“I know you have issues with Christianity,” a reader wrote this morning, “but given your admiration for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, I thought you might be interested in this appraisal by Catholic critic (and screenwriting-workshop coach) Barbara Nicolosi, who greatly admires it.”

Roman citizens enjoying the show in Cecil B. DeMille‘s The Sign of the Cross

I don’t have issues with Christianity. I have issues with right-wing Christians, particularly the kind focused on in Tony Kaye‘s abortion documentary Lake of Fire. The Romans may not have thrown Christians to the lions in ancient times (as famously depicted in Cecil B. DeMIlle‘s Sign of the Cross and Chester Erskine‘s Androcles and the Lion) and if they did do this it was terribly wrong. People should be free to worship freely, and having your throat torn open by a lion with bad breath is a ghastly way to die.

That said, I think I partly understand why the Romans were so motivated.