A COMEBACK PENSIONER
Jamie Portman wonders whether reviving Lethal Weapon will be Gibson's salvation.
In 2006, the Los Angeles Times published a blistering editorial calling for Mel Gibson to be booted out of Hollywood.
It never happened, despite the damage to Gibson's reputation caused by his drunken anti-semitic outburst against a pair of Malibu cops on July 27 of that year. More than a decade later, he still maintains a career — of sorts.
He's the eternal comeback kid, a troubled man yearning to claw back at least a semblance of the respectability he once enjoyed. So do we now detect desperation in the move to dust off the long defunct Lethal Weapon franchise?
At the age of 65, Gibson will be resurrected in the role of maverick cop Martin Riggs, reuniting with old Lethal Weapon buddy Danny Glover, 74, and the franchise's original director, Richard Donner, who's now 90. But will Lethal Weapon 5 really happen? Will it prove his salvation?
Media heavyweights are skeptical. Forbes magazine, its eye always on the dollar, sets the tone. Columnist Scott Mendelson acknowledges that the first four Lethal Weapon films stand beside the Die Hard and Robocop franchises in reshaping the modern action movie.
But more than two decades have passed since the release of the last one, and Gibson remains a toxic property.
“If audiences don't want to see Mel Gibson as Martin Riggs ... then Lethal Weapon 5 is doomed,” Mendelson wrote last year.
Because Gibson continues to work, some pundits insist that he is already back in Hollywood's good graces. But is he really? As a director, he managed to deliver a stunningly crafted Second World War film, Hacksaw Ridge, which grossed nearly $200 million internationally and picked up Oscar nominations and wins. As a filmmaker, he is gifted; however, as was also the case with films The Passion of the Christ and Braveheart — he remains politically, theologically and psychologically naive.
Meanwhile, what of Gibson the actor? Short answer: he remains out of favour, appearing in generally mediocre material that often goes directly to streaming. Mainstream producers remain cautious. To be sure, there was the $180 million earned by the family-oriented Daddy's Home 2, but Gibson's presence in the film upset people.
“Even if Gibson's casting didn't hurt the movie, it certainly didn't help,” a caustic Mendelson told his readers. The online Daily Beast was more brutal, saying the filmmakers should be ashamed for casting him. GQ magazine said his so-called comeback was “unearned.”
When it comes to Hollywood, the comeback trail is about as predictable as a crap shoot. Robert Downey Jr. pulled himself out of drug-addled decrepitude to become a huge star. Silent film comic Fatty Arbuckle found his career destroyed even after he was cleared of manslaughter in the death of a young woman. Oscar-winning Ingrid Bergman spent years in exile from Hollywood because of the scandal over her affair with Italian director Roberto Rossellini; she returned only after legendary TV host Ed Sullivan asked viewers whether they were willing to have her back. Lindsay Lohan has stumbled persistently in her quest for redemption and forgiveness. Charlie Sheen fell from grace more than once, and returned to favour more than once before becoming so self-destructive he lost his starring role in Two and a Half Men.
For Gibson, the comeback trail seems unending, and there's a certain pathos to all this.
Yes, he is volatile, alarmingly so. He's also vulnerable, which is why he continues to have staunch friends and supporters like Downey Jr. and Jodie Foster, steadfast in her loyalty despite Gibson's homophobic leanings.
Journalists have found him difficult to dislike while often remaining conscious of a demon-driven man struggling to rein himself in.
Gibson lost control on the Pacific Coast Highway in 2006. “F---ing Jews,” he yelled at a Malibu policeman arresting him for drunk driving.”
When a recording of his tirade was leaked, Gibson's career became toast overnight. And despite the fact that he would be sentenced to three years probation, pay $1,300 in fines and be required to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, the Times editorial was unforgiving, labelling him a “megalomaniacal, sexist anti-semite.”
To be sure, there was a statement of contrition at the time:
“... I said things that I do not believe to be true and are despicable ...” But it came from a man who, liberated from the stability of a long marriage, would then threaten physical violence and worse against the Russian girlfriend who was also the mother of his ninth child, who would leave the Jewish Winona Ryder speechless with an offhand comment about “oven-dodgers,” (prompting Canadian comic Seth Rogen to label him a “ho-ho-holocaust denier), and who once reacted to New York Times columnist Frank Rich's negative comments about The Passion of the Christ with these words: “I want his intestines on a stick. I want to kill his dog.”
Is any of this excusable? Well, Mel Gibson is an alcoholic. We've been told that he is bipolar. And, given his religious background, it's reasonable to believe that he's capable of remorse. But does this get him off the hook?
Gibson certainly hoped so when he appeared on Good Morning America a few weeks ago to tell the world that Lethal Weapon 5 was definitely happening.
For him, the promise of redemption was again looming.
But negative reaction was swift. “Why is Mel Gibson welcome on Good Morning America?” asked online columnist Roger Friedman, who went on to predict that Warner Brothers would never green-light a movie starring an actor who was “box office poison and human poison.”
Variety, the venerable show-business newspaper, chose its words more carefully, but the headline on a recent thousand-word article told all: “How does Mel Gibson still have a career?”