Celebrity Disaster

This is how you have your mug shot taken. Always smile, even if you are a bit greasy

Roger Friedman does a good job of picking apart the new project from Mel Gibson, and his apparent lack of remorse for his arrest in Malibu a few years back, and that's fine. I think Gibson needs to answer some more questions and I think he will never be able to escape what happened, although I'm not sure what his father has to do with any of it:

Mel Gibson opens in “Edge of Darkness” this Friday. It’s his first starring role since “Signs” in 2002. But a lot has changed.

Since then we’ve learned that Gibson is a racist and anti-Semite. He’s also a drunk, a liar and a philanderer. His father is a famous Holocaust denier who has a Web site explaining all his crazy beliefs. He also disavows the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church in favor of his own brand of Catholicism.On a radio show called “The Political Cesspool,” broadcast on Jan. 9, 2010, Hutton Gibson went after the late Pope John Paul II for visiting the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, for being a Russian or Communist agent and other crazy stuff.

“The whole bunch at the top,” Hutton Gibson says at 14:58 of the interview, of the current Archdiocese,  ”if they’re not outright queer, they’re supportive of it. They do nothing about the terrible things that go on among the clergy and the bishops.”

Listen to the interview here. (Thanks to blogger Adam Holland, who found the link.)

Audiences do move on, but what strikes me about this film is that it is another fetishization of violence. Mel Gibson is mad, then he hits someone, then he breaks a window, and he walks mad some more, and then he says something through his teeth, then he looks mad, and there's more violence.

Okay, but how is that entertaining? Gibson needs a hit. Barring that, he needs to work and try to restore the bond that he used to have with people who wanted to see his films. He needs to find a way to be likeable, or just exit the industry.

If people held what my father said or did against me, I'd probably hide under the blankets and have people bring me beverages and snacks.