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There.
So Mel Gibson and Britney Spears flew off to Costa Rica
together. No, it wasn’t a naughty tryst. It wasn’t a
wacky celebrity skit on Saturday Night Live. It
wasn’t even a copy of People magazine sent through the
office shredder and reconstituted like a Franken-story.
Nope, just one inhabitant of the celebrity Truman
Show lending a hand to another denizen of the
bubbled universe. Unlikely as it sounds.
The
two—accompanied by his wife and her father—had gone to
vacation and look at property. Mel already has a home
there. And Britney could certainly use a refuge from the
paparazzi, though wouldn’t you know it; the tabloids
even followed the songstress there, and snapped pictures
of her swimming off Barrigona Beach.
 It’s
not hard to figure out how the 52-year-old Gibson and
the 26-year-old Spears know each other—through Blair
Berk, defense lawyer to the stars, who has helped both
of them sort out their legal problems. Berk declined to
comment, as did Spears, and Gibson’s publicist said that
Gibson would not be able to comment as he was out of the
country.
But what
are these two really doing together? According to those
who know (who declined to be named for fear of angering
the actor), Gibson—and his wife, Robyn—reached out to
Spears back in the dark days of February, around the
time the troubled songstress was committed to the UCLA
Medical Center’s psychiatric unit. He was tortured by
the idea that the pop star might end up dead, in part a
casualty of the public’s lurid fascination with her.
Says one informed source, “There was no religious
overtones, no endgame other than trying to show her
there’s a way to live your life without being in the
fishbowl, and learning how to raise kids that way.”
Indeed, unlike Suri Cruise or Jaden Smith, the seven
Gibson kids have avoided becoming tabloid grist.
Gibson
remains one of the most enigmatic figures in pop
culture, the Jekyll and Hyde—no, the Sybil—of the movie
world. He’s alternatively been described as a brilliant
director, a religious nut, an aging leading man, an
anti-Semite, a mensch, a conspiracy theorist, a
repenting drunk and a ham. He certainly defies the famed
dictum “the personal is political.” Indeed, until The
Passion of the Christ, few in showbiz had a problem
with Mel, the person. He wasn’t a nightmare on two legs,
and he worked happily and closely with gays and Jews.
It’s just when he vocalized what was putatively in his
heart—when he went ideological—that his
public-perception problems began.
 Even
now, pals say the actor has a sincere commitment to
charity in its purest sense—without ostentation. He’s
shelled out $10 million to UCLA and Cedars-Sinai Medical
Center and backed Healing the Children, an organization
that helps disadvantaged children get medical aid. But
the Passion of the Christ director is loath to
let the public know about any of his altruism. Humility
is apparently part of his conservative Catholic ethos,
and he also doesn’t want to let his own notoriety
somehow besmirch those he’s trying to help.
At some
point, he became a figure on the celebrity-recovery
circuit, a last resort for famous folks who can’t quite
get it together. Robert Downey Jr., now riding the
Iron Man crescendo, had Mel to thank for giving him
a job (as the star of The Singing Detective,
which Gibson produced) back in 2002 when he came out of
rehab, after a year in prison and years of battling drug
addiction. In an old interview with a
Florida
paper, Downey recalled that “Gibson gave me a gift.”
Courtney
Love also had her Gibson moment, as she told Good
Morning America in 2006. She was doing drugs in a
Beverly Hills
hotel room when Gibson showed up unannounced, with
addiction specialist Warren Boyd (Downey’s go-to guy) in
tow. “Mel kept coming to the door with this cheesy grin
going, ‘Hi!’” Love said. “I just kept looking at him
going, ‘Blank off!’...” Gibson ultimately persuaded
Love’s drug-taking compadres to leave with him to get a
cheeseburger, leaving Boyd with Love to usher her into
rehab.
Of
course, Downey and Love were both grown-ups when Gibson
intervened, not an addled child-woman whose father has
been made the conservator of her estate. Yet, it’s
possible that Gibson and Spears share even more. While
only Spears and her doctors know precisely what she
suffers from, the papers have been pretty free and easy
with the armchair diagnosis, suggesting that her bizarre
behavior might be a reflection of a bipolar disorder.
Just last week the Sydney Morning Herald ran a story
about a documentary focusing on Gibson and his old
drama-school classmates, in which the superstar tells
the interviewer, “I had some really good highs but some
very low lows. I found out recently I’m
manic-depressive.” Hmmm.
So is
this recent trip to
Costa Rica
yet another act of altruism? It’s hard to say. It’s also
hard to weigh, which is more important for a
world-renowned figure—private charity or public
responsibility?
It’s
equally unclear whether he’ll ever be truly accepted
back into the entertainment community after the
anti-Semitic comments he made during a 2006 arrest for
drunk driving in
Malibu. For those who viewed his The Passion of
the Christ as hostile toward Jews, Mel’s words
seemed proof of his actual intentions.
Many in
Hollywood continue to view Gibson with wariness. After
the 2006
Malibu
incident, Endeavor super-agent Ari Emanuel vociferously
called for a professional “shunning” of Gibson on the
Huffington Post, “even if it means a sacrifice to their
bottom line.” Emanuel is apparently not just talking the
talk. According to a well-placed source, Gibson’s
longtime agent Ed Limato did discuss going to Endeavor
when he left International Creative Management last
year, but bringing Gibson along was a hurdle in the
negotiation. Limato ended up relocating to the William
Morris Agency. (Emanuel declined to
comment.)
Yet,
others in Hollywood believe that Gibson is still an
international movie star, even though he hasn’t
top-lined a film since 2002. Just last month the trades
reported that Gibson is finally going back to work as an
actor and will star in The Edge of Darkness, a
film to be directed by Bond director Martin Campbell and
written by Oscar-winning scribe William Monahan. The
movie, about a Boston police officer investigating the
death of his activist daughter, is being bankrolled by
independent financier Graham King, who recently went off
to Cannes to sell the foreign
rights.
I’ve had
my own encounter with the dual nature of Mel Gibson. As
an entertainment reporter, I’ve spent a considerable
amount of time with the star over the years, on sets in
LA,
Scotland
and Maine, and in the editing room during Braveheart.
He was always friendly and unpretentious, a macho
goofball. Then I saw him in 2004 during the media
meltdown of The Passion of the Christ. Huddled in
a swank hotel room, Gibson had aged considerably and
appeared harried and even paranoid, which is a strange
quality for a gazillionaire megastar. “I’ve been
subjected to religious persecution, persecution as an
artist, persecution as an American, persecution as a
man,” he told me, which was a little hard to take, given
that he didn’t have a concentration-camp number on his
wrist or hadn’t just spent five years in a labor camp in
Siberia.
Still,
he was remarkably warm and seemed genuinely surprised
when I told him how much The Passion of the Christ
upset me. As a Jew, it made me feel like I had a target
on my back. “I’m sorry if it’s caused you to feel that
way, because you’re a friend of mine and I love you,” he
said sincerely. “It completely tears my heart out when I
see you like that.”
Huh? I
knew he was using love in the Christian-“Kumbaya” sense
of the word, but still it was a strange moment. Over the
years, I’ve thought back on that encounter. I wonder if
Mel the person might be OK, although Mel the ideologue
scares me.
The
troubled Spears certainly needs help from someone who’s
not trying to exploit her.
I just
hope that it’s Mel the compassionate struggling former
alcoholic who’s stretching out his hand. The personally
flawed but still human Gibson is easier to take. |
