Heaven and Mel (Kindle Single)

by Joe Eszterhas

  On the 24th of January, in a Q. and A. appearance at the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles, Mel described the Maccabee film we were doing as "a western."

  A western? A film about one of the most glorious moments in Jewish history, and he describes it as "a western"? My script wasn't going to be a western. It would be a historical epic. I wasn't going to turn Judah Maccabee, the Jewish Braveheart, into the Lone Ranger or The Man With No Name.

  * * * *

  I DID AN INTERVIEW with The New York Times Magazine, which appeared on February 5th, 2012. I said two things in the interview that I knew Mel Gibson wouldn't like.

  I said I agreed with Oksana Grigorieva that he needed medication and said that I had seen him explode at his house guests.

  And I said in the online version of the article that if I saw anti-Semitism creeping into the project I would take my name off the film and tell the world why.

  My manager, Craig Baumgarten, an old friend, said, "Why did you say those things?"

  I said, "I wanted to let him know my feelings."

  "In The New York Times?"

  "It's not all that easy to get Mel's attention."

  "I think you got it," Craig laughed.

  "I hope so," I said.

  I could see Alan Nierob calling Mel in Malibu and telling him what I'd said to The New York Times.

  I could see Mel hurling his cellphone… running to the humming gizmo in the corner of his living room. I could see him running upstairs and hooking himself up to the enema machine that emitted rancid, black sludge.

  * * * *

  ON FEBRUARY 27th, twelve days late, I finished my script… without suffering any other Satanic attacks. My prayers warded them off. The Holy Spirit warded them off. Jesus Christ warded them off. Our Lady of Guadalupe warded them off. My St. Benedict and St. Michael the Archangel medals warded them off, Judah Maccabee and his Bros and his Pops warded them off. John Lennon warded them off. Walter Cronkite warded them off.

  It was also not impossible that Istvan Eszterhas, the alleged war criminal, warded them off… because I knew that Istvan Eszterhas, wherever the hell he was, loved his son.

  * * * *

  I SENT THE SCRIPT to both Warner Brothers and Mel the next day — on February 28th.

  I got up excited every morning, waiting for a response. I just knew they'd like it. I had passed it around earlier to some people who were close to me, many of them Jewish, and they loved it. They were moved and overwhelmed. Some of them cried at the end. They were moved as Jews — and as human beings.

  One of the people who loved the script was Jeff Berg, the head of International Creative Management, long an industry heavyweight. Jeff called Mark Gooder, the head of Mel's company, ICON. Mark Gooder said to him: "I'm knocked out by it. I just loved it. As far as I'm concerned, we should be in pre-production with this tomorrow. But," he added, "I haven't heard from Mel."

  Craig Baumgarten, my manager, finally lost patience with the lack of a response. He called Warner's president of production, Greg Silverman, in mid-March.

  Silverman said, "It's complicated," but added that he would call me "tomorrow." Silverman didn't call me the next day, but he did the day after.

  He said to me, "I'm sorry, we didn't like the script."

  That's all he was going to say, but I pressed him: "Why not?"

  "It has no feeling and no sense of triumph."

  I was shocked. I told him that the unanimous response of those who'd read my script was that it was "powerful and moving."

  "We don't agree," Silverman said.

  "What about Mel? How does he feel?"

  "I don't want to speak for Mel," he said. "But he'll call you imminently."

  I sensed that Silverman was eager to get off the phone.

  Craig Baumgarten called him back.

  "What was so complicated about that?" Craig asked him.

  Silverman said, "I had to make a lot of calls."

  But I knew that this wasn't Warner Brothers' doing. I knew Mel was the tail that wagged the Warner dog. As Mel had often said to me, they owed him big-time for the fortune that he had made them with the "Lethal Weapon" movies. They had felt badly about having to fire him — at the insistence of the cast — from "Hangover II." And there was even talk in the last few months about another "Lethal Weapon" sequel.

  There was a Hollywood saying, "He fucked me but it didn't hurt." It was a kind of philosophical cousin to "Just because we're fucking doesn't mean we have to kiss."

  Well, Mel Gibson had fucked me… and it hurt.

  * * * *

  BOTH OF THE WARNER EXECUTIVES on the project were Jewish. Craig Baumgarten, himself Jewish, said, "There are a lot of self-hating Jews in this town. It never ceases to amaze me. I keep discovering that in different ways, and I've worked most of my life in Hollywood, but it never ceases to amaze me."

  * * * *

  I WROTE MEL GIBSON A LETTER. I recounted in nine pages everything I'd seen and heard from him. All the repulsive anti-Semitic words and all the ugly threats to kill Oksana.

  I wrote: "I've come to the conclusion that you never had, or have, any intention of making a film about the Maccabees. I believe you announced the film with great fanfare — 'a Jewish Braveheart' in an attempt to deflect continuing charges of anti-Semitism which have dogged you, charges which have crippled your career… I've come to the conclusion that the reason you won't make 'The Maccabees' is the ugliest possible one: You hate Jews."

  And I wrote: "You don't just need medication. You need serious therapy. You need extensive psychiatric counseling. If you don't do that, then sooner or later, you'll hurt someone: most probably you, but also possibly Oksana… Luci… a Jew… or me… or some innocent… who stumbles blithely into your field of vision, your line of fire."

  And I wrote, "I worry for you and those around you. I know there are as many guns around your house as crucifixes."

  I added this: "You know how much work I've done. You know how long I worked. You know how desperately I want to see my script made. I ask you to do the decent thing. Give my script back to me. Let me get it made."

  I also told Mel that my son Nick was so frightened in Costa Rica that at one point he taped Mel's outburst on his iPod.

  I ended by talking about Jesus Christ.

  I wrote, "I believe in Jesus Christ and you say you do too… but Jesus Christ teaches love, not hate."

  And I added: "How did you go from 'The Passion' and (being) the altar boy at your church to screaming obscenities to God into the night?"

  * * * *

  I DIDN'T SEND MEL GIBSON THE LETTER YET, but I rewrote it, mulled it, and polished it.

  I knew one thing for certain: If I sent Mel Gibson the letter I wrote, it would leak to the media. Because everything in Hollywood leaks to the media. Everything!

  So if I sent it I had to be prepared to defend it and talk about it.

  It was guaranteed to be the kind of exhausting, all-encompassing battle that I'd avoided for more than a decade. I loved living a quiet life — which, for a time at least, would end.

  And Naomi, a former public relations executive on Wall Street who specialized in damage control, was worried. She knew the letter would leak too. She knew what a public, media-saturated battle royale it would turn out to be.

  Not just Naomi, but her brother, Jeremy, who had become my brother too. Jeremy was one of the most respected public relations executives in the world. He loved me and he worried. Naomi said, "Mel has a lot of friends in this town. He'll say you're impossible to work with."

  "They already say that," I told her and Jeremy. "But I've worked with three directors twice; no other screenwriter that I know of has done that. If three directors with directors' egos will work with you twice, you can't be a total megalomaniacal prick, right?"

  "We worry," Naomi and my brother said.

  I told them I was no hero, but I'd learned some things at my age. The biggest thing I'd learned was that you had to stand up against things that were
wrong. Otherwise you couldn't look yourself in the mirror… and that was death.

  And I told them what Nick, the son we'd raised with our values, was saying to me: "This is just wrong. You don't treat other human beings this way. You don't say all this horrible stuff. Somebody's got to put an end to it."

  But what Naomi was most worried about, she finally told me, was this: "He has hundreds of millions of dollars and he's already told us he's planning to kill someone."

  * * * *

  I SENT THE LETTER that I hadn't yet sent to Mel Gibson… to Patricia Glaser, who I thought was the toughest and smartest lawyer in America.

  I'd known her for twenty years. I loved and respected her. When she was a little girl in Charleston, West Virginia, Patty wanted to be the center fielder for the New York Yankees. She was married to a man who had the best twinkle in his eye I'd ever seen. He was a tough guy named Sam Mudie, who'd given me a yellow LiveStrong bracelet that I wore every day. He was a former defensive back for the Pittsburgh Steelers.

  Patty read my letter to Mel Gibson and said, "They'll have to go through me, not around me, to get to you."

  I knew Patty's fearsome reputation — not just in Los Angeles — but nationally.

  There was no way that anyone was going to "go through" Patty Glaser.

  * * * *

  "STINKING JEWS!"

  The last time I was in Hungary, my birthplace, I saw this graffiti on the Lanchid, Budapest's Chain Bridge.

  "Budos Zsidok!"

  "Stinking Jews."

  I had heard those Hungarian words a lot when I was a boy growing up on the West Side of Cleveland. But I never heard those words from my father, Istvan Eszterhas, who would become the alleged war criminal.

  Maybe my father didn't say those words to me because he regretted the things that one day he would be accused of. Or maybe he didn't say those words to me because he knew the shit would hit the fan and he'd need me to get him off the hook.

  "Budos Zsidok."

  I wasn't a Jew. I'd had a couple of girlfriends who were Jewish. I'd read a raft of Jewish writers. Many, if not most, of my closest friends had been Jewish. And I'd eaten gloriously at lots of Jewish delis. But what did I really know about Jews?

  Well, I knew they were my brothers and sisters. I knew I liked their charm, orneriness, and chutzpah. I knew they'd been fucked over historically more than any other people on the face of the earth.

  And I knew, because they were my brothers and sisters, that I would stand shoulder to shoulder with them and fight at their side whenever I could.

  Judah Maccabee felt as close to me as Jesus Christ.

  I had taken on anti-Semitism as my own personal battle, but I believed that all of us who weren't Jewish had to do that. Only in that way could we as individuals guarantee that it would happen "never again."

  One of the differences between Mel and me was that he stood up for his father's beliefs, because he loved Hutton so much.

  And I stood up for my father, Istvan Eszterhas, the alleged war criminal, by standing up for Jews… because I loved him so much.

  * * * *

  AND THERE WAS ANOTHER OVERWHELMING REASON to send Mel Gibson my letter, especially because I knew it would leak. It was Oksana Grigorieva.

  He threatened to kill her. He said that he had ex-FBI men who would help him to kill her. He told my son the particularly grotesque and awful way that he was going to kill her. He also talked about putting a baseball bat to the side of her head and putting her in a rose garden. He even said he was going to get rid of her mother.

  And he kept saying, "No one will know. No one will ever know."

  I had seen him as the berserk star of two violent and crazed real-life rampages. They had convinced me that he could hurt someone and make good on his threats. In one of those rampages, he even vandalized his own home.

  And he had also threatened to kill Frank Rich, Harvey Levin, and that unnamed biographer. ("Until I read your letter," Harvey Levin would say to me, "I wasn't scared. Now I am.")

  I didn't know Oksana. I had never met her or spoken to her. But Naomi and I had fallen in love with Luci, and Oksana was Luci's mother. I felt like I had a special responsibility to Oksana … and to Luci.

  When my letter to Mel leaked, as I was sure it would, it would put a kind of protective cordon around Oksana. (It would work the same way for me, too). If Mel did something to her — "no one will know" — the whole world would know!

  My letter would serve to disarm Mel Gibson as far as Oksana was concerned. Medication and psychiatric therapy were necessary to disarm him from hurting anyone else.

  * * * *

  ON THE MORNING OF FEBRUARY 9TH, I woke up and asked Naomi to email my letter to Bjorn Pork.

  Naomi discovered that Bjorn Pork was dead.

  Mel's email address was no longer valid.

  She emailed the letter to Nick Guerra, Mel's assistant.

  A few days later, I got a call from Sharon Waxman, who headed a website called The Wrap. She told me that she had in her possession my letter to Mel Gibson. Naturally, she didn't tell me how she'd gotten it. I confirmed to her that the letter was authentic and that I had written it.

  I knew it would leak, but I was happy it hadn't leaked to Deadline Hollywood, a website that competed with The Wrap. I knew that Alan Nierob was close to Deadline Hollywood. He had spoon-fed the announcement of our Maccabee project to Deadline and told me he was taking it there because "those people are friends of mine."

  The world blew up — as we knew it would.

  * * * *

  THE WRAP POSTED MY LETTER on its website and my phone, usually quiet, assumed a life of its own. So did Naomi's cell. Just about every news source in the world called us.

  I still hadn't heard from Mel… but now I knew I would.

  Alan Nierob, I was sure, was probably over at Mel's house in Malibu along with a woman who was a so-called "Hollywood journalist," but who was also hooked up with Mel on a television project.

  I could see Alan and the "Hollywood journalist" writing Mel's response to me… while Mel himself, wired on caffeine and nicotine, danced around sucking on cigarettes. I suddenly had an image of Mel saying the Exorcist's Prayer over every page of my nine-page letter.

  I could hear Mel saying, "I want him on his knees! I want Eszterhas to come to me on his knees!"

  * * * *

  ALAN NIEROB SENT ME AN EMAIL. It said, "This makes me so sad."

  I sent him one back.

  It said, "Me too."

  * * * *

  WHEN MY LETTER TO MEL WENT VIRAL, thanks to The Wrap, Jeff Berg called me and said:

  "You know what? This town has given Mel Gibson a free pass all these years. When he got arrested on the drunk driving charge, he reached out to me for help. And even though I didn't represent him, I made some calls for him. I'm ashamed of myself. You put an end to the free pass."

  In another call on another day in this scrambled week, Jeff called, and at one point during the conversation, said, "You're the King of the Jews!"

  I sort of liked that, until I remembered that The Other Guy who'd been called "The King of the Jews"… got himself beaten half to death… and then nailed to a tree.

  * * * *

  MEL RELEASED HIS LETTER TO THE MEDIA in response to mine the next day. He called me a liar. While talking about "utter fabrications," he refused to respond to my allegations individually.

  I knew why. Alan Nierob, who'd worked with me and represented me for years, didn't know what — if anything — there was on "Nick's Tape." There were some websites that said they believed "Nick's Tape" was a hoax, that it didn't exist.

  But Alan Nierob knew me better. He knew I didn't bluff. Alan knew, even if everyone around him was doubting it, that there was a tape. But he didn't know what was on it.

  His worst nightmare was this: Mel denies something specifically in my letter and "Nick's Tape" proves that what I have written is true.

  Mel's letter said it was all my script's
fault.

  "Honestly, Joe," Mel wrote, "In twenty-five years of script development I have never seen a more substandard first draft or a more significant waste of time."

  That made me laugh. I envisioned Judah Maccabee brandishing his sword above Mel's head, threatening to cut it off.

  * * * *

  I DECIDED TO DO ONE INTERVIEW. I picked the "Today" show. I decided to do the interview because Mel Gibson had called me a liar.

  The way I was raised, if someone called you a liar, you had to either stand up or run. I had no intention of running.

  I had done the "Today" show often through the years and my interviewers had always been fair.

  I turned every other interview request down. There were forty-two of them before the end of the day. This is what I told the "Today" show. Ann Curry did the interview.

  Curry: What was in your view the most egregious episode that you witnessed?

  Me: The most egregious episode had to do with my fifteen-year-old son Nick who was with us in Costa Rica as Mel's guest. Mel shared with him a pornographic scenario that I can only call sexual butchery — that he fantasized in terms of Oksana. Nick is fifteen years old, and to put this kind of imagery into a fifteen-year-old boy's head, I think, is heinous. I think it's vile and I think it's unforgivable…

  Curry: Why would you stick it out and finish a screenplay with a man who has said such a thing?

  Me: I didn't have anything to do with Mel personally since that incident. We were supposed to go on his plane to his house in Malibu after that incident. I canceled those plans because I didn't want my wife and my son around him. … The script is a different matter. I had a contract to do the script. I was very excited about doing the script, because it's a wonderful story, a truly inspiring story, of glorious Jewish heroism. … And to tell the story of the Maccabees in this glorious way, this triumphant way — I jumped at it. One of the first red lights that I got, that really put me off, is that Mel said to me that… he wanted to do a movie "that would convert the Jews to Christianity." That's not the Maccabees. The Maccabees truly is a Jewish Braveheart. The piece I wrote is a Jewish Braveheart. I'm proud of it…