There’s a scene in Lethal Weapon – the first one, not those awful sequels (I blame Joe Pesci).
It’s Christmas Eve and Mel Gibson is in despair in his shabby trailer, scotch in one hand and revolver in the other and weeping over a photo of his late wife.
As a schoolgirl, I loved that scene. Not quite as much as the one in which he’s naked and we get to see his bum, but almost.
I loved that he was flawed. An alcoholic nutcase with a heart of gold. Dangerous, but at the same time brave and protective.
It was how I imagined Gibson to be off the screen.
A Catholic father of about a million children who struggled with his demons. He was sexy and talented and pulled off one of the most impressive mullets of the ’80s.
Then he aged and, for me, Gibson lost his shine.
Around about the time he did the terrible What Women Want and Brad Pitt was shirtless in Fight Club, thereby answering the question Gibson’s film posed. What do we want? Certainly not Gibson waxing his legs. Pitt sweaty and semi-naked? Yes, please.
Over the past decade, Gibson has proved himself to be genius and outright loopy la-la, with not much moderation in between.
A fundamentalist Catholic conservative, Gibson has built a church where he apparently insists women wear neck-to-ankle outfits and headscarfs (because ladies should be punished for having knees and elbows with deathly ugly fashion and hat hair). There’s one point for crazy.
Perhaps recognising his extremism, Warner Bros refused to fund his ambitious The Passion of the Christ, so he paid for the entire epic. Another one for bonkers.
However, religious zealot he may be, Passion became the eighth-biggest film of all time, scoring Gibson the biggest “I told you so” in history and a big tick in the genius column.
His next directorial outing, Apocalypto, was again considered the work of a madman, but a masterpiece upon release.
Unfortunately, critical acclaim counts for nothing when you’re arrested for drink-driving, spout a bunch of anti-Semitic rubbish to anyone who will listen and then call a police officer “sugartits”.
Less genius and more cuckoo. Or is that just a man in crisis?
That was three years ago and since then his decline has seen him photographed with numerous women (including Britney Spears, who is the kind of girl my mother would describe as “trouble best avoided”) on endless drunken binges in just about every bar from Malibu to Melbourne.
The latest in this conga line of babes is Oksana Grigorieva, 39, a Russian singer and composer.
Not Oksana Kolesnikova, nightclub singer, or Oksana Pochepa, pop star, as originally rumoured.
It’s easy to get them confused. They all seem to like to pose provocatively next to a piano (who doesn’t?).
Undoubtedly, such behaviour is less than ideal for a Catholic father of seven and a husband of 29 years. In case you’re unsure, Mel, that is definitely not what women want.
But if reports are true, that’s not the full story.
According to Gibson’s lawyer, he and wife Robyn separated somewhere in Year Sugartits, probably as a result of said outburst and its resulting humiliation.
I certainly would struggle to forgive such crassness from my husband, unless it was said in a moment of passion and the sugary goodness was mine.
Gibson has been a single man for some time.
His womanising, while not generally the hobby of a conservative Catholic, is irrelevant. It’s his business if he chooses to cavort with the whole Moscow Circus.
And this supposedly sordid affair with Grigorieva may not be the act of a drunken philanderer, but rather a man who’s rebuilding his life and is finally rediscovering happiness.
They were obviously making a statement during the week when they walked hand-in-hand down the hottest red carpet in the world, the premiere for X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Hugh Jackman – now that’s what women want).
Gibson and his girlfriend (possibly sporting baby bump, possibly having just eaten a bowl of pasta) looked happy. And he looked kind of together.
It made me wonder, what does Gibson want? Maybe it’s this.
Maybe he wants to settle down with this Russian beauty and start a new life. Maybe they plan to set up house and grow old together in a very sane and rational manner.
Or possibly Gibson wants to work his way through every Oksana in the phone book until his wife strips him of his entire billion dollar fortune.
Either way, I can’t wait for the sequel – as long as Pesci doesn’t make an appearance.
That really would be crazy.
Source: Herald Sun