Mel's movie tops box office

"YOU can't hope for better than the No 1 spot," says Mel Gibson, citing the opening weekend box office for his ancient Mayan chase pic, Apocalypto.

Gibson's latest epic has which reaped a three-day gross of $US15 million ($A19 million).

Still, that's nothing compared with the dollars Gibson collected from his previous directing job, The Passion of the Christ.

Gibson's controversial retelling of the Crucifixion opened on Good Friday of 2004 and made a whopping $US85.8 million ($A110 million) its first weekend out.

"Of course, I knew Apocalypto wouldn't do that kind of business," Gibson said by phone from Los Angeles. And not, he asserted, because of any fallout from his July arrest on drink-driving charges and subsequent anti-Semitic rantings.

He blames it on the shops.

"No, I don't think it (the scandal) had an impact," said Gibson, who has been on a public campaign of self-reflection, contrition and reconciliation with Jewish leaders since his infamous outburst.

"It was a soft weekend all around. There were other good pictures out there and they were all in line with one another. Everyone was at Christmas parties or shopping. ... But, hey, I'm not sneezing at it. No 1 - I think it's great."

Apocalypto also has landed a Golden Globe nomination for best foreign language film (the actors, indigenous Americans, speak Yucatec). Whether the widely praised film will garner Oscar nods is another question. Gibson, who won best picture and best director Academy Awards for Braveheart, was criticised by religious leaders for his villainous depiction of Jewish high priests in The Passion.

The actor and moviemaker's anti-Jew eruptions hardly helped matters. Can he still be embraced by the Hollywood community?

"Hey, awards and stuff like that, or being embraced, is not the ultimate goal of what I do," he said.
"What I'm doing is what I love - it's a passion for telling stories. These other things are, and have always been, by-products. Who was ever embraced by the Hollywood community, tell me? . . .
People, if they're creative and they have something to say, they just do it, and it's either consumed or not."

But doesn't he feel that he's alienated a significant group of his peers?

"If I have, there's nothing I can do about it, and there's no way of gauging it either," Gibson said. "In my dealings it's always straight-ahead here, business as usual. And most people are very understanding. There's very few of us that haven't made a mistake or goofed up somewhere along the line. People understand humanity and human failure. There you go, you know."

Like Braveheart and The Passion before it, the $US40 million ($A51 million) Apocalypto - which Gibson financed and filmed last year in Mexico - is graphically, rhapsodically violent. There are impalings, decapitations, scenes of people getting their hearts ripped from their chests. Some critics have said it's too much, that Gibson's penchant for gore is obsessive, fetishistic.

"Well, it's part and parcel of the subject matter, and the story," he said. "Apocalypto is set in the fading glory days of the Mayan civilisation, when tribe preyed upon tribe, and priests practised human sacrifice.

"People either really love it or they really hate it. Looking at some of the people that really hate it, I think maybe there's a little disingenuousness and jealousy there. One always has to ask, is that honest? Is that an honest criticism? And sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't. But it's of little consequence . . . I make the story that I want to tell and put it out there and try to share it with people."

How does he mean, "disingenuousness"?

"Well, when you read things like `it's boring'. I know it's not boring. So why is he saying that? ...

Some critics are really honest, great, erudite. Others are bitter. I mean, imagine having to see that many movies every week. You'd get jaded really fast."

Gibson, 50, hasn't appeared onscreen for several years: He had a role in the little seen 2003 release The Singing Detective, and was, of course, the star of M Night Shyamalan's 2002 extraterrestrial thriller, Signs.

A couple of projects he's been linked to - Under and Alone, about an undercover agent who joins the Mongols biker gang, and Richard Donner's Sam and George - are on the back burner.

"I love it when I do it," he said of acting. "I just haven't gotten around to it for awhile. That's not to say I won't. But if you do something for 30 years you get an appetite for something more. Or something else."

And what's next as a director? After films in Aramaic and Yucatec, is there another dead language and culture he'd like to explore? "I'm not sure what's next," he said. "I'm on the hunt. I might try something out of left field, you know."

Like The Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto aren't?

"Yeah, in a sense. But I mean out of left field if you think about those. I'll focus somewhere else. I think it's time."
Source: http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,20953066-5006023,00.html