Is Mary Magdalene’s mythology like that of celebrities today?
DL: I think the redemption here is our soap opera, having worked with so many of these people for so long, especially with Paris [Hilton] since the beginning. When Princess Diana had her big fairy-tale wedding, we lived our fantasy romantic life through her in a positive, aspirational way. Then when we found out about her cutting herself, throwing herself down stairs, her bulimia, then it was, like, “Well my life isn’t so bad—if she’s a princess with fame and money and servants and she’s still puking all over the place, then my life isn’t so bad in my trailer park with my own cheating husband.” There’s definitely a connection in the fallen woman and the redemption of the fallen woman. Those great paintings of Mary Magdalene were created because of the ideas of redemption, forgiveness, starting over, through Christ and the Catholic Church. There’s still the same basic need for human drama, for the arc of redemption. It’s the same narrative we can see in baroque art or today’s celebrity-
