Quentin Tarantino Recalls Laughing Through The Passion of the Christ, ‘Getting Kind of Turned on By the Beating’

Quentin Tarantino was “laughing a lot” the first time he saw Mel Gibson’s 2004 The Passion of the Christ, he says in a new podcast, in which he also praised the film as one of his favorites of this century.

Tarantino didn’t laugh through the entire movie, mind you: Just the parts where Jesus gets brutalized.

“Extreme violence is just funny to me,” Tarantino said in the latest episode of the Bret Easton Ellis Podcast. “And when you go so far beyond extremity, it just gets funnier and funnier, all right?”

Tarantino joined the podcast to share his list of his 20 favorite films of this century. The Passion of the Christ was No. 15. You can listen to the full podcast episode to hear the rest of the first half of Tarantino’s top 20, and the second half will be released soon.

Ellis recalled that he first saw the film in a completely packed theater in which many people were weeping. Tarantino had a very different viewing experience: He watched a print of it with a girlfriend at the time, in his own theater.

“To see that movie packed to the rafters, that movie in particular, all right, would have been fascinating,” Tarantino said. “But I had such a special time with my friend. We were laughing a lot during the movie, not because we were just trying to be perverse, laughing at Jesus getting f—ed up.”

He explained that they “we were just groaning-laughing at how f—ed up it was,” especially because they knew more violence was coming.

“It just ended up being an extremely enjoyable experience. But now that sounds like I’m just being perverse, but no, I actually, I thought he kind of did a tremendous directorial job.”

He praised Gibson for capturing the ancient time period of the film, and added:

“I love the fact that he never really chose one tone and carried it through. There are scenes where you feel like you’re watching the most realistic Biblical movie you’ve ever seen. Then all of a sudden it turns into a religious painting and gets completely avant-garde, and gets surreal. And then there’s actually horror movie imagery that he invests in, big time. And then there’s political s— in there. You really see the political situation of a Pontius Pilate in a really terrific way. And all those actors just seem amazing because they’re not speaking English, and it just seems so convincing.”

Quentin Tarantino Describes Mel Gibson Looking at Him Like a ‘Nut’ for His Passion of the Christ Reaction

The Passion of the Christ. Newmarket Films

Tarantino said he found one moment in the film “incredibly memorable,” and said he had once told Gibson about it in person.

“I told him about this and he looked at me like I was a f—ing nut,” Tarantino said. “Of course he doesn’t understand where I’m coming from on this, and I don’t know if anyone else will.”

The particularly memorable scene is one in which Jesus is whipped by Roman soldiers. Tarantino noted that Gibson really extends the setup for the whipping, and that the Romans act like true “motherf—ers” even before the whipping begins.

“I mean, they just look like the worst cops you’ve ever seen in your life. And they’re testing it out, and they’re passing it around — you’re like, ‘Oh, my God, this is gonna be f—ing terrible.’ And he’s stretching it out, stretching — and then it starts happening.

“And then it’s like wham. And you feel it. And then it’s another one, wham. And like, three, four, five times, and you feel every f—ing blow.

“By the sixth blow, I traded places,” Tarantino said. “And I was now a Roman. And I started getting kind of turned on by the beating. But I’m not Jesus getting beat. … I became the Roman, and all of a sudden the whipping — I started getting the rush of that. And I couldn’t believe I was feeling that. But I was feeling it.”

Ellis, the author of the very violent American Psycho, interjected that he is affected by screen violence, and that the scene was “one of the most upsetting scenes that I can remember seeing.”

Tarantino continued: “I liked that it reached into a sadomasochistic aspect in me that I didn’t quite know I had, and it kind of turned me on. … I didn’t know I was going to switch horses. I just did.”

Tarantino’s Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, which recombines his masterful Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2, arrives in theaters December 5, and Gibson plans a two-part sequel to The Passion of the Christ, called The Resurrection of the Christ, for release in 2026 and 2027.

Tarantino isn’t the first, interestingly enough, to see a link between the kind of cinematic violence displayed in his films and the violence of Gibson’s.

When Christoph Waltz, star of Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained, hosted Saturday Night Live in 2013, the show re-imagined Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection as a Tarantino-style revenge thriller, Djesus Uncrossed. Enjoy:

Main image: Jim Caviezel in The Passion of the Christ. Newmarket Films.