Thursday, April 19, 2012

More fallout re Gibson's Maccabbees project

TWO ITEMS on Mel Gibson's (presumably now defunct) Maccabees film project.

First, the audiotape of part of the rant reported earlier by Joe Eszterhas has been released: Transcript of Mel Gibson Rant to Joe Eszterhas (The Wrap).
Why don’t I have a first draft of "The "Maccabees"?

What the f**k have you been doing?

I’ll type it!
No anti-Semitic comments were recorded. Much of the rest seems to involve the expression of negative views regarding his ex-girlfriend, using a limited range of vocabulary.

More interesting is the report by Sharon Waxman, again from The Wrap, on the content of the rejected script, which she has seen: The Joe Eszterhas ‘Maccabees’ Script: Bloody Butchery, Heroic Jews (Exclusive). Excerpt:
Eszterhas’s script is remarkably faithful to the 2nd century B.C. biblical tale. A group of five brothers, sons of the high priest Mattathias, band together to fight the anti-Jewish occupation of Israel by the Greek-Syrian ruler, Antiochus.

It is primal: white hats and black hats. Heroes and heinous villains. Good vs. evil.

On the face of it, this is a script that Mel Gibson should absolutely love: A band of pious underdogs take on an evil overlord. (They don’t paint their faces a la “Braveheart,” but the Jewish women are physically branded as harlots.)

It is full of throat-slitting and cutting off of heads. There are miles of heads on stakes. In one scene, a woman plunges a dagger into the eye of an opponent. Hearts are cut out of dead bodies.

And the fighting is full of Rambo-like relish.

From one scene:
“Ramses turns to run, but Judah is on him...Ramses falls. Judah kills him with his bare hands - lifting him by the neck and snapping it suddenly. Judah gets up and faces the other mercenaries. He is a crazed, furious, dervish - explosive, a killing machine. The mercenaries have shields, swords, and shovel-like spears. Judah draws his knife. He is a fighting machine at full roar.”
Like “Passion of the Christ,” “The Maccabees” assert their principles in the face of a sadistic, heathen overlord (that would be the Greek-Syrian Antiochus instead of the Roman overlordjoe eszterhas Pontius Pilate).
She is surprised that Gibson and Warner Bros. rejected it.

Background here.