Recreativity

I'm all the way back to June 2006 in recreating my old blog. Which is cool, cause I feel like it was at the peak in July and August of last year with my hiking photos and the story of my Mel Gibson encounter.

Sideshow Mel

I've been biting my tongue for a while about an incident that occurred several years ago, but with recent events I figure that the time has come to share them. As you may or may not know, I live in a resort town surrounded by lakes, mountains, ski areas and golf courses. A lot of famous people have vacation homes in this area. Ellen Travolta often appears in community theater plays, Tom Cruise's Gulfstream jet always flies low over town and pisses people off, John Elway barrels around town in his tinted Hummer, and The Wife once realized she was standing in line behind Dennis Franz at Safeway.

Anyway, one day several years ago, I was hiking with my dogs up on Canfield Mountain on the northeast edge of town, and who should I run into but Mel Gibson who happened to be in town for a celebrity golf benefit at the Resort. He was wearing sunglasses and a wide brimmed hat so I didn't recognize him at first. Just as I started to walk past him, my older dog Saffy decided to greet him by sticking her nose right in his crotch. She's usually well behaved, but sometimes she just can't help being a dog. I apologized and told her to heel, but Mel just laughed and said that he likes dogs. He then said that she had a very nice coat and asked what her breed was. I get that question all the time since she really is a pretty dog. I told him that she's a border collie / blue heeler cross. She has the thick glossy coat of a border collie, but the ubiquitous markings of a heeler. He said that she reminded him of some of the herd dogs back in Australia. At this point it dawned on me who he was.

Let me interrupt here and note that this was before he went all woo-woo all over the media. Since I've never been a big follower of celebrity gossip, all I knew was his body of work up through his then recent appearance on the Simpsons. I admit it, I was a bit star struck and told him that Mad Max was one of my favorite movies of all time. I'm not proud. He said that he gets that a lot, and said that he really gives credit to George Miller, and said that he was really impressed with the recent success of Babe (hey, I really liked that movie too).

About this time I realized that I'd probably never have a chance to talk movies with someone in his position again so I figured I'd make a pitch that I'd been kicking around in my head for a while. I asked him "I know this is really corny, so feel free to say no because I'm sure you get this all the time, but can I tell you about about an idea I have for a movie?" To my surprise he said that he had nothing better to do, and that he'd rather listen to me than listen to John Travolta's boring airplane stories while trying to hit the floating green.

Given the green light, I started in on my story, "It was a Thursday night." Giving a nod to Douglas Adams, "Nobody ever gets the hang of Thursdays. On this night, three guys are hanging out in a garden. They're all feeling very tired after a big meal of hot buttered corn, but one of them can't sleep. He stays up into the early hours of of the morning with an impending sense of doom. It turns out his fears are well founded as one of his other friends who'd been at the dinner shows up before dawn with a bunch of soldiers to bust him. The other two wake up. They argue and fight, and one pulls a knife. He cuts off one soldier's ear, but backs off when the first guy tells him to stop because he doesn't dig on violence."

"Long story short, he gets hauled off to court while his friends scatter. But," I tell him, "that's just the opening sequence. The next two hours is basically the guy getting stripped naked and beaten to a horrible bloody pulp by the soldiers while a crowd of the ugliest hooked-nosed caricatures ever assembled jeers and eggs his tormentors on. Seriously, Mel," I continue, " picture the most violent scenes of gore in Braveheart. Now multiply that times fifty, and you'll start to get a glimpse of the sick twisted shit I'm talking about. Then to top it all off, after all the whipping and torture, they drag him though the streets and pound nails through his hands and feet, and hang him up to die."

Gibson stood there for a while looking stunned. Finally he waggled his jaw for a little bit before stammering "Th-th-that's seriously fucked up, Mate. What do you call it?"

I answered, "The Aristocrats."