“Sort of Michael Caine on speed”: the Mel Gibson performance with unusual origins
They may have never worked together on a movie, but Mel Gibson and Michael Caine ended up forging an unusual connection when the former channelled the latter for an offbeat performance, with the caveat that he was approaching things from a drug-addled perspective.
The two-time Academy Award winners never shared the screen or appeared as part of the same ensemble, but they were credited on the same picture once. Not that anybody would have realised because 2014’s Stonehearst Asylum wasn’t exactly a high point for either of them.
The psychological horror based on Edgar Allan Poe’s works sank without a trace at the box office and was summarily dismissed by critics. Caine sleepwalked through his role as Dr Benjamin Salt in a mind-numbingly dull exercise in monotony, backed by Gibson and his Icon Productions banner.
That was as close as they ever got, but Caine nonetheless made an impact in a different way. If somebody were to combine Rotherithe’s favourite son with Ray Winstone, then the end result would be some kind of super-cockney with the potential to rampage through London like Godzilla taking Tokyo to task, leaving nothing behind but screaming civilians and smouldering wreckage.
Not quite what Gibson was aiming for, but the two came in equally handy when he was seeking to find the perfect way to approach the depressed and borderline suicidal head of a flagging toy company in Jodie Foster’s 2011 dark comedy The Beaver.
The star’s Walter Black is ready to bid farewell to a cruel world until a disembodied voice begins speaking to him. Naturally, those dulcet tones belong to a beaver puppet he’d found in a skip, which he then places permanently on his hand and uses as a conduit to get his life, career, and marriage back on track.
Gibson also voiced the puppet. Having very recently worked with Winstone on Martin Campbell’s remake of the classic BBC miniseries Edge of Darkness, he knew exactly how he wanted his furry conscience to sound, with a splash of Caine thrown in for good measure.
“Mel did a movie with Ray, and he kept calling him during the shoot and saying, ‘How would I say this?'” Foster shared with Total Film. “It was very specifically Ray Winstone and sort of Michael Caine on speed. I’d love to take credit for Mel’s performance, but he was amazing from day one.”
Gibson’s performance was a strong one, but because he was persona non grata and an exile from mainstream Hollywood, nobody went to see it. The Beaver bombed hard at the box office, with Caine and Winstone’s influence proving pointless in the long run when the star’s presence was more than enough to dissuade audiences from checking it out.
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