Mel Gibson names the most underrated director in cinema history: “Great fuckin’ guy, I love him”
With two Academy Awards to his name for his efforts behind the camera, Mel Gibson isn’t an underrated director, although he’s increasingly shown himself to be a fairly inconsistent one.
His feature-length debut, The Man Without a Face, was a solid-if-unspectacular introduction to the latest actor-turned-filmmaker on the block, but it didn’t offer any indications that his next movie would be a historical epic with a blockbuster-sized budget that would win him ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’.
The Passion of the Christ wasn’t a critical darling outside of its target demographic, but it did become the highest-grossing R-rated movie and the top-earning independent film of all time, making Gibson a shitload of money after he’d financed himself because no major outfit was willing to stump up the cash.
Apocalypto was a brutal and bloody experimental thriller told at a breakneck pace, and Hacksaw Ridge briefly got him back into Hollywood’s good graces when it won two Oscars and was nominated for another four, before he decided that a crap B-movie with Mark Wahlberg was the best way to end his near-decade directorial sabbatical. Either that, or Flight Risk was the best offer that came his way.
It’s back to biblical times next with a two-part follow-up to The Passion of the Christ, and if they perform half as well as their predecessor, then he’s going to get even richer. Before he was exiled from the mainstream and forced to plumb the depths of straight-to-video purgatory, Gibson worked with plenty of big-name auteurs, but he’s adamant that one of them never got the credit they deserved.
He’s teamed up with George Miller, Peter Weir, Robert Towne, Ron Howard, Roland Emmerich, M Night Shyamalan, Robert Rodriguez, and more, but despite boasting an impressive array of box office hits, cult favourites, and certified classics, Gibson still thinks Richard Donner has never gotten the credit he deserves.
“Uncle Dick,” he wistfully told Venice Magazine. “He’s a great guy, just terrific. Extremely professional. He’s an old veteran and has an understanding of film that is the culmination of years of experience. He’s got his technical stuff down, his vision down. No matter what you say about Dick, it underrates him. He really loves what he’s doing, loves working with actors, and he allows you freedom to explore all kinds of areas.”
While it’s easy to assume that Gibson is being biased, since he made four Lethal Weapon flicks, Maverick, and Conspiracy Theory with Donner at the helm, he’s got a point. He also directed The Omen, Superman, Ladyhawke, The Goonies, and Scrooged, all of which have plenty of fans, but he was never spoken about in the same breath as the other elite-level populists like Howard, Steven Spielberg, and James Cameron.
Quentin Tarantino even called him the exact type of filmmaker he never wanted to end up like, which is doing a disservice to a guy who made more great movies than most directors of his era, and many of them are still religiously watched today. “He’s just an extremely charming, talented, great fuckin’ guy,” Gibson concluded. “I love him.”
