Movies

If somehow you have managed to stay under your rock for the past few days and have neither read nor heard the hubbub about Mel Gibson, let me fill you in. Late last week Mr. Gibson was arrested for Driving Under the Influence. The story starts out as our prying into the private affairs of a celebrity, but gets a little meatier when the arresting officer speaks. The hand-written statement (.pdf) from the officer details abusive and anti-semitic language from Mr. Gibson.

The backlash has been ugly and VERY public. Apparently when you tell your arresting officer that Jews are "responsible for all the wars in the world" you cause a scene. I know I am the last person on the internet to write about the incident, and all of the details are known. I will stop there and move on to Rob Schneider's reaction.

Schneider Slams Gibson
Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo star Rob Schneider is the first actor to publicly announce he will never work with Mel Gibson due to the anti-Semitic remarks he made when he was arrested last Friday. Schneider took out an ad in Hollywood trade paper Variety slamming the star for his behavior in "An Open Letter to the Hollywood Community." The ad appeared yesterday and said, "I, Rob Schneider, a 1/2 Jew, pledge from this day forth to never work with Mel Gibson-actor-director-producer-and anti-Semite." Schneider then went on to say even if he were offered the lead role in Passion Of The Christ 2 or a "juicy voice-over role in his new flick Apocalypto and spoke ancient Mayan" he would still turn them down. He also repeatedly praised Hollywood talent manager Bernie Brillstein for publicly saying he would refuse to work with Gibson because "I just don't like bigots." The actor continued by saying he had recently directed a film called Big Stan in which there was a part for a Nazi gang leader "which apparently Mel would be perfect for." Schneider said he would still not cast Gibson in that role and ended the letter by saying, "Of course that would only be after I talked with my financial backers. Some of whom share Mr. Gibson's hankering for a good bottle of tequila. Because, after all...I don't get to call all the shots." -IMDb

So the way I have it figured, comedic actor Rob Schneider wanted to remind us all that he is alive and available for bit parts in any Happy Madison films that may be coming out in the near future. He could not have been serious about his verbal flogging of Mr. Gibson because no one knows better than he does that he does not now, nor has he ever had a snow ball's chance in hell at gracing the silver screen along side Mel Gibson. So I applaud Mr. Schneider's successful attempt to get his name in the news.

Hey, when are they going to do a new season of "Men Behaving Badly?" I loved that show. And yes... I do own a copy of Deuce Bigalow.