Mel Gibson, you magnificent mess. I have loved you from my baby days. You have inspired me and I have learned a lot from you. This article is about Gibson’s new and (for me) exciting up coming release “The Beaver”.
Gibson plays a depressed dad that finds solace in a beaver hand puppet (voiced by Michel Cain). If you lost me at hand puppet (or Gibson) put this one in your pipe, the film is directed by Jodie Foster (yeah you heard me, Nell). Watch the trailer, you’ll see why I am stoked. So I want to get into more about the film but I think this article will start best if I give you a short background of my life of mediocrity. It starts in some hospital in Chicago with my mom screaming in pain and my bloody little body shooting out of her like a cannon ball, thrust into the world with no rhyme or reason. A beautiful scene between a mother and her child meeting for the first time, a scene however, being more at home in a horror film than a hallmark commercial (in my opinion). I don’t remember it, but there are some pictures my pappy took that would freak out Hannibal Lecter.
My baby days are obviously a blur. I think I remember dancing in my crib once, to Bruce Springsteen, but I can’t be sure that happened. As a toddler though I began this strange obsession with film. You know that Edward Hooper painting of the young kid sitting two inches from his television, enveloped in the world of the fiction he’s seeing, the blue light glowing like God illuminating his face? That was I.
I watched movies in a way that was odd, not like most kids that I knew. The first was Marry Poppin’s. When Ms. Poppin’s would fly away clenching her umbrella at the end of the film I would start to cry. The only way my mom could dry my tears was to pop the VHS in again and play the film over from the beginning. (What’s a VHS? I know I forgot about them too). I call it now the “watch and repeat days”. It was a way of viewing that sort of never left me. Up until my mid-twenties, I watched movies in this way. Film ends and I pop it in again. It’s a botched way of viewing, I know, but it made me happy. Living in Hollywood and pursing a career in film I feel that this was a very effective way to learn. I wasn’t just watching movies, I was learning them. The catch is that it left me with a deformed sense of what is “real” and “fiction”. A maddening thought which torments me day in and day out. So years after Poppins, I discover Lethal Weapon One. Holy Sh*# that was a good movie! Mel Gibson and Danny Glover running around town catching criminals, (Gary Busey that crazy chaos of a man) getting leg choked by Rigg’s until he passes out, you had me at hello!
The Gibson obsession starts, I needed to see it all, from “Mad Max” to “Forever Young” to even “Gallipoli”. I remember making myself sit though “Summer City” a film he did in 1977 that was more boring than Spiderman 3 (at least that had Kirsten Dunst to look at). I was struck, I envied him, I loved him, I even acted like him everywhere I went. This is sad and pathetic, I probably shouldn’t be putting it out there, but I used to practice his mannerisms in the mirror. That wide faced laugh, the semi squint he does when his acting chops turn “real”. I wanted to be him, not on film, but in life, a true hero figure for a growing boy. Then the boy grows up, Mr. Gibson gets sauced, takes his drunken thoughts and verbalizes them to the public, my heartbreaks. As if I had been dumped by my best friend. Lied to, it’s like being in a great relationship, purely loving someone and then finding out that they eat their boogers and hate minorities. The same disappointment came from finding out that Frank Sinatra was a wife beater. My childhood hero turns out to be a drunk aniti-semite, the man I wanted to be shows his colors.
So Gibson, whatever negative things I have to say about him, (there are a lot) his work always seems to redeem him in some way. Defected for sure but the guy makes films that he wants to make, not always films that people want to see. Perhaps that’s honorable in a way, Apocalypto, Braveheart - great films. Even The Passion of The Christ, well made, and made by Gibson with no remorse, and little worry of what the world will think of him.
So the question is posed. Can you love the art despite the man who created it or must you love the man to love the skill? Watching Bobby Fisher playing chess so effortlessly must have been like being witnessing the painting of the Sistine Chapel. Fisher will grow up to be an anti social racist, who publicly said that the towers falling in New York was a good thing. “This is all wonderful news. It is time to finish off the US once and for all,” he was quoted to say. Must we now forget his brilliance in his field? I think some people can be so amazing and stunning in moments of their lives but are just simply bad at living. I don’t know the answers to these questions but I would love to hear how you, the reader, feels.
The beaver, two-time Academy Award winner Jodie Foster directs and co-stars with Mel Gibson. From the look of the trailer the film is a dramatic narrative about a man in mayhem. Gibson plays Walter Black a successful toy executive that falls into a fit of depression. Until he finds a toy Beaver that promises to change his life. Quirky, witty, touching, peculiar, all the elements a film needs.
Originally slated for release in 2010, and then on March 28 of this year, "The Beaver" will now open on May 6 in limited release before expanding. Controversies with Gibson risked the film having a straight to DVD release after it leaked that he said to his girlfriend, "You're an embarrassment to me. You look like a f***ing bitch in heat, and if you get raped by a pack of n***ers, it will be your fault."
(This quote was pulled from radaronline.com, I take no responsibility for it’s validation)
Good luck Mr. Gibson. I again will take the high road with you and be the first in line to see the film. Do me a favor though; stop talking. Keep acting, directing and making films. However you feel about people who are different than you, I don’t want to hear it.
Last thought, when you watch the trailer, pay attention to the song that scores it. If any of you read my articles, the song comes from my 3rdfavorite record of 2010. Frightened Rabbit’s “The Winter of Mixed Drinks”. “Swim until you can’t see Land”, another reason why this trailer sucked me in.
Article by: Brett J. Rosenberg
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