from IMDb.com:

Mel Gibson has denounced the Oscar ceremonies as “a celebration of mediocrity” and accused academy members of treating his The Passion of the Christ as a political football. “My film is not right-wing or political, but they made it so,” he told an interviewer on the Catholic cable channel EWTN (Eternal Word Television Network). Gibson, who won an Oscar for his direction of Braveheart in 1995, remarked: “The whole notion of these awards ceremonies is ludicrous. … It’s really a marketing exercise.” He said he decided not to promote the film for Oscar consideration because he realized that doing so would be futile. “I knew exactly what was going to happen. I didn’t try to market the film. People are spending 15 or 20 million dollars to market their films. That’s a lot of money for a little gold statue.”

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