Mel Gibson: The Holocaust Is Horse (Bleep)

“The sun is setting in Malibu and Mel and I are out on the patio talking about Alan Nierob, my former publicity agent and Mel’s present one, a man both of us view as a friend. ‘Do you know his dad is a Holocaust survivor?’ I ask Mel. He looks at me with that flinty eye. ‘The Holocaust is mostly a lot of horsesh*t,’ he says. I know he’s goading me. He knows how I feel about the Holocaust…

“’They’re just a bunch of oven dodgers,’ he smiles. It is an actorly smile, the kind of smile Robert Mitchum did so well in The Night of the Hunter.”

“’Says to me, I’ve tried therapy and it doesn’t work.’ He says to Naomi, ‘I have so much rage and no one can tell me where it comes from.’ Naomi says, ‘Did your dad (Hutton) get that angry?’ Mel says, ‘No. Hutton could work up some steam, but nothing like me.’ Naomi says, ‘Did your brothers?’ Mel grins and says, Oh, yeah.’”

Eszterhas also writes about Mel’s extremist Catholic views.

“Mel lit up another Winston as soon as he finished the first one, and I saw now that he was a chain smoker, just like I had been for so many years. This time he made less of an effort to blow the smoke out the door. I started to cough a little bit and cleared my throat. ‘Geez, I’m sorry,’ Mel said. ‘It’s okay,’ I said, and Mel kept smoking. ‘How old is your priest?’ Mel asked. ‘In his forties somewhere. He’s not really a priest then.’ I didn’t understand. ‘Any priest who came after Vatican II in the Sixties isn’t a real priest,’ Mel said. I still didn’t understand. ‘That’s when the church got ruined,’ he said. ‘Read Bella Dodd.  Who’s Bella Dodd? I’d never heard of Bella Dodd. She’s a former Commie who testified about the Commies taking over the Catholic Church.’”