dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/589375/

Mel Gibson’s New Film Seems Designed to Outrage

The pitch for the newly announced satirical fiction film Rothchild, a comedy set in the world of the ultra-wealthy about a forgotten son trying to inherit the money of his influential family, already sounds like an elaborate piece of trolling. The real-life Rothschild family, a Jewish and European banking dynasty, has for centuries been the subject of anti-Semitic myths and conspiracy theories, fables revolving around their alleged control of world finances. The film that’s up for sale at this year’s Cannes Marché du Film, a movie marketplace where a majority of the industry’s business is done, has dropped the s from the family’s name, but the title is still loaded. Even more bizarrely: Mel Gibson is attached to star.

Gibson’s involvement is hard to interpret as anything but a whole other level of provocation, a ludicrous addition to a project that already sounds potentially offensive. The actor and director’s reputation has recovered in Hollywood despite numerous scandals, including a drunk-driving arrest, a racist phone call to an ex-girlfriend in which he drunkenly admitted hitting her, and a plea of “no contest” to a charge of battery. Despite all that, Gibson was nominated in 2017 for an Oscar for directing Hacksaw Ridge and was recently hired by Warner Bros. to direct a remake of The Wild Bunch. But Gibson’s history of anti-Semitic remarks makes him a particularly baffling choice for a project titled Rothchild. (A representative for Gibson stated that the film has no connection to the real-life Rothschild family.)

When Gibson was pulled over by police for drunk driving in 2006, the officers recorded him saying (among other things) that “Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.” Years later, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg asked him about that particular blowup, which Gibson said was a result of drunkenness. “I was loaded, and some stupid shit can come out of your mouth when you’re loaded,” the actor said in 2011, claiming that his invective was prompted by Israel’s conflict with Lebanon at the time. Gibson’s 2004 film The Passion of the Christ had been criticized for pushing the anti-Semitic notion that Jews were to blame for the death of Jesus. The director’s attempt at a follow-up movie about Judah Maccabee never came to fruition, but its screenwriter alleged that Gibson was publicly hateful of Jews and used several anti-Semitic epithets in their time working together (Gibson denied the allegations, but admitted to having had “a little bit of a temper”).