On Hollywood Scandal And 'Redemption'

NY TIMES: You’ll Work in This Town Again
By JERRY STAHL
Published: December 17, 2006

GOD bless Mel Gibson.

Of course, the deity doing the blessing is less likely to be Yahweh than Gukumatz, traditional Toltec god of culture, agriculture and opening weekend grosses.

By now the miracles have been quantified. “Apocalypto,” when it opened, promptly took the top box office spot with $15 million. Plus — what are the odds? — his Joseph Campbell-meets-Mesoamerica epic has been nominated for a Golden Globe, and is now being mentioned in the same sentence as Oscar.

It’s the last thing you’d expect for a movie in Mayan — especially one made by a man whose last project was a staging of Hate Crime Theater on a Malibu police-cam. Which begs the question: How low does a human being have to sink before Hollywood shoos him away and he can’t get an Oscar?

Stars have always been bent. Wallace Reid, the silent screen’s first heartthrob — and a full-on dope fiend — needed the studio to slip him morphine to keep production going. (This was the pre-rehab era; Reid died trying to kick his habit in a sanitarium.)

The celebrated Charlie Chaplin? In his 20s, he married a 16-year-old moppet; in his 30s, married another 16-year-old; in his 50s, settled down with a 17-year-old. But his penchant for child brides did not prevent him from receiving the longest standing ovation in Oscar history when he was given an honorary statue in 1972. Of course, Chaplin’s honor also marked his return from exile in Switzerland.

Once, Hollywood required scandal-ridden stars to go away for a while — a penitent hiatus before they could enjoy redemption, their second acts. So after being banished for years for her baby with Roberto Rossellini, Ingrid Bergman was, in 1956, finally welcomed back and given an Oscar.

Roman Polanski waited decades after fleeing a warrant for pedophilia before he finally snagged, in absentia, his best director statue for “The Pianist.” And even Leni Riefenstahl, the Führer’s darling, received a posthumous mention among the notable Hollywood dead at the 2003 Oscars.

But less than five months have passed between Mr. Gibson’s spouting of tequila-fueled bons mots on the dread power of the Hebrews and his basking in the glow of a No. 1 movie. His brief time in the wilderness may represent the fastest about-face since Democrats re-embraced Joseph Lieberman after he bested Ned Lamont in the Connecticut Senate race.

I know what you’re going to say: Fatty Arbuckle. The exception to the rule. Once bigger than Chaplin, he’s now remembered as the gold standard of degraded celebrity, someone who allegedly committed such unforgivable acts that he could never really come back. In 1921, the year he became the first comic actor to make $1 million a year, he was accused of raping and murdering an actress during an orgy at a San Francisco hotel.

It wasn’t Hollywood that finally barred the door to Arbuckle — friends like Buster Keaton helped him scrape together directing gigs under a pseudonym — his audience left him. Back then, the Christian reform movement blamed movies for an epidemic of teenage degeneracy, but these proto-Don Wildmons loved Arbuckle, who radiated less sex than a lawn chair.

So when the comedian was exposed as a sweaty, waif-crushing love-manatee, it wasn’t just a revolting crime — it was a core betrayal of his conservative fans. A jury found him innocent, but it was too late. In this industry, Arbuckle’s sin was worse than Mr. Gibson’s: he wasn’t bankable anymore.

That’s what it comes down to. If you’re going to offend your peers, parade unforgivable behavior and find all-new ways to turn your life into a nonstop shame-fest, you’d better also deliver big box office.

Speaking strictly as a paranoid Jew, I want my celebrity anti-Semites to be loaded mega-stars screaming into the night by the side of a road. How much more disturbing would it be to hear, say, Wilfred Brimley making the same racist claims over a bowl of groats, sober as a judge?

Mr. Gibson’s anti-Semitism is in fact the least interesting thing about him. Maybe he was simply craving that next level of public humiliation; maybe his espousing of such heinous opinions and subsequent talk show tortures are valuable research for his violent onscreen debasements.

The point to remember is that every award won by “Apocalypto,” every ticket sold, doesn’t mean that “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” will start inching upward on Amazon. Mr. Gibson’s anti-Semitism may be as American as canned ham (that’s the dark truth of why he’s not been completely shunned), but his film will win accolades in spite of who he is — not because of it.

What do I know? I’m in this business because somebody made a movie about my life as a drug-addled loser in Hollywood. If lifelong integrity were required for gainful employment in the entertainment industry, then I’d still be sweating through my McDonald’s poly-blend, serving Happy Meals alongside other showbiz reprobates.

You simply can’t vet the moral worth — or at least, the absence of obvious, deep-seated depravity — of every potential Oscar nominee. If they only gave work, let alone awards, to non-sickos, non-egomaniacs and non-hypocrites, there would be nobody left to make movies but Tom Hanks.

Jerry Stahl is the author, most recently, of “I, Fatty.”

Apocalypto Found To Be 'Just Like Tintin'

FOXNEWS.COM: Mel Gibson's 'Apocalypto' Eclipsed by Tintin?
Monday, December 04, 2006 By Roger Friedman

At the end of last Thursday night’s one and only screening in New York of Mel Gibson’s excruciatingly violent "Apocalypto," a woman in the audience exclaimed, "It’s just like Tintin, you know!"

I didn’t know, but since then I’ve looked into her idea. Yes, "Apocalypto" appears to have a big scene in it that is also integral to other pieces of work in fiction: Mark Twain’s "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court" and the Belgian illustrated books by George Remi (aka "Herge") called "The Adventures of Tintin" about a young man (the title character) and his dog.

In "Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun," a book that is still wildly popular all over the world, and has been for several decades, a scene depicts a solar eclipse that takes place in Mexico over the Mayan ruins.

An almost identical scene is pivotal to the story in "Apocalypto," in which a sudden eclipse darkens a maddening crowd scene and helps those who’ve been taken prisoner during continual warring to escape.

The eclipse is so important to the movie and such a visual hook that Disney has used it as a key part of the film’s promotion. It’s part of the film’s animated logo in trailers and ads.

Now it’s not like Twain (in his book an eclipse is also used to hide an escape) or Herge were first to think of this device. The Mayans were obsessed with eclipses and studied them, so Gibson and his screenwriter assistant Farhad Safinia were right to be thinking about them. Some people call this "being influenced." Others call it "stealing."

At the same time, though, the Tintin business is a little surprising. In "Prisoners of the Sun," it’s as if "Apocalypto" is actually story-boarded.

Not only that, but the woman in the audience was thinking not just of the book but of a 1969 animated film called "Tintin and the Temple of the Sun" in which that scene, from the same perspective as it’s seen in "Apocalypto," takes place.

Conveniently, none of the Tintin movies are available on video in the United States.

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... a woman in the audience exclaimed, "It’s just like Tintin, you know!"

Except for the scene where a human heart is cut out and sacrificed - they had to tone that shit down from the comic. Hey, that's how Tintin rolls.

Judge The Film Or The Man?

NY TIMES: Praise for Gibson Film, Quandary for Oscar Voters
By SHARON WAXMAN Published: December 5, 2006

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 4 — With some early reviews lauding the audacity and innovation of Mel Gibson’s bloody Mayan epic, “Apocalypto,” Hollywood’s tight-knit community of Oscar voters may find itself facing a difficult dilemma in the coming weeks: Will they consider the film for an Academy Award?

Since Mr. Gibson’s drunken tirade against Jews last summer, many people in Hollywood swore — both publicly and privately — that they would not work with him again or see his movies.

But that was before the critics began to weigh in on “Apocalypto,” a two-hour tale about a peaceful village of hunter-gatherers who are attacked and enslaved by the bloodthirsty overlords of their Meso-American civilization.

Mr. Gibson wrote, directed, produced and financed the film, much as he did “The Passion of the Christ,” his surprise 2004 blockbuster; the Walt Disney Company is distributing the film.

“Apocalypto,” which will open on 2,500 screens across the country on Friday, is as different from a typical Hollywood film as Mr. Gibson’s last one: it features unrelenting, savage violence, is told in an obscure Mayan language and uses many nonprofessional actors with a primitive look born far from Hollywood.

Most critics (including this newspaper’s) have yet to weigh in on “Apocalypto,” but the excitement of those who have — like that among journalists who lingered to debate the film after a screening ended in Los Angeles last week — has been palpable.

“ ‘Apocalypto’ is a remarkable film,” Todd McCarthy wrote in Variety. “The picture provides a trip to a place one’s never been before, offering hitherto unseen sights of exceptional vividness and power.”

“Gibson has made a film of blunt provocation and bruising beauty,” Peter Travers wrote in Rolling Stone. “Say what you will about Gibson, he’s a filmmaker right down to his nerve endings.”

Other reviewers allowed themselves to psychoanalyze Mr. Gibson even as they praised the film. In a mixed review in The Hollywood Reporter, Kirk Honeycutt observed that Mr. Gibson “knows how to make a heart-pounding movie; he just happens to be a cinematic sadist.”

The rising tide of generally positive, if qualified, reviews poses a problem for Hollywood insiders, many of whom would prefer to ignore Mr. Gibson entirely, despite his formal apology and a trip to rehab.

Powerful players like Amy Pascal, co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment, and Ari Emanuel, of the Endeavor talent agency have publicly disavowed Mr. Gibson, with Mr. Emanuel writing online last summer that “people in the entertainment community, whether Jew or gentile, need to demonstrate that they understand how much is at stake in this by professionally shunning Mel Gibson and refusing to work with him.”

Other studio chiefs have said they would not work with Mr. Gibson in the future but would not say so for attribution because they didn’t want to endanger their future business dealings. At least one influential publicist has declined to work on an “Apocalypto” Oscar campaign because of objections to Mr. Gibson’s views, but would not say so publicly for similar reasons.

And yet, can the 5,830 voting members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences — an organization that like broader Hollywood, includes many people who are Jewish — ignore a film that may well be considered by critics to be among the best of the year?

Murray Weissman, who has worked on Oscar campaigns for many years and is working for the Weinstein Company on its hopefuls this year, said some voters would not see the film on principle.

“There is still a lot of resentment out there among the Academy members, certainly the Jewish group of them, over the incident,” he said. “There are a lot of people who are very unforgiving. I have run into some who say they will not see any more Mel Gibson movies.”

Yet, Mr. Weissman added, those who saw the movie and believed it deserving would vote for it. “The movie academy is of full of professionals; they will respect a good movie,” he said. “If the guy made a classic film and it’s absolutely brilliant — hey, I’m Jewish — I’d probably embrace it. But going in, I’m shocked and dismayed at his behavior.”

The problem posed by Mr. Gibson touches on an age-old question of whether an artist’s personal behavior ought to be a factor in judging his or her work.

The question is not a new one even in the brief history of cinema, which includes people like D. W. Griffith, the visionary feature director whose work fed racist stereotypes; Leni Riefenstahl, whose ground-breaking talent served Nazi Germany; or Roman Polanski, who in 1977 pleaded guilty to having sex with a minor and then fled the country, which did not prevent him from winning the Oscar for best director in 2003 for “The Pianist.”

As Richard Schickel writes in the Dec. 11 issue of Time magazine, “Gibson is a primitive all right, but so were Cecil B. DeMille and D. W. Griffith, and somehow we survived their idiocies.” Disney has taken a low-key approach to the Oscars, awaiting a general sense from critics and influential voices in Hollywood. The film was not on a list of screenings for Oscar consideration sent to Academy members, and no screenings are scheduled with question-and-answer sessions featuring Mr. Gibson, as has become the custom for movies vying for Oscar consideration.

But as the film has been gathering critical support, executives at the studio have begun to refer to “Apocalypto” as their “Million Dollar Baby,” the small movie directed by Clint Eastwood that came from behind two years ago to win best picture at the Oscars. And the studio is planning to send out “screeners,” DVDs sent to Academy members.

“From Day 1 we’d hoped that people would judge the movie on its artistic merits and judge Mel as a director,” said Dennis Rice, a Disney studio spokesman. “We believe they’ll separate their feelings of Mel the man from Mel the artist.”

But in addition to the other issues, the film’s sheer violence — which includes decapitation and hearts ripped from the chests of human sacrifice victims — could turn off some voters, whatever their feelings toward the director.

“Once the reviews come out and it’s perceived to be a foreign language film with that kind of violence, you will have trouble getting people to actually go see it,” said one seasoned Oscar campaigner, who declined to speak for attribution because of business ties to Disney.

“There will be a degree of resistance, And Mel would be the first one to say, ‘I anticipate a degree of ambivalence,’ he knows that,” said Peter Bart, the editor of Variety . “The violence is an issue. But that’s the way he is. That’s the way he sees the world.”