The movie Mel Gibson was banned from starring in: “It seemed like a good idea at the time”
It might sound oxymoronic, but there’s a notable difference between being a busy actor and an employable one, as Mel Gibson has found out since hitting the self-destruct button on his mainstream career almost two decades ago.
The two-time Academy Award winner is currently making more movies than at any point in his career, but who cares? Almost all of them are straight-to-video thrillers that barely anyone watches, and it’s been a long time since he appeared on-camera in a film that received a wide theatrical release.
In the last decade, Gibson has been credited as an actor, producer, or director on 19 features. In what’s absolutely not a coincidence, the only three that screened in a decent number of multiplexes – the comedy sequel Daddy’s Home 2, the biographical drama Father Stu, and the airborne action flick Flight Risk – all boasted Mark Wahlberg as star and producer.
Without his guardian angel, Gibson’s recent filmography makes for grim reading. 2010’s Edge of Darkness was the last time he took top billing in a studio-backed theatrical movie, and 2014’s The Expendables 3 was the last time he sniffed a blockbuster. Robert Downey Jr might want him forgiven, but it hardly helps his case that a lot of people don’t want to work with him.
Less than four months after ex-partner Oksana Grigorieva filed a restraining order against him that resulted in Gibson pleading no-contest to a misdemeanour battery charge, it was revealed that the Lethal Weapon and Braveheart frontman would make a cameo appearance in Todd Phillips’ The Hangover Part II as a Bangkok tattoo artist.
The filmmaker failed to consult his collaborators about Gibson’s casting, which caused an uproar. After multiple cast and crew members protested Phillips’ controversial move, he booted the fallen star from the ensemble and released a statement admitting that “this decision ultimately did not have the full support of my entire cast and crew.”
For his part, Gibson claimed that he wasn’t bothered. “You just have to let it go,” he told Deadline. “It shows you a few things. You just move on and go, ‘OK’. I’m not greatly offended by it. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and it went south.”
Naturally, rumours abounded that Downey Jr may have had something to do with Phillips extending an olive branch to Gibson. The Iron Man figurehead and the director had recently worked together on Due Date, and he’s always been one of Gibson’s most vocal cheerleaders. It’s irrelevant whether the scuttlebutt had any truth to it, though, when the filmmaker should have known that drafting in somebody who’d been blackballed for being a terrible person without his cohorts’ approval had the potential to backfire.
He was out almost as soon as he was in, with Liam Neeson brought in as his replacement, who was himself replaced by Nick Cassavetes after shooting his scene when he was unavailable for reshoots.
