Mel Gibson, looking less like the Old Testament prophet you know he thinks he is and more like a backwoods moonshiner, held a press conference where he gave details about his next foray into dead languages, Apocalypto.
"It’s set before the Conquest, so there are no European faces, and we are using mostly indigenous people and actors from Mexico City," Gibson said at a news conference in the port city of Veracruz, where he will be recreating Mayan life for the film. "There’s still a lot of mystery to the Mayan culture, but when all is said and done, it’s just the backdrop to what I’m doing — creating an action adventure of mythic proportions, and I am a megalomaniac, so I like the position … A lot of it I just made up, and when I checked it out with historians and archeologists, it wasn’t that far wrong."
Gibson also said that the film would be light on dialogue (a blessing, since most of the actors will be locals without any real acting experience) and bloody as hell (expected, as Mel Gibson has a weird S&M streak (I wonder if he hangs with Ruggero Deodato)).
I am interested to see how this turns out in the end. On the one hand it seems like sheer madness to make a big film in a language no one speaks and that doesn’t have the safety net of the Church behind it. On the other hand this has the possibility of being fucking huge among the Hispanic population of the US. Plus it’s the kind of movie that will get plenty of notice from genre fans for being gory. While I do believe that Mel Gibson is a fruitcake, I don’t know if I think that this production is crazy, a truly bold artistic vision or a very calculated financial risk that could pay off tremendously.