Mel Gibson: Mel’s Moves
https://lebeauleblog.com/2020/08/10/mel-gibson-mels-moves/
No matter what you may think of Mel Gibson today, there was a time when he was universally beloved. Before the DUI and the troubling tapes, when his darker impulses remained beneath the surface, Gibson was one of the most popular and versatile leading men in Hollywood. Sometimes I wonder how Gibson remained in the spotlight as long as he did without any of that darkness spilling out into public view.share
This cover story from the July 2000 issue of Movieline magazine is a prime example. Michael Fleming asks Gibson all kinds of questions about how he is attracted to unsympathetic and violent characters and the actor’s answers hint at Gibson’s dark side. But before Fleming gets to that, he spends a lot of time establishing Gibson as a likable every-man who dotes on children and eats lunch with the crew.
On location in Charleston, South Carolina, Mel Gibson is dressed in 18th-century garb and hair extensions only slightly less wild than the ones he wore in Braveheart. He’s portraying Benjamin Martin, a man who has buried a past of brutal experience from the French and Indian War, but is forced back into fighting during the Revolutionary War to protect his children. The film is The Patriot, written by Saving Private Ryan scribe Robert Rodat and directed by Roland Emmerich, whose last brush with Independence Day had to do with the world being blown up by aliens. As is common with summer event films, the shoot has run longer than expected and Gibson’s face betrays the wear and tear of the production, but neither he nor anybody else looks unhappy. “The first few days you watch him and say, ‘My God, this is fucking Mel Gibson,'” Emmerich tells me. “But he’s so disarming you quickly forget.” Gibson knows everybody’s name as he strolls the set, and he dotes on the young actors who play his children. At the dinner break, he attacks the buffet spread along with everyone else instead of retreating to his trailer. When his plastic spoon breaks while eating a mishmash of apple crisp and other desserts, he keeps shoveling with what’s left of the utensil.
Gibson wears the calm confidence of an actor who has evolved over two decades from a handsome, hard-living star-in-the-making to a household name who also happens to be an Oscar-winning director and producer. In fact, he’s more remarkable than that. While most actors who achieve his fame and pay scale find themselves caged into a screen persona they can barely stray from, Gibson has played truly divergent characters over the years, many of whom have specialized in objectionable behavior worthy of a screen villain rather than a hero. The Mel Gibson known to us from countless interviews over the years is a self-effacing, prank-pulling, pun-spewing, occasionally reckless guy who somehow lucked out between The Road Warrior and Lethal Weapon and became a screen icon, but who’s really just a great guy… and so on. The Mel Gibson you can’t help missing if you look at his resume is a guy who’s made many interesting calculations over many years, taken some whopping risks and ended up on top with breathing space to spare. Having chatted with Gibson when his company, Icon Productions, made a TV movie from a book I’d written on the Three Stooges, I decided to talk with him about the choices he’s made in his career and the priorities that have guided him. He tends to laugh off everything, but only the Stooges would believe he’s laughed his way through the decisions that have gotten him where he is today.
MICHAEL FLEMING: I thought you’d be amused by this Wall Street Journal column that claims you’re being paid $25 million for The Patriot.
MEL GIBSON: [Wincing at the sight of it] Jeez, I hate stuff like this. [Lights a cigarette, looks around the hotel dining room we’re sitting in after shooting has finished for the day] This room is a last bastion for smokers. But at least they’ve got: a smoking section, which is better than L.A.
Q: You always seem in your interviews to have either just quit smoking or just quit quitting smoking.
A: Well, I guess you’ve got to have at least one vice.
Q: Now that we’ve covered big money and little vices, let’s talk about The Patriot. What appealed to you about this film?
A: It was a really personal story that put a guy into an extraordinary situation. I love that. The screenwriter, Robert Rodat, is pretty dark when he gets going, and he really displays it here. There are elements to the story that are shocking, and yet it has to go there to convey the character’s desperation. The thing that really got me is when he takes his very young sons with him to kill people. What was cool was that, OK, he needs their help. But he’s also thinking, “I’m going to teach them how to kill.” It’s kind of knuckle-dragging stuff.