The Last Supper (Leonardo da Vinci) contributed to its refusal by the Vatican who called it "blasphemous." In Norman Jewison's 1973 film version of "Jesus Christ Superstar", in the Last Supper sequence, Jesus and the 12 apostles briefly mimic the posture of each character in Da Vinci's painting The painting is parodied in Mel Brooks's movie "History of the World, Part I", making Leonardo a contemporary of Jesus. It is also parodied in the original movie "MASH", in the scene where Hawkeye Pierce stages a "last supper" for Walt (Painless) Waldowski before his planned suicide. The various doctors, all in surgical scrubs, pose in imitation of
The Last Supper (Leonardo da Vinci) in their victims. "The Last Supper" has been the target of much speculation by writers and historical revisionists alike, usually centered on purported hidden messages or hints found within the painting, especially since the publication of the novel "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown in 2003. Dan Brown proposed that the person to Jesus' right (left of Jesus from the viewer's perspective) is actually Mary Magdalene disguised as the Apostle John, being mirror images of one another. It also states that there was a letter ‘glaring in the center of the painting’ (M) standing for Matrimonio or Mary Magdalene.