el Gibson used to be just a decent action actor who'd been in half a dozen good films, and tons of forgettable ones. In recent years he's become much more of a public figure thanks to his outspoken uber-Catholicism, and the anti-Semitism and anti-homosexuality that comes with it. The culmination of his career, as of 2005, was his independently-produced film The Passion of Christ, which sounded like a misguided joke until it got impossible amounts of publicity and was madly embraced by conservative religious types, to the tune of several hundred million dollars.

On top of The Passion stuff, Mel's dad is pretty much a raving nut, always happy to spout off his holocaust-denying theories, and though Mel's smart enough to keep his mouth shut about that sort of thing, you know he was strongly-influenced by it growing up.

This page collects blog entries on Mel and his family, and you can see much more blogging about The Passion on the its review page. More recent additions are on top.

February 19, 2004

Mel Gibson's dad has escaped from the attic again, and is once more raising hell about the Jews and that whole holocaust nonsense he and he alone sees the truth about.

In his interview on WSNR radio's "Speak Your Piece", to be broadcast Monday, Hutton Gibson, argued that many European Jews counted as death camp victims of the Nazi regime had in fact fled to countries like Australia and the United States.

"It's all -- maybe not all fiction -- but most of it is," he said, adding that the gas chambers and crematoria at camps like Auschwitz would not have been capable of exterminating so many people.

"Do you know what it takes to get rid of a dead body? To cremate it?" he said. "It takes a liter of petrol and 20 minutes. Now, six million of them? They (the Germans) did not have the gas to do it. That's why they lost the war."

During his lengthy radio interview, Hutton Gibson, 85, said Jews were out to create "one world religion and one world government" and outlined a conspiracy theory involving Jewish bankers, the US Federal Reserve and the Vatican, among others.

It's funny how seemingly everyone who denies the holocaust always ties in some master conspiracy theory about Jews running the world.  Why can't they ever believe in one or the other, but not both?

Of course this is bad news for Mel, since he's long fought charges of anti-Semitism, homophobia, and more, and he's trying to get this stuff calmed down with his big Jesus movie coming out soon.

"The Passion," which gets its US release on February 25, purports to be a faithful and graphic account of Christ's last 12 hours on earth.

Jewish leaders who have attended advance screenings have voiced concerns that its portrayal of the Jews' role in Christ's execution could stir up anti-Semitic feeling.

Or is he?

Gibson's father indicated that the controversy had largely benefited the film, in terms of generating publicity.

"Mel says he absolutely couldn't buy PR like this," he said.

So is dad lying or is Mel really privately loving the Jews being angry and giving him free publicity (which has undoubtedly boosted the profile of his movie enormously)?  I don't have any interest in seeing the movie personally; bloody, unpleasant, overly-fictionalized account of one of the thousands of people who were crucified for various crimes in the Roman Empire. Ugh.

But what annoys me is how this reflects on Mel.  It's almost like Arnie being governor now; every time I flip past Commando or Predator or Total Recall or other of his action films on TV (which is pretty damn often, given that the cable channels run them constantly) I can't help but think, "That steroid dope is now the governor?"  Same with Mel now, and when Braveheart or Lethal Weapon is on, I'm looking for subtle anti-Jewish or anti-homosexual material.  Not that the anti-gay stuff has ever been real subtle in Mel's movies.

This sort of thing is actually a drawback in this modern era of constant celebrity spying by the media.  The more we know about actors, the harder it is to just enjoy them in a movie role.  At least it is for me, anyway. Tom Cruise is ruined by his nutty Scientology, it's impossible to take Russell Crowe seriously when you think about him constantly being in drunken bar fights with rugby teams, etc.

March 16, 2003

Mel Gibson has long been a raving Catholic.  If there is such a thing. He's into the whole Latin Mass, wife = baby machine, Jesus' face on a tortilla, etc stuff.  Very hardcore.  He's gotten away with it by keeping a sort of low profile, but that may be changing.  He's financing some unwatchably-long movie about Jesus which will apparently be critical of the Jews for killing Jesus.  And with his parents being interviewed, we now know where he gets his ideas.

The actor's father, Hutton Gibson, told The New York Times he flatly rejected that the terrorist group led by Usama bin Laden had any role in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon Sept. 11.

"Anybody can put out a passenger list," the elder Gibson told The Times.

"So what happened? They were crashed by remote control."

He and the actor's mother, Joye Gibson, also told The Times that the Holocaust was a fabrication manufactured to hide an arrangement between Adolf Hitler and "financiers" to move Jews out of Germany to the Middle East to fight Arabs.

"Go and ask an undertaker or the guy who operates the crematorium what it takes to get rid of a dead body," Hutton Gibson told The Times. "It takes one liter of petrol and 20 minutes. Now six million?"

Said Joye Gibson: "That weren't even that many Jews in all of Europe."

March 18, 2003

In a follow-up to yesterday's comments about Mel Gibson and the article that describes his particular style of throw-back Catholicism, here's an email from Bryan.

I found the article on Mel Gibson very interesting, and yes I realize I should probably email the person who wrote it, but I fear with the bad grammar and misused words that the email I would receive in return would be horrible. I also feel that you'd be better apt to receive my commentary than said author because you seem to have more of an open mind and (s)he's more apt to want sensationalism.

I won't go into the whole crap about Vatican II being the name of the council of Cardinals that assisted the Pope in drafting those resolutions because I'm sure you already knew that, even if the ABC reporter appeared to have no clue. What really shocked me was the fact that the Catholic church now apparently denies the Jews were instrumental in the death of Christ. It's a large part of the Catholic faith that the Jewish Heirarchs condemned Jesus before Herrod and Pilot. That's fine, I don't blame modern Jews at all. I don't blame the ancient ones either. By condeming him to die they allowed him to be born again and free us from the shackles of sin. They were just doing as God had wished.

Ironically, I'm not that conservative a Catholic. I rarely go to Mass anymore, and while I certainly want more music in Church, a Latin Mass makes no sense to me. How exactly are you supposed to feel ecclesiastical when you have no idea what in God's Name they (the Priests) are saying? I dig any religion, really, though I tend to be a bit of a pacifist. Destiny of mankind to unite and all that business.

I find his comments interesting, just for the way they are, and the way I am.

First of all, I've always heard from people who have done objective analysis/reading of that portion of the Bible that the whole "Jews killed Jesus" story is clearly bullshit.  Maybe there was or was not a historical Jesus Christ, but in any event, the Roman emperor Pontius Pilate was notoriously cruel and blood-thirsty and would never have even considered letting anyone go if he had the chance to crucify them.  As the Jesus myth/history goes in the Bible (as best I remember) there was Jesus and a couple of thieves about to be crucified, and the emperor let the crowd of Jews vote over who was to be punished and who spared. The crowd allegedly Jesus over the thieves, and thus Jesus was done for.

The interpretation of that I've always heard (again, from people who have objectively analyzed it) is that the whole story is bullshit, and there's no way the crowd would have been given that choice, or the thieves spared, and that it was just added or edited in in later times.  All the stories in the New Testament were written decades or centuries after the events too place, and they are about as historically accurate as George Washington cutting down the cherry tree.  Based on reality, embroidered for to make a better story, etc. And even if they were factually exact at the time they were recorded, the modern bible is a fraction of the total ancient writings, and has been pared down over the centuries in various translations and updates, where the biases and prejudices and beliefs of the age when the translation was done crept into the document.

Of course this is all heresy to a true believer, who holds that God divinely inspired the original writers, or gave them heavenly dictation, or whatever.  And I suppose did the same to the various monks and others who did later translations.  And we should overlook the numerous errors and inconsistencies and contradictions between various accounts of events and prophecies in the Bible.

That went longer than anticipated.

What I was initially going to say about Bryan's comments was to agree with his one point.  Even if the Jews did condemn Christ to death, they were just doing God's will.  Jesus had to die that way to redeem the sins of man, right?  If he'd been spared then, by the Jews or whoever, and somehow hadn't gotten killed a month or a year later for his ongoing illegal proselytizing, and had lived to be 70 and gotten fat and dropped dead one day while on the crapper, (like Elvis) wouldn't mankind have been doomed? Forever left to wander in darkness away from the cleansing blood of the lamb.  And so on?

If you look at it that way, the Jews were heroes.

Furthermore, the reason Jews don't take Jesus as the messiah, as prophesied in the Old Testament, is because by the prophecies say the messiah must be this, that, and the other thing.  You can tell I didn't exactly take notes in Sunday School, eh?

Anyway, one of the conditions was that he (the messiah) be a great military leader.  He was to unite the tribes and drive forth the Hittites, or some damn thing.  Anyway, Jesus was not, Jesus did not, therefore he didn't match all the bullet points on the "messiah or not" check list, therefore the Jews didn't accept him as the true messiah.  As far as I can tell they have a point, and since the Bible was written by people who came to worship Jesus long after his death, and the victors write history... Well, you know how it goes.

If Jesus had grown old and done the Elvis flop, would we be talking about any of this now?  Hell, I'm not sure why I'm talking about it as it is.

March 19, 2003

I wish I'd seen this yesterday, before I posted an email about and commented on the whole "Mel Gibson, Super-Catholic!" thing.  Read this article, it's long and very detailed/informative. Covers Mel's ideas, his parents, the entire "return to pre-Vatican II Mass" movement, and more.  Very interesting.

So Mel is really super Catholic, and likes to be in his private church with his own rules, cause he feels special.  Okay, whatever, buying yourself rank in a church is an old favorite of the rich.  It's popular in Hollywood, though generally with Scientologists.  But you wonder if Mel is losing his mind though, when you hear the details of the movie he's making now.

According to press accounts, "The Passion," currently being shot in Italy, purports to be the story of the final 12 hours of Jesus' life. The film is based upon the diaries of St. Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824) as collected in the book, "The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ." This is Gibson’s first directing effort since he won an Oscar for "Braveheart," In "The Passion," the actors will speak only Aramaic and Latin and there will be no subtitles.

I'm sure both people on earth who speak both Latin and Aramaic will love it! Besides the lack of subtitles making it impossible to understand, the subject matter sounds like fun for the whole family.

...that Gibson "depicts the crucifixion in a most bloody, gruesome manner. Nothing is left to the imagination or to good taste. Gibson conceded, gladly, that it's never been done so vividly before. He's very proud of showing the suffering it all its minute-by-minute horror."

All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007.