Mel Gibson SIGNS On

By: SCOTT COLLURA
Date: Thursday, August 01, 2002

Mel Gibson has been a Hollywood superstar for two decades now, with films like the MAD MAX series, the LETHAL WEAPON picture, and his Academy Award winning BRAVEHEART assuming a special place in the film-going audience's consciousness. His newest picture, teaming up with THE SIXTH SENSE director M. Night Shyamalan, is SIGNS, a tale (of a troubled family who happen to be confronted with an alien invasion) that is sure to have genre fansand mainstream audiences as welltalking, not to mention looking for crop circles in their backyards.



Gibson stars as Graham Hess, a recently widowed father of two and former preacher who has lost his faith after the accidental death of his wife. Raising his children (Rory Culkin and Abigail Breslin) with the help of his brother Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix) on the family farm, Graham's world begins to unravel even further when a mysterious series of crop circles appear on his land. Soon, similar phenomena begin to pop up in farms around the world, and the notion that some kind of extra-terrestrial race has visited the Earth becomes more and more real. If so, what do these aliens have planned for mankind?

Of course, being an M. Night Shyamalan film, SIGNS has its fair share of otherworldly happenings. But as far as Gibson is concerned, the heart of the film is in his character's loss of faith after his wife's death.

"I didn't think that it mattered [what religion he was]," says Gibson. "The main question was that he was a guy whose main reason for being was to expound the faith or [have] faith in something greater than ourselves, and he'd lost that faith. So, what was his reason? He was faced with quite a dilemma and... the machinations of the story put him into kind of [a] seedbed where he's really into a corner. He's backed up against a wall and he's got nowhere else to go. So, either he gets faith fast or he crashes and burns."

Gibson, who himself is a devout Catholic, admits that everyone has a moment in their life when they are confronted with a crisis of faitheven movie stars.

"I think that during the course of one's life, one is presented with circumstances that can shake [one's faith]," he says. "I don't think that I've ever lost it. See, basically, I'm too scared, too scared about getting a lightening bolt up my posterior. But yeah, I can understand how people do."



Aside from the philosophical and spiritual questions at the center of SIGNS, the film is also a good old-fashioned thriller. Like THE SIXTH SENSE before it, SIGNS is filled with thrills, chills and scares. Gibson, who says he enjoyed working on these scarier aspects of the picture, also acknowledges that he has his own fears in real lifeeven if they're not of the alien invasion variety.

"What frightens me? I think that fear of the unknown," he says. "It's the unknown thing where the possibilities in your imagination can blow up to any horror and your imaginations can be pretty horrifying, and knowledge dispels fear. So, I think that when you come up against something that you're not quite sure about or don't know fully... when you're in the middle of [such] an experience, it's not so much fear, it's the expectation of what might happen that you're fearful of. That's usually the way that stuff works. I've been in situations where I thought, 'Man, I'd be terrified if that ever happened.' But when it does happen, you're not terrified, you're just reacting. It's really the expectations that are scary."

Gibson is less prone to admit to a belief in "little green men" or other alien invaders though. He does maintain that there are unexplainable phenomena that exist in the world, but he has no answer for such eventslike crop circles, for exampleanymore than the rest of us do.

"I don't know if I believe in little green men coming out of the woodwork to sort of eat you or befriend you," says Gibson. "Maybe [the] universe is a better place. I do believe in a realm outside of our own that's pretty difficult to explain. I think that probably everyone in [this] room has had an experience or more than one where, you know, it's hard to explain exactly what it is, but it's otherworldly somehow."



In another sense of the word, Gibson experienced the "otherworldly" presence of director Shyamalan as soon as the two teamed up for SIGNS. The actor calls the young director "brilliant" and found him a very interesting craftsman to work withand this is coming from the guy who won an Oscar for his direction on BRAVEHEART! Additionally, Gibson maintains that there was never any clash of egos or division between the two powerhouse talents during the production of the film.

"I mean, to actually cook the idea up and write it so eloquently and craft it so wonderfully in a script," he says, "and then to execute [it] with absolute certainty and precision, left me very little room to ever have any kind of dispute or go to loggerheads [with him]. It never happened, as I was just amazed at what he was doing. We did used to talk about stuff. It's really interesting talking to him and getting his observations on things, and I'd throw my two cents in and we'd have disagreements about the future of digital and you know... all that kind of stuff, and that was interesting."

Gibson is also enthusiastic when talking about what Shyamalan brings to the table as a director.

"He's kind of like the truth police," continues Gibson. "From an actor's perspective it's great because he'll bust you if he's not getting something truthful all the time and that's fantastic. He's a completely objective pair of eyes out there, watching everything down to the minutiae. He has a very clear and strong vision and has a way of communicating to you his vision that is quite understandable and you pick up on it really fast, and then there is this other aspect to him that's almost indefinable. There's almost an other worldliness to it [that's] oddly spiritual. Films do... three things if they're great. They entertain, they educate, and they take you to a higher plane of existence or a kind of spirituality of reaching outside of your own realm. And I believe that he's done that with this film."



And what about those other films that have been such an important part of Gibson's career, MAD MAX and LETHAL WEAPON? Fans have been hoping to hear about a fourth sequel to MAD MAX since the last film, BEYOND THUNDERDOME, was released in 1985 (!). Rumors have been flying of another post-apocalyptic outing since then, but Gibson says that's all there is to it at the moment. Rumors.

"I don't know. I've heard the same rumors. You didn't happen to find out where they were shooting it, did you?" laughs Gibson. "I hear that there is a lot of cash involved. I love working with [director] George [Miller]. I think that he's a brilliant man, and he's one of those guys that I worked with that I'll never forget. I learned so much from him and he's kind of like a filmic Einstein. He's the mathematician with a camera, and I learned a great deal from him. So, I'd work with him anywhere even if he wanted to do a story about a guy shaving, and it may happen. I have heard these rumors."

And what about LETHAL WEAPON 5? Those sequel prospects sound even more dim.

"I think that we buried Riggs and Murtaugh," he concludes. "I think that they're toes up. I think that they've turned in their badges and they have pennies on their eyes."

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