IN 1992, WHEN DISNEY REleased "Aladdin," Arab-Americans protested that some of the characterizations and song lyrics seemed to portray Middle Eastern cultures and peoples as savage. Jeffrey Katzenberg insists that this experience was not directly responsible for the hitherto unheard-of pains taken with "Prince of Egypt" to accommodate the varying beliefs of the religious communities that revere Moses.
Spearheading the theological consultative effort was Tzivia Schwartz-Getzug, who came to "Prince" from the Anti-Defamation League. Jews and Christians, recalled Schwartz-Getzug, speaking to The Report from a post-production Hawaii vacation, "agreed it was a good thing to have this story told - and in as faithful a way as possible.
"I remember getting a call from a rabbi from a small synagogue in Canada. Every kid in that synagogue goes to a public school where they're the only Jewish kid. He said he couldn't wait for the kids to see it and go back to school and feel proud that all the other kids would see their particular heritage and story become part of the mainstream."
Christians, Schwartz-Getzug recalled, focused almost exclusively on the necessity of showing Biblical values in movies. And members of the Muslim community in the United States, and Arab-Americans, were concerned that the film might be perceived as a message on modern Zionism, and boil down to a confrontation between Arab bad guys and Jewish good guys. Islam, they explained, regarded Moses as a prophet, in part because he sought liberation for all peoples oppressed by a pharaoh who saw himself as a god.
There was no shortage of argument among religious leaders, even within their respective communities, and plenty of dos and don'ts from all. Though co-director Simon Wells says he at first dreaded the consultations, he eventually came to value, and even enjoy, them.
At one point during production, for instance, the filmmakers contemplated replacing the slave Moses saves with his sister, Miriam. Several rabbis, however, insisted such license would be a mistake, not just because it goes against the canon, but because it belies the logic of Moses' motivations. Anyone, they argued, would defend a blood relative. Defending a stranger, however, and from Moses' perspective as a prince of the realm, a mere slave, called for him to evolve a sense of his own place in the world. Work had already begun on the sequence, but was shelved. Another problem involved finding the appropriate voice for God. The deep, booming timbres of a James Earl Jones seemed predictable and clich_d. Someone, says Wells, came up with the idea of using digital technology to meld the voices of all the people Moses had come to know and love. The result was powerful and mellifluous, but some Jewish consultants pointed out that "in essence what you guys have here is a pantheon, which was characteristic of the Egyptians and something the Hebrews wanted to avoid." In the end, said Wells, the filmmakers decided to have Val Kilmer, who portrays the voice of Moses, provide, albeit with different tone and inflection, God's as well. "There are midrashim," he explains, "that say Moses heard the voice of his father, Amram. Well, Amram wasn't a character in our story. But if God is going to speak to you, he speaks to you in your heart and voice and in ways you can understand."