Image Source: Georges Biard, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
What Was the Accusation?
Actor and filmmaker Mel Gibson faced renewed public condemnation in 2010 after recordings of arguments with his former girlfriend, Russian musician Oksana Grigorieva, were released online during a bitter custody dispute involving their infant daughter. In recordings reported by ABC7, ABC News and other outlets, a voice identified as Gibson used racist and sexist language, berated Grigorieva over her appearance, said she would be responsible if she were raped, and made threatening and profane remarks. Additional recordings released in the following days appeared to contain further racial slurs and statements connected to allegations of physical violence. Grigorieva said she had recorded the calls because she feared Gibson might harm her.
The recordings intensified scrutiny of a January 6, 2010 confrontation between the couple. Grigorieva accused Gibson of striking her during the dispute, while Gibson disputed important elements of her account. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department investigated the domestic-violence allegations. In March 2011, prosecutors charged Gibson with misdemeanor battery, and he entered a no-contest plea. He received 36 months of informal probation, domestic-violence counseling, community service and fines, but no jail sentence.
Gibson’s image-repair response developed in stages. Reporting later revealed messages sent to Grigorieva after the January confrontation in which Gibson expressed remorse, said he had sought help from a therapist and wanted to make amends. In April 2011, in his first major interview addressing the leaked recordings, Gibson said he regretted his language but also emphasized the emotional context of the argument, described the recordings as edited, and argued that the remarks did not represent his beliefs or his treatment of people generally. His response therefore combined remorse and corrective action with contextualization, denial of broader racist intent, and efforts to separate a highly publicized episode from his overall identity.
Key Apologia Strategies
Mortification, Differentiation, Defeasibility, Attacking the Accuser
Video
Transcript
Excerpts from Mel Gibson’s April 2011 interview with journalist Allison Hope Weiner:
WEINER: Were people angry at you about what you said on tapes?
GIBSON: I was angry at me. But, no one expressed any anger at me. They may have felt it.
WEINER: Do you feel regret over what you said on the tapes?
GIBSON: Of course.
WEINER: After the tapes ended up on line, many people asked themselves how could someone who’s been around this long and knows the business managed to get into a position where so much of their private life ended up on line? Did you ever think that those private conversations would eventually get out?
GIBSON: [Looks at the ceiling and shakes his head and sighs] Who anticipates being recorded? Who anticipates that? Who could anticipate such a personal betrayal?
WEINER: People didn’t understand how you could say the things you did on these tapes. They wondered, what kind of person says those things. Right now, many people think you’re a racist and that you hate women from listening to those tapes.
GIBSON: I’ve never treated anyone badly or in a discriminatory way based on their gender, race, religion or sexuality — period. I don’t blame some people for thinking that though, from the garbage they heard on those leaked tapes, which have been edited. You have to put it all in the proper context of being in an irrationally, heated discussion at the height of a breakdown, trying to get out of a really unhealthy relationship. It’s one terribly, awful moment in time, said to one person, in the span of one day and doesn’t represent what I truly believe or how I’ve treated people my entire life.
WEINER: Are you worried that audiences will hold what happened against you, and you won’t be able to act anymore?
MEL GIBSON: I don’t care if I don’t act anymore.
WEINER: Really? Is that true?
GIBSON: It really is true.
WEINER: Aren’t you going to be hurt if people judge you based on what they believe occurred here?
GIBSON: I’m beyond that, way beyond that. The whole experience has been most unfortunate. And so it’s not without all the downside.
WEINER: But if you don’t get to act again… I’m asking the same question.
GIBSON: I could easily not act again. It’s not a problem. I’m going to do something now because I want to do it and because it’s fun. I’ve already pulled another job and it’s going to be fun. I don’t know if it’s going to get off the ground, but I’m going to go work for [Best Picture Oscar winner Braveheart‘s screenwriter] Randy Wallace again. He’s got this script and he’s had it for years. He wrote some book and he’s adapted it to a script. And it’s almost like Alexander Dumas — like that swashbuckler kind of stuff.
WEINER: Bodice-ripping?
GIBSON: Yes. It’s total bodice-ripping swashbuckling stuff, but it’s funny. It’s funny and yet it’s got really good serious undertones too. Randy writes a decent script. And I responded to it right away. I thought this is hilarious. I’ve got to do this. And I’m not the main guy in the film — which is great.
WEINER: You were going to do a small part in Hangover II. How did you respond to being asked to do that and then having cast members not want you in it? How did it feel to have them allow a convicted rapist [Mike Tyson] in the movie and not you?
GIBSON: You have to let that go. I sat here and talked to [director] Todd [Phillips] about it. I like Todd. How could you not like Todd? He’s smart and he’s gifted and so are the other people in the film. It’s okay. You just have to let that go.
WEINER: That’s a very Hollywood hypocritical moment.
GIBSON: It shows you a few things. You just move on and go okay. I’m not greatly offended by it. It seemed like a good idea at the time and it went south.
WEINER: What gets you to the point of ‘I don’t care’? I don’t believe you don’t care about people coming to see your work.
GIBSON: It’s like being a chef. If you’re making a cake, you don’t just make the cake and have it look nice and have nobody tastes it. But that doesn’t take away from your ability to execute what you do as well as you can and to have it be something for many. So that it’s like, say Apocalypto when it came out. I think it’s a good film. It doesn’t have a lot of dialogue; it’s mostly just like watching stuff happen in a language you never heard before. It didn’t do surprisingly well at the box office, no, but it has this life where people see it and they go “Whoa,” and the feedback is really amazing, so you know that you’ve hit. And that’s enough. That’s enough. And the end of the day, it’s what did they think of that? Did they get something from it? Were they entertained? Were they educated? Were they elevated? Were they all three? You know, which is really good? Entertain, educate, elevate. I think that’s what Jodie did [in The Beaver]. If you can get all three of those, you’ve got the Trifecta going.
WEINER: Do you think that the audio tapes have hurt your ability to make your own movies?
GIBSON: I don’t know. I don’t know. Guys like Robbie [CEO Rob Friedman] over at Summit [Entertainment] have been really nice. It didn’t seem to bug those guys at all. They were like, ‘This is crap. We’re going out with this movie.’ The next movie I’m in is How I Spent My Summer Vacation and it will have a distributor because we’re in the business of entertainment.
WEINER: Even when the drunk driving/anti-semitic incident happened and was splashed everywhere, you continued to work. Do you just compartmentalize things so you can keep working when you’re at the center of something like this?
GIBSON: You have to. There are a lot of people depending on you. There are deadlines to meet and fiscal responsibilities. There are the basics of supporting yourself and those who depend on you and those commitments that you have to co-workers.
WEINER: What did you think of Whoopi Goldberg going out on a limb and publicly defending you?
GIBSON: I knew Whoopi before she was Whoopi. And, as she’s great and I always liked her and loved her. I like her even more now because she got it.
WEINER: She took a lot of flack for defending you.
GIBSON: I know. I love her for it.
WEINER: Jodie defended you as well. But it’s a short list of people who spoke out for you. What was your reaction to the fact that not many people publicly defended you?
GIBSON: That doesn’t bother me. Why would anyone want to speak publicly and drag themselves through this crap? It seems to add fuel to the fire. Very many people are supportive, of course, but you find out who your friends are. I have many friends and they’ve been great.
WEINER: When we last spoke after you finished Apocalypto, you said you probably wouldn’t act again. And, a four years later, you did the Edge of Darkness. You’re in The Beaver now. Did something change?
GIBSON: It was something different and it was also Jodie. I’d give her a pedicure every day of the week if I could. We met on Maverick many years ago. I realized that one has a perception — everyone gets preconceptions. She totally surprised me. I knew she was bright, so that didn’t surprise me. She was really bright. And she was pragmatic and extremely sensitive and a good heart, a real good heart. So how could you not become friends? We became fast friends and we maintained that over the years. We’ve both had our different little journeys. It’s untraditional. But there are a lot of things we have in common. I can empathize with her. From four years of age, she’s been out there. And it’s not that for me, but almost, because I was a baby when I started. I was probably more developmentally arrested at the age of 21 than she was at four. [Laughs] You couldn’t get two people who are more diametrically opposed on everything that they think about religion and politics than what we do. But there is a core of goodness there that’s undeniable and I just love her.
WEINER: Don’t you find that a lot of your industry friends have different political beliefs than you?
GIBSON: Nobody is the same. The whole notion of politics is they always present you with this or this or this. I’ll get a newspaper to read between the lines. Why do you have to adhere to prescribed formulas that they have and people argue over them and they’re all in a box. And you watch Fox claw CNN, and CNN claw Fox. Sometimes I catch a piece of the news and it seems insanity to me. I quietly support candidates. I’m not out there banging a drum for candidates. But I have supported a candidate and it’s a whole other world. Once you’ve been exposed to it, once or twice or however many times, if you know the facts and see how they’re presented, it’s mind-boggling. It’s a very scary arena to be in, but I do vote. I go in there and pull the lever. It’s kind of like pulling the lever and watching the trap door fall out from beneath you. Why should we trust any of these people? None of them ever deliver on anything. It’s always disappointing.
WEINER: You’d kept much of your private life out of the public for so many years. And you kept this relationship with Oksana Grigorieva really private for quite some time. The public didn’t even know you were dating her for a long while.
GIBSON: It’s nobody’s business. It really isn’t. Why is it? Why is it anyone’s business? I think it detracts from my business. It’s a change. And why is that of interest to anyone? It always baffles me. Why is that of interest to anyone? If people understood how mundane my life really is. You’re sort of thinking, who cares? It’s staggering. It’s a surprise to me. It’s just a life.
WEINER: It seems like you’ve become really uncomfortable with your fame.
GIBSON: Yes. When I was younger and it first started to happen, there’s some kind of novelty to it in your twenties. You quickly realize before your twenties are over, you realize that it’s not anything it appears to be in your imagination or any other thing, and that it has a lot of downside to it. Now you deal with that. It’s like trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube, but you can’t. The toothpaste is out there. You realize change has happened. You face it, you cope with it and you move on. And it’s not easy. Change is always proceeded by a little pain. [Shrugs shoulders with smile.] Some people can change and they don’t have to go through so many painful things. But I think that I’m of a personality [laughs at himself] that I’m a little stubborn, so it’s tough for me.
WEINER: Do you think that being a movie star now is drastically different than when you first became famous 30 years ago?
GIBSON: Of course it’s more difficult. The pop culture has become more frenetic. There are more forces at work that are far more invasive. However, I think it would be perfectly doable to defend ones loved ones from some of the harsher aspects of public life. You’re not going to be a 100% successful. But you can see when it’s on purpose. It’s so blatantly easy to avoid at times and you can tell when it was unavoidable.
WEINER: People don’t know very much about who you really are. You had this public persona that seemed easy-going and always happy and joking. And I think people all thought that personality as the Lethal Weapon franchise evolved was yours.
GIBSON: Yes. Kind of slightly manic. A kind of cuddly pathology.
WEINER: But your public persona is not really you.
GIBSON: It never is. Remember old Cary Grant. People said, “Boy, what’s it like to be Cary Grant?” [Imitates Cary Grant voice and says] “I wouldn’t know.” It’s like, “I don’t know who that guy is.”
WEINER: Did you ever question that you chose the wrong occupation — especially when the tapes were released? Did you think that, ‘I’m sick of this and I chose the wrong job’?
GIBSON: [Hesitates] There are a lot of instances over the years, with the loss of personal anonymity, you’ll always look back at. Nobody warns you about that. You walk into that arena and your intentions are fairly pure — you just want to be good at what you do and do what you love to do. That’s all. It takes on another side life. There are all these side streets that you really have no control over. One looks back with regret on that. There was a moment where there was a fork in the road where you could have chosen one way or the other. For example, I know people because they know me, they’ve chosen another way because they don’t like what it does. You go back and say, if I could go back and make that choice again, I’d make a different choice. It’s unfortunate that I was 21 or 22 years old when I made the choice because without benefit of experience or any kind of maturity, one makes a choice in the spur of the moment, that you again can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.
WEINER: There are other things you could do to stay out of the public eye. You could write.
GIBSON: I’m writing now. I’m writing on three different things. That’s what I’ve been doing this whole time is writing. I’m always writing. There is always a story brewing in my head. It’s been productive.
WEINER: It just seems that if you could only act, that would be one thing. There are other things that have less exposure.
GIBSON: I walked away from acting for eight years and tried to make the choice that I should have made when I was 21. But, it doesn’t make any difference. Nothing changed. You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.
WEINER: Do you remember where you were when the tapes scandal broke? What was your reaction?
GIBSON: I don’t remember a bunch. What came first? The chicken or the egg. The Beaver was completed. We’d finished shooting, I think.
WEINER: Before the tapes were leaked on line, you’d reached a $16 million settlement agreement with Oksana, right?
GIBSON: I can’t really talk about that.
WEINER: Well, it has been reported that you reached a $16 million dollar settlement with Oksana and she signed the agreement. And then, shortly after agreeing to the settlement, she rejected it and the tapes were leaked to RadarOnline only days later. [Gibson says nothing.] So, when did you first find out that tapes had been made of your private conversations?
GIBSON: I really can’t talk about this stuff. It’s all kind of … There are a lot of things pending, custody and all kinds of things that I can’t even go into. Put it this way, for the sake of my daughter and the rest of my children, I really can’t talk about this. There are all sorts of legal things pending.
WEINER: What are you dealing with in terms of legal things?
GIBSON: Everybody has a dog in the fight but me, oddly enough. I haven’t got a lawsuit out on anyone because I think it’s extremely… You have to think about your children. That’s all there is to it. I can’t really discuss this. There are a lot of delicate and sensitive issues and I don’t want to be the cause of grief to any of my children or to friends or family or associates on either side because it’s a matter that should be dealt with. It’s important to me that it’s dealt with correctly and it’s important that I maintain my integrity through this for the sake of those I love. So speaking about it is just not on and apart from anything else, I’m prohibited by court order. Now, the system is flawed as we know, but you’ve got to ride with that. I think that it will all eventually come out in the wash and I’m depending on that. I have a lot of faith in that. Even though any organization, anybody, will always be flawed or not perfect in many ways. But at the end of the day, they’re trying to work in a fashion that achieves some kind of justice. I’m going to hook my hitch onto that and follow that through. Perhaps some time I will go on and comment in a more full way. But even if the judge hadn’t put some kind of court order on me, I think I’d stay mum on a lot of these things just out of consideration for Lucia and my other children and my grandchildren and friends and family. It doesn’t do any good. Maybe, when this is all over and hopefully, justice is achieved. Maybe I could say something. But I’d never want to leave anything lying around that would… a lot of damage has been done. I don’t want to add to it.
WEINER: Let’s talk about what you plead to in court regarding allegations that you hit Grigorieva.
GIBSON: I was allowed to end the case and still maintain my innocence. It’s called a West plea and it’s not something that prosecutors normally allow. But in my case, the prosecutors and the judge agreed that it was the right thing to do. I could have continued to fight this for years and it probably would have come out fine. But I ended it for my children and my family. This was going to be such a circus. You don’t drag other people in your life through this sewer needlessly, so I’ll take the hit and move on.
WEINER: How did you find yourself in the position to make some of these many bad choices? When you were pulled over for the DUI in Malibu, weren’t you separated from your wife?
GIBSON: The next day.
WEINER: Were you having problems before that?
GIBSON: Marriage is marriage. Everybody has problems. I don’t want to really talk about that either.
WEINER: What I was trying to get at is that you found yourself without your family after a long marriage. Were you in a good frame of mind?
GIBSON: I doubt it. It’s nobody’s business, my separation, my divorce, any of that stuff. It’s out there, okay, so it happened. As to the details, I have precious little to keep to myself. And if I can even hold on to even painful things for myself, so be it.
WEINER: At this point, you seem to have made it past the worst of the tape scandal. How are you feeling about things?
GIBSON: The main thing is that it was terribly humiliating and painful for my family, all my kids.
WEINER: Did they talk to you about that?
GIBSON: Yeah, we spoke. And I had to speak to them with everyone but my youngest who is blissfully unaware, thank God. Well, she may be aware of it one day, and at that time, I guess I’ll just address that. I spent thirty years keeping them away from this kind of thing and I was quite successful. So why should I start now dragging them through that stuff? You try to manage that.
