He’s cute, Mel Gibson. Also tired, flat and a little dull after a million interviews. Thankfully, though, he finds BAZAAR’s Wendy Howitt adorable.
published in Harper's BAZAAR
The best thing about interviewing a celebrity is telling your breathless friends about it later. In truth, meeting the celebrity is usually a fraught experience, involving officious minders, hotel suites and bored silences. The weary stars in question are always averse to discussing anything personal. And up close and personal is what your editor expects. Then there is the issue about what to wear; your aim is to appear confident but friendly – a confidant. Anything, as long as you don’t look like a journalist. Stars loathe journalists. Journalists print lies.
So, I’m on the phone to my friend Sarah: I met Mel Gibson and the interview went really well. A lie. In fact, he was sick, tired and rather flat. My timeslot was 4pm, for half an hour. How can you bond with a total stranger in that time? And after he has already sat through a press conference and, like, a million other interviews? Humph.
Mel thought I was adorable, though. No, really. He told me that, and said he wanted to hug me. Rotund was also mentioned but we won’t go into that. It seems he’s crazy about pregnant women. (I’m eight months pregnant). Well, he does have seven kids of his own. Is he good-looking in real life? Well, he’s pushing 45 so he’s kind of rugged. And short. He says he’s is actually 1.78 metres but he’s stocky – “I look like I’m shorter.” His eyes have wicked promise. Sigh. I once saw him in Death of a Salesman at Sydney’s Seymour Centre. He was just out of NIDA back then and I have to say he overacted – just a tad. He had the goods, though, even I could see that. Nowadays, he’s one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, his films grossing $1 billion. He was paid $30 million to do Lethal Weapon 4 and $39 million for The Patriot. His first ever acting cheque was for $20 for Summer City with Steve Bisley (Gibson told me it went straight down their throats). I read somewhere that Richard Donner, the director, said, “First, God created movies, then she made Mel Gibson.” Ha. But he’s not a pretty boy hero, like DiCaprio or Brad Pitt. He’s a bit of a lad. He blows up stuff, shoots guns, tells fart jokes, or so I hear.
Of course, I was nervous meeting him. I got a little lost on my way to the interview, which didn’t help, and ended up in the room in which the press conference was held earlier. The maitre d’ was busily packing up. As he shooed me out, he said: “Don’t ask silly questions, girly.” What’s a silly question? I really wanted to know. Be blunt, he advised. Witty. Oh, hell, I think as I go up in the elevator to the 26th floor, which is a non-smoking level. Interesting because I thought Mel was a Marlboro man. Anyway, he has a reputation for being a bit of a grouch and for deflecting questions he doesn’t like. What? Oh, you know, personal stuff, family details, money. He often does this with humour, usually at the interviewer’s expense. There was the time a journalist posed the question: when you were making Ransom, did you ever imagine any of your own kids being kidnapped? You know, to draw from the experience to give the character depth? Gibson replied: “No, that’s a terrible thought. What kind of crazy man would imagine his own kids being kidnapped? What’s wrong with you?” He then went on to say that he had Schwarzenegger’s kid kidnapped. Just for an hour. Then he called him up and asked him what it was like. And look out if he really doesn’t like you. “I’m terribly vindictive. If somebody ripped me apart in the press, I’d kill them,” he happily informed one hack from Fleet Street. “There’s this stuff in Australia. It’s called 1080. It’s for pest eradication. It’s odourless, colourless, tasteless and one teaspoon will give you an instant brain haemorrhage, and it doesn’t leave a single trace.”
So, with that thought, I kicked off with a joke to, you know, break the ice. The one where Darth Vader says to Luke Skywalker, “I know what you’re getting for Christmas,” and Luke says, “How do you know that?” and Darth says, “I’ve been feeling your presents for some time.” It’s a great joke, but for it to work you have to do the voices. I was so uptight, I couldn’t. He laughed – politely.
But he tells me a little gag he pulled on Helen Hunt, his co-star in his new film, What Women Want (in which he plays an advertising executive who suffers an electric shock and wakes up with the ability to read women’s minds). He’s famous for his pranks, see. Once he sent a marching band to greet Jodie Foster on her first day of directing Home for the Holidays. Another time, during the filming of Maverick, he rewrote a scene using the cheesiest dialogue he could come with and handed it to Richard Donner, the director, to give to Foster. He also convinced Ransom director Ron Howard that the pilots on the Disney corporate jet were required to wear Mickey Mouse ears. Funny guy. He burps on cue, too. Not that I asked him to.
Anyway, he and Helen had this kissing scene and one day, he told me, he was giving her razor rash because it was about 4pm and he had some shadow. She got her makeup artist to ask him to shave before the next take. When he came back he was made up in cuts and Band-Aids. Ha ha ha ha. Okay, so it wasn’t that funny. The point is, Mel and I shared a joke. Brilliant. I don’t think his wife Robyn digs all that on-screen snogging much. What’s she like? All I know is that she punches his arm at his premieres when he starts making out with his co-stars on screen. In Lethal Weapon 2, she practically beat him up. She sounds bolshie, all right. In charge is the way one Braveheart crew member put it.
So, he’s a family man. He collects his kids from school, watches Wallace & Gromit, plays sport with them, hangs out. He doesn’t hire somebody to put the handle on the cabinet. He does it himself. Apparently, he’s not very good at it but he does it. His oldest daughter worked on The Patriot as a production assistant. I bet he behaved on that set. It was about at this point in our interview that I mentioned my emergency Caesar. (He started it by telling me Robyn delivered twins six weeks early and there was all this “emergency stuff happening”.) I was just telling him that my medical staff were so casual, I was expecting to have the operation the following week, not in 15 minutes. He cut in at the same time to say a salad. Y’know, as in a Caesar salad. Anyway, it was funny. But I was a bit huffy. I mean who jokes about labour, especially one that went on for 18 hours?
Oh, he’s been guilty of not putting family first. He’s had his share of Tequila-fuelled transgressions. One time, he said, he went off and worked somewhere for six months and didn’t come home. Not once. Never again – during the filming of The Patriot, he arranged to be home every weekend. But the fame thing started a long time ago, long before he was married and a father. Back then he was just “pottering around”, working with George (Miller) and Peter (Weir) and doing some television when Gallipoli screened in the US. “It really took off from there.”
Naturally, that brought us to Braveheart, Mel’s favourite movie, not just because it netted him a few Academy Awards and a Vanity Fair cover. It also gave him his first taste of directing. “It’s so much fun doing all the big scenes and being objective. I’d get so bummed out when it was time to get in front of the camera. But I’ve never worked so hard in my life. Afterwards, I was ruined for three months. I couldn’t utter a sentence. I eventually recovered but the grey hair stayed.” I told him that with a beard he looked like a badger. He liked that and repeated it, rubbing his chin. Feeling rather brave by now, I ventured to ask him if he minded that his co-star Heath Ledger pipped him at the post for the latest Vanity Fair cover. He said: “It’s a young groovy magazine and they didn’t want boring old me.” Mel boring? Never.
But before I could protest, the PR reappeared and wrapped it all up. Mel walked me to the door, which I thought was very gentlemanly. I was barely in the hall when I started telephoning all my friends. Guess who thought I was cute?