An action movie set in the dying days of the Maya civilization, the 15th century, “Apocalypto” was made in the Yucatec dialect without a single recognizable actor, and shot in the jungles of Mexico, where heavy rains slowed production and postponed its planned release from this summer.
Even for him, the oddball quotient is high. Gibson’s new film, “Apocalypto,” was already one of the most talked-about of the season, largely because of the Crazy Mel factor. “Mel’s crazy, but I like him,” a name-dropping billionaire says in Bruce Wagner’s latest Hollywood novel, “Memorial” (released this month but written pre-meltdown).Īnd Mr. Mel Gibson is “crazy, dude,” one South Park kid tells another. A 2004 episode of “South Park” about “The Passion of the Christ” depicts him as a looney-tunes guy bouncing off the walls in his underwear and whooping. THE Myth of Crazy Mel began seeping out of Hollywood long before he was arrested for drunken driving six weeks ago and burst out with the ugly, anti-Semitic comments that have put him in extreme damage-control mode.