Oh my. It's not often we get to see Hollywood cat fighting of this magnitude spill out into the open, but this war of words between Mel Gibson and screenwriter Joe Eszterhas is absolutely delicious. Frankly, both men are probably nuts, but only one appears to be racist up to his eyeballs. If you'll recall, yesterday the news broke that Warner Brothers had put on hold Mel Gibson's planned action movie based on Judah Maccabeus, one of the greatest Jewish heroes in their history and helped lead the revolt that conquered Judea in the 2nd century. Considering Gibson's anti-semitic rantings from a few years ago, this was always a risky proposition, and the studio finally woke up and realized it, ultimately blaming the decision on a bad script.
TheWrap got hold of a breathtaking nine page letter Eszterhas sent to Gibson privately, where he reams him for his continuing racist behavior. He claims that Gibson was pretty upfront about only wanting to make a "Jewish Braveheart" to deflect charges of being an anti-Semite, ultimately claiming that Gibson had never had any real desire to make the movie because he simply hates Jews. Ouch. He states that Gibson repeatedly used derogatory language when describing Jews on set. Double ouch. That'll hurt your career a little bit, yeah. The anti-Semitic rantings continued for the entire production, according to Eszterhas.
It gets worse, with Eszterhas describing a violent encounter at Gibson's home where the actor exploded in a rage against his ex-girlfriend, Oksana Gregorieva, telling her son how he'd have anal sex with her then stab her dead while doing it. Pretty disgusting, and I'm inclined to believe it because...well, why in the Hell would Eszterhas make shit like that up in a private letter?
Gibson responded by, of course, saying most of the claims are untrue. He does admit to getting extremely upset and raging at Estzerhas at various times, and wrote a letter to him to apologize for losing control. Gibson says he was upset mainly at the writer's inability to meet a deadline, with even Eszterhas saying the turned in the first draft two weeks late. That draft was apparently not well received, with Gibson's reply letter basically calling it a piece of crap...
Gibson: "In 25 years of script development I have never seen a more substandard first draft or a more significant waste of time."
The whole thing is far better than I can describe here, so just check out the full letter for yourself here, and Gibson's response here. What I immediately take from all this is that Gibson's career is effectively over. Nobody is going to want to work with him if even a fraction of this letter is true. He was already struggling to comeback even after having a pretty good 2011, and now any good will he might have created for himself is flushed down the toilet.
