Posted on 09/24/2006 8:40:30 PM PDT by paltz
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Mel Gibson has returned to the spotlight to promote his upcoming movie "Apocalypto," and to criticize the war in Iraq, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Almost two months after he railed against Jews when he was arrested for driving drunk in Malibu, the actor made a surprise appearance Friday at Fantastic Fest, an event in Austin, Texas, devoted to new science fiction, horror and fantasy films, the trade paper said in its Monday edition.
He presented a work-in-progress screening of his Mayan adventure tale, and then took questions. About one-third of the full house gathered for the film gave him a standing ovation. The film is scheduled for a December 8 release via Disney.
In describing its portrait of a civilization in decline, Gibson said, "The precursors to a civilization that's going under are the same, time and time again," drawing parallels between the Mayan civilization on the brink of collapse and America's present situation. "What's human sacrifice," he asked, "if not sending guys off to Iraq for no reason?"
Appearing alongside Rudy Youngblood, one of the film's actors who hails from the Austin area, Gibson said he plans to make further trims in the film, which ran more than two hours. The print shown did not include sound effects and score, and some visual effects have not yet been added.
Gibson's appearance at the festival, co-founded by Harry Knowles, was reminiscent of a similar appearance he made at Knowles' Butt-Numb-a-Thon, which offered one of the first public previews of "The Passion of the Christ."
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
As mu niece would say, "Gibson is so pre-9/11."
My response about Mel is a response to all the fawning over him personally as the second comming when his movie came out. Its not the secrets, its his arrogance. When the Passion came out, Gibson said that HIS MOVIE would for once and for all change this notion that the Jews killed Christ.( that was his response to Jewish critics).
And when actors share too much about themselves, I don't enjoy their acting or movies anymore, because now their personal rants interfere with their character in the movie. Jack Nicholson never talks all this political and social crap and so I can get into his chracter in the movies.
by the way...your home page here on Freep is very interesting and I agree with a lot of your ideas.
gee, i would never have pictured mel in this way. my nephew is in iraq and i get a little huffy when someone tells me gi's are being sacrificed for nothing.
must be the samson syndrome taking over his brain
Oh probably some. Kind of curious. You do realize the two issues are completely different. That it is a complete logical fallacy to try and link two?
Your position here is not at all intellectually defensible. It is absurd to demand one's opinion be forever set in stone about another person simply because of a past event.
You do realize Mel Gibson came out an apologized for his anti-Semetic which was why those Freepers advocated forgiveness? I suspect if he later apologizes for his remarks on Iraq those same Freepers would again advocate forgiveness. It is after all a Christian thing to do.
I don't know but I'm invoking the name of St. Micheal here.
Curious. This exact same argument was made in the 1930s. It was a advocated by a group called American Firsters. Their Dogma was called "Isolationism".
It almost resulted in the Nazis winning WW2.
Such a dogma after WW2 would of let the Sovs win the Cold War.
We tried this in the 1980s and 1990s with Terrorism. We pretended it wasn't a threat. That if we just ignored it it would fade away. How did that Neo Isolationist Dogma work out for us on 09-11-01?
It's a pointed question meant to criticize FReepers who are perfectly willing to forgive and forget anti-Semetic bigotry for someone who is percieved to be on our side, but abandon him as a traitor as soon as he comes out against a policy that they support.
Mel, just shut your mouth, and let us enjoy looking at you --- no beard or looking like a flake please.
Well said, antonia!
Mel has oficially jumped the shark.
Good points all. What you say probably is at least part of the reason why I tend to go out of my way to avoid learning details of celebrities lives and opinions.
I think that Jack Nicholson is pretty politically active in left-wing causes -- but he is more quiet about it, so one can avoid hearing about his views, which is all I ask (although if his views were conservative, I'm not sure that they would be covered in nearly so quiet a way.) And he is a heck of an actor. I wasn't aware that Gibson was particularly vocal about his views -- at least not by comparison to the likes of the usual liberal suspects (all of whom set breathtaking standards for arrogance).
I pretty much bypassed the whole Passion thing, as I mentioned in another post, so missed the hype and commentary. I will admit that I didn't like the fact that the film was being blasted for being anti-Semitic before a screenplay had even been written -- based solely (apparently) on Gibson's statements that it would closely follow the Gospel accounts.
Which meant that the Gospels are anti-Semitic and should be banned. Not a way to win my favor. For that reason alone, I enjoyed the fact that it was a huge success when so much effort had been put into trying to torpedo it before it saw the light of day. The ornery part of me coming out. But neither my wife nor I saw the film, and probably never will.
And thanks for the comments on the home page...
Freegards,
A.
Hollywood will never take him back. One of the tabloids reported that at the recent wedding of Mel's daughter, no Hollywood celebrity accepted an invitation to attend.
"Only if they don't look into how the authors of the time lived!"
Ha! You've got that right. Decadence and stupidity in the artistic class is hardly a novel product of the past century.
Mel is no better than Sean Penn in his anti-war harping. I won't go see Sean's new film, ditto for Mel's.
Get more than huffy, tell them to either support our troops or stand behind the enemy so we eliminate both enemies with one shot!
Don't think that this new movie will make much money.
I remember the Kurds and the massive killing.
I remember how much Saddam hated the US. So much so he tried to kill ex President George Bush.
I remember how everyone thought he had those weapons.
I have no doubt that given any alliance at that time or in the future with Al Qaeda that Saddam would do anything to do as massive damage to the US as he could.
He was a very destabilizing force that given different intelligence advice after the first gulf war, he would have been killed.
His time should have been done back then and George Bush 42 knew this was especially true in such a destabilized time, in a time of war, when terrorist were showing they would do anything and make any alliance to kill Americans on a massive level.
For no reason Mel? Who took your thinking cap you selfish, self-centered, self-righteous fool?
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