Jesus Christ Super Ham

Thirty Miles Outside Jerusalem I was taken into a labyrinth of underground caves, where the apostles and their women were performing a dance routine. The atmosphere inside was rank and airless, the heat was murderous. After half an hour, half-choked by dust, I came stumbling out into the sunlight and fell asleep beneath an olive tree, dreaming of Gadarene swine. When I awoke I saw a figure perched motionless on a rock above me, a small man in a coarse white robe, with a cassette recorder pressed against his ear. For some moments he gazed blankly at the horizon, lost in the music, and then he came down slowly toward me, to crouch beside me in the dirt. His beard was silky, his eyes full of light. "You must be Jesus," I said.

"Sure am," he replied, and I shook his hand. We ate shriveled olives and he nodded his head in time with the songs, sandals tapping. When the Stones became suggestive in their lyrics, however, he turned the volume down.

"What does it feel like?" I asked him. "I mean, to be the Son of God?"

The small man considered carefully. Lizards scurried by his feet and he stared into infinity. "Outasight," he said at last. "It's really a far-out trip."

• • •

When John Lennon said in 1966 that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ, one could hardly have conceived how soon and how directly he'd be given the lie. Yet Jesus Christ Superstar, in three years, has grossed somewhere between $50,000,000 and $80,000,000 and is currently hotter than the Beatles, The Rolling Stones and any half dozen other rock groups put together. Variety calls it "the biggest all-media parlay in show-business history"; Time simply calls it "Gold Rush to Golgotha."

A movie-a major motion picture-was inevitable. Yet, Hollywood's enthusiasm has been tempered by considerable caution. Film executives still look on rock (and on youth) with deepest distrust. Occasionally, it has made their fortune; much more often, it has showered them with offal. So these days they tend to hover desperately on the fringes, like so many dirty raincoats lurking outside a clip joint. They know, of course, that they're bound to get sucked in sooner or later, yet they can't stop wheedling for discounts and guarantees, in case the bar girls turn sour on them.

Universal Pictures, having bought the rights to Superstar, promptly began to do the crab walk. It restricted the budget to $3,000,000, which for a Hollywood musical is peanuts, and it stocked the cast with virtual unknowns. Originally, Mick Jagger had been proposed as a possible Jesus. So had Lennon, Elvis Presley and, unimaginably, David Cassidy. But the part went to Teddy Neeley from Ranger, Texas, "for an undisclosed fee," as one apostle put it, "rumored to run into three figures."

The producer and director was Norman Jewison, whose last picture had been Fiddler on the Roof. That probably made him the most reliable profit maker in Hollywood. He had made In the Heat of the Night, The Cincinnati Kid, The Thomas Crown Affair and The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming.

His interest in Superstar went back almost to its inception. Long before it became successful, someone had sent him the original album. Straightaway, he was hooked: "Without doubt a unique statement for our age," he said, with reflex overkill. "Possibly not a masterpiece. At certain moments pretentious, at others naive and superficial. Nevertheless, a major breakthrough, an original and unforgettable vision."

Reverence ran deep. No true child of Hollywood can ever resist the lure of the religioso. So Jewison filled his script with symbolism, spoke with awe of The Greatest Story Ever Told and, inevitably, chose to film in Israel-or rather, as he never failed to call it, the Holy Land.

"Piety," Orson Welles once said, "is a showbiz term of unknown origin, meaning money." In Jewison's case, however, the common rule came unstuck. He meant to make enormous profits, of course, and was prepared to be ruthless in pursuit of them. But there was no mistaking the missionary glint in his eye. He clearly had his sights set on Art: "A total experience," he said. "Truth, meaning and beauty."

Most of the cast were Superstar veterans, selected from various American stage versions. Judas was a big black stud named Carl Anderson from Washington; Mary Magdalene, played by Yvonne Elliman, was a surfer's dream from Hawaii; Herod was Joshua Mostel, Zero's son. As for the others-apostles, Romans, whores-one half looked like refugees from Hair and the rest like dropouts from The Boys in the Band.

On the whole, they were not respectful. Superstar was an experience that they'd already been through and, frankly, they were bored. Sated with solemnity, they wanted to get back to good hard rock and goof off again, get stoned onstage, boogie. So they went into the film for the exposure and the bread, but they groused behind their hands: "The vehicle," said the incarnation of Saint James the Elder, "is bullshit."

Israel changed that. On the road in America they had merely been performers. But the moment they arrived in the actual setting, they began to mesh with their roles. Bypassing the opera, they went directly back to the source, to the original Gospels. Superstar became irrelevant. Now it was Christ himself who concerned them.

Thus, a couple of days before filming began, Saint Bartholomew and Saint James walked out together into the desert and sat down on a rock. All afternoon they squatted cross-legged and did not move or speak. For hour after hour they watched the shepherds tending their flocks, the olive trees, the scrub, the ageless stone. Nothing had changed here for 2000 years; possibly nothing ever would. Time was meaningless: Afternoon moved slowly into twilight and on into night, heat faded into cool, and still they didn't stir.

When at last they returned to themselves, they found their faces wet with tears.

• • •

Jewison is a stocky, sun-browned Canadian in his middle 40s. He has been making films, first for TV and then for Hollywood, for 20 years and therefore is rarely to be seen without a fat cigar, which he smokes in the style of Ed Begley, all puff and no drag.

On the set he invariably wore shorts and a battered old bush hat, so that he looked like a reject from a B-feature thriller, set in the Australian outback, who had wandered into Superstar by accident. A grizzled, nuggety gold prospector, perhaps, or a cranky mule driver. A character role, at any rate, with plenty of scope for excess: "I'm a ham," he said. "I can't help it-audiences are my lifeblood."

He can sniff out a journalist or a prospective Boswell at 50 yards and immediately, in the very instant of recognition, is overwhelmed by rhetoric. Ask him a question and his eye becomes a beacon, his cigar begins to belch forth smoke like a factory chimney and out gush anecdotes in a torrent. Reminiscences, parables, apocryphal fables of vintage Hollywood, all as dazzling and as dubious as the sequins on a Bluebell girl.

Even more than yarn spinning, however, he is addicted to profundity. Touch on any of the great flowerpots at random-art, religion, love, life or death-and you are immediately engulfed in proverb and portent. Thus, when Barry Dennen, alias Pontius Pilate, came to Jewison between takes and asked his advice on some small point of interpretation, he did not reply at once but creased his face like an accordion, puffed three mighty puffs on his cigar and, finally, raised a solemn forefinger. "Just remember this," he said. "Whatever you do, however you play it: Unto thine own self be true."

• • •

Now Jewison stood framed in left profile. Silhouetted against the first glow of sunset, he crinkled his eyes and flung his arm out across the valley below. "There are kids down there in tears," he said. "Why? There are grown men breaking down and bawling, there are cameramen and grips and hard-boiled pros who've been in this business for twenty years and don't give a fuck for anyone or anything and all of them are crying. Why? Jesus is crying, Judas is crying, all the apostles are just wiped out. Why? They didn't cry in London. They didn't cry in New York or Los Angeles; they didn't cry in Hoboken. So tell me, why are they crying now? Why?"

Everyone looked blank. The assistant director, the production supervisor and the unit publicist crowded in close, like Los Angeles Rams in a huddle, waiting to be instructed, but Jewison took his time. "Why?" he asked again and, noticing that his cigar had gone out, paused until the assistant director relit it. Fat Israelis were swilling out latrines in the background. Extras straggled past, holding hands and snuffling. The valley turned purple. "Because we're here," said Jewison suddenly. "That's why."

"Because we're here," echoed the production supervisor, and he looked profound. Clearly, he was troubled. So were the others.

But Jewison was triumphant. "Right," he roared. "Because we're here. Because it's the Holy Land. Because we're all in this simple valley, just us and the olive trees, the mules, the mountains above. Because it's real."

His cohorts began to catch the drift. "Because it's real," intoned the assistant director and he beamed at the unit publicist, who beamed right back and said, "Because we're here."

Soon the mood became frankly celebratory. "Reality," declared Jewison. "No studios, no faking, no bullshit. Only the rock and the sand and the sky. Only the truth."

Inspired, he half-turned and looked directly down into the valley at a small patch of vivid green grass, especially flown in from England, because there isn't much green grass in this part of Israel. Saint Peter sat cross-legged beneath a tree, reading The Autobiography of a Yogi; Saint John was writing home to his mother; Saint Bartholomew was busily goosing Saint Thaddeus with an olive branch. "Reality," said Jewison one last time and, clambering into his Jaguar, he was driven off into the sunset.

• • •

The crying, once launched, did not easily let up. The apostles and most of the cast cried when Jesus got the shits and had to rush for the sanctuary of the honey wagon; they cried when Judas turned nasty and raised his voice to them; most of all, they cried when they saw themselves on the rushes. "Very emotional boyos, these," said the Irish chief caterer. "Thank the Lord I've got plenty of spare buckets." Several times, at the end of a take, Jesus and Judas capsized sobbing in each other's arms. Then Jewison joined them for a choked embrace. Within seconds, the set was awash. Gradually, even the technicians and the extras were snared. By the end of the third week, the unit nurse was so deeply moved by the sight of a young Arab boy picking flowers that she fell over a small stone wall and sprained her wrist.

Along with the general gushing, meanwhile, a macabre little charade began to unfold. The apostles had apparently identified themselves so utterly with their roles that they began to look on Teddy Neeley as though he were, indeed, the Messiah. They followed him everywhere, took him food and drink, massaged his neck when he was weary, carried his burdens when he felt depressed and, of course, bathed him with their tears whenever the script made him suffer.

Undoubtedly, he was a gentle and sympathetic spirit, a very nice man. Still, to the outsider, such worship was startling. No matter, worship him they did: "Would I give up my life for him?" asked Saint James rhetorically. "Who can know such things? But I would fight for him, I'd even put up with loss and abuse for him. Why? Because he is warm and tender and good. Because, if Christ were alive today, he would be someone like Teddy Neeley."

Teddy, it must be said, neither encouraged nor discouraged all this. He was altogether too polite ever to propose himself as the Godhead. On the other hand, the journey from Ranger to Calvary had taken him 15 scuffling years and he wasn't about to blow his ticket. He had spent three years playing Saturday-night dances in Palo Pinto County, six more on the road to Los Angeles and whole eternities in Vegas, or in warm-up bands for Opry tours, or singing suppertime schlurp at the Cocoanut Grove. He had cracked up in Hollywood, broken down in Hawaii and his first gig in Superstar, on Broadway, had been as an understudy. Now he was Jesus Christ: "the big cheese himself," as Jewison put it, and who could blame him if he wore his robes in the shower or made a few ambiguous passes with his finger tips? "I know what I am," he said. "Others can see what they choose."

Big black Judas, inevitably, caught the backlash. Jesus liked him fine, but the apostles ran away every time he approached. "Rough, tough and bad," said Saint Bartholomew. "Just looking at him is enough to make you cream. Now you tell me, honey, who wants to cream at a time like this?"

Judas was not unduly distressed-isolation suited him. Intensely competitive, implausibly handsome, he had brisk contempt for mass opinion and locked himself up every night in his hotel bedroom. "People are a pain in the ass," he said, "and nice, well-meaning people are the biggest pain of all."

Nonetheless, like Jewison, he was a compulsive performer and, while on the set, he played at Captain Superspade, all soul handshakes and funky little finger pops, eye rollings, mouth gapings and splutters of dirty laughter. He had enormous presence and, undoubtedly, was going to be a star. Kids adored him, so did the Israelis and so, of course, did women. Soon he built up a following all his own, a group of antidisciples, who idolized him as much as the apostles idolized Jesus. (continued on page 200) Jesus Christ Super Ham (continued from page 90) Every day, in the luncheon tent, the two factions would mumble in corners and watch, waiting for a showdown. Their leaders, however, let them down completely. Obstinate, not to say unsporting, they insisted on remaining good friends and swapped cassettes, shared salads, embraced in the sunshine: "Rip-off!" squealed Saint Thaddeus. "It wasn't like that in the script."

Still, away from the set, Judas started showing signs of strain. There was a series of explosions-blazing rows with hotel managers, semibrawls by swimming pools, tales of unpaid bills and overturned tables. In between outbursts, he withdrew entirely, immersing himself in solitude and silence. Having sent for his girlfriend from Los Angeles, he found he couldn't even speak to her and had to parcel her off forthwith. All human contact, all sentiment irked him unbearably. "Judas means distance and coldness," he said. Then he suddenly laughed. "Loneliness, bad vibes, being mean," he chortled, "and man, I really dig it. A few times I think I'd really like to be close to someone, but then, as soon as I am, I start feeling trapped and have to run away. Anyone I care about, I destroy them, try to drive them off. I hate responsibility, dependence, need, any kind of closeness. Deep down, I just don't give a fuck."

Jesus, when told of this, was saddened but not shocked. Spreading his robe serenely about his feet, he squatted in the shade and heaved a deep sigh. "Whether you're Judas or Jesus or even Mary Magdalene," he said, "this gig can be a killer."

• • •

What was all the fuss about Superstar in the first place? Certainly it was amiable and energetic, full of bounce and good intentions, all the things that musicals are meant to have. Then, of course, the Messiah has always been box-office boffo and the notion of rocking the Gospels was predictably good for a storm of controversy. In its field, it was a thoroughly skilled and entertaining night out and one could easily see why it was a hit. But the biggest all-media parlay in showbiz history? Even allowing for the hyperbole, that was a dream coat of quite another color.

Larry Marshall as Saint Simon the Zealot, a marvelous skin-and-bone streak of a New York speedoo, alone among the apostles, had failed to weep. He explained the bonanza in terms of the perfect compromise. "All the trappings of rock, none of the reality," he said. "Color, noise, brashness, a little outrageousness-people feel groovy and adventurous because they go to see it and yet, at the same time, it keeps them safe as milk."

It was true that Superstar's public was essentially halfway house-middle aged, middle class, middle-brow, demihep-and that, even when it reached the young, it missed the hard-core rock fan. What it marked, in fact, was the final integration of pop into the mainstream of Western culture. Here at last was a kids' show for all the family. Electric guitars no longer meant orgy, anarchy, imminent holocaust-in Superstar, din was mere high spirits, anger only a gesture. "Sit back and enjoy it," Saint Simon said, "and remember it's only a story."

As such, it became a rallying point. There were millions, after all, who had grown weary of Herb Alpert but couldn't yet stretch to Frank Zappa; who liked to smoke three joints a month, taken after dinner, but went cold at the very thought of needles; who deplored the Vietnam war and were civil to all ethnics on principle without remotely wishing for revolution. A massed liberal bourgeoisie, oozing with cash and changed aspirations.

Somehow, before Superstar, they had been overlooked. No one had quite perceived their growing friskiness, their enormous willingness to flirt. Even Superstar had originally been aimed at the kids-Jesus freaks, lapsed hippies, just plain fans. Thus, the initial combustion, as with all the greatest successes, was largely unexpected.

As soon as it had happened, however, and the smoke had cleared, it was obvious that the pickings, both short- and long-term, were stupendous. A whole new market, almost a whole new class, turned Superstar into a celebration.

The same valley, a different sunset: "We could have been vulgar," said Jewison. "We could have played this for cheap. Nothing simpler. Guaranteed socko at the box office. We could have been really filthy. But we weren't."

Right on cue, the chorus took up the refrain.

"We could have been," said the assistant director.

"But we weren't," said the unit publicist.

"For instance," Jewison continued, "we could have had Mary going down on Jesus, right there on the cross. Can you imagine that? And half the apostles are gay, right, and what about Jesus and Judas? I mean, would you just look at those guys? A big wet smackeroo, right on the lips? How about that? Oh, yeah," and here he went hushed, "we could have been vulgar, all right. We could have milked it for every grab in the book."

"Sensationalism," said the unit publicist.

"Cheap thrills," said the production supervisor.

"But we didn't," said Jewison firmly. "Instead, we decided to make it beautiful. We came here to the Holy Land and we played it straight, we gave it faith. We made it into a spiritual experience and it's beautiful, and Jesus is beautiful, the kids are beautiful, it's going to be a beautiful film. People are going to see it in drive-ins and neighborhood nowhere theaters and they're going to be moved by it. People who were never moved by this story before. People who always thought that Jesus Christ was some kind of schmuck. They're going to see something beautiful and they're going to cry. They won't be able to help themselves."

There was an awe-struck silence. The last of the sunlight disappeared behind the mountaintops. Everyone gazed into the darkening valley. "When you really come to think of it," said Jewison, in a sudden flash of self-mockery, "we're doing him a favor."

• • •

Possibly he did not fully understand this. At any rate, halfway through the filming of the Crucifixion, quite without warning, there came an apocalyptic thunderstorm. Jesus bled and twisted in his agony, lightning flashed, the rain beat down torrentially, the music swelled, the very heavens trembled. And then, inevitably, everyone began to cry. Jewison and the apostles, of course; then the secretaries, the stand-ins, the caterers, the latrine attendants, the money men and the Arab peasants watching from afar. Only Jesus himself was stoic and serene, as the elements smashed and exploded about his head. Afterward, some of the spectators said they had felt his soul ascending.

When the shooting was over, as soon as Jesus was brought down from the cross and had gone home to tea, the storm suddenly died down and everything was calm again. The unit hairdresser called it a miracle.

• • •

That was the climax. The anticlimax came one hot morning, while they were setting up the Last Supper. Growing bored, I began to climb up a goat track, rocky and precipitous, and headed for a tiny Arab village on a mountaintop.

My hands were scraped and torn. I sweated like a hog and once I was almost swept away by a minor avalanche. Still I persevered and, at the end of an hour, I stood at the summit.

In the village street, there were perhaps a dozen bronze tables, set in open doorways, and around them sat the elders, complete with robes and headdresses, puffing peaceably on their hash pipes. They didn't look at me and they did not speak. Every now and then, one of them would slowly keel over and topple into the dust. Alter a pause he would be picked up and dusted off.

I got a contact high from the fumes alone and sat down in the shade to steady myself. Forty or fifty children clustered around me, laughing and pointing, and fat ripe figs hung thickly above my head. So I ate myself sick and played with the kids and soon I grew sentimental.

Gazing out across the valley, in great stoned solemnity, I thought about timelessness and balance. Then I turned my head and was confronted by a face in a doorway, surmounted by a baseball cap. "I'm from Orlando, Florida," said the face. "How about you?"

I was taken indoors. A young girl brought me olives and iced Coca-Cola. There was a TV in the corner and the man from Orlando couldn't stop laughing. Ten years before, he said, he'd won a trip to Florida in a competition. Once there, he got a job in plastics, bought a home, started a family, changed his name. Now he was home on a three-week vacation.

He was very inquisitive. He asked me if I were married, and did I like the Miami Dolphins, and who was the greatest man in the world? Where had I bought my shirt? What did I think of Raquel Welch's thighs? What, above all, were all those people doing down below, milling about in the valley and shouting?

I answered as best I could, curled up with my Coke, and the young girl took out her dentures, to show me how they worked. The man from Orlando, for the most part, seemed satisfied by my responses and we got along just fine. But in the last analysis, one point still troubled him: What, who and why was a superstar?

Not easy to convey. A superstar, I attempted to explain, was a star who transcended performance. When you felt his full impact, he took you over, possessed you absolutely; became, for the moment, godlike. "Hence," I said, "Jesus Christ, Superstar."

For a moment he still looked uncertain. Then his face cleared, light flooded his soul. Jubilant, he jumped to his feet and, handing me a second Coke, he gave me the sweetest, most radiant smile. "Like Perry Como," he said.