Don’t you hate it when two douchebags feud and you just can’t pick sides? Like when the odious Donald Trump and the equally odious Rosie O’Donnell let loose on each other?
I want to sit them down and say, “Yes, Joe, you are a lying sack of shit; and yes, Mel, you are a homophobic, violent anti-Semite. Now, can’t we all go out for some poisoned ice cream?”
Full text of Eszterhas’ letter here and Gibson’s reply here.
I tend to agree with you, a plague on both their houses, but it is fun watching them ripping into each other. I do think Eszterhas’ letter has the ring of truth when it’s descriptive of Gibson laying into the ‘Hebes’ every other sentence and cursing out his wife, although I also suspect that Eszterhas’ script did suck most forcefully and he was less than honest in his references to that.
What amazes me is that Mel Gibson never seems to have shaken off the malign influence of his crazy pop. I’m sure as a kid he was forcefed plentiful heaps of baloney about the Jews and his bedtime stories would have been selected from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion rather than Grimms’ Fairy Tales but any young man of reasonable intelligence (and Gibson is far from dumb) would surely have seen through all this crap when he reached adulthood. But apparently the apple didn’t fall far enough away from the tree.
His dad was a real piece of work. He dragged his family to Australia away from a racist, bigoted enclave in New York because it wasn’t white enough to suit him. The guy had reached psycho level hatred.
I think Mel’s anti-Semitism is just a symptom of some real serious problems he has, and hasn’t been dealing with. I can’t work up much sympathy for a highly successful and wealthy man of leisure who doesn’t seem to attempt to deal with his personal demons.
Is. He’s one of those mummified bigots who just won’t die. And I’m with aldiboronti: I’m trying to enjoy these two jerks savaging each other.
I think this proves that Mel Gibson is delusional. I mean, he really picked Joe Exterhas to write a script for him?
If the script is that great Joe should have no problem finding someone to film it. Somehow I doubt it.
I’d watch a movie about that!
About historical Jewish heroes.
After reading the letters fully I have to say that Mel comes off better than Joe. I have no doubt that Mel still has a rage issue and is probably still drinking in his private life. But his letter sounded believable and Joe’s just sounded like a hissy fit. I don’t find it hard to believe that it was the worst script he has seen in 25 years.
I might be a bit prejudiced though. I have enjoyed quite a few Mel Gibson movies but every Joe Eszterhas script has been complete shit.
Two Men Enter
One Man Leave
Prize Is Bullet In Brain
Two Australian practising Catholics with abusive anti-semetic fathers get together to write a movie about the Macabees? I think they should make it “Adaptation” style and write it about the process of writing the script instead of about the actual biblical events.
Ok, got it, Mel Gibson is a nut case. But doesn’t the letter read a bit suspiciously? If your intent is to write to someone and essentially say “your a racist dirtbag who broke a promise, but I’m only going to send this to you” would you really write that letter? It seems like this guy feels his reputation is now in the toilet so he wants to take Mel further down with him. It seems written about Mel, not to him.
On this one, as loony as Mel might be, I have to throw the BS flag and say Mel’s response is most likely the closest thing to the truth in this case.
The Donald is far more odious than The O’Donnell. Get a grip.
As for Joe and Mel, I don’t give a damn.
I suspect the “real story” is that Warner Bros. said “holy fuck, are we really about to put millions of dollars into a movie about the Maccabees directed by a possibly unstable anti-semite”? When it turned out the answer was “yes”, they dropped the project.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a project like this getting dropped because the studio didn’t like the first draft of the script. That might be a reason to drop Eszterhas, but not a reason to scrub the whole thing, so I’m pretty sceptical of Mel’s story.
The first paragraph of Gibson’s letter is probably clearer than anything Eszterhas has ever written.
But Joe has a tape!
Am I allowed gourmet popcorn and tasteful lawn furniture in Cafe Society?
That’s what tripped me up, too. And the fact that Mel is okay in letting Eszterhas think that it’s really because his script sucked makes me think it might be an antisemetic thing. But it could also just be him being an asshole. Or even possibly being misled.
You also have to keep in mind that, anti-Semitism and bad writing aside, Mel Gibson and Joe Eszterhas are both just crazier than shit-house rats. Which is what makes it so hard to choose sides . . .
Yeah. Every word of Eszterhas’s letter may be true, but it reads like a failed blackmail attempt. There is no other conceivable point to writing a letter like that, except to send a message to Gibson that unless he capitulates to whatever Eszterhas wants, the letter gets leaked to the media.
Still, it’s entertaining to watch two creeps fight.
Even if every single thing he said Gibson said is true and worse, unless Gibson actually announced clear criminal intent (“Let’s get together this week…I can’t meet Monday because I’ve brought over a Burmese hit squad to kill my ex, Tuesday’s I travel the world on private jet and torch random synagogues, Wednesday Jodie Foster and I get pedicures… how about Thursday if I don’t have to make a tearful ‘how did this happen’ about my ex’s vicious murder?”) then Eszterhas is a santorumy douche to reveal it. It’s not like he’s exposing anything (everybody knows Gibson is racist, crazy, and violent) or has any nobler intents than to embarrass him, and even that’s pretty futile (Mel’s been through one helluva lot worse than this in the public arena).