I have been asked by the name sake of this blog to weigh in on the Mel Gibson brouhaha. I am not sure if everyone was asked. Or if I have been singled out because insiders know that The Secret Jewish World Government met at my house one year. (They made it very clear that they were not happy with the amount of dog hair on the furniture and vowed to never return. And that is really all I am at liberty to say about the meeting or the people involved except to add that there was a great deal of concern about who leaked the information to Mel about the Jews starting all the wars. )
That said I have to be very careful about what I say on this matter as I am a resident of Malibu which apparently Mel owns. I was kind of hoping for permission to stay. Maybe I will try and get him to sign some kind of special dispensation next time I see him at the local Starbucks.
Since the most obvious stuff about this incident has been said early and often by everyone with access to a keyboard or a microphone, the only thing I can think of to add is that there is a cautionary tale being offered here about the amount of happiness that you can expect from the things our culture values most: personal beauty, show business success, and enormous wealth. Apparently based on this incident, there is also a subtext, And it's "Guess again."
Because when Rodney King was driving around drunk and screaming at cops, his personal history and environmental circumstances could offer a context, if not an explanation.. But come on: who on this planet got a better hand than Mel fucking Gibson? (Okay, Johnny Depp...but only Johnny Depp. And he got a freakishly good hand what with the fact that he seems to have also gotten reasonably good artistic taste, a head for business AND an actual sense of humor. In fact, it almost seems like God got so hung up creating opportunities for Johnny Depp that he forgot to give certain entire nations enough to eat and drink.)
But back to Mel: after he got bored with being People's sexiest man alive and being cast in every conceivable kind of movie, from drama to action to comedy, (even though he's not actually funny) and was finished effortlessly making the transition to directing where he won awards and had endless additional opportunities, when his every creative whim wasn't being met within the existing studio system he was still able to go outside the system and produce a gorey eccentric dark horse religious flick that no one really believed would work... and still succeed beyond everyone's wildest dreams. Add to that a long stable marriage, a big in tact family, and ownership of all of Malibu, and no wonder he's out driving around drunk in the middle of the night, looking for someone to hate!!
And there-in lies the whole Hollywood conundrum. I've seen it over and over again. The message is this: Learn to be happy for other less superficial reasons,. Because actual happiness runs on a different track from career success . And if you are a crazy narcissist full of self hatred and unexamined rage, even being physically beautiful doesn't make things feel okay.
(If you are not familiar with narcissism, it is most easily explained by the narcissist's credo which is: I'm the piece of shit the world revolves around.)
The truth is that among the rage filled narcissists and sociopaths of show business, (and there are many. It's a real Petri dish) sometimes getting too good a hand just feels all wrong. They're able to spin it as just one more thing to fuel their rage. So I'm thinking that maybe Mel needed to engineer his own fall from grace so he could distract himself with his own redemption. Because the wanting, the yearning and the climbing to the top just felt so much more comfortable.
Don't forget that NOT getting what you want comes with a slate of things to blame. Whereas having everything you want turns the mirror back on to you. And if you don't like what you see, you have to start looking around for a target. Or find a way to fuck things up for yourself. Either way you can justify the rage. ( See O.J. Simpson)
But what do you do when the suits and the development people and the bankers and the government and the biggest executives in the country are all willing to do your bidding? Who can you count on to show up and use as your target in a pinch? Well, there are so many types of people to hate, but for those seeking a cozy bundle of racism issues,, they always throw in Jews free...like floormats when you buy a new car..
Will I still go see his movies? Probably not. Will he go in to my creepy show biz file with Michael Jackson, Woody Allen and Gary Glitter? His chances are good at this point.
Will I make big gloomy judgmental faces at him if I see him at the local Starbucks? Well, it will depend on my mood and if he lets me continue to live in Malibu.
The real truth is that I learned early on not to give too much thought to things being yelled by drunks. Particularly if they're sitting in the back of a squad car.
But if I hear that Johnny Depp is on crack and hurling racist epithets...well, I don't want to even think about that.