Mel Gibson's "Passion" is getting a bit out of hand. In an article in the New Yorker this week, Gibson's comments about his unfinished movie, "The Passion," and the controversy it has sparked sound more like those of David Korresh than one of Hollywood's favorite leading men. Just look:Gibson on Catholicism and the Holocaust:

"Modern secular Judaism wants to blame the Holocaust on the Catholic Church. And it's a lie. And it's revisionism. And they've been working on that one for a while."

Gibson on Frank Rich, who penned a column in The New York Times criticizing the movie and insinuating that Gibson's father is a denier of the Holocaust:

"I want to kill him. I want his intestines on a stick. . . . I want to kill his dog."

Ouch, Mel, that was Tyson-esque. What happened to you, Gibson? Have you lost it? Or perhaps, you were always like this, harboring a need to erect a private church in Malibu and collect weird relics. You sure are passionate about your religion:

"There is no salvation for those outside the Church. My wife is a saint. She's a much better person than I am. Honestly. She's, like, Episcopalian, Church of England. She prays, she believes in God, she knows Jesus, she believes in that stuff. And it's just not fair if she doesn't make it, she's better than I am. But that is a pronouncement from the chair. I go with it."

But before declaring Mel Gibson insane, an anecdote might help channel some confusion: I ran into Ezra Pound last year on the Red Line.

Thanks to a new marketing kick by Barnes and Noble called, "Poetry in Motion," which sought to subject poetry on anxious commuters, I found myself staring at a famous haiku by Pound.

"The apparition of these faces in the crowd:/ Petals on a wet, black bough. "

While the rhythmic droning of the "T" allowed me to meditate on the poet's words for a bit, I spent most of my time in transit thinking about those marketing bigwigs at Barnes and Noble who probably knew squat about Ezra Pound.

How would they have reacted upon learning that he was a passionate fascist and an anti-Semite? In the 30s, Pound gave radio addresses for Mussolini, and was arrested for treason by the United States during World War II.

Though found innocent, Pound was soon after committed to an asylum. While there, the jury of the Bollingen-Library of Congress Award (made up of some of the most eminent writers of the time) decided to overlook Pound's political career in the interest of recognizing his poetic achievements and awarded him the prize for his landmark "Pisan Cantos" in 1948.

The Bollingen jurors were ahead of their time; there are people on this campus who still won't touch a Pound tome - or peak at Joyce's "Ulysses" - because they don't like his politics or because they find his beliefs reprehensible.

And now Gibson has gone loony and made a $25 million film about the crucifixion of Jesus that spits in the face of modern scholarship and was shot in two dead languages (initially without subtitles!). To make matters worse, it was driven to completion by Gibson's unrelenting faith in a form of Catholic fundamentalism that shuns the progressive, interfaith strides of the past 50 years. But we should look to Pound's story as a guide for how to draw lines between art and artist.

For me, Gibson will always be Sergeant Martin Riggs of Joel Silver's action sequel, "Lethal Weapon," who munched on dog biscuits and joked with his high-strung partner, played by Danny Glover. He'll also be the lovable neurotic in "Conspiracy Theory," the smooth talking poker player of "Maverick," and the unforgettable folk hero William Wallace of "Braveheart."

We can still enjoy a Gibson performance, as we can a Pound poem or a song by Cat Stevens (now known as Yusef Islam), who also has been accused of anti-Semitism, without subscribing to their beliefs ??TM or even while being vehemently opposed to them.

But while we can - and should -examine Pound's poetry or Gibson's early work in the movie "Gallipoli" without letting our opinions be influenced by the artists' personal views, we have reason to be wary of Gibson's new movie. He allegedly uses the artifice of cinema to propagate, at the very least, an image of the gospels that doesn't grapple with modern scholarship.

Some critics go so far as to say that Gibson's film is very dangerous; that the literal retelling of the Gospels - especially one passage in "Matthew" in which the Jews are implicated for Jesus' crucifixion - might fan old flames of hatred.

I haven't seen the film, so I can't say how it comes off. But a panel of scholars was able to "procure" a copy of the script, and they found it unsettling.

In the New Yorker article, Gibson was said to have devoured studies on the physical crucifixion of Jesus. One article, a famous clinical study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1986, formed the basis of the crucifixion depicted in the film. The article was titled, "On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ," and describes in graphic detail the nature of crucifixion.

This begs the question: Why doesn't Gibson approach the movie on the whole with such an unflinching reverence for historical veracity?

Maybe it's unfair of me to speculate. After all, as a Jew, I'm in no position to section off where religion should bow to history when it comes to Jesus. That's a decision for Gibson, the Christian filmmaker.

But with so much at stake and so many already uneasy with the prospect of the film, I default to "Lethal Weapon" lingo and make a lasting plea to Mel: "It ain't worth it, Riggs.