UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, November 6.1996
5B
From a cup of joe to Mad Max
Mel Gibson sees rise to stardom in terms of coffee
By John Rogers Associated Press writer
NEW YORK — When Mel Gibson looks back on his road to superstardom, the first thing that comes to his mind is coffee.
"Yeah, coffee. It kind of reminds me of coffee." Gibson said.
Then he explained: "When I made The Year of Living Dangerously, I'd made a few films before that — and they'd made money. So I was viable. But if my name came up, people still would go, 'Who?'
That was in 1883, and Freddie Fields, then head of MGM studios, decided to change all that.
"He had been an agent and he had a flair for using the machine," Gibson recalled before adding — in his best cigar-chumping, movie mogul voice — "We're going to make this kid a star."
"That's what they used to do in the old days," Gibson said. "But it still happens sometimes. They keep giving you to the public until you become a star. That's why it reminds me of coffee. Because Freddie served me up to people every morning.
"I saw it happen to someone else more recently. Matthew
McConaughey, Man, the guy was every place. He was breakfast cereal. And the same thing happened to Brad (Pitt). It still happens. It's one of those sleight of hand things. They're making coffee, that's all."
Before they hooked him up to the machine, Gibson said, he was happy working in films and on stage in Australia, collecting $250 a week and walking away.
He likened the change to putting a cat in a round room.
"You know how a cat follows its nose around the room? I just kept following my nose around," he said.
Not that he's complaining. Gibson said he enjoyed being a star. He even likes saying hello to people on the street.
bad.
He likes making movies, too, trying to create something that, at least, is entertaining and sometimes can affect people's lives.
He even likes promoting his pictures, he said, because it gives him a chance to meet a tough audience of film critics.
He's immersed in that part of the process now, holed up in a Central Park South hotel suite, doing a weekend of nonstop interviews to promote the film Ransom.
Aside from the opportunity to work with director Ron Howard, Gibson said he took the role for the chance to play a character whose perfect life falls apart on every level and discovers that everyone around him — from the kidnappers to the cops to his wife — is neither all good nor all
He had his own share of real-life problems, from an appendectomy to arthroscopic knee surgery, during filming.
"It's like, all of a sudden, karmic surgery," he said. "It all
Mel Gibson
comes to rain on me at one time and goes away again.
"But it is good. It kind of makes you aware that, you know, you'd kind of better start cycling or something," said the trim and fit-looking Gibson, who recently turned 40.
As for exactly what he does do in his spare time, Gibson isn't particularly forthcoming, though it's well-known he has six children and 10 brothers and sisters.
A sister put him on the road to Hollywood, secretly sending his application to Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Arts.
"She kind of thought I might be good at it, so she made all the applications, gave me the five-buck entry fee and all that," he recalled.
He then made a string of hits, including Tim and Gallipoli, which won him Australian best actor awards, and the Road Warrior pictures, which earned an American cult following.
Then came The Year of Living Dangerously and international stardom for the American who moved to Australia when he was 12.
"My dad's family were from there and went back during the second World War on leave," Gibson recalled in a soft-spoken Australian accent. "He just thought it would be a good place to kick off again."
Having spent roughly half his life in each country now, he is fascinated by both.
But being isolated made Australians more laid back and laconic, he said.
"They're weirdly similar, in that they both started in the same fashion, as a dumping ground for undesirables from old Mother England," he said.
"People here are certainly more out there," he said. "They'll say, Yeah, we're good.' Whereas Aussies will say, Yeah, we're good — but who cares?"
To a certain degree, Gibson shows that split personality. He can be thoughtful one moment, playful the next. Catching himself going on too seriously on Australian history, he laughs and says, "Hope I'm not being too Metamucil for you, man."
Having starred in and won an Academy Award for directing 1995's Braveheart, he passed on directing this year, in part because he didn't want that much responsibility again so soon.
"It's nice to see someone else twisting in the wind for a while," he said. At the same time, though, he's looking at future directing projects.
Robert Duvall to play Nazi war criminal
By Dennis Anderson The Associated Press Writer
LOS ANGELES — In addition to the movie roles that have won him critical acclaim and a best actor Oscar, Robert Duvall has a body of work in television that could earn him the title of history teacher to the masses.
Now, he's adding another war figure to his library of roles — one of history's orges, Adolf Eichmann.
in miniseries and TV movies, Duvall has played World War II titans Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
In The Man Who Captured Eichmann, first airing at 7 Sunday night on TNT, Duvall gives a chilling performance as a tender family man who loved his young son but had no problem putting other children on trains headed for the crematoriums of Auschwitz.
In 1960, Eichmann was kidnapped in Argentina by Israeli agents and taken to Israel, where he was tried for crimes against humanity and executed two years later.
An SS colonel who escaped to Argentina, Eichmann was the architect of the Final Solution, the shipment of Jews to the death camps of the Holocaust.
Like Priebke, Eichmann was taken in chains from Argentina. Unlike Priebke, Eichmann was hanged for his contribution to the ugliest deeds of our time.
The story of Eichmann's capture holds timeliness in a year in which Erich Priblek, an SS officer who participated in a massacre of Italian civilians, was largely absolved of criminal responsibility by an italian court.
Eichmann never considered his work evil, Duvall said. He claimed instead to be a machine-like policy instrument.
Duvall, perhaps best-known for his work in The Godfather, Apocalypse Now and his Oscar turn in Tender Mercies, said he always was looking for a character he could bring something to. He had wanted to play the German industrialist who saved Jews in the film version of Schindler's List, a role that earned Liam Neeson an Academy Award nomination.
Duvall came across the book *Eichmann in My Hands*, an account of Eichmann's capture by Peter Malkin, one of the Mossad agents who grabbed the SS man off the street in a Buenos Aires slum.
Duvall, who also served as executive producer of the movie, decided to make Eichmann's story with his own company for TNT.
For Duvall, the opportunity to make the film is a way to reach a bigger audience with a story that is part real-life spy thriller and part compelling, contemporary history.
"You reach millions on television," he said. "In a strange way, you can reach more people than you can in a feature film."
Michael Collins glorifies Irish revolutionary hero
By Shawn Pogatchnik The Associated Press
BEALNABLATH, IREland — This is the spot where Michael Collins was slain by zealous comrades and Irish dreams came cruelly crashing down.
In life, Collins was the Irish Republican Army mastermind behind 2 1/2 years of guerrilla war with Britain. He negotiated a compromise treaty in London in 1921 and came home to fight a bloodier civil war over it. In death, he has come to symbolize the miscarried birth of independent Ireland.
Irish director Neil Jordan's $30 million biographical picture Michael Collins provides a partial education for those who know little about Collins and the times in which he lived.
In Ireland, his assassination at age 31 left a painful legacy. The film's arrival here this month is anticipated with enthusiasm but with some dread that it will distort history like Oliver Stone's *JFK* and reopen Ireland's poorly healed wounds.
"My father was in the old IRA. He would have fought for Collins, then against him. It was something he didn't ever talk about." David Hallagan, 77, said quietly as his wife and a cousin thumbed Rosary beads at the Collins memorial in Bealnatha, West Cork
A simple Celtic cross inscribed "MICEALO COLEAIN" — Michael Collins in Gaelic — marks the spot where the fledgling Irish Free State's first commander-in-chief was ambushed and shot in the head on Aug. 22, 1922, only a few miles from his birthplace.
"An awful lot of people killed their brothers during that terrible civil war. Many more died than in the war of independence against the British," said Hallahan, who brings friends and relatives to the Collins monument several times a year. "An uncle told me of how he took part in one gun battle that went on for 3 1/2 hours. He told me they burned a house and bayoneted some fellas and basically tore their opponents to ribbons. But I'd ask my father what he did, and he wouldn't talk about it."
Unlike the nearby Kilmichael monument that celebrates where the IRA killed 18 British soldiers and lost three of their own in 1920, Beaulah halls offers no boastful displays or bitter words, just a pervasive air of regret.
Civil war divisions survive in the country's
two main political parties. Fine Gael, founded by Collins allies who won the war, is in power today and a Collins grandniece, Nora Owen, is justice minister.
But the bigger Flanna Fail party was formed by Collins' chief-turned-enemy, Eamon de Valera, "Dev" to friend and foe alike. The former Sinn Fein president reinvented himself after championing the losing side in the civil war and towered over Ireland as prime minister, then as president, for four decades until his death in 1975.
So Fine Gael sees Collins as an unmitigated hero. Fianna Flaan fails him as a flawed ope.
"Michael Collins' crowning achievement was that he had the guts to sign the treaty with Britain. The strength to compromise is the greatest strength of all," said admirer Jim O'Keele, a Fine Gael lawmaker in Bandon, West Cork. "That's the problem in Northern Ireland today—no one will compromise."
Collins 75-year-old nephew, Liam, keeps a statuette of a uniformed Collins beside his desk and a picture of his deceased father, Fine Gael lawmaker Gen. Sean Collins, on the wall. He barely remembers when British soldiers forced neighbors to burn down the family home in 1921, and Liam has spent most of his life since striking an apolitical stance because he says he has had to serve both sides of the community.
"My uncle is the lost cause in Irish history," he said, playing nervously with a rubber band. "The civil war was so disastrous. It created such an fortunate bitterness. Then when Dev rose to favor, he lasted a very long time. He was a colossus. Collins disappeared from the history books."
With the Irish-born Liam Neeson perfect in the starring role and Alan Rickman ideal as de Valera, Jordan's Michael Collins makes claims of authenticity down to the finest period detail.
But Collins is back with a vengeance now, thanks to Jordan, whose film canonizes Collins and denigrates Dev — and streamlines a lot of messy history in the process.
"I went to great pains to ensure it was accurate," said Jordan, who rose to fame with the critical success of The Cycling Game in 1992.
"I did have a responsibility to the truth because Irish history never sleeps. Any nuance will be relevant, especially to the present situation in Northern Ireland."
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Islam in Perspective
The Muslim Students Association has the pleasure to announce that this Semester we are going to have a 3 weeks mini-lecture series on various aspects of Islam and the current issues dealing with Jerusalem. All the pertinent information is given below:
Lecture Topic Speaker Date and Time Place
1 Fundamentals of Islam Br. Hamed Ghazali Wed., 10/30/96 7:30 p.m. International Room at Kansas Union
2 Al Quran, The Holy Book of the Moslems. Dr. J. Lang/ Br. Hamed Ghazali Wed., 11/06/96 7:30 p.m. Oread Room at Kansas Union
3 Muhammad (PBUH), The Messenger of God Br. Hamed Ghazali Wed., 11/13/96 7:30 p.m. Walnut Room at Kansas Union
We hope to see you all there. Please make sure that you come and also bring along your friends, neighbors and roommates. Free refreshments will be served during the lecture. If you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to contact Mohammed Yameen Farooqi @ (913) 864-6190.