It is easy to draw comparisons between Mel Gibson and Walter Black, the character he plays in The Beaver. Both were once charismatic personalities who, after deep personal setbacks, are struggling mightily to find their way back to a life that has escaped them.
By Ken Regan, Summit Entertainment
Lethal Weapon, it's not: In The Beaver, Mel Gibson plays Walter Black, a deeply depressed man who uses a beaver hand puppet to communicate with loved ones.
By Ken Regan, Summit Entertainment
Lethal Weapon, it's not: In The Beaver, Mel Gibson plays Walter Black, a deeply depressed man who uses a beaver hand puppet to communicate with loved ones.
When The Beaver opens in limited release Friday after a long delay, many involved with the film are hoping theatergoers simply admire the performance on the screen and ignore everything that has gone wrong in the personal life of its troubled star.
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The Beaver will be a test of whether America, and the critical world, is willing to forgive or forget enough to still watch Gibson on-screen.
"I'm hoping that people can put all of this aside, because really, acting is what he is meant to do," says Anton Yelchin, who plays Gibson's son in the movie. "Mel Gibson gives this brilliant performance of a broken man. It's a pity, but sometimes our culture forgets that at the core of it, his job is to make movies."
Gibson has been in this comeback position before, after his 2006 DUI arrest in Malibu. He apologized on national television, calling the anti-Semitic and sexist remarks made to police officers "the stupid ramblings of a drunkard."
The 2010 film Edge of Darkness was billed as his cinematic return, but quickly sunk off the box office charts.
That July, Gibson's personal life went tabloid nuclear with the release of an alleged threatening taped conversation with ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva.
Summit Entertainment immediately pulled the Jodie Foster-directed The Beaver off of its year-end schedule.
"When things started occurring in Mel's life, we wanted the movie to be the topic of conversation ... not other stuff," says Rob Friedman, co-chairman and CEO of Summit Entertainment, the film's distributor.
Summit opted for the spring release due to Foster's availability to promote the film — and the beleaguered actor — she believes in so passionately. While Gibson has remained mostly silent in the film's run-up, Foster has done her best to put a human face on his distorted public image. She points out that her co-star in 1994's Maverick cares little for what remains of his career and is simply acting out of passion for his craft.
"The only reason for him to do it is because it moves him and he loves something," she says. "That's it. He doesn't have to prove anything."
Foster also makes clear that Gibson is a complex man trying to do right, and sometimes failing.
"There's nobody that understands struggle the way Mel does," she says. "He never questioned the path of the film because he understood it so well."
In fact, watching Walter Black's personal struggle — so vivid and raw and echoing Gibson's own — might be enough to draw curious moviegoers into the theater.
"If his personal life factors into him giving a great performance, that's for him to know," Yelchin says. "I don't care what got him there. I only care what I see on screen."
While Gibson's critics have been quiet in the lead-up to the film, so have former allies like the Christian right, which buoyed the Gibson-produced The Passion of Christ to a $370 million domestic box office in 2004. Raleigh Washington, president and CEO of the Promise Keepers, a prominent Christian ministry, doesn't discount supporting The Beaver.
"The man is down and out, has lost everything and did things wrong," Washington says. "But Christian life is all about redeeming people who have blown it. I definitely support and get behind (the film). If there's anything that fits Mel Gibson, considering what he's been through, it's a movie dealing with a person being redeemed."
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