Interview with Jim Caviezel, Actor in "The Passion of the Christ"

How many of you, by raising your hands here or in North County, watching by video, how many of you have seen The Passion of the Christ? Yes, you've seen it before. How many of you have not? Okay, we'll slap you later, it's no problem. Just a little film that did about, you know, over a billion dollars worldwide and kind of revolutionized the theatrical industry, but no big deal, you know. But we have a great guest with us this morning, a guy that just, he loves the Lord, and he's the real deal. Gonna just talk with you a little bit. We're gonna do an interview today, and really, it's just a time for you to sit in on an intimate conversation. It's not scripted. There's nothing that we're setting to accomplish other than just to allow you to hear a little bit about his story and his life and what God has done. And it's gonna be an exciting time, so let's give a credibly warm rock welcome to Jim Caviezel. I just hugged Jesus. And he really is that tall. Thanks for coming, man. It's great to be here, thank you. We're so blessed to have you here as our guest and being transparent, just making yourself available to us. Just great to have you with us here in San Diego. And we know we're gonna talk about the passion. We're gonna talk about your new project, Word of Promise, and a little bit about you, but tell us a little bit about yourself. We know you're a husband, a family man, got kids. Tell us a little bit about your family. I'm from the state of Washington. We won't hold that against him, right? Seahawks, I don't know. Cowboys. Can you diss me in my own house? I mean, what's up with that, you know? My wife, 14 years. We both are from Washington State, and we have two adopted children from China. One is 10, and one is eight. Awesome. And you're a Harley guy, you like to ride. Yeah. We knew we had a common bond. We started talking about, he rode his motorcycle down this weekend, and I said, okay, this guy's gotta be a Christian. He's gotta be all right, because we know the Lord's down with Harleys and motorcycles. Okay, let's get back on track, sorry. Talk about motorcycles, you get off track, but the passion, global phenomenon, incredible theatrical masterpiece, literally reached worldwide. Still the number one R-rated selling movie of all time. Incredibly, beating the Matrix revolution, beating Saving Private Ryan, just phenomenal. And so, tell us a little bit about the journey of how you got that part, and were able to get into that role, and meeting Mel, and kind of how that transpired. I met Steve McAvitty, his producing partner, at a picnic bench one day. They called my agent up, but they didn't want to let out that it was a passion movie about Jesus, so they sent me a script called Mavericks, that they're actually considering doing. The script wasn't that good, so that's what I told him firsthand, and then about 40 minutes in, Mel Gibson shows up. And he, in person, very shy, always looking down, and he smokes nonstop. And yeah, but for 15 years, as I got to know him, that he had 15 years that he felt in his heart that God was calling him to make this movie. And he knew what would happen if he did this movie. And eventually, they used the surfing movie as a front, and I kept, he started talking about Jesus this, and Jesus that, different thing, and I'm looking at him, thinking about Jesus on a surfboard. Right? He walks on water, but he might not surf, right? Yeah, so I said, you want me to play Jesus? And he says, yeah. And the next day, he called me at home, and he tried to talk me out of it. And, you know, that's how it is. You make a commitment to Christ that you're going to do that, and then the devil comes in and sips you out. And all of a sudden, I shouldn't have had this meeting. I shouldn't have done this. I've done all these things, and people will find out eventually that this is the kind of person I am. I can't do this movie. I'm the wrong guy. I shouldn't direct this. And so he called me and says, if you do this movie, you may never work in this town again. I don't want to be responsible for that. And I felt the fear, because I thought of all the nice things that I have, and I realized that God had got me into this business that my talent came from God, not from man. And so I said, look, man, we're all called to carry our own cross. If you don't pick up and carry your cross, you will be crushed by the weight of it. He got real quiet on the phone, and I said, oh my, he said, what? I said, I just realized my initials are JC, and I'm 33 years old, and he says, God, you're freaking me out, and hung up the phone. Yeah. Enough said, right? It's kind of a, well, yeah. What can you say? I mean, kind of portrays the lifestyle he's in now, but as you built a relationship with him, and you accepted the role, obviously, there were incredibly hard physical demands upon you, learning the language, just obviously the climate you were gonna be working in. Talk about your preparation for the role, and what it took from you. Well, initially, I just said, all right, here's a script, I read it, and okay, this is what you do with any script, and I start researching it. And this one was right to the Bible. But what was amazing is that that everybody wants resurrection, nobody wants suffering. But can you have the gold medal without suffering? Can you sit on, does a man, when he's sitting there, and his country's flag is going up, and he's got a gold medal around his neck, and he's weeping, is he going, I'm crying because Nike just called, and has given me a $30 million contract. That must be it. Or is it that I see the sacrifice, I see my family suffering, I see them, you're joined to a lot of other people that have given so much into your country, and to people that have given their life for God, and paying with their own blood, and you hear the Star-Spangled Banner. Much the same way, in this piece, I wanted this thing to transcend. If I'm gonna do this movie, I don't want to do the passion of mediocrity, or something that is a little pagan, that he wasn't handed over by his own, that only the Romans were so responsible. But if you look at it, day after day, that we all are a part of handing Christ over when we contribute to sin. Especially when we betray him, and we are Christians. But Jesus then continues to tell us to get back up, to try, to keep going. Mm-hmm. Doing the movie, and going about doing this movie, was thinking that if we had done this thing in a controlled set, you would have never saw the performance. It was truly birthed in pain, and it immediately threw me on my face. So, right from the get-go, I had my shoulders separated. At that point, I'm thinking, God, hey, hello, we're trying to do a movie here. I'm an actor, I'm just an actor here. You're letting the devil, or whatever, to destroy us. At the same time, we're getting phone calls, and stuff from major publications, saying expressed interest that Mel Gibson is anti-Semitic. And all this stuff is compounding, over and over. The cursing, remember at one point, Mel Gibson would take God's name in vain. And I would say, hey, as Jesus. And looking as Jesus, and I said, don't take my father's name in vain. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so, I become him. And it was a big part of, that I don't want people to see me, I want them to see Jesus. Sure. That when people come to the theater, that what they experience, is they can look right at themselves, the way God sees them. Not the way we see ourselves, but the way God sees us, and that's who you really are. And so, again, I was scourged, accidentally hit, during the carrying of the cross, my shoulder was dislocated. And upon the cross, I had, I weighed 210 pounds. In the filming, I was about 168. I was so sick, I kept throwing up, had my both lungs filled with fluid, pneumonia. After the movie was over, many people don't know, and I don't talk about it too much, but I had to have heart surgery. So, I was struck by lightning on the last shot of the day. So. That's kind of a moving encounter right there. So, what I'm telling you, you know, if you want to be a Christian, you know, you're in for it. Yeah. Yeah, we've got these buzzers under the seat, you know. You feel something hot, it's just, it's Jim's fault, not ours, just blame it on Jesus, right? So, we're gonna look at a couple of clips. In just a minute, we're gonna look at the whipping scene and the thrashing scene. And I understand that during the flogging, Mel kind of impromptu made some adjustments that were not in your favor. During the scourging scene on accident, we didn't really rehearse this. We had a metal plank about a foot away from my back, right here, and I'm standing right here, and they would hit the metal plank. And then, there's one, two, three cameras on this particular day. And Mel, in the middle of the shoot, because these guys don't speak English, and we don't speak Italian, so there's a translation problem. So, he's telling Karidi, his assistant, to translate to them, to tell him to hit Jim like baseball, you know, like a pitcher in a baseball game. And they're like, they don't play baseball. And he's like, oh, oh, like cricket. So, they went back here and took a run like this. And I'm sitting here like that, and they hit the metal plank, except with that momentum, the whip went over and 14-inch gash on my back. And I went right down, like in a football game, where you get the wind knocked out of you. Why, did it hurt or something? Is that what you? I mean. No, I saw God. Well, let's roll the clip. Let's talk a little bit about the whipping. And we're gonna just walk through it a little bit. Let's roll that. So, they're not being kind in this moment. They're kind of jerking you around a little bit. Pause it right there, pause it right there. Maybe we could go back just slightly. Sure. I'm kind of just thinking to myself, you're hearing them flexing the bows in the back. What's going through your mind at that point? At that point, I'm thinking about all my sins. The whole part was, you know, I'm not worthy to play this role. And that's a good place to be. And I told a friend of mine that, and he says, well, you know, Jim, God doesn't always choose the best. But he chose you, what are you gonna do about it? So, you know, I was in a place of deep, deep, just like in a, in the zone. And throughout the whole film, I was always meditating and always praying the whole time. And as you would say, staying in character. And this was important because I knew that for only the people that would be able to see Jesus is through the prayer, the daily prayer and the fasting. And the fasting was immediate because of the sickness. At the end of the movie, when I was on the cross, my body's blue. There was no makeup. My body was actually blue. They, between takes, as I'm here, they would put, they would take me down. And my, every time my shoulder was locked in, there was a thousand foot cliff and it would hit the cross and would snap my shoulder out of joint. And I wasn't, I was just beyond. And at that point, I was so sick that it would be ripped out. And I honestly, I could barely feel it anyway. I was so gone, but something was wrong with my heart. And the man put a stethoscope on my heart and he said, Mel, he can die. And at that point, you know, Mel, some of the greatest things about Mel Gibson was that he was a gambling man. And he said, Jim, what do you think? And I said, I'm going between me and God. This is between me and God because I never thought I was good enough. Wow. And at that moment, it was, I'm ready to go home. So you can take me here. That's no problem. But I knew if I died making this movie, I knew that people would be, so many people would be safe. At the end of the movie, I was walking up the mountainside. As I got up about halfway, everybody's in location, about 250 people. About halfway up, I felt this presence come over me, evil presence. And it was, you're a dead man. And I remember thinking, this is the best news. This is where I was. This is the best news I've ever had because I know if I die, I'm going to heaven. I got to the top, about the fifth take. The clouds were so low. The thunder and lightning was the sound of a howitzer. It was so powerful that you could feel the earth move. And I saw two people that were about as close as these two are to me. And their eyes were looking up and they were watering like they were going to cry. And my hair, I couldn't feel it. And I heard a huge ghast in the audience because they saw something and I couldn't hear anything. It was like an eye of a storm. If you're in the eye of the storm, your hair could be blowing. It could be 30 knot winds. And I never heard the wind blowing. I could just, it was silence. Five seconds, four, three, two, one, and this light came right down from heaven and lit me up. What people witnessed was an illumination around my body and a fire on the right and left side of my head. And for one moment, I was looking at myself outside my body. You got struck with lightning. I was struck by lightning. And there were three groups of people. Pastor Miles mentioned it, asked me this yesterday. Was it true? There were a lot of people that were very indifferent about being extras in the movie. I said, yes, tremendous amount. In fact, there were three groups of people and there were the believers, and there were the non-believers, and there were the fence riders. They're the ones that are very indifferent about it. Two of those are bad decisions. But what was amazing is that people who think they're fence riding think that that's not a choice. It is a choice. You are fence riding and that is a decision that one is making. But when I was hit, everybody fell on their face. The ground shook. And from that point, that was the last shot of the movie. In a second, we're gonna look at that last scene when they dropped the cross into the ground and it shook. And you were telling me over our conversation that because where you were elevated, the wind would blow and the cross would move and your shoulder would continually come out of socket and the pneumonia had set into your lungs and some of those things. Tell us about that. I think, I mean, I couldn't breathe very well. Obviously, when you're hung on a cross, you die by asphyxiation, suffocation. But I mean, physically, I was struggling. But our Lord was letting me feel a little bit of what he went through. And he was sustaining me, but to a point of how far do you wanna go with this? How much do you want the world to see of me? And I said, every bit of it. Well, then you're in for it. It's kind of like, Lord, I want to drink your, can you drink the cup that I'm going? Yes, we can. We can, James and John asking that we want to sit at your right and left hand side. So it was given, but it's funny, I'm in San Diego. When I was a young man, I came out at 18 and I wanted to be a Navy SEAL. I didn't know what Navy SEALs were. They started talking about frogmen. At 18, I told my dad this is what I wanted to do. And I applied to the United States Naval Academy three times. I was gonna give my life, but in a different way. God had reserved that in me. I see those guys when they go through buds. And I said, there's no way you can make it through unless you're willing to say, it's okay if I die here at buds. So I want to give my life for something. And there's nothing better for me than to give my life for Jesus Christ. Let's roll that clip of the crucifixion scene. Left shoulder, left shoulder, ah. Let's pause the footage right there. So at that moment, you're about this far up. Are you thinking, can I get some aspirin? I've got a headache. I mean, what is going through your mind at that moment when that cross is about to drop? Again, it was between me and for years of being feeling enslaved in sin. And going up like that was, bring it on. Is this the best you got? I look at not just our Lord's death, which was for all, but understand that the modern day Christians, they say to me, but Jesus did that. Yes, true, he did do that for you. And so he did it, I don't have to. I said, okay, well, why did Peter have to then do it? And why did John have to do it? Why did all the rest of the apostles have to then, well, why did they have to sacrifice themselves? Jesus had done that. What about all the martyrs of the 20th century? What about Christians that I've heard and done documentaries to where they were executed at the foot of Muslims that are executing your brothers and sisters right now? Where is our Lord with them? Does he hate them? We cannot continue as Christians to sit here and say, well, I'll only be a Christian if it's about prosperity, you know, that we have plenty. I want you to remember that when Herod, when Jesus goes in to meet Herod, he wouldn't look at him. Did I just do that because that was a choice? No, it was scripture. He wouldn't look at Herod. You don't have to go out and do a song and dance for seculars because they won't believe. They won't believe anyway. You can pray for them. That's the way it's going to be. But understand, people are going to choose evil, but you don't. And the devil is going to sift you out. He's going to look right now. Where are you weak? I can get this guy a million bucks and he'll turn. 10 million for this guy, 50 over here. They'll all turn. They'll all say, well, choice, choice, my freedom to choose. Every generation of Americans needs to know that freedom exists not to do what you like, but having the right to do what you ought. If you want to look at it this way, the problem I see right now is the fact that many, many Christians have immersed themselves in paganism. They want to be cool to their Christian or pagan friends by being a little pagan so they can be cool. There's nothing cool in this. The only thing lacking in you is that you don't want to be holy. Well, here's what'll happen. We'll all come to task one day, and you either get a chance to lay it down for Jesus or you'll get to deny him. But it will come in our generation this way. There are many things that you see on the horizon right now where you're going to have to make a choice. You will have to make a choice. I was in Croatia recently. There were 26 Roman Catholic priests, Franciscans, 26 of them. Stalin had taken over. We had sold out. We gave Stalin the whole East, Eastern Europe, and many people paid for this, paid with their lives. Communists came in. They took the crucifix down. They put it down, and they said, deny this to the priest. Deny this or you'll die, and they executed him. He said, no, I won't deny it. Shot the second guy too. By that time, the captain said, bring my Jeep over, take the gasoline. Grab the most weakest man here, the man in the wheelchair, Franciscan. Pour the gasoline on him. He lit a match. He says, you guys want to see this? And he looks to his brothers, and he says, let me burn. They burned him, and they shot the rest of them, but they all had a chance. Now, is that hard to hear? Is the passion hard to watch? Your death is imminent. I hear people all the time in Hollywood, they say, you know what? My agent just died, and he was so embarrassed by his death, he didn't want anybody coming in because it was very hard for those people to watch. Well, guess what? Suck it up. We need Christians to go look death in the face and understand the next point, to encourage these people to understand that eternity awaits them. We're all going to die, the first death, hopefully not the second. God never sends a man to hell. People choose this place. Our democracy cannot be sustained without a shared commitment to certain moral truths about the human person and the human community. The basic question before a democratic society is this, how ought we to live together? And in seeking an answer to this question, can society exclude moral truth and moral reasoning? Set yourselves apart from this corrupt generation, my brothers and sisters. You weren't made to fit in, you were born to stand out. That's right, amended, amended. So, now you've started on a new endeavor. It's actually been a six-year process. The audio Bible, Word of Promise. Tell us a little bit about that project and what it means to you and the purpose behind it. This audio Bible is the passion of the Christ, but it's the passion of Christ in your car. It's the passion of the Christ when you're depressed and everyone's rejecting you because they only like winners. It's when you've hit that depressive state when you think of suicide or you've had your abortions or you paid for one. It's to understand that Jesus will forgive and he has mercy and the greatest of mercy. I don't think even we understand what mercy is or what grace is. You can't be an Olympic athlete, you can't be a world champion by practicing once a week. You have to take Jesus Christ into your life every day. It's not, it's who you are. He's a part of you, he wants to be with you all the time. He's the greatest coach there ever was. But he's that coach that when you fall down, he's like, get up, man, go. And does he push you? Absolutely, he wants much from you. He's the one that encourages you to fast, to not just pray once a week, but to pray every day. And then once you're praying every day, you change the workout because you can do more, can't you? Yes, and he wants more, he demands more, and you want it. And after you make it, you get there. There's more and more and it's a continual thing, even in heaven, on earth as it is in heaven. Guys, our Father is real, the gospel's real. It's not something that you just put away. You read this, it's now, the gospel. Some of you are going to play the Virgin Mary. Some of you play Jesus. Some of you will play his betrayer, Judas. And some of you will be Pilate, the politician. Who are you? God will tell you. And then you move in the direction of holiness. Every day, you're in the car, you're depressed. Right now, we're going through a time period where things are being stripped from us, and they will. And it's good, because you understand, you don't need all the things that we've been given. They aren't your given right. They're going to be stripped. We are living in this time right now where the world is going to be fasting, and it's going to get hard before it gets better. But God, the people need to see God in you. They need to be a light, you need to be that light. Because they're going to see you, and they're going to think suicide is the way out. But they see you, they want that. This, every day, the word of God. So it's a 160-piece orchestra. It's 5.1 sound like a movie theater. You feel the Holy Spirit go through you. The word of God comes alive. And everybody's going to look at you, and believe me, they'll be asking you, what are you on? You'll be on Jesus Christ. You have a... Yeah, yeah, it's great. Obviously, tremendous cast in this audio version. 600 actors. Including yourself. So we've actually got an audio clip that we're going to roll and Jim and I are actually going to just be quiet for about two minutes and allow you to experience the word of promise. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void. Darkness was on the face of the deep. And the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, let there be light. And God said to Noah, the end of all flesh has come before me. For the earth is filled with violence through them. And behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. Make rooms in the ark. And cover it inside and outside with pitch. I am Joseph. Does my father still live? But his brothers could not answer him for they were dismayed in his presence. And God spoke all these words. I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. So the people shouted when the priests blew the trumpets. And it happened when the people heard the sound of the trumpet and the people shouted with great shout that the wall fell down flat. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul. But he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon him. And by his stripes, we are healed. Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden. And I will give you rest. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes. Then they struck him on the head with a reed and spat on him. Wow, phenomenal. You hear those trumpets driving down the 805, you'll think the CHP's coming after you. Incredible production value in that. So before we wrap up, obviously you're gonna be available afterwards to sign Word of Promise purchases and you're gonna be in the cafe and people can connect briefly. But if someone's sitting here today and they've not seen the Passion or they haven't had that God encounter the way that you have, what would be the one parting thing that you'd like for them to know about your life and the God relationship and how they need to connect with God? Well, you asked me this, but I will tell you what I know God wants me to say. Sure. Number one, I love you. I love you. That's what you want to hear, isn't it? Number two, you are all going to heaven. And you say, how do you know this? It's very simple. God had been in your heart a long time. He's been dormant, some of you. Some of you, much more alive. But continually, God is asking for more conversion. Why do you believe? Let me tell you, a man can be a soldier in the military for 20 years and never see one day of combat. But when he's in that foxhole and he's losing his own men, he's on a whole nother level. God is preparing you now for this level. I will tell you how I know that God loves you this much and how I know that you're all going to heaven. Some of you have had abortions. Some men here and women are adulterers. Some have committed murder. Some of you didn't have the abortion, but you paid for it. So you have contributed to this. Many people are a part of this great sin in this country. Over 50 million in the United States alone. 45 million die every year in the world. These are all God's children and God brings them home. Now he wants to bring you home, now, in this moment. This is a chance for heaven right now. You don't have to wait to die to experience heaven. But when you committed the sin, any of the 10 commandments or the sin of abortion or contributed to it, let me be very clear. Did you go to one of your friends and ask your friend, hear my story, and you say, yes, I went to one person. I said, why do you go to this person to confide in this sin to them? Because they didn't judge me, because they loved me, because I felt mercy and grace. Now, I ask you this, do you think that your God doesn't have more mercy than your friend? Do you think your friend has more grace than God? Does your friend have more love than the creator? It can never be, it can never be. So God forgives you and now he needs you to begin again, to accept forgiveness. Earlier I said, God never sends a man into hell. People choose this place, your choice. God made you and loves you. There's never been another like you. He deemed that you would come here. He asked you and you came. Today, you came, you had the courage to come. And there was plenty parts of the world that pulled you from today from even coming, but you came. Don't you know how much God will remember this? Do you think he is a God that's just sitting there waiting to toss you off? You are perfect. There is no one else like you. And without you, he would cry. So he's coming to you now, right now in this moment. All he has to hear from you is yes. Yes, you've accepted Jesus, some of you. Keep accepting him. Every time we sin, we deny him. Be holy, be perfect just as my father is perfect or in the passion. My commandment to you is this. You love one another just as I have loved you. And if that doesn't grab you, maybe this one will. Your name may not appear down here in this world's hall of fame. In fact, you may be so unknown that no one knows your name. The Oscars and the praise of men may never come your way, but don't forget God has rewards that he'll hand out someday. This crowd on earth, they will soon forget when you're not at the top. They will cheer like mad until you fall and then their praise will stop. Not God, he never does forget. And in his hall of fame, by just believing on his son, forever there's your name. I tell you, friend, I wouldn't trade my name, however small, that's written there beyond the stars in that celestial hall for all the famous names on earth or the glory that they share. I'd rather be an unknown here and have my name up there. God bless you. Fantastic, fantastic. I love you.