Bigotry and the box office: Will audiences forgive Mel Gibson?

A colleague says he’d really like to see “Apocalypto” when it opens Friday on 2,000 screens. But he’s not going to.

“Not after what Mel Gibson did,” he said, referring to the actor/director’s drunken anti-Semitic meltdown in July. “I’m not going to reward him.”

If that is a widespread attitude, Gibson’s self-financed epic set in pre-Columbian Mexico could be in trouble.

Even before Gibson’s bad behavior, “Apocalypto” was a long shot for commercial success. It has no stars, the dialogue is in an ancient language (Yucatec Maya, with English subtitles) and the film is said to be disturbingly violent. (Gibson did not reply to requests for an interview.)

Of course, the same could be said of Gibson’s previous effort, “The Passion of the Christ,” which went on to earn $611 million worldwide and provide the filmmaker with the cash he has poured into his Mayan movie.

But “Passion” was fueled by its religious content, drawing customers who hadn’t seen a film in years. “Apocalypto” is fighting the perception that it was made by an anti-Semite. For some, that will be reason enough to stay away.

Others, like veteran movie industry reporter Nikki Finke, who writes the Deadline Hollywood column in LA Weekly, sees a need to separate the art from the artist.

“If we start giving a litmus test on behavior,” she said in a recent phone conversation, “then nobody is ever going to work in Hollywood again.”

“Apocalypto” is an adventure movie.

A village is raided by fierce warriors. After hiding his family, Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood) is captured and taken to a huge city, where he is to be one of hundreds of humans sacrificed to the Mayan gods. He escapes, and the second half of the film is an extended chase through the rain forest as Jaguar Paw, intent on returning to his loved ones, outraces and outfights his pursuers.

Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers calls the film “Pure adrenaline ... the movie flies by fast enough to cause whiplash.”

But, Travers adds, “This being Gibson, there’s more to the film than the rush. It’s impossible not to see parallels to our own cultured civilization, one that knowingly destroys its environment and sends troops to Iraq as human sacrifices. Gibson has made a film of blunt provocation and bruising beauty - it’s breathtaking to watch a jaguar racing in the jungle alongside the man who is named after the beast. Say what you will about Gibson, he’s a filmmaker right down to his nerve endings.”

The movie may have the right stuff. But Gibson’s beliefs and behavior are something else.

“In Hollywood certain behavior is tolerated,” Finke said. “If Gibson’s anti-Semitism had come out of the blue, maybe it wouldn’t have been so widely reviled. But `The Passion’ set off an industrywide discussion of whether the movie had anti-Semitic overtones, so what happened this summer wasn’t coming out of a vacuum.”

As part of a plea agreement on his drunken driving charge, Gibson agreed to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, perform public-service announcements and pay a $1,300 fine. He also began digging out from this public relations disaster by submitting to an interview with “Good Morning America’s” Diane Sawyer, where he apologized for his anti-Semitic remarks, said he was ashamed and admitted to a long history of alcohol abuse.

For “Apocalypto,” Gibson has borrowed a page from his “Passion” playbook. That film came under fire even before it was completed over allegations of anti-Semitism.

Fingers were pointed at Gibson’s father, Hutton Gibson, a traditional Catholic who has stated that the “reforms” of the Second Vatican Council were an anti-Catholic plot orchestrated by Masons and Jews and who has claimed that most of what is believed about the Holocaust is “fiction.”

Gibson tailored the film’s promotional campaign to its prime audience - evangelicals and Catholics. He set up screenings for religious leaders and made personal appearances at religious conclaves. The strategy worked. The film opened Feb. 25, 2004, to mixed reviews, but it earned more than $80 million on its opening weekend. The movie played through the summer and became a huge seller on home video.

For “Apocalypto” Gibson has targeted American Indians and Latinos, figuring the movie would appeal to their shared heritage. This fall the filmmaker traveled to Oklahoma and Texas for private screenings and Q&A sessions before groups like the Chickasaw Nations Industries and the Native American Pow Wow Association.

The courtship already is paying off. In Los Angeles the Latino Business Association has given Gibson its Chairman’s Visionary Award, prompting the editorial page of the Los Angeles Times to write, “If that’s all it takes to overlook its honoree’s notorious anti-Semitic ramblings this summer, the group is clearly a cheap date.”

“Gibson has a habit of digging himself a deep hole,” said commentator Paul O’Donnell on the religious-themed Web site beliefnet.com. “But it may not matter when you’re the hardest wooing man in show business.”

“Apocalypto” and the surrounding uproar over Gibson’s behavior raise one of the most troubling questions in the world of culture:

Is it possible to separate a work of art from the person who created it?

Dick Cook, chairman of Walt Disney Studios, which is distributing Gibson’s film, hopes so.

“The public is smart enough to differentiate what happens in someone’s personal life and their professional life,” Cook told the Los Angeles Times. “And while we knew the marketing mountains we’d have to go up, you realize the movie is in the hands of someone who has conquered all these obstacles before and succeeded in an extraordinary way.”

Robert Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University, said some of our greatest artists have had untidy habits.

“Schools that have `Just Say No’ programs also teach Coleridge and Hemingway,” Thompson said, “two writers who definitely didn’t say no to substance abuse.”

Indeed, many people overlook the dark sides of composer Richard Wagner (an anti-Semite) and painter Pablo Picasso (who badly treated many of the women in his life). The Gibson episode, though, may be too fresh to forget.

“An English student doesn’t know about Ezra Pound’s Nazi politics while reading his poetry. But everybody knows `Apocalypto’ was made by Mel Gibson, and everybody knows what happened just a few months ago.”

Public outrage can have a long shelf life, Thompson said, pointing to the negative public reaction to O.J. Simpson’s proposed “If I Did It” book and TV deal.

“Most human beings would have been interested in watching that interview,” Thompson said, “but they refused to be a party to it. It was a moral choice.”

Given all this, you might expect Gibson to lie low.

In fact, Gibson has worked to ensure that his association with the picture is front and center. A series of TV ads for ” Apocalypto” has Gibson narrating and even appearing on screen. Finke, whose work appears on deadlinehollywooddaily.com, believes that is a calculated move.

“He’s aiming at the `Passion of the Christ’ audience, an audience that still reveres him,” she said. “I know this from the level of e-mail I get whenever I write about Mel. And those people will see this movie.”

Even if “Apocalypto” does well, Finke wonders if Gibson or the movie will fare well at awards time.

“`Apocalypto’ is not dissimilar to `Braveheart’ - a big epic with lots of action about persecuted people. It’s the kind of thing Oscar voters usually eat up,” she said. “But right now he could have made the most brilliant, artistic film ever, and it probably won’t matter at awards time.”