The Dictator, Mel Gibson, History and Comedy

The Dictator is an outstanding satire which is not burning up the box office in America as it should and has gotten temped ratings on rotten tomatoes. Too bad. A movie that swings for the fences will impress those it was meant to impress (people like myself who find it refreshing) and will alienate people who are either strict formalists who insist a movie can only be a satire or a rom-com. It will also annoy morons, but we'll leave that aside. I love the fact that this is both a satire and a somewhat disingenuous rom-com with a protagonist who gets to do heroic deeds and still has a back-story and attitudes that are off-putting. Too many movies are running for office. This movie expects you to know when it is giving movies the finger. Some people don't get it. I got it and appreciate it. This is the sort of movie I would like to be doing. Get the Gringo appears to be released somewhere and I like what I am hearing about it, that it has the quips of a Lethal Weapon and it has a tone like Robert Rodriguez flicks. I look forward to Machete Kills, in which Mel Gibson is supposed to play a bad guy. This all happens around the same time Joe Eszterhas is coming out with an e-book called Heaven and Mel which will fine-tune his own spin on the creative falling out he had with the actor-director over the Maccabee script. I have only the other day heard that he released audio of Mel's alleged rant to him in Costa Rica, but it is clearly from another room and kind of low key as rants go. Mel yells at him for not writing a darn thing over 14 months of being employed to do a screenplay, then yells "Who wants dinner? Yum!" or something. No big deal. He also apparently appeared on Jay Leno and (appropriately) made light of it. It is a shame. I have a copy of Basic Instinct which is entertaining. I also have a book, "The Devil's Guide to Hollywood," wherein one presumes our guide is Joe. After the downbeat visit to Costa Rica (where another writer was having better luck writing with Mel, one Randall Wallace who wrote Braveheart and directed Mel in We Were Soldiers) Joe did finally whip-up a screenplay draft. But it was apparently slip-shot and not reflective enough of what Mel wanted. Warners rejected it and then Mel rejected it. Warners had already paid Joe for the work thus far. Now without Joe's spin, it is the tale of a screenwriter who hasn't cranked anything out since An Allan Smithee Film, Burn, Hollywood, Burn in 1997 if you don't count the 2006 foreign polo film Children of Glory which has three other credited screenwriters and I've never heard of it. Getting his draft of the Maccabee script rejected by Warners would be such a blow to this latter phase of his career he knows his posterity is at stake so he has to make something else of it. Why Mel or Warners chose him to work on this material is unknown. Maybe this time-honored story of Jewish history needed a "Showgirls" touch. Joe wants to amp up the perception that Mel Gibson is not only a lunatic but anti-Semitic. Is The Passion of the Christ a slam against Jews? I didn't feel it as such when I watched it. And it didn't motivate anyone to go out and commit acts of violence against Jews either. It is a very contemplative film. I don't know if Hindus deny that Hindus killed Gandhi or whether the Nation of Islam says their members had nothing to do with killing Malcolm X. The facts don't seem to be much in dispute. People see evil done do Jews OSTENSIBLY for the killing of Christ and therefore can't suffer the fact that not only a Jew named Jesus got crucified and that some high-ranking Jews insisted on it but that crucifixion was common, as was public flogging. I have not heard any dispute of the line "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do" spoken supposedly by Jesus, which would (one thinks) wipe the slate clean for all of JC's persecutors. But even then to not know "what they do" is to assume they don't realize they are killing the Son of God but believe they are merely torturing and killing an ordinary person for blasphemy. So any way you slice it, people have been barbaric and stupid throughout history. Hopefully we will get to see Randall Wallace's Viking film which might very well push Viking violence to the limit. It's a little too easy for people to whine that they don't agree with their employer. It creates a climate where famous employers can't write you a letter or an e-mail without fear that you will release it to the public. I likely will read Joe's e-book, but I already don't respect it. Sascha Baron Cohen (The Dictator himself) has made a couple of digs against Mel Gibson but they are inspired digs. I can respect both in that case. Gibson is made an easy target for accusations of racism. Hopefully meanwhile I will soon find a copy of Get the Gringo. Apparently it is in theaters overseas.