Diane Makes Mel Sweat

Caught the first round of Mel Gibson’s media Walk of Shame this morning with Diane Sawyer.

It didn’t take a police psychologist to see that Mel’s still dealing with some anger/stress issues. Wow!

Despite the fact that his lighting was way more subdued than Sawyer’s (think Vito Corleone’s parlor on a dark and stormy night), he was still all sweaty on his upper lip throughout the interview. He looked like Dick Nixon caught in the headlights.

What really jumped out was how bad he was at essaying humility, and keeping his irritation and arrogance with having to make his Walk of Shame under control. They’ll be showing this video in aberrant personality classes for decades. He has more ticks than a Chinese clock shop!

[wait for laughter to subside]

Plus, he’s still in total denial about harboring antisemitic shit. When Sawyer hit him with “in vino veritas,” he twitched, twittered and finally brayed laughter and wrote that centuries-old wisdom off as being the product of people who didn’t know what they were talking about.

Does Mel really think he knows more than the ancient Romans about drunkenness and debauchery? Where’s that fearless and searching moral inventory when you need it? How much would it have sucked to have gone into rehab to really get your life together (as opposed to, say, dodge the press for a month) and ended in ‘group’ with Mel Gibson?

Getting back to this morning’s performance, honestly, it was weird. I’ve seen him turn in more nuanced, believable performances in the “Lethal Weapon” movies. He must have handlers whose job it was to prepare him for this interview, but man, somebody dropped the ball.

Actually, I have a theory:

I’ll bet you somebody in rehab said, “Mel, you ever think about looking into some low-dose, AA-approved anti-anxiety meds?” Mel flipped out and cold-cocked him, laughed and tripped the guy when he helped him stand up then straddled him, screaming, “I don’t need pills! All I need is God you fucking shitbag!! I’m not a fucking junkie you goddamn… uh… say, where are you from, buddy?”

Anyhow, I will make sure I catch Round Two tomorrow. If she asks him about his (famously anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying) Dad, I’ll bet he cold-cocks her, and not just in my imagination.