MEL GIBSON TALKS ABOUT MOVIES AND ACTING, AND DIAPERS
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From: Seattle Post Intelligencer
July 6, 1989
Mel Gibson twists his lovely features into a tortured grimace.
"Echhhhh," he says, faking a belly-wrenching gag. "I really hate the messy ones."
He could easily be describing bloody scenes from "Lethal Weapon 2," a slam-bam of an action comedy opening tomorrow that within its first four minutes has four cars bursting in flames ("Now we're cookin,' " Gibson wisecracks to co-star Danny Glover).
But he's talking diapers. Dirty diapers.
Surely a star who commands $4 million a film can hire someone for this odious task. "You have to do it," says Gibson, who moved with 10 other Gibson kids from New York to Australia at age 12. "There's a kind of bonding that happens.
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"Even if that kid is just 6 months old, he knows. He doesn't reason it out and say, 'Boy what a great guy, he's changing my diaper.' But somewhere in the back of his brain it's going to stick with him that you did it."
Gibson, 33 ((age)), is a man who takes fatherhood seriously. He and Robyn, his wife of nine years, are raising their five children, ages 1 to 9, on an 800-acre cattle ranch in Victoria, Australia. They don't believe in birth control, don't let the little ones watch movies like "Lethal Weapon" and don't believe in hiring live-in nannies.
"I see my kids more than most 9-to-5 parents," says Gibson, who has brought his family with him to Vancouver for "Bird on a Wire," a comedy with Goldie Hawn that wraps up shooting here in mid-July. "I see my kids more than you do. I'll bet on it," he tells a reporter who has left a 2-year-old in Seattle to come interview the star described as the sexiest man alive.
Gibson runs his fingers through a dark, thick, shoulder-length mane. A notorious goof who stands up in the middle of an interview and bursts into the "The Sound of Music," he's somber and thoughtful when asked about the toughest role of his career, coming up next spring.
"I've done five reads in the last month," he says, rolling a cigarette back and forth across the table.
The role is Hamlet. The writer is Shakespeare. The director is Franco Zeffirelli. And Gibson, who has agreed to do the part for minimal salary, knows that he may be killed by critics even before he dies onscreen.
"I'm sure I'm going to get kicked around for it," he says of the role that has challenged some of the greatest actors of the ages. "You're setting yourself up to have people throw things at you: 'How dare you?' "
The brooding Prince of Denmark is a serious stretch for an actor who stepped out of school at Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art and into a souped-up hot rod in the bargain-basement 1980 film "Mad Max," a grim, futuristic, Australian revenge tale shot with dialogue dubbed in strange accents.
"I was affronted by that at first, but when I saw it with the dubbing I thought it kind of worked. It's kind of trashy, kind of where the film's at," says Gibson of that first big hit, which was the last to make the serious mistake of zooming in on turbo chargers and exhaust pipes instead of Gibson's riveting blue eyes.
Zeffirelli, who lovingly re-created "Romeo and Juliet" for the screen in 1968, is taking his "Hamlet" back to its source, the 12th-century "Historia Danica" by Danish writer Saxo Grammaticus. The film, set in seventh- or eighth-century pagan Denmark, will likely be shot in Northern Scotland.
"It's like Christianity has just come in," says Gibson.
And who, sweet prince, has been cast to play Ophelia?
Gibson, the comic, senses an opening and leaps.
"I don't know, but Ophelia in when I find out."
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Hamlet loved puns, too. But the free-flying wordplay in "Lethal Weapon 2," sequel to the story of a suicidal white cop and his wary black partner, would probably turn both him and his creator pale.
"This was an open season for improvisation," says Gibson, whose comedic timing and wry expressions can salvage even lines like "We're back, we're bad, you're black, I'm mad."
Written by Jeffrey Boam, creator of "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," the movie takes a comic-book approach to the further adventures of Martin Riggs (Gibson) and partner Roger Murtaugh (Glover), joined this time around by a pesky little accountant (Joe Pesci) hiding from heavies after laundering a half-billion dollars in narcotics money.
"Jeff provided a strong script, but he hates dialogue. He just, like, gives you a blueprint," says Gibson, who has nixed any more "Mad Maxes," but hasn't yet closed the door on a "Lethal Weapon 3." "We kind of made it up as we went along."
Like the Three Stooges, Glover, Gibson and Pesci release a relentless barrage of gags and one-liners in "Lethal Weapon 2," which at $27 million cost $10 million more than its predecessor. When Glover hammers two baddies with a nail gun at a construction site, he deadpans "I nailed 'em both" and when a truck driver loses his head to a flying surfboard, Gibson comments: "Wipeout." You can almost hear the crew groaning.
"It got to be some kind of hideous one-upmanship game where if somebody said something, you'd have to think of something on the next take to come back with," says Gibson.
Gibson's character Martin Riggs, who found himself unable to pull the trigger after putting a gun in his mouth in "Lethal Weapon," is a healthier, happier man this time out. And (take note, all you women who stayed away from the first installment), he falls in love.
The lucky lady is a blue-eyed English beauty named Patsy Kensit who gets to do the first onscreen sex scene of her acting career with Mel Gibson.
Dream of a lifetime, right?
"It was the most unnatural, unromantic thing I've ever done," said 21- year-old Kensit. "You know, Mel was very gentle about it, and he made it as pleasant as it could be with anybody, but it was acting and it was work."
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Mel Gibson doesn't say yes, he says yeah, a drawn-out yeah dusted with a light Australian accent. Combined with a taste for understatement, and an I- could-care walk that does wonders for his medium-height frame, the attitude is loose and cool.
Yeahhh, he takes acting seriously.
"I do take it very seriously, it just doesn't matter to me that much, if you know what I mean.
"I don't let it matter too much."
Forget the wrenching self-analysis of his peers.
"Those New York method actors, they're all busy gaining 50 pounds and torturing themselves mentally. I couldn't work like that," says Gibson, whose next film is an action comedy called "Air America," about covert CIA operations in Laos in the '70s.
OK, OK, so he's a little worried about Hamlet.
"You know, it's a challenge, it's a little scary. I'll see. I mean, it's like anything. Why is it different from anything?"
Yeahhh. This is the same guy who is poring over Shakespeare and vowing to get in peak physical shape. A committed smoker who alternates Camels with Players, he has even promised to give up cigarettes before filming begins in April.
"It requires a lot of lung power," says Gibson as he contemplates reverting from pistol to rapier.
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