Slave-driving and vicious and cruel… He was so easy. My deal with him when they hired me was basically, “Here’s the money. Don’t go over-budget and if you don’t go over-budget, then make the movie you want to make.” That was sort of my marching orders. He really lived up to that. If anything, I was sorry he wasn’t around more because he was so busy preparing “The Passion” that he wasn’t physically present all that often. He’s a very smart guy and when he was around, he’d make good suggestions and everything but he was always very careful when he’d make a suggestion to say, “This is just my idea and it may be a stupid idea. Don’t do it if you don’t agree.”
It’s the second film in a row that I’ve directed for a powerful actor/director – before this I did “Waking the Dead” for Jodie Foster – and they were very similar in that style in that, if anything, they wanted to err on the side of deference to the director. I guess it comes from being that powerful. Hollywood’s full of people that don’t feel that powerful so they have to throw their weight around. But if you’re Mel Gibson or Jodie Foster, you don’t have to prove anything to anybody so you can become very generous and very deferential, because you know in the end, the buck does stop with you. If you had to put your foot down, you could. When people know they can do that, suddenly they don’t feel the need to. I think I’m only going to work for people like that. I’m going to find every powerful director/actor combination in the world and just work for them (laughing).
The difference is enormous between that and the kind of middle-level Hollywood executive who does feel nervous and on the line, and that they have to prove that they’re powerful. Mel didn’t have to justify anything so he was more like, “Just tell me what you need and I’ll provide it.” He was wonderful in the sense that when this whole idea came up in rehearsal to make him older and not look like Mel, we didn’t have any money in the budget for that. Mel was like, “You’re right. I’ll pay for that.” He just went out on his own and hired people and took that on as his own project.
It took me a while to recognize it was Mel Gibson.
It was such a great thing. When he came on the set, it took people a while to recognize him who were working on the movie. The first time he walked in in that make-up, really people didn’t realize for a good couple of minutes that it was Mel, which made him very happy. He’s got such an impish, boyish sense of humor that I think he completely got off on the fact that he walked around the set and nobody knew who he was for 4 or 5 minutes. But that was all him.
[Mel] was the one who designed that look. He did it in consultation with me, but basically he went off and hired this woman to do the hair. He would send me photographs and say, “Let me know what you like and what you don’t like.” He was wonderful. He got so into the idea of transforming himself. It came out of real instinct with the character, too. He’s so smart, the first day of rehearsal he started saying, “You know, I can’t look like me because Robert’s character would never trust me. If I’m kind of this handsome, good-shaped man, why would Dan Dark open up to me? I need to be as much of an outsider as he is.” I thought that was an absolutely great instinct, and he was the one who brought it up. Then we started talking about how we would achieve that, and what this guy would be like. I thought it was wonderful that he wanted to approach the role with that kind of seriousness.
What kind of say did Mel Gibson have over final cut?
Contractually we shared it but it was worded in a way that if it ever came down to a horrific dispute, he would win. But he said to me, “I will never put a gun to your head. I will never make you do something you don’t believe in.” He stuck to that. Even in the editing, when he’d come in and give me comments it was always, “Only do this if you think it works. Just take a look at it and if you think I’m wrong, just forget about it.” He seemed to really mean it - and Jodie was the same way.
I think if he’d been deeply upset with something, if I had re-edited it into a 45-minute piece and said I think we should air it on television, I think he probably would have said, “Okay, I have a problem with this.” But I think because I stayed true to the script that we all loved, I think he really had an attitude of, “I hired you because I liked your vision. Go make your vision.”
PAGE 5: Gordon on Fan Reaction and Dennis Potter's Script
