There’s a great, largely-unremembered Humphrey Bogart / Gloria Graham movie called “In A Lonely Place” that everyone ought to see. It’s an ultra-bleak film noir in which Bogie’s character, an alcoholic screenwriter suffering from what we’d now call PTSD, begins to put his life back together by romancing his hot neighbor (Graham)… only to see it all scuttled when he finds himself investigated for the murder of a female aquaintance. The tragic arc of the film is that it ultimately doesn’t matter if he’s innocent or not: The investigation reveals enough of his past and dark side that his few remaining friends/lovers realize that he very probably could have… and thus he’s done for. In other words, being accused and having no one doubt it is almost as bad as being guilty.
So I ask you: Regarding actor turned director turned religious-nut turned comeback-kid turned racist (prospective) woman-beater Mel Gibson… in terms of “is this the end?,” does it even MATTER if he actually “did it?” When you’re alleged to have punched your girlfriend in the face while she’s holding your baby and people’s reaction is pretty much “Yeah… that sounds plausible,” you’re DONE as any kind of viable public personality unless your name is Sheen, yes?
In any case, Radar Online now has the (apparent) audio of the infamous “raped by a pack of n****ers” conversation. WARNING: It’s a pretty hard listen: http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2010/07/world-exclusive-audio-mel-gibsons-explosive-racist-rant-listen-it-here
Going back to the whole “just as bad as having done it” thing, even if this were a fake or “out of context”… who’s surprised? Particularly given the pathetic, self-hating projectionism that seems to be at the root of it: The guy leaves his wife and seven kids for a hot young model… but SHE’S the “whore” and “bitch” for dressing provocatively. (From the tape: “I don’t WANT THAT girl!!!”) It’s the classic, good ol’ fashioned “damn the TEMPTRESS for ruining MY righteousness” routine, yes?
Well, given that this IS the same mind that gave us “The Passion of The Christ”… Well, are you at all surprised?
MOVIEBOB CENTRAL 
meh….. he's a good actor/director…. could care less about his personal life.
same goes for Tom Cruise, hes a good actor, could care less about his religious beliefs and over the top escapades in the public eye.
as long as they do there job properly, could care less what they say or do.
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I agree, who cares.
I couldn't give 2 shits what he says, the man made and starred in Brave Heart, starred in Sighns, Directed Apacolypto.
Who the fuck cares, let him be a racist, abusive drunk.
We all have are demons, just because he's a celebrity he's supposed to be perfect all the time?
I bet he wouldn't have said any of that shit if he knew he was being taped, we all say racist, mean, hateful fucked up shit when we think we are around people we can trust.
I would say its kinda messed up of his lady friend to secretly tape him and then release it to the public.
We all knew he was a drunk, racist religious nut before, i don't get why everyone is so “shocked” by this.
Let the man live his life.
If some stupid women is willing to get into a relationship with this nut job, they should know by now what comes with the territory….. 8 kids and all of the above.
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I think you give people too much credit, bob. If all that stuff really mattered, his career would have been over the first time he was taped making a bigoted rant.
People don't care what kind of person they are supporting as long as they are entertained. look at Jeffrey Jones. Got convicted on child porn charges and is still working. Look at Dog the bounty hunter. There was a big stink about the racism but his show is still on. Look at Victor Salva, Roman Polanski, Michael frigging jackson.
ALL of them did messed up, horrible things and all of them were able to play Karma houdini with the public. And none of them had the built in support that Gibson has because of the passion. Catholics belong to a church that may or may not have served as a bloody child sex ring for a couple decades. They aren't going to forsake the guy who made the passion for a little thing like racism and misogyny. And the real kicker is, in a couple of years, we'll all forget too.
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… considering that misogyny and racism was always built into the big three monotheistic religions, anyway…
And Tom Cruise is a terrible actor; so is Nick Cage. The whole nut-job-and-cult-member thing just gives me to cross over from “I hate you in movies” to “I hate you in life”. Either way, I just want them to go away.
Regardless, I don't think this is an either/or situation: it may very well turn some people against him but you'll always have people that make excuses. With Polanski, you've got the “but that doesn't make his movies worth any less”-great-artist crowd, with Micheal Jackson, you had the ones that convinced themselves the whole thing was a frame-job; just the white man trying to keep him down and all that.
So really, I think he'll just become another polarizing figure(more than he already is), along with Cruise, Glenn Beck, Al Gore, Micheal Moore, etc, etc.
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“He can be an abusive, evil, hating, violent murderous fuck for all I care, just as long as he keeps me entertained.”
Yeah. That's a healthy view.
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Well, I WAS kind of surprised that he said the N-word… But yeah, he's a freaking psycho.
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People can't stop getting on Gibson's back nowadays. Maybe he should rape someone, that seems to garner support in Hollywood. But using no-no words, FUCK HIM FOREVER!
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@BFG
you know what, if he went on a TV show and said that stuff in front of a camera, that would be completely different.
by doing that, he would be saying he doesn't care about his fans, so why should we car about him.
This gf of his or whatever, taped him while he was unaware, I'm absolutely positive he wouldn't have said any of that shit for fear of insulting his fans.
ill be the first to admit that i have said far worse things than that in front of people i feel i can trust.
I just don't see what the big deal is….. it's his life, let him live it. It's non of our fucken business anyway.
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Here's the thing Anonymous: if he was Mel Gibson the bus driver or Mel Gibson the taxi driver, you're absolutely right in that it's none of our business.
However, this is Mel Gibson the movie star, director, and pop culture figure. By being a public personality a certain portion of his life is public knowledge and public fodder. The idea that you have that he wouldn't say these things in public to avoid not upsetting his fans shows the superficiality of people like him and yourself.
I imagine that when you say racist things to people you trust, it's jokes and being funny. This is not a case of Gibson making a racist joke. This is full-blown, KKK-style racism. This is the shit you would hear from someone standing next to a lynched black person back in the 1920s.
I'm all for being non-politically correct. I'm all for freedom of speech. Does Mel have the right to say those things? Yes. Should he be held accountable for his mistakes? Yes. For frak's sake, he punched out the mother of his child, while she was holding the child.
The whole “I don't care what they do as long as I'm entertained” bit worked real well right before Rome fell. I'm sure those people wouldn't mind having some gladiatorial games at their local stadium. Doesn't matter who gets hurt, just as long as your puny mind is entertained.
This is one of the reasons why I fucking hate other human beings.
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@Nick
see, the flaw with your argument is your saying that he's some kind of killer or something.
If he admittedly came out saying he raped his wife then slaughtered his family….. i ASSURE you that i would not be a fan of his anymore, movies or no movies, director or no director…. i wouldn't care, i would want to see the man behind bars and on death row.
now that i've gotten that out of the way, they where just words he said in anger, they didn't hurt anyone.
I feel he's getting more shit for this than assaulting his wife.
The man is a fucken religious nut bag, everyone knows that.
Micheal Jackson was a fucken pedophile, and that's the reason i could never respect him or his work, regardless if he was found guilty or not, it just happened one too many times for me to sit here and ignore the fact that he was a child molester.
First time it happened i gave him the benefit of the doubt, after that i think not.
Mel has done nothing Remotely close to that and hes getting more back lash for this than MJ did for his crimes.
ITS NONE OF YOURS OR MY BUSINESS.
The day the man time travels back to Rome and becomes a leader and supports people dying for his and others entertainment, then i will fully support what you have to say.
but since that will never happen, i think we should all stop judging him for things he said in anger.
This is one of the reasons I hate other human beings…. they are judging holier than thou assholes that feel they can pry into others lives and judge them for not being perfect human beings.
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Damn Bob….. you really know how to get people ready to throw down in here…. haha.
I agree with Anonymous though, let him be…. Micheal Richards did far worse with his is antics at the Laugh Factory, that was worthy of the Nick speech….. not this though.
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Bob, as a long time Born-Again Christian, I feel I can safely say to you that most folks in my faith don't really care about Mel Gibson.
The thing is, you seem to be propping him up as a kind of Exhibit A for Christians who say one thing and do another. And I gotta tell ya, it's not really happening. As far as most church goers are concerned, this isn't a blip on our radar. Mel dug his own grave with behavior not becoming a of a gentleman.
Just FYI
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@Anonymous (both of them, since neither one has the balls to actually put their names to their statements)
At no point did I state that I viewed him as a killer. He's a racist, period. I doubt there can be an argument made that he isn't a racist. As such, he has lost my business for his future endeavors in film. I will not waste one more minute on his projects in the future because I don't like racists.
Just because he's a religious nutbag doesn't excuse shitty behavior. That's like saying a politician found to be corrupt can't be held accountable because he's a politician, everyone knows they're corrupt.
Words said in anger almost always hurt somebody, you fucking nimrod. Try screaming his words at a woman you're friends with. You think you might hurt her feelings just a bit? You think that if someone else hears those words, they might take offense to your racist rantings? Maybe.
Michael Jackson was tried in a court of law TWICE. Did he do it? More than likely. Do you know for sure that he did it? NO! Do we know for sure that Mel Gibson is a racist, misogynistic misanthrope who likes to beat women? YES! We have audio that confirms his racist attitudes. We have police reports that show he likes to beat up a woman.
The fact that you're defending him shows just how fucked we as a species are. I don't hold myself as being holier than though, I leave that for religious nuts like Gibson. What I do is look at my species without rose-colored glasses and see all the filth that exists. We're not noble creatures. We're highly evolved animals who still haven't figured out how to live peacefully in our world without killing or fucking up our own planet.
Mel Gibson's troubles are inconsequential in the cosmic scale. But since we live in the here and now, and his career is based on the premise that people go to see him because he's a likable actor/director, he's getting exactly what he deserves.
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@Nick
Actually you did refer to him as a killer, something about “Rome” i remember you comparing him too.
Get your OWN facts strait.
Like i said before, if some stupid chick decides she wants to date/marry a known Racist/Religious nut/Abusive/ womanizing ass, then that's on her.
It's called Freedom of Speech, its a free country for a reason.
You may not have to like him for what he says, but he's definitely entitled to his own opinion, and is allowed to say whatever the hell he wants.
I DO NOT CONDONE BY ANY MEANS him punching his wife in the face, that was just wrong.
This i consider some form of restraint though.
You can wear whatever color glasses you want, it doesn't change the fact that its a free country and he can say whatever he wants to whom he ever he wants.
Like i said before, the man is a GREAT actor as well as a very decent director and I'm not about dismiss his future work because people like you feel they have a say on what other people do or say.
I bet you love reality TV if your getting off on this so much.
Mind your own business.
He's got 8 kids, is constantly ridiculed for his religious beliefs and has to deal with people like you.
Mel's a good dude, screw the bitch.
Don't feel like talking about this anymore, since there is no reasoning with “Holier than thou” assholes like yourself.
Go watch The Hills or something, I'm sure there are plenty of people for you to judge on that show.
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To me it's a matter of separating the person from their body of work. Chris Benoit did awful things, but I could go back and watch a match of his and appreciate that he could wrestle better than most. “Birth of a Nation” and “Olympia” celebrate the KKK and the Third Reich respectively, but are still valid pieces of art. Salvador Dali supported the fascist Franco regime, I still have prints of two of his paintings framed on my walls, one on my mantel. George Orwell wrote about Dali; “One ought to be able to hold in one's head simultaneously the two facts that Dalí is a good draughtsman and a disgusting human being. The one does not invalidate or, in a sense, affect the other.”
If I could watch a Mel Gibson movie before, then I doubt I'd suddenly be unable to watch it. I don't condone his views or his actions but until they have a presence in his work, to me they will be separate from it.
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@Gone
THANK YOU! at least someone gets it.
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Sorry, forgot to add that “In a Lonely Place” is an amazing film, and I second Bob's recommendation, with the addition that while it's not the best film to star him, it's likel Bogart's best piece of acting.
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MEH!
Everyone has there demon's, EVEN movie stars believe it or not.
Like Gone said, may not be someone i want to be “Best Friends” with, but i can say that this whole thing does change the fact that he's a good director/actor.
“Mel's a good dude, screw the bitch”
Mickey Rourke
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Freedom of Speech doesn't mean that people have automatic immunity to say whatever the hell they want.
Sure, they can reasonably expect to be free from legal/political persecution for what they say. But I'll be damned if I'm ever going to spend a cent on his work from this point on.
Just as he has a right to say hateful racist shit, I have every right to make a decision as a consumer based not just on the artistic merits of his work, but also the man behind the work itself.
So as far as I'm concerned, fuck Mel Gibson and his career.
If people want to continue to support his career, that's their choice. But I certainly haven't in a long time and this one just cements it.
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And that's your choice and no one can stop you or change how you feel about that.
Just like no one can stop you from saying the things you just said about Mel.
I love this country, regardless of its many faults.
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Has he ever called a black man a n****er?
Is that how he views such people in general? Does he consider all Latinos “wetbacks”?
One thing is for sure: He's mad… in more ways than one, no doubt at himself than anyone else.
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People keep forgetting the idea that freedom of speech does not come without consequences.
I'm not saying Mel Gibson doesn't have a right to say whatever he wants. But that right does not mean we just have to sit back and enjoy it.
He's a bigot, and he's abused his spouse. I don't bring that into his work, but I bring that into my ability to respect him as a person, which -is- tied to my ability to respect his art.
What we do as artists is informed by who we are as people. I can't think of a single artist who isn't that way. No, Dahli didn't paint about supporting a fascist regime, etc; but what I'm saying is that in some fashion or another, Gibson's demons change his work and the way it can be viewed.
It changes the expectations, for better or worse. It could be as simple (and as good) as “wow. That's a surprisingly tender performance as a loving married man from a guy who broke up with his wife and started dating a younger, hotter woman, and then starting beating that woman up.”, or it could be as large as noticing racist or religiously intolerant views in his film-making after the fact.
I'm not going to -not- see a Mel Gibson film because of this, but knowing what I know about him, I'm going to be looking at it in a different light. Not a better or worse light. Just a different light.
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