The Judas Touch

A Catholic priest and Hollywood producer talks about his movie's portrait of Judas

BY: Interview by Paul O'Donnell

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The last project of Father Bud Keiser, sometimes called "God's agent" for his years producing religious films in Hollywood, was "Judas," a portrait of Christ's infamous betrayer. Written by the award-winning scenarist Tom Fontana and directed and played by other devoted Catholics, the role raises sometimes uncomfortable questions about Judas by imagining him as a complete human being, with his own quite understandable reasons for joining, and eventually handing over Jesus. The movie will be shown on ABC Monday, March 8. Beliefnet talked recently with Father Frank Desiderio, Fr. Keiser's successor at Paulist Productions, who saw "Judas" to completion.

There's been a lot of press lately about evangelicals in Hollywood. But this movie seems to have come out of a Catholic cabal.

[Laughs.] There's no secret handshake. You're starting to sound like Dan Brown. Let's put it this way: everything in Hollywood happens because of relationships and money. And to a much lesser degree, people's person belief system. But ABC wouldn't have made it if they didn't think it was going to be a ratings hit.

The screenwriter, Tom Fontana, executive producer of "Oz," is a Catholic, and the director, Charles Carner, is too.

And Jonathan Schaech, who plays Judas. His father raised him to be a good Catholic. His dad is a Baltimore cop, a kind of blue collar Catholic type. I met Jonathan through kind of a Christians-in-Hollywood group called Open Call. Somebody on the Board of Directors of Open Call who is a friend of Jonathan's said, "I've got this friend, he'd be great." And I'm saying, "Oh sure." Then I met him and I knew he was right.

How long were you working on the movie?

The first draft of the script was done September 2000. We delivered it to ABC November of 2001.

So did ABC shelve it until "The Passion" made such a stir?

They told me that in 2002 they didn't have the money to properly promote it. In 2003, you'd have to ask them. Today, I see it as providential that this movie was waiting for the publicity wave of Mel Gibson's movie-and I think they compliment each other nicely. We tell why Jesus was crucified.

Obviously this is a rather sympathetic view of Judas. In the history of the Church, has he gone in and out of favor?

What you find is a certain literary history with Judas. Since Jesus had to die for the redemption to happen, somebody had to hand him over, not betray him, but hand him over. And Jesus would only trust the strongest disciple to do it. So he entrusted Judas, who was the strongest disciple and his best friend to do what He thought none of the others were capable of doing. That's a little piece of the literary tradition.

Most of what we get is what I'd call the Augustinian model. Augustine said that he was the archetypical Jew, and he meant that in a very derogatory way-the cheat, the betrayer, the greedy, avaricious Jew. In art, Judas is always shown as the ugliest of the apostles. He's always got a bag of money in his hand, or he has no face at all. But you could always pick him out in scenes of the twelve because he's the really nasty looking one. Dante put him in the lowest circle of hell.

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