Heaven and Mel (Kindle Single) (10 page)

To try to sell them "The Maccabees."

* * * *

ALAN NIEROB ASKS ME
to send him a description of what "The Maccabees" will be about.

I think it's odd that he doesn't ask Mel for this description, but I send it to him anyway. I write: "M.C.K.B.I.(the ancient biblical spelling) is the story of Judah Maccabee, the biblical Jewish warrior, who, with his father and four brothers, defeated the Syrian-Greek armies that had conquered Judea. It is the story of an epic, historic struggle against tyranny and oppression, the Braveheart-like story of a people who gave their lives so that they would be free to worship their God. The Maccabees' triumphant heroism is celebrated by Jews all over the world as Hanukkah, the Feast of the Lights. Most biblical scholars agree that, had the Maccabees not resisted and triumphed over their oppressors, Israel today would not exist."

* * * *

MEL AND I MEET WITH EXECUTIVES
from Warner Brothers and with the head of production at Universal the same day.

They both ask Mel the same question: "Why do you want to do this movie?"

Mel answers both exactly the same way he'd answered me: "Because I think I should."

The executives believe that he means it: That he wants to do this movie as a kind of penance for the things that he is alleged to have said and felt about the Jews.

Both Warner and Universal want the project. They both want to make a deal, although Universal will end up backing off.

Mel isn't surprised about Warner's interest: "I've made them a lot of money through the years; they remember that. They know they owe me. Sooner or later, people in this town pay their debts."

Our meeting with Warner ends with a joke.

Mel says he isn't sure if he wants to do the movie in English or Aramaic or Latin or Greek. I can tell that the Warner executives are taken aback by that.

So I say, "I'll write it in Hungarian." Everyone laughs.

We make the deal with Warner and, when Alan Nierob announces it, Mel says to me, "Cool breeze!"

The announcement goes worldwide. People are astounded that Mel and I are teaming up. The headline on one website is, "MEL GIBSON AND JOE ESZTERHAS: SHOULD WE BE SCARED?"

Much is made by the media of the fact that I've written two films about anti-Semitism ("Betrayed" and "Music Box") and that I've won the Emanuel Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award.

I'm back home when Bjorn Pork emails me:

"THE BUSINESS IS NOT LIKE IT WAS, BUT IF THEY WANT TO BUY OUR SOULS THEY SHOULD PONY UP."

* * * *

EVEN THOUGH EVERYTHING
is looking up for Mel and even though he's just had his first big announcement in a long time, Mel still isn't happy.

"That fucking cunt is driving me crazy!" he says to me. "She's doing everything she can to turn Luci against me."

He turns away from me and stares a long moment at all of Luci's toys on the patio.

His back still turned to me, he says, "I'm going to have her killed."

I gape at him:
What did he say?

He turns slowly back to me and looks me in the eye. "I'm going to make her disappear," he says. "She's going to be gone. Gone! And no one will ever know it's me. No one! I'm not going to live this way the rest of my life! She is evil! They worship the Devil where she comes from! She's going to disappear!"

The air suddenly seems suffocatingly thick between us.

"Don't talk like this," I say. "This is crazy talk. You can't talk like this."

"I mean it. I've talked to these ex-FBI guys. They're going to help me to do it. No one will ever know! No one!"

He adds, "I'm going to fix it so that her fucking cunt of a mother can never enter this country again. I'm going to get rid of that cunt, too!"

* * * *

IN THE MIDDLE OF ONE OF HIS ANGRY OUTBURSTS,
he says in a complete non sequitur, "Ari Emanuel is a fucking cunt! Fucking Jewboy! He's a cunt fucking Jewboy!"

Ari Emanuel, now the head of William Morris Endeavor, fired Mel from the agency the day after Mel was revealed to have used the "N-word" on one of Oksana's tapes.

His firing took place one day before Mel's longtime agent Ed Limato died.

* * * *

"GOD HAS TURNED HIS BACK ON ME,"
Mel says. He is upset, emotional.

"No," I say. "God loves you. Trust God."

"No," Mel says. "He has turned his back on me."

"Why," I ask, "would God do that, Mel?"

"I've been bad lately," he says simply.

I wait for him to explain it if he wants to.

"I was at a dinner party," Mel says, "and there was this girl and she took me into a room afterwards and she went down on her knees… and I let her."

I say, "So what?"

He shrugs, in obvious pain.

"Mel," I say, "the whole world knows you deserve to be blown. There are all these idiots with T-shirts out there that say so. Do you really think that God is going to turn his back on you because of one blow job?"

My answer doesn't satisfy him. He looks at me and walks out of the room. That stupid electronic gizmo he has in the corner of the living room starts to hum.

* * * *

MEL AND I ARE IN HIS CHURCH.
We're sitting here praying the rosary with Jim Caviezel's crown of thorns near us and it occurs to me that Mel was Martin Scorcese's first choice to play Jesus in "The Last Temptation of Christ."

The church is dark as we say the rosary. We are, naturally, saying the Sorrowful Mysteries: Christ's passion and crucifixion since we are both passion and crucifixion freaks.

When the rosary ends, Mel reads this prayer from an old prayer book:

"In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, strengthened by the intercession of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, Mother of God, of the Blessed Michael, the Archangel, of the Blessed Apostles, Peter and Paul and all the saints, and powerful in the holy authority of our ministry, we confidently undertake to repulse the attacks and deceits of The Devil. Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered, let them that hate Him, flee before Him."

It is the Exorcist's Prayer, I know. It is the prayer said to exorcise unclean spirits from those who are possessed by the Devil.

Mel says afterwards, "That prayer was about Harvey Levin." I know that Harvey Levin runs a hugely successful gossip website called TMZ. And I know that Mel is angry at him because he thinks TMZ's coverage of the custody battle has favored Oksana.

Mel says, "I want to bring Harvey Levin to his knees. I want Harvey Levin to come to me on his knees!"

* * * *

MEL IS SITTING QUIETLY WITH LUCI
at the kitchen counter in Malibu. She suddenly slaps him across the face… hard. Mel stares at her a moment and then says, "Why did you hit Daddy, Luci?" The little girl looks at Mel and quickly says, "I'm sorry, Daddy. I love you." Neither of them smiles.

* * * *

THE SUN IS SETTING IN MALIBU
and Mel and I are out on the patio talking about Alan Nierob, my former publicity agent and Mel's present one, a man both of us view as a friend.

"Do you know his dad is a Holocaust survivor?" I ask Mel.

He looks at me with that flinty eye.

"The Holocaust is mostly a lot of horseshit," he says.

I know he's goading me. He knows how I feel about the Holocaust and about our "Jewish Braveheart."

"They're just a bunch of oven dodgers," he smiles.

It is an actorly smile, the kind of smile Robert Mitchum did so well in "The Night of the Hunter."

* * * *

BACK AT HOME
, I go to my favorite place to pray, my little chapel.

The chapel is all windows. Light pours in from every direction. Woods backdrop the windows. The statue of Jesus isn't Christ crucified on the cross; it is the resurrected Christ, from the Glorious Mysteries of the rosary, not the Sorrowful ones. There is a statue of the Blessed Mother near the altar. Mary is smiling, flowers usually at her feet.

"What should I do?" I ask God. "Should I just walk away from this whole thing right now? Should I say it's because of creative differences; the line they always use in Hollywood? Should I go public and say Mel Gibson is an anti-Semite and reveal what he said about wanting and planning to kill Oksana Grigorieva?

After a while I hear an answer in my heart. It's in the form of a question: "Don't you want to write this script? I thought you wanted to write it. That's why I sent it to you, because
I
want you to write it."

"Of course I want to write it," I reply, "I'm aching to write it. I can knock it out of the park!"

"Then knock it out of the park," I hear His voice. "Write it."

"But he's nuts," I say. "He needs medication."

And the voice of God which is in my heart says, "Half the people in Hollywood are nuts. Almost all of them need medication."

* * * *

SO I SIT DOWN
and start to write "The Maccabees." I will write such a powerful script, I tell myself, that nuts or not, full of hate or not, Mel will be forced to direct it because of the power of the script. The power of the Holy Spirit will overcome him.

I begin writing each day with a prayer to a very special saint: Judah Maccabee, the Jewish hero, the Jewish warrior, who is also a saint of the Catholic Church.

I'm going to let all those Jewish Old Testament prophets, all those Jewish holy men…
convince
… Mel Gibson!

My script would conjure those early Jewish prophets and their power, holiness, and shrewdness would do the rest.

I hear God say something else to me: "Come on, man, get real. You've got four teenage boys in Catholic schools. Catholic schools are expensive. You've got a deal with Warner Brothers. Write the script. Get the damn money! Pay for those Catholic schools! Let the nuns work their magic!"

* * * *

I'M MAKING GREAT PROGRESS WITH MY SCRIPT.
I've solved the love interest problem without having to explore any more MRI tunnels.

She is Rachel, a former captive of the Greek/Syrian king, a woman just as fierce a warrior as Judah himself.

While I write, Bjorn Pork emails me that he's trying to quit smoking. He lasts a day. "I failed already," he writes. "Got a taste of the withdrawal just like I remembered. Too much stress."

I've solved another major script problem: How to compress a thirty-year war into a two-hour movie. I've decided to focus on the first few battles — a three- or four-month span.

As I keep writing and saying my prayers to St. Judah Maccabee, my characters are coming alive. I'm joyous that it's coming together creatively for me, but I'm nervous about Mel and "prefiguration" and "oven dodgers" and all the rest of the noxious sack of shit he carries around.

And Bjorn Pork emails me: "You're toast now. Maura and I put you and your family on a 54-day novena. Watch it work! May God's grace pilot you."

* * * *

AT THE END OF OCTOBER 2011
, Bjorn Pork emails me again: "I was thinking of hitting Costa Rica after Thanksgiving. But I want to take Luci, which means I must run it by a judge first and get the Dragon's (Oksana's) fucking meaningless approval. I'll let you know more when I know more. I thought I'd get it in your head."

It's nice of him, but I don't really want to go to Costa Rica now. I'm writing. I'm in a tunnel of my own creation that stretches from Bainbridge Township, Ohio, to Jerusalem circa 160 B.C. All of my days are spent in that tunnel. I'm not seeing any movies, I'm not reading any books, I'm hardly even watching the Cleveland Browns on TV. I am up on the third floor of our house, in my office, listening to Judah Maccabee and letting Jewish history and the Holy Spirit tie me off and shoot me up.

I also don't want to be distracted at this point of the writing by any of my director's ideas — good or lame. I just want to finish
my
script,
my
first draft. There will be plenty of time after my first draft to hear Mel's ideas, but now isn't the time — not while Judah Maccabee and the Holy Spirit are helping me to give birth to my Judah, and his dad, Mattathias, and his brothers John, Simon, Eleazar, and Jonathan.

But Nick Guerra, Mel's assistant, calls and says Mel would really like us to go and to be his guests in Costa Rica. He will pay for our trip, and the weather in Costa Rica at this time of year is stunning.

Bjorn Pork emails and says, "The Monster (Oksana) gave clearance for Costa Rica. So it's on if we do a little work, the play time is great."

Bjorn emails me again: "Bring Bible — will work some."

* * * *

NAOMI AND I DISCUSS IT
. I really don't want to stop writing. I'm in a flow and I fear that the flights and Mel's house there, the "playtime," will badly disrupt me. I don't need sun and "playtime" now, I don't need to hear any more of Mel's graphic and violent visual imagery. I need to be left alone with Judah and Mattathias and Eleazar and the other guys.

They're all upstairs now, living in my office. They've moved in. They've taken over the place. There's barely any room for my desk up there. Leather and brass armor lie everywhere. Mattathias keeps pecking away at my old manual typewriter, enjoying himself.

I tell Naomi about the Maccabees living upstairs in my office. She gives me a look and asks to meet them. I tell her it doesn't work that way. Only I can see them and talk to them.

She says, "It would be really rude to refuse Mel's invitation to Costa Rica."

I know she's right — she's right most of the time — but I think it would be damn rude on my part to leave Judah Maccabee and his brothers all alone up there in my office.

The hell with Mel, he's a lightweight compared to Judah. The absolute last person (real or imagined) I want to piss off is Judah Maccabee… who's my pal and who's busting his nut to help me.

But Naomi says we're going to Costa Rica.

* * * *

OUR SON NICK IS FIFTEEN YEARS OLD
and has turned himself from a C and D student to an A and B student. Like Judah, Nick busts his nut — often working on his homework from four in the afternoon until midnight. He's the most religious of our four boys, too. Whenever he can, he comes to church with me. Naomi often finds a rosary in his bed in the morning.