The release of a tape taken of Mel Gibson in Costa Rica by the son of screenwriter Joe Eszterhas has prompted a threat of a defamation lawsuit by the actor. Not only did Eszterhas release the tape secretly made by his son during an argument with Gibson, he accused Gibson of not wanting to proceed with the film “The Maccabees” because he hates Jews.
The tirade by Gibson was taped on an iPhone by Eszterhas ‘ 15-year-old son Nick. On the tape, Gibson, 52, is upset that Eszterhas has not moved more quickly on the script for the movie, which tells the story Jewish heroes: “Why don’t I have a first draft of ‘The Maccabees’? What the f**k have you been doing?” Gibson then goes further in attacking Oksana Grigorieva, his ex-girlfriend and mother of his young daughter: “I am earning money for a filthy little c**ksucker who takes advantage of me!”
On its face, it is a bit untoward for a guest to record a host secretly in their home. However, Eszterhas insisted that he released the tape because “Gibson called me a liar. And I also have some reason to believe he’s creating a PR blitz questioning my truthfulness.” While Eszterhas had agreed to do the film with Gibson, he denounced Gibson for “hating Jews” and using “The Maccabees” film project “to deflect continuing charges of anti-Semitism which have dogged you, charges which have crippled your career.” He publicly stated in a letter that “I’ve come to the conclusion that the reason you won’t make ‘The Maccabees’ is the ugliest possible one. You hate Jews.”
A privacy and defamation action would face challenges. Gibson’s claim of an expectation of privacy or that his comments were a protected private fact are undermined by his making the comments to third parties. There was not presumably agreement that such comments would be kept private by the guests.
On defamation, Gibson would collide with the public figure standard requiring a higher level of proof from celebrity to established defamation. The public figure standard was established in Curtis Publishing v. Butts (1967). The case involved a March 23, 1963 edition of The Saturday Evening Post alleging that former University of Georgia football coach Wallace Butts conspired with University of Alabama coach Paul “Bear” Bryant to fix a 1962 football game in Alabama’s favor. In a 5-4 decision, Chief Justice Warren wrote a concurrence that extended the ruling in New York Times v. Sullivan on public officials to public figures. He found the same reasons for applying the higher standard to public officials as present in cases involving public figures:
[I]t is plain that, although they are not subject to the restraints of the political process, “public figures,” like “public officials,” often play an influential role in ordering society. And surely, as a class, these “public figures” have as ready access as “public officials” to mass media of communication, both to influence policy and to counter criticism of their views and activities. Our citizenry has a legitimate and substantial interest in the conduct of such persons, and freedom of the press to engage in uninhibited debate about their involvement in public issues and events is as crucial as it is in the case of “public officials.” The fact that they are not amenable to the restraints of the political process only underscores the legitimate and substantial nature of the interest, since it means that public opinion may be the only instrument by which society can attempt to influence their conduct.
Gibson would need to show actual malice or a reckless disregard of the truth. He would also face truth as a defense with a likely successful effort to admit his prior anti-semitic ravings.
There is the possibility that the taping violated Costa Rican law, but that would involve pursuing a young boy for a criminal charge — not exactly good optics.
For these reasons, this is one dispute that may be better handled outside of court.
So I got up this morning, and thought I had the worst dream. Gene, you were there, and AY, and someone called NAY, and SwM, you all were there.
I woke up, and “CRIKEY!” it wasn’t a dream after all. I wish everyone a good weekend; blow off some steam in the yard, on the bike, on the tesnnis court, whatever. Give yourselves a rest. Everyone, and I mean EH-VER-EE-WUN, has earned it.
And Mel, love him or hate him, love his work or hate his work, Ditto for Jane or fox terriers. Their lives will go on as if were weren’t there, especially those terriers, minds of their own, and possessed by the Devil I tell you.
Bless you all, especially those I’ve disagreed with. Interesting how we can agree on somethings, and be disagreeable on others. We’re human beings.
I’m not much into conspiracy theories, but if I were, I’d wonder if the good prof was actually Commander FUBAR from the planet Yelrut using us as an analytical experiment in social interaction??
Let’s live to fight another day!
Bob
Gene,
I fully support your right to be a guest Blogger….. As I did then and do now…. I can separate personal feelings from facts….. You as a guest writer and blogger have a higher duty of civility on this blog….. Your name calling of individual bloggers is really inappropriate…..
I do not think that you should be allowed access to people’s private information…… I think the guest writers should only be allowed to write, not edit others posts, unless it is equally enforced…… And then only if the professor says so…..
Gene,
I am not surprised…… You deleted the post….. If verifiable truth is an issue on this site then maybe it should be renamed jonathanturleyredacted.Org…….
I recounted the emails that you sent to the professor and his response. They total three. If my email outbox is correct, I sent one at your request. If you recall, there were numerous folks that did not want you as a guest Blogger because you’d have access to private personal information…… If I recall, FFLEO was one of them…… I think he quit coming here because of his disagreement with your censorship of a guy by the name of martin this last summer….
There is nothing revealed here that cannot be proved…..please look at your post as a guest writer……
Now, go back to ignoring my posts…..
Sell your drama to somebody interested.
Gene,
Do you need a copy of an email addressed to the professor? How soon do you forget… Maybe that’s your problem, maybe you’re the one having the break down….. But it is what it is….. You see what you want…. Now that’s your reality…..famous words…. Piss Off….
But also, Mel does a LOT of unpublicized work for charities. That means not just throwing cash at the problem but personally participating, especially with developmentally ill kids who have NO idea who he is. He’s just doing it as a person. There’s two sides to every story.
In 1978, a movie about the Vietnam War, Coming Home, garnered eight academy award nominations and won three — including best actress (Jane Fonda) and best actor (John Voight).
In 2002, Mel Gibson starred in a movie about Vietnam, We were Soldiers. I don’t think it garnered a single academy award in any category.
That doesn’t mean that Mel Gibson did an especially bad job of acting, but rather, that Jane Fonda did an exceptionally good job of it. She often does.
I didn’t see either movie, because I saw all that I wanted to see of Vietnam and never want to see any more of it ever again. Subsequent to my own peripheral part in the tragic farce, I went on to read a great deal about the War and its origins in cynical French colonialism and America’s hysterical anti-communism — neither of which held any interest for the Vietnamese. I once heard Oliver Stone (a Vietnam Veteran) say that he made three movies about Vietnam and not a one of them had the slightest impact on maniacal American militarism. Good acting or film making aside, the government and electorate of America do not seem disposed to learn anything of value from war. For them, war has long since become no more real than the moving images and background music coming at them from off of a motion picture or television screen. After the popcorn, back to whatever else …
President George W. Bush and his Rasputin Vice President Dick Cheney, on the other hand, just had to demonstrate to the entire world that they didn’t give a shit about what had happened to so many of us Vietnam Veterans. They couldn’t wait to initiate two more of these needless debacles for the vicarious enjoyment of REMFs like themselves. They even staged their own b-list productions of “Top Gun” Dubya landing on an aircraft carrier or serving fake plastic turkey to the troops on Thanksgiving in Iraq. Can’t blame Mel Gibson or Jane Fonda for that consummate cinema crap. At any rate, when Deputy Dubya finally got around to visiting North Vietnam on November 17, 2006, I couldn’t help commenting on the idiotic irony of it all with Hanoi Haiku.
So true, Noah. And non-bloggers as well. Or in the words of Devo: “Freedom of Choice, it’s what you want, Freedom from Choice, it’s what you got.” Thinking is easy when you let someone else do it for you.
I think that many bloggers could name their dog Matic.
Gyges,
The Clash do indeed rock.
************
AY,
Your help? That’s pretty funny. What’s not funny is you are apparently having some kind of break down. Over the last few weeks you’ve become increasingly paranoid and you see forces aligned against you that simply don’t exist. I may not be your friend anymore, but that was your doing. My indifference doesn’t include wishing you ill. Seek help.
You are a bunch of pussies in here. You DON’T tape a man in his own HOME and make it public under ANY circumstances.
True that
I absolutely love Jane Fonda, one of America’s finest actresses and one who got America’s War on Southeast Asia absolutely correct. — like millions of us worldwide. Many of us Vietnam Vets considered her one of the great babes of all time in Barbarella, and I can still remember the public outrage that ensued when the TV networks cut into a re-run of Cat Ballou to show yet another — like the second — astronaut voyage to the moon.
Anyone who looks at an actor or actress onscreen and sees the political demon of their worst anal fetishes doesn’t know how to watch or evaluate films. Personally, I can watch some of Mel Gibson’s films because he makes his character come to life onscreen. In films where he doesn’t do this so well, I criticize his poor acting, or the lousy script, or incompetent directing, with no concerns whatsoever for his political or religious or marital views.
For Jane Fonda, though, I love both her ability as an actress and her anti-war political views, although I keep them distinct from one another and evaluate each according to its separate merits.
As for the North Vietnamese and NLF forces who never attacked America, they had every right to shoot down American planes that violated their airspace raining death and destruction down upon them. Americans killed something like three million Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians for no defensible reason whatsoever, but few prominent Americans other than Jane Fonda had the nerve to speak out against that bloody barbarism when it really counted. Again, nothing to do with her acting, but kudos for getting it right about needless war and inspiring others to eventually get it right as well.
I don’t know if Mel Gibson has a case for defamation here, but even if he does, a jury could still do the QBVII thing and award him damages in the amount of a penny, “the lowest coin in the realm.” Sometimes even the law can see to it that people get a little of what they want and a lot of what they deserve.
Blouise is a wonderful person who should be Queen of the World!
Malisha:
The Wikipedia definition sums it up nicely:
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockpuppet_%28Internet%29
OK, what’s a sock puppet?
OK, aside from that, I’m going to relay a story I got second-hand from an Orthodox Jew before she was Orthodox, and I’m going to tell it because there may be something in it.
Apparently the Chanukah story came from a time when there was a big political struggle going on. Jews who were “Hellenized” were infighting with the Jews who were xenophobic (a characteristic tendency of both the Greeks and the Jews, probably until present times, but definitely then). The anti-Hellenized Jews were basically led, politically, by the Maccabees. They decided that the Hellenized Jews were unfit, and wouldn’t let them get into the Temple or make their sacrifices. The Hellenized Jews appealed to Antiochus for back-up and he gave it. So the two groups squared off against each other with the Greek forces backing up the more religiously “liberal” Hellenized Jews. And the Maccabees won.
ANyway, that’s what I heard.
Now as to Mel Gibson, CHECK on the torture porn verdict of “THE PASSION.” Absolutely disgusting to anybody who can enjoy sex without watching somebody get hurt and killed. Ugh. I can’t say enough bad about it except, of course, that it appeared to have been written by a disturbed high school student who needed to be on meds.
But the funniest thing about Mel is that he can’t seem to keep his big mouth shut. EVERYBODY RECORDS HIM. This is not the first damn time. Why can’t he learn to shut up at times when it is pretty obvious that the tape is running? He’s so dumb, so crazy, so creepy, so so so so so.
And what’s Jane Fonda got to do with it?
Yeah, and what’s a sock puppet?
AY,
I’m not an author. If you’re talking about me, I’m sorry for the offence.
You know who is or is not posting under a variation of my nom de plume…. Would I expect a man that says he wants civility on this blog to check into such a thing? Apparently, these concepts are transitory for you at best….. Better get back to that book you’re writing….hopefully you can…..
Gene,
What part of piss off did you miss? Apparently you don’t have the ability to comprehend ….. You stuck your nose in again where it was not asked for or appreciated….. I thanked you and you responded in your most usual snotty child like attention seeking tantrum….response….. See it over and over…
New comers are in awe…..you asked for my help in becoming a guest Blogger….. You were not a choice….i went to bat for you…. As well as some others…. It ran a few other regular posters off….
Then came the other issues…… Yes I asked for your assistants in deleting derogatory information placed out there not by me….. Who created that drama? Like I said, piss off…. Good luck……
The night is still young… You have bron still to abuse….. I’m going back to bed…..