January 2007
We talk to Mel Gibson about the challenges he faced in filming Mayan epic Apocalypto.

How long has Apocalypto taken to complete?
Mel Gibson: We started writing this two and a half years ago. The editing time has been insane because the post production time was extremely abbreviated as the film was difficult to shoot and went four months over schedule. We had to edit fast and mix in half the time, but I think we did a good job!

How did you cast your two leading men?
Mel Gibson: I put out a call and we went from Canada, California, New Mexico to Oklahoma. I wanted to see native peoples and we found them from everywhere. The little girl, for instance, doesn’t speak anything but Mayan. That’s her only language.
She comes from a village that’s less sophisticated than the village in the film. She still lives in the forest, in huts with dirt floors. She was seven years old and had never seen a camera or a car before.

Were the actors aware of how physically demanding this was going to be?
Mel Gibson: They knew going in. I told them what it was going to be like. It’s about the most physical film that I’ve ever seen as far as sheer endurance is concerned… eight months of that stuff! And how do you keep a guy from breaking a leg?
Fortunately, nobody was hurt. I got them down there beforehand and told them they had to go on a diet that made them look as though they lived back then. So they started to eat the right kind of food and got really lean and muscular.
I also got them to exercise to keep their ankles and ligaments strong, so they trained for six weeks in pre-production. We had a movement coach who made them all graceful and and knocked the 20th century out of them.

How did you keep up your enthusiasm and energy levels for eight months?
Mel Gibson: It was difficult at times. You can get pretty cranky. But when we conceived this film there was a real passion involved in telling a compelling story, then having all these subtle things hidden, all the way along.
The story is actually very simple, but the meat that’s attached to the bones of it is quite complex. There are messages about civilisations and we are trying to be true to history.
We wanted all this to gel with some good theory about why these civilisations weakened and crumbled. Because they did, they vanished.

Was there any moment when you thought you’d bitten off more than you could chew?
Mel Gibson: Of course - it scares the hell out of you! The amount of work, the logistical nightmare. But I’d been through it before, so I knew it was possible.
Sometimes you get to a point where it isn’t happening and you have to figure out another way to do it, particularly making the jaguar do what you want! That wasn’t CG - a real guy had to run really fast and not trip. There was a restraint on the creature that you can’t see, so it was all very safe – but it's real!

Is this the sort of film that makes people want to find out more about this time in history?
Mel Gibson: I hope so. They’re finding out more [about the Mayans] every day. That’s the amazing thing. We employed the help of Richard Hansen, who was a professor at UCLA and is now at the University of Idaho, who deals with an even older period of Mayan history.
We went to the places and stood at the top of the pyramids to see the footprint of the sophistication that was there. It’s just staggering, it’s like Manhattan. You have the biggest pyramid in the world there, bigger than those in Egypt.

You don’t shirk from showing the savagery. They see what they’re doing – human sacrifice – as keeping them in touch with their god.
Mel Gibson: That’s right. That’s what I told the actors. I said you’re not bad guys, and I don’t want you to think that you’re a bad guy. You’re a part of your culture and you’re doing your job. That’s all you know and all you were raised to do.

Can we draw comparisons between the making of this film and The Passion Of The Christ?
Mel Gibson: A lot of the same sensibilities go into them. There are certain rhythms that are yours and you leave your mark on something. There are things that I’ll do viscerally to affect people emotionally, with speed changes and sound, and various other things.
Sure there are links; I worked on that script as well so there was an emphasis on minimising dialogue, to focus on the visual and to put it in another language.

It must give you tremendous satisfaction when you can make a film that's not mainstream and yet mainstream audiences go to see it – like The Passion Of The Christ. Is it a case of proving the doubters wrong?
Mel Gibson: Well, I hope they go. But it’s not about being vindicated. It’s about doing the things you want to do, in the way that you want to do them. You achieve a certain amount of independence by not having any interference. But nobody makes art for an elite, not if they’re a real artist.
You try and reach as many people as possible. If a chef is making an omelette, he wants everyone to think it tastes great because he made it. And if it does, then that’s a success because everyone eats it. I hope this story finds them [mainstream audiences] and touches them.

You’ve never made an easy film. But would you say this was your toughest?
Mel Gibson: This was the hardest by far. The schedule turned out to be longer than anything else, and some of the things turned out to be really difficult to achieve because we were working with animals… jaguars, tapirs, snakes, and monkeys. I can’t even remember all the animals. The peccaries were nasty!