Heaven and Mel (Kindle Single) (2 page)

We prowled flea markets and found objects that Naomi and I had as kids: a can from the Num Num Potato Chip factory, which was next door to my parents' apartment on the West Side of Cleveland, and a pocket knife from Niagara Falls, identical to the one my dad had given me when I was a boy.

I gloried in Ohio, a universe away from Malibu, where they were finding hypodermic needles in the park where our kids used to play. Our house in Bainbridge even looked and felt, Naomi said, like the one in which she'd grown up: It had a little lake behind it and we could hear the hum of tree frogs when we fell asleep and woodpeckers and robins when we woke up. We lived in a part of Northern Ohio called "the snow belt," a place that often got ten or twelve inches of snow overnight.

We took long walks in our neighborhood. Only very occasionally would a car stop and a driver try to hand me a screenplay. Our house was full of Cleveland Indians pennants and signed baseballs — one even from Bob Feller, and another from my boyhood idol, Rocky Colavito.

Ours was a full house: Four boys, two dogs, two cats, two parrots, and a serpent. We loved our serpent. His name was "Lucifer".

* * * *

OUR HOUSE WAS FILLED
with crosses and crucifixes. Three Guatemalan crucifixes painted with bright-red painted blood… a black missionary cross and a big silver cross, and a Latin American Indian cross with a Mestizo Jesus.

We had a small sculpture of a black Jesus and figures of Christ on the walls. And I wore a small St. Benedict's cross. Benedict was an exorcist, and the cross was to ward off evil.

I spoke in churches and monasteries in Cleveland and around the country describing what had happened to the man who wrote "Basic Instinct" and "Showgirls."

They asked me to carry the cross and speak at a monastery in Oregon and I told the monks and seminarians about a scene I had written in the first draft of "Showgirls."

Cristal, the aging stripper, was up on a cross in faux crucifixion nearly naked… while a group of leering Hell's Angels tried to get her off the cross to ravage her.

The monks and seminarians, listening to me describe the near-naked crucifixion in "Showgirls," looked like I'd whacked them with a baseball bat.

* * * *

THE YEARS WENT BY
. I wrote books and scripts. One of them was the script about Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Virgin Mary's appearance in 1531 to a peasant named Juan Diego.

The project began when, at the suggestion of a mutual friend, I called a man named Steve McEveety, the head of M-Power Pictures, who was interested, I heard, in making faith-based films.

I told Steve about my devotion to the Blessed Mother, a devotion no doubt spurred by Naomi's lifelong devotion to the Mother of God. I told him there was a terrific movie in the meetings between the peasant and the Lady. And I told him I thought there was great drama in the Spanish governor Guzman's oppression of the Indian people.

Steve said it sounded like a great idea and was a movie that could attract the attention of much of the Spanish-speaking world as well.

And then he said something that put the chills down my spine. He said he was standing at that very moment in front of a statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Washington, D.C.

He was attending the National Prayer Breakfast. He had ducked out during a break and stopped in at a nearby church to say a prayer, and his cellphone rang. And it was me, talking about writing a script about Our Lady of Guadalupe, just as he was standing there, saying a prayer to her.

Steve and I both took that as a Sign from Heaven.

* * * *

I STILL WATCHED "THE PASSION
" every Good Friday with Naomi and I was still defending Mel against continuing charges of anti-Semitism. In 2006, however, I changed my mind about him, but not about the movie.

He'd been stopped for driving drunk on the Pacific Coast Highway after leaving a meat-market pick-up joint called "Moonshadows" in Malibu. And he'd spewed a bunch of undeniably anti-Semitic garbage to the arresting officer.

Mel Gibson told the deputy: "You motherfucker — I'm going to fuck you!"

Mel Gibson then told the deputy that he "owned Malibu" and would "spend all of my money" to get even with the officer.

And then he said, "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world. Are you a Jew?"

In my book "Crossbearer," published in 2008, I wrote:

"Ballgame. Open and shut. No doubt now. Mel was a raving anti-Semite. The man who had composed his prayer of a movie about Christ shared the mind-set of Adolf Hitler."

It made me want to retch. Mel had assassinated his own film. Now the movie would be known for all time as a big-screen anti-Semitic billboard. It was said that in the course of making the film, Mel had played a small part as the soldier who drove the nails into Jesus's hand. And now, I thought, Mel had done it again - publicly and in full view of the world. He had driven his nail into his own movie.

It all made me think that God uses unworthy and flawed people for His own good uses.

Mel, the anti-Semite, directs a movie celebrating Christ's passion. And Joe, the author of "Basic" and "Showgirls," carries a cross with Christ's body around chapels, monasteries, and churches.

* * * *

SOME PEOPLE IN THE INDUSTRY
were outraged by Mel Gibson's statements to the arresting officer.

Amy Pascal, the head of Sony, called for an industry boycott of him.

And Ari Emanuel, head of the Endeavor Agency, who would later become the head of William Morris Endeavor, probably the most powerful man in Hollywood, wrote an article for The Huffington Post.

"People in the entertainment industry," Ari Emanuel wrote, "whether Jew or Gentile, need to demonstrate that they understand how much is at stake in this by professionally shunning Mel Gibson and refusing to work with him, even if it means a sacrifice to their bottom line. There are times in history when standing up against bigotry and racism is more important than money."

* * * *

I ALSO WROTE
in "Crossbearer" about Mel's publicist, Alan Nierob of Rogers & Cowen, arguably one of the best publicists in town, a man who'd been my own publicist for years when we lived in Malibu, a man I liked very much.

This is what I wrote about Alan's defense of Mel when "The Passion" was released:

"I didn't know Mel personally, although my good friend Alan, who was Jewish and had lost family members in the Holocaust, was Mel's publicist, as he had been mine. I knew Alan well and respected and admired him and felt sure he wouldn't work so hard for a man who was either anti-Semitic himself or had created something that would fuel the flames of anti-Semitism worldwide. In other words, nothing could convince me that a proud and strong Jew like Alan would put his energy and talent to work on behalf of someone who would make people hate…
him
."

But I was wrong about Alan. Even after the anti-Semitic incident with the arresting policeman, Alan continued to work hard for Mel and helped orchestrate a public relations effort that would try to wipe away Mel's hateful words in the media.

* * * *

ALAN NIEROB'S LOYALTY TO MEL
reminded me of Ed Limato's loyalty to him. Like my late agent Guy McElwaine, Ed Limato was one of Hollywood's top agents, a brilliant and tough man who protected Mel like a father.

But Ed Limato was gay and Mel had said some horrendously scurrilous things about gay people.

In an interview with a Spanish magazine, Mel had gotten up from his chair, bent over, pointed to his butt, and said, "This is for shitting, not fucking."

He repeated it for the interviewer: "They take it up the ass! This is only for taking a shit!"

In an earlier Australian interview, he had referred to gays as "faggots." He had also been attacked for his depiction — "his mincing portrait" — of a gay hairdresser in "Bird on a Wire."

Yet Ed Limato, a distinguished gay man, ignored Mel's homophobic ugliness the same way Alan Nierob, the son of Holocaust survivors, ignored Mel's anti-Semitism.

I couldn't understand why. I had loved my father more than any other man in the world, but I was unable to ignore the shameful things he had done in Hungary before World War II.

Did Limato and Alan Nierob — people I liked and respected — have no shame? How did Ed Limato look himself in the mirror after what Mel said about that part of his anatomy? How was Alan Nierob able to talk to his dad, a man he no doubt loved, and ignore the pain he saw in his eyes?

Was it the money that both men made off of Mel Gibson? It seemed to me there were easier ways to make money then swallowing your own gay pride or blinding yourself to the pain in your father's eyes.

It also occurred to me that this was one of the unstated reasons why Naomi and I brought our sons back to Ohio.

* * * *

AT OUR FIRST MEETING
about the Guadalupe project, in Steve McEveety's offices on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica, we were joined by a couple of potential Mexican investors from Cancun.

The sun was setting; shadows played in the room as I talked about the arc and structure of the screenplay I had in mind. As I spoke, Naomi suddenly said, "Look!"

I stopped and we stared at what she was looking at.

A shadow of a cross had suddenly appeared on the wall of the office. In the darkening room, the cross seemed clear and distinct.

Looking at it, one of the potential investors made the sign of the cross.

There was no real explanation for the cross on the wall. There was a church with a cross on its steeple several blocks away, but it was more than unlikely that the setting sun could have put the shadow of that cross on Steve McEveety's wall.

We took it as a Sign from Heaven.

So did our potential investors: They were in! The cross on Steve's wall had convinced them. Now Steve had enough money to pay me for writing the script.

* * * *

STEVE MCEVEETY WAS ONE OF THE PRODUCERS
of "The Passion of the Christ." He talked about the "satanic attacks" they underwent during the making of the movie. He said there were thunderstorms and lightning that knocked out the power, computers that went down for no explainable reason. They all slept with the lights on.

"The Devil was all over 'The Passion,'" Steve said. "Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus, even got hit by lightning when he was up on the cross. All of our lives were affected. The Devil took his toll. One night Caviezel was in his room and he felt Satan coming down from the corner of the room and covering his body. Satan was sticking his entire hand down his throat. Caviezel was suffocating. Then a gigantic hand came down and with one finger, flicked the demon off of him into nothing. Isn't that amazing? The power of God!"

I said to Steve
,
"What about Mel? Did the
Devil take his toll on Mel?"

"You'll have to ask Mel that," Steve said.

"What about driving the nail into Christ's hand? Why did Mel insist that the shot show
his
hand driving the nail into Jesus?"

Steve didn't say anything.

"Is it true that he did that?" I asked him.

Steve looked at me a moment and finally nodded.

I asked, "Why did he do it?"

Steve said, "You'll have to ask him that, too."

* * * *

I HAD MET
a distinguished young priest who had grown up in Cleveland and was also a friend of Mel's: Father John Bartunek, a Legionary of Christ.

Father John had spent a lot of time on "The Passion" set and had written a book called "Inside the Passion." Mel had even written the foreword to the book. Father John was a sharp, no-bullshit priest, well-read and pious — a holy man, I thought. We met for lunches and he had come over to play basketball with one of our sons, Nick.

I noticed Father John was circumspect about Mel. He tap-danced around questions about how Mel had behaved on the set of the movie. I asked him too why Mel had insisted on driving the nails into Christ's hand. Father John said he didn't know.

He had heard about our Guadalupe project from Steve McEveety and encouraged me to write it. He said he'd pray for me.

"The Devil doesn't like movies made which glorify Jesus or the Blessed Mother," he said. "Be wary of Satanic attacks." I showed him my St. Benedict medal and he blessed it. We were standing outside a Hungarian restaurant on Shaker Square in Cleveland, the same restaurant I had taken Jimi Hendrix to so many years ago — and I stepped back to watch the scene we were creating.

A guy in his mid-sixties wearing a Cleveland Indians T-Shirt, holding a medal out to a young priest formally dressed (like Max Von Sydow in "The Exorcist"), making the sign of the cross with great flourish in the air.

Blessing complete, St. Benedict medal tucked back inside my Indians T-Shirt, I was ready for all Satanic attacks.

* * * *

I SAID THE HAIL MARY
every day as I began writing the Guadalupe script… and the Magnificat at the end of every writing day. I had also begun a practice which I do to this day: I go to morning Mass at the church chapel three times a week.

I felt the presence of the Blessed Mother as I wrote each day, a long way away — a universe away — from the more fleshy presences I had felt writing "Basic Instinct" and "Showgirls". (The New Yorker headlined: "Eszterhas Takes on 481-Year-Old Virgin" when Steve announced "Guadalupe").

I felt pleased when I finished the script. I felt that the Blessed Mother had answered my prayers and inspired the writing. I sent the script to Steve, who happened to be in Medjugorje, the Catholic shrine in Bosnia where Our Lady is said to have appeared to a group of children many years ago.

Steve called me excitedly after he had finished reading the script. He said he loved it. He said his wife loved it. And so did Father John Bartunek, Mel's friend, who happened to be with him on the trip.

Father John called me and said he read the script at the top of Apparition Hill and, when he finished it, he felt the presence of the Blessed Mother.

Steve, in the village church that night with one of the visionaries, said the visionary turned to him and said, "The Blessed Mother is very happy about something that happened today."