September 25, 2006
Mel Gibson at Fantastic Fest
While we were busy watching Funky Forest, Mel Gibson made a surprise appearance at Fantastic Fest to present an advance screening of his upcoming Apocalypto. This is going to go down in history as one of the most talked about Fantastic Fest events ever. We nabbed this photo from Matt Dentler's blog, where he has an in-depth review of the film and the event. So check it out. And if you were lucky enough to have attended the event, post a comment and give us your review.
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Oh, Mel. Trying so hard to make us forgive you.
Lucky? Why would anyone want to hear that guy speak? Why would the organizers put on his movie? Very strange.
a friend told me gibson looked completely manic, as, seemingly, always. dude is messed up! and i heard the movie was overly-gory.
You gotta love Austin...people want to hear him speak because he's a movie star, silly! And occasionally he even makes interesting movies. Believe it or not there's a looooooong list of artists with inexcusable personal behavior problems, including wife-beater Pablo Picasso, sleazy-drunk/adulterer/statutory rapist Jackson Pollack, and child-rapist Roman Polanski. Does that mean you're never renting Rosemary's Baby or visiting the Louvre again? Comparatively, drunk/anti-Semite Mel Gibson's all bark and no bite.
P.S. there's no such thing as "overly-gory"
I was there--you could feel the overall bewilderment in the audience as Harry Knowles finally revealed the film and guest presenter to us all, since most of us were hoping for something more appropriate to the festival such as "300" or "The Prestige" -- hell, even "Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny" would have gone over like gangbusters. As for the film itself, it needs plenty of editorial tightening to fix up a deadly dull and overly earnest first half, but once the action really gets going with the scenes involving Mayan civilation onwards it's not half-bad. I would never have paid to see anything this annoying bigot produces, so I was at least happy to experience it for free.
I was there and it was a good time. I had heard Mel was doing this movie and I wasn't terribly interested in it. After having seen it, I thought it was a great movie. It looked beautiful and was very exciting. I found the QA afterwards to be really interesting. Mel was quite funny and engaging. We all fuck up from time to time. The man can still make a great movie.
I heard that Mel stayed at the Hyatt under the name "Senor Hugh Jater," his latest favorite pseudonym. He thought it was hilarious how they pronounced it down in Maya . . .