By Kasey Schiedeck | Image property of Buena Vista Pictures
Mel Gibson
It seems actor-director Mel Gibson and controversy are now a permanent duo. Annie Fort, a spokesperson for ABC, announced earlier this week that Gibson’s Con Artist Productions has struck a deal with the network to develop a nonfiction miniseries based on the Holocaust and the real-life story of a Jewish woman taken into hiding by her non-Jewish boyfriend in Holland. The TV movie will be adapted from Flory A. Van Beek’s 1998 memoir “Flory: Survival in the Valley of Death” and will be developed for the screen by Cynthia Saunders according to the Associated Press.
Gibson for Flory
Despite Gibson’s stake at Con Artist, Daniel Sladek, an independent producer who has overseen the initial bartering for the project, insists that Gibson’s influence is still uncertain. Sladek maintains that whether or not Gibson will executive produce the miniseries remains indecisive.
Still, some critics brandished the news as soon as it was announced and have already begun warning Gibson of wrongful endeavors. Director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies in Melrose Park, Pennsylvania, Rafael Medoff, reportedly told the AP that “for [Gibson] to be associated with this movie is cause for concern. He needs to come clean that he repudiates Holocaust denial, and that he understands the Holocaust was not just another atrocity that occurred in World War II along with other atrocities."
After helming 2004’s “Passion of the Christ” which grossed a monstrous $370 million domestically, ABC’s desire to cohort with Gibson and crew is understandable. What’s not understandable is Gibson’s desire to cover sensitive material in light of allegations that he is Anti-Semitic. During “Passion’s” height at the box office, Gibson’s father famously ascertained that the Holocaust never actually occurred creating a maelstrom of insidious PR for Gibson, a Catholic, who has since defended the film as strictly factual and loyal to the New Testament.
In austere defense of Gibson is ABC’s senior vice president in charge of television movies, Quinn Taylor, who, when asked what he would say to those questioning Gibson’s involvement with the project replied, "I would tell them to shut up and wait to see the movie, and then judge."
It seems that waiting period will be a long one. The movie is still in the negotiating stage with Sladek envisioning a season 2006-2007 premiere. As Gibson finishes production on Disney’s “Apocolypto,” based on early Mayan history in South America, requests for statements were denied.
Mel Gibson
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