When it rains it pours for Mel Gibson — and we don’t mean in his use of racist words when talking about Jews or African-Americans. Amid a host of p.r. and legal problems, Gibson has now been dumped by a major Hollywood agent:
Add another log to the Mel Gibson inferno.
A spokesman for the William Morris Endeavor agency confirmed Friday that the embattled actor is no longer a client.
The decision follows the death Saturday of longtime Hollywood agent Ed Limato, who had represented Gibson for more than three decades. Limato brought his roster of A-list talent — including the Academy Award-winning actor — to William Morris when he rejoined the agency in 2007. It merged with Endeavor last year.
Ari Emanuel, co-chief executive of William Morris Endeavor, has made no secret of his disdain for Gibson. In July 2006, Emanuel wrote an open letter urging Hollywood to blacklist the actor for anti-Semitic remarks made during Gibson’s drunk-driving arrest.
“People in the entertainment community, whether Jew or gentile, need to demonstrate that they understand how much is at stake in this by professionally shunning Mel Gibson and refusing to work with him, even if it means a sacrifice to their bottom line,” Emanuel wrote.
Gibson later apologized for his remarks.
Emanuel is said to have tolerated William Morris Endeavor’s representation of Gibson out of respect for Limato. However, when the agent’s illness made it impossible for him to continue to work, the agency reportedly asked Gibson to find other representation.
In a previous, extensive post, I noted how hubris is now destroying Gibson’s career. Read the original post but it is worth stating: once a Hollywood start suffers from image problems that overpower an audience’s ability to suspend belief when they watch a film and believe that the actor IS the character versus saying lines, he or she is on the decline.
And it’s hard to see how Gibson’s career will ever be the same — especially now that the newest twist is that he’s being dumped by a top agency, no matter what the reason is.
Almost all of the press he’s getting is bad press. Even when my original post was re-posted on the Huffington Post if you look at comments there, readers who mistakenly claim I was lumping Tom Cruise in the same, exact category have little to say about Gibson but defend Cruise.
The image that is taking hold for Gibson — accurate or not — is of a Hollywood star whose biggest fans may be those who watch his movies and then rush out for their weekly cross burnings.
And press reports about him offer little that is image enhancing — or even old-image retaining.
There’s the phrase “it’s all good.” With Gibson these days, in terms of image, “it’s all bad.”
For instance, here’s this from Australia’s news.com:
ANTI-Semitic, misogynist and a magnet for bad publicity. Mel Gibson is spiralling from Hollywood’s A-list towards oblivion.
Ten years ago he was riding high on the success of the historical action epic The Patriot and the romantic comedy What Woman Want.
Now, it’s hard to envisage any studio courting Gibson for those sort of roles or audiences embracing his cheeky turns without feeling a shiver down the spine, warranted or not.
The news that police are investigating allegations he abused his ex-girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva, and the steady drip of lurid claims that appear regularly on gossip websites are making the once bankable star box office poison.His last film, Edge of Darkness, was a disappointment, critically and financially, and Hollywood’s number men will be looking closely at how well his next two movies – the quirky comedy Beaver and the more mainstream action movie How I Spent My Summer Vacation – perform before writing his obituary.
It didn’t take much to derail Tom Cruise’s career – just an afternoon jumping up and down on Oprah’s couch; but allegations of domestic violence and of foul-mouthed rants are harder to eradicate from audiences’ minds, especially they think you are a repeat offender.
Just one week after Mel Gibson’s longtime agent Ed Limato passed away, his agency William Morris Endeavor has confirmed that the controversial actor is no longer a client. Deadline Hollywood first reported the news this afternoon. It really comes as no surprise that WME, which is topped by Ari Emanuel, would cease to do business with the former Mad Max. Back in 2006, after Gibson’s well-publicized anti-Semitic tirade was made public, Emanuel pleaded with Hollywood to stop doing business with the man.
I’m in Melbourne, Australia today as the release of latest Mel Gibson tapes has made TV news. It’s a story of the Australian-raised local-boy made-good gone-bad. I feel dirty just listening to the tapes ……These days you hear the word racist bandied about too freely. With Gibson, however, the R-word truly applies. You can always spot a racist because he’ll bring up race on any issue, no matter how unrelated.
The New York Times Media Decoder blog:
Mr. Gibson’s longtime William Morris agent, Ed Limato, died on July 3. Mr. Limato moved to William Morris in 2008 from International Creative Management and brought Mr. Gibson with him. It was always an awkward arrangement: Ari Emanuel, the co-chief executive of William Morris, had taken aim at Mr. Gibson in a HuffingtonPost.com article in 2006 following the actor’s drunken driving arrest and anti-Semitic tirade.
“People in the entertainment community, whether Jew or gentile, need to demonstrate that they understand how much is at stake in this by professionally shunning Mel Gibson and refusing to work with him, even if it means a sacrifice to their bottom line,” Mr. Emanuel wrote.
A spokesman for Mr. Gibson said that “it is way too soon to be discussing agency representation out of respect to Mel’s 30-plus years relationship with longtime agent Ed Limato.”
Radar Online has the audio of the tapes that got him in the most recent trouble HERE (WARNING: VERY adult language).
Will anyone sympathize with him when they hear the tape?
Will people feel negative coverage is overlown?
Or not?
UPDATE: And more reaction is coming in — mostly regarding the tape. To wit:
—Mediaite:
Last week, RadarOnline reported the existence of audiotapes that feature Mel Gibson making offensive and racist rants towards his ex-girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva. One week later, the first tape has been published and is somehow worse than may have been originally reported….It is difficult to imagine how Mel Gibson will come back to have a fruitful and successful acting career now that the audio is out there.
—A MUST read in full post at Deadline Hollywood. Here are just a few parts of it:
4:20 PM UPDATE: I’ve just learned that WME Entertainment actually fired Mel Gibson the day before his longtime Hollywood agent Ed Limato’s death last weekend. I’m told wme-new-logo-final smallerwhat happened is that the news media reported last week there was a tape of Mel Gibson making a racial slur. And last Friday, WME board member Ari Emanuel “woke up at 3 AM and emailed his partner Patrick Whitesell that ‘we can’t represent a guy who said the N-word’.” So the agency dumped Mel Gibson on July 2nd, and the next day, on July 3rd, his agent Limato died…..
3 PM: “There is no way, with Ed Limato not here, that Mel Gibson would be a client of this company, ” an insider just told me. ..
….The question since this latest scandal is whether Gibson’s Hollywood career will be affected. Now those questions will multiply tenfold because WME has dropped him. Still, Gibson, the director of the worldwide biggest independent film ever The Passion Of The Christ, has a very active motion picture career at present. He stars in a movie called The Beaver directed by Jodie Foster which is supposed by distributed by Summit Entertainment. And he’s filming a movie titled, How I Spent My Summer Vacation, about a career criminal brutally imprisoned in Mexico and the 9-year-old boy who helps keep him alive. Gibson also has been talking about directing a Viking epic project as well as reteaming with Lethal Weapon scribe Shane Black in Cold Warrior. And, of course, Gibson also is a movie mogul as the co-owner of Icon Productions.
MY PREDICTION: Gibson can still release movies but there is a large chunk of the country (like those who were bar mitzvahed or whose skin isn’t white) who may be disinclined to spend money on his productions. Production and distribution is the name of the game and he can still (presumably) do that. Getting people into theaters to get the kind of box office he had before is another matter.
And the alleged revelations keep coming……….
UPDATE II: Suggestion for Mel Gibson: Perhaps your next movie should be titled “The Passion of the Hubris…”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.