By, David Robson
4 min read
ByDavid Robson, David Robson
What a glorious night for the human spirit! No, not this month's Oscars but its far more outrageous precursor, the Golden Globes awards in Beverly Hills.
This year, the two most lauded films (and which many predict will be Oscar-winners too) were The Revenant - a harrowing epic about how the human spirit can overcome icy wastes and grizzly bears - and Room - a harrowing account of how the human spirit can overcome confinement in a tiny space.
And then there was the appearance of Mel Gibson, a revenant who'd long been confined to the outer darkness but now invited in.
Gibson, you may remember, used to be the hottest of the hot. Star of Mad Max, the Lethal Weapon series and many others, owner of a successful production company and the producer, director and star of Braveheart for which he won two Oscars. But now he is at least as well known for an antisemitic tirade when he was arrested for suspected drunk driving in Los Angeles in July 2006: "F•••ing Jews. Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world," he is reported to have said. Then - reportedly - he asked the cop: "Are you a Jew?" That really is a very bad behaviour, especially in Hollywood.
So here's the thing. It's 10 years ago now and, though he is clearly a loose cannon (or a loose Trident) it's been decided he can be allowed in again, at least for the evening. Clearly he needed something and so did the Golden Globes. Who cares who wins a Golden Globe? It isn't the Oscars. But it's live on NBC so there must be at least a whiff of excitement.
And this year's whiff was Gibson. Ricky Gervais, the Globes' resident court jester, made a few quite funny jibes about him then Gibson came out, the two men hugged (of course) and Gibson said: "I love seeing Ricky because it reminds me to get a colonoscopy," and the audience laughed and cheered.
This is only the latest of Gibson's efforts at rehabilitation - it'll be interesting to see what, if any, appearance he makes at the Oscars. He is a recovering alcoholic with a history of unpleasant explosions of fury.
He is also a man of religion, a Catholic, who cleaves to the Latin mass, and built his own chapel in Malibu in 2003.
Gibson's 2004 film The Passion Of The Christ, a bloody and harrowing account of Jesus's last 12 days, is the highest grossing non-English language film of all time. It introduced more people to Aramaic than rabbis have ever done. He deserves a medal for that.
But was it antisemitic? Many thought not, others thought yes and Gibson had to run the gauntlet of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, which is some gauntlet to run.
Was this the war he was thinking of when he had his confrontation with the traffic cop? The writer Peter Biskind, describing the incident, says he had just returned from a gruelling shoot in Mexico, he had fallen off the wagon again, his daughter (one of six children) was about to be wed and Robyn, his wife of 26 years, had told him that if he caused any embarrassment their own marriage would be over.
And so it was. Gibson may not be an easy person to be married to but he's a great person to divorce. Robyn Gibson got $400 million.
Gibson embarked on a film project about the Maccabees. He claimed it would be an act of expiation, a celebration of Jewish heroism. It turned out to be a slower burn even than Chanucah and was eventually shelved.
He had employed the writer Joe Eszterhas to do the script. Eszterhas had been a wildly successful screenwriter and a very wild man who had only relatively recently discovered that his Hungarian journalist father had been a rabid and active antisemite, something Gibson knew nothing of. The project did not go well. Gibson said he'd rejected the script as rotten; Eszterhas, no friend of understatement, reported crazed outbreaks of anti-Jewish rants and domestic violence. So who knows? Alcoholism, volatility, rants - if every star was excluded for such sins the historic Hollywood firmament would be much reduced. Gibson is clearly liable to unhingedness.
He also lives in an age when the relatively private becomes universally known. Setting aside the Christ film (which may or may not be toxic) there is no record of anything public we need to object to.
He has Jewish friends who have spoken in his support. You may not want to have him round for Friday night supper but you might think he's served his time. It's 10 years since he said what he said to the police officer in Malibu, California.
You can construct philosophical arguments as to whether such people should be allowed to apologise and get on with things. Or you can decide that those foolish enough to have expressed insanitary thoughts should be cast to oblivion.
Gibson is clearly a man of talent with a gift for the sort of excitement, violence and simple-minded heroics and pyrotechnics audiences want. And not only that.
He has played Hamlet on screen as well as Mad Max. "Mel Gibson's Hamlet is strong, intelligent and safely beyond ridicule," wrote the New York Times, " though the greatest disservice the director Franco Zeffirelli did him was to tell interviewers he was inspired to cast him after seeing Lethal Weapon."
In real life Gibson isn't Hamlet but nor is he a lethal weapon.
In any debate on how he should be treated I go along with the late Hollywood super-agent Susi Mengers, born in Hamburg in 1932, arrived in the United States in 1938: "What do I care what Mel Gibson thinks about the Jews? To me he's a dumb goy….I care what Barack Obama thinks about the Jews."
