The movie Mel Gibson condemned before it had even been released: “It’s just a piece of shit”
Of course, you’re all thinking, ‘Wow, it’s not like Mel Gibson to say something as a matter of public record that he’d soon come to regret’, but these one-off anomalies are capable of happening to anyone.
Even Gibson, the two-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker and former A-list superstar, can be caught off guard and end up dropping a soundbite or two that would come back to haunt him. As shocking as it is that such a thing could happen to such a stand-up guy, surely it taught him an important lesson.
Never again would the actor and director dream of sharing controversial, contentious, and/or offensive opinions in front of recording devices or cameras, after the first time he did it saw him try and claim that he didn’t mean anything that came out of his mouth, and that wasn’t really how he felt about the thing he was criticising.
He was definitely in the minority, though, since the movie he called a piece of shit wasn’t a piece of shit at all. Again, it’s not like Gibson to share an acerbic, foul-mouthed, and derogatory hot take on an issue, event, or specific cultural moment that most people would disagree with and be appalled by, but he did.
Ever the master of self-promotion, this being the same guy who called The Million Dollar Hotel “as boring as a dog’s ass” when he was supposed to be hyping it up ahead of its Australian release, since he produced the thing and played a cameo role in Bono’s passion project, 15 years previously, he achieved much the same feat.
After two stone-cold classics in a row, and with the first pair having turned a little-known Australian auteur and his leading man into internationally renowned hot commodities, the pressure and expectation were higher than they had ever been ahead of George Miller’s Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome hitting the big screen in July 1985.
Cornered on set and bestowed with the distinction of being named the first-ever recipient of the ‘Sexiest Man Alive’ title, Gibson found himself in a reflective, if not outright surly, mood. “I don’t even want to be doing this interview,” he moaned. “I don’t even want to be making this film. It’s just a piece of shit.”
Naturally, when he was asked if those were still his feelings, he denied it. “Oh no, I liked Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome,” he tried to clarify years later. “Really. That quote was directly related to the person I was talking to. I think what I meant to say was, ‘You’re a piece of shit.'” This being ‘Mad Mel’, we’re not buying it.
Wherever his version of the truth lies, Beyond Thunderdome is nowhere near a piece of shit. Is it the worst of the original trilogy? Yes, comfortably, but that doesn’t make it bad. Is it the worst in the entire franchise? Maybe, since it’s either that or Furiosa, and neither of them are bad movies by any stretch. In some cases, you’d take him at his word, but since he’s Mel Gibson, perhaps not.
