{"id":1535,"date":"2025-08-16T04:40:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-16T04:40:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/1535\/"},"modified":"2025-08-16T04:40:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-16T04:40:13","slug":"ive-still-got-the-irish-passport-i-think-i-understand-the-quirky-nature-of-the-irish-mind-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/1535\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I\u2019ve still got the Irish passport… I think I understand the quirky nature of the Irish mind\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Colourful banners flutter over the road. An enormous tent rises beneath a late-summer sun. Some fellow in horned helmet and sheepskin tabard is (inexplicably) striding the grassy divisions. It\u2019s like something from Game of Thrones. Or Mel Gibson<\/a>\u2019s Braveheart.<\/p>\n

Gibson has travelled to the annual King John Summer Prom Festival<\/a> in Trim<\/a>, Co Meath<\/a>, for the 30th anniversary of that legendary historical drama. It was in neighbouring fields and castles, during the first stirrings of the Celtic Tiger, that he recreated the bloody rise of the Scottish rebel William Wallace. This afternoon he will enjoy a concert of movie music before going on to a screening of the Oscar-winning film<\/a>. Right now he is in a small satellite tent to speak with The Irish Times. How did they lure him here?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was no biggie,\u201d he says amiably.<\/p>\n

David O\u2019Hara, the famously gruff Scottish actor, seems to have sealed the deal. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019d done one at 20 years. They did one at 25. Then O\u2019Hara was on the phone, saying, \u2018Oh, come on!\u2019 He insisted long and hard. He said, \u2018It\u2019s the last one they\u2019re doing!\u2019 I thought, okay. And I haven\u2019t seen it for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a sense he is coming home. Thanks to a mum born in Longford, he has previously travelled under an Irish passport. Is that still so?<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve still got the passport,\u201d he confirms. \u201cI come here now and then. My mother, when I was young \u2013 she educated me about the place. I think it\u2019s just in your blood somehow. You end up coming back. I think I understand the quirky nature of the mind. Because my mother was an axe murderer.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m pretty sure he\u2019s joking about his mother being any kind of murderer. Gibson, who is what we shall call a \u201ccontroversial character\u201d, is that sort of black-belt conversationalist. Speaking in a voice that now betrays little of his teenage Australian years, he thunders through anecdotes the way juggernauts thunder around bends.<\/p>\n

You get some sense how the younger Gibson might have talked financiers into bankrolling a film about the man, once little known outside his native land, who led the First War of Scottish Independence, in the 13th century. Legend has it that Morgan O\u2019Sullivan<\/a>, the tireless Irish producer, and Michael D Higgins<\/a>, then minister for arts, culture and the Gaeltacht, lured the production across the Irish Sea.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were great,\u201d Gibson says. \u201cWe were in Scotland, and the filming was going great. We got tremendous footage in Scotland \u2013 many scenes there. But we realised pretty quickly that the ground was not horse-friendly. It\u2019s okay, but it\u2019s pretty rocky.\u201d<\/p>\n

They were also short of bodies.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we got in touch with Michael D, and we met Morgan through that. They just welcomed us with open arms, and they made it easy for us. They were able to supply the Army Reserve as extras \u2013 because we needed 2,000 guys. And we had a racetrack right there near the Curragh. They had the barracks on the other side. These guys could walk to work. Ha ha!\u201d<\/p>\n

A lot of time has intervened. In 1995, Gibson was still riding the first waves of international stardom. Breakthrough had come with Mad Max II, George Miller\u2019s Aussie automotive apocalypse, a little over a decade earlier. Peter Weir\u2019s The Year of Living Dangerously suggested he might have currency beyond the . The first Lethal Weapon film, in 1987, confirmed his growing status. Here was a leading man of the old school.<\/p>\n

\"MelMel Gibson as William Wallace in a scene from Braveheart, shot in 1995. Photograph: 20th Century-Fox\/Getty <\/p>\n

His 21st century has been more troubled. There was much controversy around The Passion of the Christ, in 2004, but that insanely bloody retelling of Jesus\u2019s death made a fortune. As we speak, he is working on a much-delayed two-part follow-up on the resurrection.<\/p>\n

In 2006, detained for driving under the influence, he allegedly threw a string of anti-Semitic abuse at the arresting officer. Two apologies were issued through his publicist.<\/a> There was further trouble. In 2011 he pleaded no contest to a misdemeanour charge of battering Oksana Grigorieva<\/a>, his former girlfriend, in a deal that allowed him to escape jail and evade liability under civil litigation.<\/p>\n

\n

There\u2019s a Tom Waits song called Big in Japan. Remember that? \u2018I\u2019m big in Japan!\u2019 Ha ha! The first Mad Max film was huge in Japan. It was just giant<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Mel Gibson<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Meanwhile, it was becoming clear that his politics were not those of famously liberal Hollywood. He and his fellow conservatives Sylvester Stallone and Jon Voight are currently serving as Donald Trump\u2019s \u201cspecial ambassadors\u201d to Hollywood<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 2016, Shane Black, writer of Lethal Weapon, argued that the business had turned its back on Gibson.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he\u2019s essentially been blacklisted in the industry,\u201d Black told Business Insider. \u201cI think people don\u2019t want to work with him.\u201d<\/p>\n

How are relations with Hollywood? Has the industry welcomed him back?<\/p>\n

\u201cYeaeaeah, that\u2019s \u2026 Yeah, it\u2019s okay. I mean, what\u2019s Hollywood? Where is it?\u201d Gibson says uncertainly.<\/p>\n

\"MelMel Gibson at the King John Summer Prom Festival in Trim, Co Meath. Photograph: Bryan O\u2019Brien\/The Irish Times <\/p>\n

Shortly after Black gave that interview, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences put six Oscar nominations in the direction of Gibson\u2019s war flick Hacksaw Ridge<\/a>. That felt like the academy reopening the door to him.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, for Hacksaw. I was surprised by that,\u201d he says. \u201cBut the industry\u2019s gone through a major change. It used to be the Mecca of filmdom. Now it\u2019s not.\u201d<\/p>\n

We tend to think of Gibson as being Australian. But he was born in New York and lived there until he was 12, when the family relocated to Sydney. As an acting student, he shared lead roles in Romeo and Juliet with Judy Davis. A few years later he was doing Waiting for Godot opposite Geoffrey Rush. In 1979, when he shot the first Mad Max for George Miller, did either man have any idea it would ultimately lead to huge Hollywood careers?<\/p>\n

\"MelMel Gibson on the set of Mad Max, written and directed by Australian George Miller. Photograph: Sunset Boulevard\/Corbis\/Getty <\/p>\n

\u201cNo, no idea at all,\u201d he says, laughing. \u201cIt ended up in Hollywood. There\u2019s a Tom Waits song called Big in Japan. Remember that? \u2018I\u2019m big in Japan!\u2019 Ha ha! The first Mad Max film was huge in Japan. It was just giant.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I saw it in Ireland, they had replaced Gibson\u2019s then strongly Australian voice with that of an American actor.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, we had some Montana cowboy doing my voice,\u201d he says. \u201cDubbing is always funny. Later on they re-released it with our own voices. I think I liked it better with the dub. Ha ha! No, no one saw that coming. George was a doctor. His ambulance driver was the guy who was, like, \u2018I could produce this!\u2019 They got a few friends together who owned pharmacies and cobbled together about $300,000. It did some business. Then it got serious with the second one.\u201d<\/p>\n

The industry is now awash with Australian actors: Russell Crowe, Margot Robbie, Cate Blanchett \u2013 and on and on. That was not so then. Mind you, as we\u2019ve established, Gibson is from a lot of places. He\u2019s Irish. He\u2019s American. He\u2019s Australian. Does he have trouble identifying his nationality?<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I do,\u201d he says. \u201cI think it\u2019s just an imprint that we have from generations back. It\u2019s imprinted on you. And you don\u2019t know where it\u2019s from. It\u2019s that feeling like you\u2019ve been here before. But I don\u2019t think that\u2019s what it is. I think we are the sum of everything that made us.\u201d<\/p>\n

At any rate, Braveheart confirmed Gibson as both an actor and director of note. The clattering epic was a surprise best-picture winner at the Oscars. My memory is that Ron Howard\u2019s Apollo 13 was the favourite, but Gibson, who also took best director, saw it differently.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it was that other film that was going to scoop everything,\u201d he says. \u201cAng Lee did that film \u2026 umm \u2026 Sense and Sensibility. They were doing all right everywhere. And I thought, oh, you know, it\u2019s their year. So I was actually kind of surprised that we got it. But, you know, you could see the blood, sweat and tears in it. That was hard film-making.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Braveheart was an unlikely success, the triumph of The Passion of the Christ beggared belief. Spoken in Aramaic, taking in the most extreme vision of the crucifixion yet staged<\/a>, the picture, which Gibson, a devout Christian, financed himself, ended up as the highest-grossing independent film of all time. It has taken him more than 20 years to follow up with The Resurrection of the Christ. Were the money men, after the success of The Passion, not baying to get on board a sequel (if we can call it that)?<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Passion of the Christ: director Mel Gibson speaks to Jim Caviezel on the set of his 2004 film. Photograph: Philippe Antonello\/Icon Distribution <\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people wanted to be involved,\u201d Gibson says. \u201cBut they would come to the table and then get cold feet. It was a much bigger production. I financed the first one myself. No one else would. And then I couldn\u2019t even get a major distributor. I got a little distribution company. They\u2019d done a couple of things before. They had a toothless dog, a fax machine and a phone.\u201d<\/p>\n

We know The Resurrection of the Christ is in two parts. We know Lionsgate is distributing. Part One arrives on March 26th, 2027 \u2013 that\u2019s Good Friday. Part Two will be with us May 6th, 2027. (Full marks if you worked out that that is Ascension Day.) But we don\u2019t know what the film is truly about. Jesus\u2019s experiences in the days after the resurrection have not been much examined in popular culture.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think it contradicts any of the Gospels,\u201d Gibson says. \u201cBut it does juxtapose some of the stories. It\u2019s not linear. And it\u2019s more than one film. It talks about things that aren\u2019t really spoken about in the Gospels. What bed was Peter hiding under? What was Matthew thinking? What was John doing? I tried to explore that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first film\u2019s success was, rightly or wrongly, attributed to Christians voting with their wallets. Does Gibson expect the new films to register beyond faith audiences?<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what I\u2019m trying to do,\u201d he says. \u201cWhat I want to do is just show them something they\u2019ll maybe ask a bunch of questions about. Because there are things in it that are pretty, pretty out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

The world can consider itself warned. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Colourful banners flutter over the road. An enormous tent rises beneath a late-summer sun. Some fellow in horned…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[268],"tags":[434,18,117,19,17,1873,1871,1874,1875,1872],"class_list":{"0":"post-1535","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-meath","14":"tag-mel-gibson","15":"tag-michael-d-higgins","16":"tag-morgan-o-sullivan","17":"tag-trim"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}