“And, besides, he hasn’t done it since, and he’s a good guy, so no sweat.” That’s essentially what they say. “Yeah, he probably did rape her. Yeah, yeah. But it’s not rape as we would call it today. It was just alpha male sex back then when Clinton did that, and he hasn’t done it since — and he’s a good guy, so it doesn’t matter. It was a long time ago.” And that’s the official… That was on Wonkette. A bunch of websites have picked that up. This was the Daily Caller that picked it up. Yeah, I saw that last night.
Don’t pay any attention to these reviews comparing it to Ben-Hur with Charleston Heston in 1959. Many people today haven’t seen that version. This is a modernized version of it with a little bit of a difference in the storytelling. But it is… I found myself rewinding a bunch of times to rewatch scenes, and not because I couldn’t hear them (because I had the captioning). I wanted to see something again. The cinematography is great. It’s about two hours, a little over two hours, 1:04 the run time.
Two hours and four minutes is what it is. But I thoroughly enjoyed it. The time flew by. You know, some people are gonna call it hokey, because the message is so clean. The message… It’s about love and friendship and betrayal and integrity and honesty and doing the right thing. It depicts the Crucifixion. Jesus is portrayed well in this. I think, for whatever reason — whether you want a message out of it, if you want to be entertained… (chuckles)
The chariot race in this is incredible. I watched it three different times last night. It took me probably three hours to watch the whole thing because I was rewinding. It opens Friday. As I say, you know, don’t pay attention to the critics, whatever they say, good or bad. Judge it for yourself. Don’t compare it to ’59, the Charlton Heston version. You can, but don’t base your decision on whether you’re gonna see it based on what somebody says about it compared to that, ’cause it’s a different era.
But you will thoroughly enjoy it. And some of you might even get a lot out of it. I think a lot of people will get a lot out of it. You realize that in a climate like this to get a movie like that made — big budget, open in 3,000 theaters — is an important deal. It’s not a message movie per se. It’s a full-fledged entertaining movie as it’s intended to be, but it does have some message benefits to it that I think are thoroughly worthwhile. It’s Ben-Hur. Ben-Hur. Judah Ben-Hur.