There was some good news this week for Mel Gibson as he attempted to rescue his career from the firestorm provoked by his anti-Semitic outburst a week ago. He will not have to go to court and will thus avoid the public walk so beloved of United States cable channels, a second act to the ritual of the star’s mugshot.
The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office decided to charge the 50-year-old star with the minimum he could have expected: a misdemeanour charge of driving under the influence. Should he plead no contest, Gibson will avoid the need to attend a court hearing. While the charge carries a potential sentence of up to six months, it is more common for a first-time offender to receive a fine, have their licence suspended and serve three years’ probation.
That was the good news. But while the rest of the week may not have been quite so bad as to fulfil Gibson’s prophecy that ”my life is fucked”, he suffered some serious blows in the wake of his arrest.
From being a one-man juggernaut, seemingly able to produce, direct and star in whatever he chose, Gibson is now squirming. His enemies circle, his production company flounders and prospects for his next film — Apocalypto, a Mayan-language epic — are diminishing.
But in Hollywood, money talks, and by the end of the week it was becoming clear that Gibson, after serving due penitence, would be sheltered as one of Tinseltown’s own. ”The incident was a horrible, horrible blow to his public image,” said image consultant Peter Montoya. ”The basic rules when you’re a public figure and you make a mistake: you apologise early. He did the right thing so far, and I think he’s going to do more in the coming months.”
The week got off to a bad start with news on Monday that Disney subsidiary ABC Television had cancelled plans for a miniseries on the Holocaust with Gibson’s Icon Productions. The network said cancellation was ordered because of lack of script progress. But the possibility of going ahead without Gibson was left open.
The decision came as a few voices did what Hollywood never does and spoke out against one of its own. ”To make all your money from Jews in Hollywood, and then have a few drinks and say you hate Jews, is shocking,” producer Arnon Milchan told The Los Angeles Times.
But the silence of the studios was noticeable, with only one studio head, Sony’s Amy Pascal, voicing on-record disapproval of Gibson’s outburst.
By mid-week, after a more detailed apology by Gibson, his friends started to rally. ”He has a problem, and he’s doing everything he can to make amends,” said his agent, Ed Limato, of the ICM group. Disney, too, had decided to stand by its man: after all, Gibson’s last film cost $30-million and took in $1-billion. Oren Aviv, the studio’s production chief, issued a statement that effectively said ”dreadful business, time to move on”.
The Passion of the Christ was mired in controversy over alleged anti-Semitism. But its box-office take proved stronger: nobody in Hollywood boycotted Gibson on the grounds that they didn’t like the traditionalist Christian message.
Ultimately, the power of the Passion will be more lasting than the aftertaste of tequila.
Breaking the silence
”Bigots have so often accused our community of being ‘run by Jews’ that I think it has entered our psyche. We have become so defensive that when faced with a disgusting incident starring a movie star, we as individuals remain relatively silent.” So wrote veteran Hollywood producer Merv Adelson in an ad in The Los Angeles Times.
The South Park boys found a different way to make a similar point: ”C’mon Jews,” said an ad they placed in Variety, ”show them who really runs Hollywood.” The ad was placed to promote the show’s Scientology-knocking Emmy entry, but the timing made it another exhortation to Hollywood’s Jewish community to stand up for itself.
The Hollywood system was set up by eastern European Jewish immigrants early last century. As Neal Gabler suggests in An Empire of Their Own: ”Hollywood Jews embarked on an assimilation so ruthless that they cut their lives to the pattern of American respectability as they interpreted it.”
Hollywood’s Jews largely failed to speak out against Hitler or the Nazis until the US had entered World War II; Jewish studio heads were complicit in the McCarthy witch-hunts of the 1950s.
To some observers, that instinct still prevails: business must go on.
”Being old means I have no agenda,” concluded Adelson. ”I don’t have to worry about not getting a movie made or being politically correct. Let’s make ourselves proud and not support this jerk in any way, just because he’s a so-called ‘star’.” — Guardian Unlimited Â