WI: Mel Gibson Still Loveable

Cloudesley wrote:

He is commonly known to be religious and somewhat right-wing, but no more so than a lot of action heroes like Clint Eastwood and Charlton Heston.

For the record, I don't think Eastwood is very religious, if at all. Off the top of my head, I can think of two films he directed(Million Dollar Baby, Gran Torino) in which religion is revealed as useless, and one(Mystic River) where the script goes out of its way to portray a sadistic pedophile as a Catholic priest, even though it's not important to the plot.

I could probably also have put Herafter on the first list, because, while it does promote the idea of an afterlife, it also portrays organized religion as utterly useless in getting us there.
 
If for some reason(money, scheduling, whatever) he had never made The Passion Of The Christ, his anti-Jewishness might not have come to the fore the way it did. That movie drew wide criticism from Jewish groups and their liberal allies, mostly for refusing to remove the infamous line about Jesus' blood being on the mob and its descendants, but also for generally promoting a medieval religious worldview.

ASB. OTL Bible contains that line, so you would need a pre-1900s POD where Matthew spills ink on the line of the original manuscript, and so it does not exist on all the subsequent ones.
 
ASB. OTL Bible contains that line, so you would need a pre-1900s POD where Matthew spills ink on the line of the original manuscript, and so it does not exist on all the subsequent ones.

Well, yeah, but my scenario involved Mel Gibson not filming the Bible story, and hence no controversy abour that line, even if the line remained in the Bible.

Fairly or unfairly(you could argue that Gibson was just being faithful to Matthew for artistic reasons) there was a lot of controversy about that line. That gets butterflied away if Gibson doesn't even make the film.
 
you are forgetting his misogynistic behaviour, how he beat up his 2nd wife, threatened to kill her etc.

If Sean Penn's career can survive that, I'm sure Mel Gibson's could. It was the bigotry and rampant anti-Semitism COMPOUNDED with his personal life that began to spiral out of control when he had issues elsewhere.
 
Cloudesley wrote:

He is commonly known to be religious and somewhat right-wing, but no more so than a lot of action heroes like Clint Eastwood and Charlton Heston.

For the record, I don't think Eastwood is very religious, if at all. Off the top of my head, I can think of two films he directed(Million Dollar Baby, Gran Torino) in which religion is revealed as useless, and one(Mystic River) where the script goes out of its way to portray a sadistic pedophile as a Catholic priest, even though it's not important to the plot.

I could probably also have put Herafter on the first list, because, while it does promote the idea of an afterlife, it also portrays organized religion as utterly useless in getting us there.
Clint Eastwood identifies himself as a libertarian and is a vocal supporter of gay marriage, a position which sets him a world apart from the Christian / conservative Right of Hollywood. However, it would be unfair to say there's a consistent antireligious bent running through his films - see Changeling, which casts a charismatic radio pastor in a heroic light.
 
Clint Eastwood identifies himself as a libertarian and is a vocal supporter of gay marriage, a position which sets him a world apart from the Christian / conservative Right of Hollywood. However, it would be unfair to say there's a consistent antireligious bent running through his films - see Changeling, which casts a charismatic radio pastor in a heroic light.

Point taken about The Changeling. And I should have thought of that one myself, since I just re-watched In The Line Of Fire yesterday, featuring Eastwood and Malkovich.
 
all i can find about fox is that she compared director stephen bay to hitler when he is on set, has very little to do with anti-semitism.

Not according to Spielberg, who is more powerful than Gibson ever was or could have been. AFAIK, no producer since the golden age of the 20s & 30s have ever enjoyed the level of power that he does now. Just because he doesn't regularly abuse the power he has (as the golden era boys did constantly) doesn't mean he NEVER abuses it. This called for a public apology, not an insta-ban, which I'm not all that sure is legal. Probably is, now that corporations are legally people with full rights as citizens.

Does this mean Disney will marry Universal? Who will be the bride, and who will give her away? Paramount?

Meh, Gibson got a lot less than he deserved and Fox a lot worse, mainly because there was little other than a "shunning" that could be done to Gibson's sorry ass, while nuking Fox was easy. And NO, I've never seen any of her work.

Didn't hear about this, either. Apparently, it's the reason she's not in Transformers III. :eek:


I'm surprised that you didn't hear about this one, considering that she basically (1) called Michael Bay a Nazi.

And the producer of the Transformers franchise is Steven Spielberg.

Oops. :p

Then Benjamin Netanyahu has "basically" done the same for any one person, party, or nation that fails to support the interests of the State of Israel.:rolleyes: I'm sure then that such an obvious anti-semite:p;):confused::eek::rolleyes::rolleyes: could never expect a part in a Hollywood movie, right?:rolleyes:

Bay said he wasn't upset personally by the comments, it was Spielberg who went ballistic and blacklisted her.

That's less anti-Semitism and more Godwin's Law violating, though.

Invoking Godfrey's Law is now considered anti-semitic if the target is Jewish, which Bay is, as is Spielberg. If Fox said this in private, she should have known that the right to privacy does not exist and hasn't for many decades. If you are talking to yourself in the privacy of your own lavatory, and-talking to yourself-invoke Godfrey? You're screwed. Assuming stalkerazzi have placed recording devices/cameras in your toilet, which is not unlikely.
 
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Mel Gibsons dad was one of those old school catholics that were all anti-Vatican 2 stay with the latin etc and for some accounts a bit of drunk.

Gibson had been on the wagon since the early 90's, he had been a heavy drinker in his younger days. Legend has it that he turned up for the Mad Max audition hungover and battered from a pub brawl and this was what won him the main roll.

I guess it may have been an utimation from his wife the caused him to be sober for almost 15 years because after the drunk driving charge with added rant she filed for divorce. This let to the sleezy tabloid hell of his 2nd marriage.

So I guess if when he been offered a drink in 2006 he had turned it down or called his sponsor he wouldn't be on the Hollywood bad list.
 
Bay said he wasn't upset personally by the comments, it was Spielberg who went ballistic and blacklisted her.

which can be explained by the fact that bay managed to see it in context.
what she said in short this: when bay is in director mode he acts like napoleon or hitler, however this was followed by her saying that she quite enjoyed his company when he is not in director mode, and that he is a whole different person then.
(have to say that bays reply was funny, and probably went over her head, since he pretty much said that he wasn't offended because that is how she is, pretty much saying in a very nice way that she is a simpleton lol)
 
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I don't care what Spielberg says. Insultingly comparing someone to Hitler is NOT anti-semitic. In fact, it is anti-Nazi, because it assumes that Nazism is a bad thing. Otherwise, there would be no insult.

Gibson wasn't comparing his enemies to Nazis in order to insult them. He was saying that they were Jews, and suggesting that that was connected to their being bad people.
 

jahenders

Banned
I agree. Lots of public figures (or all shapes and colors) have somewhat extreme views of one sort or another. However, unless they have a very public explosion, or get overly, foolish vocal about it, they're unknown and/or overlooked. In some cases, celebrities can have bigoted explosive outbursts and still be revived, but it depends on how offensive those outbursts are to the media -- Gibson's were unforgivable to them.

Gibson's worldview and prejudices go back to childhood, so there's probably no changing that. But his pariah status is the result of a handful of alcohol-related outbursts. If he weren't an alcoholic, these episodes would never have occurred, and his nastier qualities would probably never have come to public attention.

My idea: Circa 1995 Gibson gets into a high-profile Kelsey Grammar-style car crash. He enters rehab and becomes a teetotaler. He continues to hold regressive views on women, gays, Jews, etc, but he never has a public meltdown. He is commonly known to be religious and somewhat right-wing, but no more so than a lot of action heroes like Clint Eastwood and Charlton Heston. His films attract some controversy for their gratuitous violence, but Gibson himself continues to be regarded as a decent guy and a crowd-pleaser.
 
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