Heaven and Mel (Kindle Single) (3 page)

Yet another Sign from Heaven.

And then, the day he left Medjugorje, Steve told me that he said to the Blessed Mother: "Please, if you want me to make this movie, give me a sign, make me a miracle."

When Steve told me that I thought: That sure takes a lot of balls! To ask the Blessed Mother to green-light your movie for you! To ask the Mother of God for your own "personal" miracle. A miracle on demand, like ordering a cheeseburger with fries at McDonald's.

And here came the topper! The Blessed Mother gave Steve McEveety, Catholic Hollywood producer, his own personal miracle: Steve McEveety suddenly saw the sun spin around in the sky.

It was the ultimate Sign from Heaven! It was the best review I'd ever have. Forget Academy Awards: My script had caused the sun to spin!

And Steve McEveety said, "We're going to get this sucker made!"

Steve called back the next day: He had some early thoughts about possible directors for our film: Ron Howard, who, Steve thought, was Catholic.

And one other thought: Mel Gibson.

* * * *

AS WE WERE HEADING TO MEXICO CITY,
Mel Gibson was in love. He was in the process of divorcing Robyn, his wife of 25 years. He'd moved out of the Serra Retreat house and was living with a stunning 30-something model and singer.

Oksana Grigorieva was Russian. Her parents had fought against the Nazis. She had been living with her parents in a two-bedroom flat, but when the Iron Curtain fell, she fled to London.

She wasn't afraid of hard work. She cleaned houses. She took care of the elderly. She studied piano at the Royal College of Music in London. She was also a piano teacher and a waitress. A photographer saw her as she was waitressing and took a picture of her. She was a true Russian beauty: Her photograph began appearing everywhere.

She met Timothy Dalton, the English actor most famous for being James Bond. They had a son named Alexander. Dalton married her. They split up a few years later. Oksana moved to Los Angeles and pursued her music. She wrote songs. Josh Groban put one of them on a CD.

She also sang at L.A.'s best and most-upscale Russian restaurant. That's where she met Mel Gibson. They fell in love. She moved into his new Malibu house, on Carbon Canyon Road. He gave her a cameo in one of his films. He found a manager and producer for her who worked for his company, ICON.

Their daughter, Luci, was born prematurely, in October of 2009. Oksana continued pursuing her music. She signed a contract with ICON Records. He co-wrote two of her songs.

He said she was "the love of his life." They travelled in Europe with Luci. Everywhere they went, people told them they were the most beautiful couple they had ever seen.

* * * *

MUCH OF MY HOLLYWOOD CAREER
was thanks to my longtime agent, Guy McElwaine, the former head of Warner Brothers, Columbia, and Rastar.

"It was the late 80s and we were in Cannes," Guy told me once. "Mel was just about to become a gigantic star. I was there with one of my ex-wives [Guy had many of them]. Jerry Weintraub had a yacht there.

"We're staying on his yacht and Mel is on the yacht too. I wake up and I hear voices and I realize my ex-wife isn't in the bed. I get up and open the door and my ex-wife is out there in the hallway standing naked, very drunk, and she's beating on Mel's door. And she's saying, 'You better open this fucking door or I'll make sure my husband blackballs you in Hollywood forever.'

"I dragged her back into our room and that's the moment she became my ex-wife, although it took me some time to divorce her. "But I really respected that Mel never opened that door. My ex-wife was a beautiful woman. Of course Mel got so shaken up by the whole thing that the very next morning he got the hell out of there and flew back to Australia.

"We all laughed at that. Of course that was a long time ago when Mel was still a Hollywood virgin."

"What's a Hollywood virgin?" I asked Guy.

Guy said, "It's a woman who's had two kids but says she hasn't ever had sex yet."

* * * *

STEVE MCEVEETY TOLD ME
how Mel's interest in doing a movie about Christ's passion and crucifixion began. "He was in his Connecticut house and a bunch of books came with the house when he bought it. There was a book he saw on a top shelf that he couldn't reach. He got a cane to try to pull the book down, but the book next to it fell down instead. The book that fell down and landed in his hands was "The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ" by Anne Catherine Emmerich."

Another Sign from Heaven, no doubt.

* * * *

MEANWHILE, OVERNIGHT,
Mel Gibson had become the talk of America — no, the talk of the world.

Mel and Oksana had broken up amid a flurry of furious accusations. What made the world pay attention to all this was a series of tape recordings, recorded by Oksana, that showed Mel berserk: screaming, roaring, bellowing, growling, hyperventilating, and panting the ugliest and vilest things to her. The recordings went global instantly.
Howard Stern was playing them over and over again every day.

These were the things that struck me:

THREATS
:

•
Mel: "I'll put you in a fucking rose garden, you cunt. You understand that? Cause I'm capable of it. You understand that?"

•
Mel: "I don't need medication. You need a fucking bat in the side of the head."

•
Mel: "I'll burn the goddamn house down, but blow me first!"

•
Mel: "You need a fucking kick up the ass for being a bitch, cunt, gold digger whore!"

•
Mel: "I will make your goddamn life miserable."

•
Oksana: "I'm saving my life, and I'm saving my daughter's life. You almost killed us, did you forget?"

•
Mel: (making fake crying noises) "The last three years have been a fucking gravy train for you."

•
Oksana: "You were hitting a woman with a child in her arms. What kind of man is that? Hitting a woman when she's holding a child in her hands. Breaking her teeth. Twice, in the face, what kind of man is that?…"

•
Mel: "You fucking deserved it."

•
Mel: "I'm coming over there!"

•
Oksana: "I'll call the police."

•
Mel: "Fuck you! I don't involve the police in anything because I can stand up for myself. You, you weak cunt, you call the fucking cops."

BLOW JOBS AND OKSANA'S SEXUALITY

•
Mel: "I should have woke you up and said — 'Fucking blow me, bitch!' I should have woke you up and said, 'Blow me.' You would have liked that better, yeah?"

•
Mel: "You went to sleep and didn't blow me!"

•
Mel: "I deserve to be blown!"

•
Mel: "And I'm not giving you my house. You can rot! Unless you crawl back and suck my cock and say you're sorry — in that order!"

•
Mel: "You should just fucking smile and blow me! Cause I deserve it!"

•
Mel: "You're a woman who sucks from me and just fucking sucks me dry!"

•
Mel: "Go out to the goddamn Jacuzzi — go and fuck the fucking Jacuzzi — it's a thing! You have no soul!"

•
Mel: (about one of Oksana's girlfriends) "She was fucking making eyes at me! She'd have sucked me in five seconds!"

•
Mel: "You look like a fucking bitch in heat, and if you get raped by a pack of niggers, it'll be your fault, all right!?"

•
Mel: "You feel like you have to show off in tight outfits and tight pants. You can see your pussy from behind."

•
Mel: "Your breasts are too big and they look stupid. They look like some Vegas bitch. They look like some Vegas whore. And you go around sashaying in your tight clothes."

•
Mel: "Your tits look ridiculous! Get rid of them, why don't you!"

•
Mel: "If you get raped it's your fault for showing off your fake tits, like they're some special deal. How much did they cost, those fakers?"

•
Mel: "You're a pain in the ass. You're a pain in the ass. You're a pain in my ass!"

•
Mel: "You flaunt your ass."

•
Mel: "Fuck you in the ass!"

OKSANA TO MEL

•
Oksana: "You are unbalanced!"

•
Oksana: "You need medication."

•
Oksana: "You're insane!

•
Oksana: "You need medication!"

•
Oksana: "Are you insane? Yes you are, of course, we can hear that!"

•
Oksana: "You need medication."

•
Oksana: "You're a monster! That's all: you're a monster… you're a complete monster!"

•
Oksana: "You need medication!"

•
Oksana: "Mel, you're imbalanced. There's something wrong with you. You need medication."

•
Oksana: "Mel, you're losing your mind — you need medication!"

•
Oksana: "I am not a whore, and I am not a bitch, and I am not a cunt, and I am not a user, and I am not a thief, I am not all those words, and I am not a liar."

MEL TO OKSANA

•
Mel: "You selfish harpy."

•
Mel: "You're a little girl with a fucking dysfunctional cunt!"

•
Mel: "You fucking selfish bitch!"

•
Mel: "Fuck you, you're a fucking whore!"

•
Mel: "You fragging ignorant bitch!"

•
Mel: "You're a fucking mentally deprived idiot!"

•
Mel: "You're a whore and a bitch!"

•
Mel: "You're a piece of shit!"

•
Mel: "Cunt, bitch, gold digger, cunt, whore — that's what you are!"

•
Mel: "You wanted the number of my therapist? Don't you even speak to him! Find your own goddamn therapist! Because you've got problems more than me!"

MEL ABOUT HIS WIFE, ROBYN

•
Mel: (to Oksana) "I left my wife because we had no spiritual common ground."

•
Mel: (to Oksana) "I don't have any fucking money! I have to support you and everybody else. I have to sell paintings… my box at the Lakers game."

•
Oksana: (to Mel in reply) "You have to feed an army."

•
Mel: (to Oksana in reply) "I spent too much goddamn money on you and my wife knows it's you."

BEING USED

•
Mel: "You're a fucking using whore."

•
Mel: "You're fucking gouging me!"

•
Mel: "You don't fucking count! You're a fucking using whore!"

•
Oksana: "You're a completely off-balanced person who absolutely hates me so much. What did I do to you?"

•
Mel: "You used me!"

•
Oksana: "It's bullshit."

•
Mel: "You fucking used!" You fucking used me and I'll never forgive you!"

•
Oksana: "You yell and scream and threaten everybody around you. Everybody's pussyfooting around you because they're all scared shitless of you."

•
Mel: "You know why? They're all a bunch of fucking using cunts. Like you! You're like every other fucker!"

•
Oksana: "You're paying them money. And they will never tell you the truth because of who you are, because you're paying them money, inclusive of your psychiatrist! Who should send you to a neurologist because you are imbalanced and you need medication. And he's just taking your money."

•
Mel: "What are you, a fucking expert?"

•
Oksana: "Yes."

•
Mel: "Fuck off!"

•
Oksana: "You are completely off your mind. I've never seen anybody like this. You have a schizophrenia."

•
Mel: "Because…"

•
Oksana: "Because you were born like this, my dear. You are so spoiled! You have the biggest ego… what an ego! Nobody would dare tell you that because you're paying them money for God's sake!"

•
Mel: "You never even say fucking thank you!"

•
Oksana: "Yes I have! Many times!"

•
Mel: "Well say thank you every goddamn five minutes and not call me mean. And not look at me sideways. Just suck my cock! Damn you fucking cunt whore! That's all you're good for. That's about all you're fucking good at!"

•
Mel: "Go on, fuck an ugly man. You don't give a fuck so long as they pay your fucking rent!"

* * * *

THE MEL/OKSANA TAPES,
as they quickly came to be known, were a freak house of horrors. I listened to the tapes and what I found more frightening than anything else was his voice.

It was hard to disregard Oksana when she said,
at least seven different times,
"You need medication!" and also said "Something's wrong with you" and "You're unbalanced."

This was the bottom line: Mel sounded like he had lost his mind.

The sexual stuff was sick: The reiterated different versions of "I deserve to be blown" and "You'll crawl back and blow me first." His obsession about "being blown."

Mel Gibson had become the greatest American spokesman for the joys and pleasures of fellatio since Bill Clinton.

And he sounded equally fixated about another part of her anatomy: "You flaunt your ass" and "fuck you in the ass!"

The vile and profane names he called her over and over again were, simply, demented. He almost sounded like he was having some kind of Tourette-like seizure.

I found his threats particularly frightening. He'd "put her in a rose garden" and he'd "put a baseball bat to the side of her head" and he'd "burn her house down." I was most struck, however, by his feeling that she and everyone else was "using" him.