Special Guest Blogger: Mel Gibson

[I wrote a long post the other day about Mel Gibson's plans to make a new TV miniseries about The Holocaust, but Blogger seems to have completely deleted the entire thing. Drag. I hate when that happens.

Anyway, rather than retype the whole long silly thing, which really wasn't as amusing as it should have been in the first place, I figured I'd just call up MG and see if he'd be willing to rap at you all about his plans and so forth. Thankfully, we're old friends, although if he asks, just tell him I'm Episcopalian or something...I fear the truth would break his heart.

For reference, here's a file photo of Mel discussing the Passion of the Christ screenplay with two of the film's other producers:



So now, direct from the set of his Mayan epic Apocalypto, I give you Mad Max...I mean, Mel Gibson.]

First of all, I'd like to address these rumors that I'm a Holocauset denier. As Atrios helpfully points out today, it's possible to believe the Holocaust happened without believing it was actually all that bad. I mean, lots of people died in World War II, right? Not all of them were Jews! So why won't these dumb Heebs just stop whining all the time and get back to controlling the media and all the world's banks?

What I'm saying is really pretty mainstream. I'm saying that, though the Holocaust did happen, it wasn't nearly as bad as you've heard, and most of the Jews didn't die, but instead moved to Jew York City or Jewneau, Alaska to open bagel shops and jewelry stores. I mean, what's so controversial about that?

So, yeah, as you probably heard in that New York Times article, I will possibly be producing a four-hour ABC miniseries about a Dutch Holocaust survivor.

Mr. Gibson's television production company is developing a four-hour miniseries for ABC based on the self-published memoir of Flory A. Van Beek, a Dutch Jew whose gentile neighbors hid her from the Nazis but who lost several relatives in concentration camps.

It is not expected that Mr. Gibson will act in the miniseries, nor is it certain yet that his name, rather than his company's, will be publicly attached to the final product, according to several people involved in developing it. Nor is it guaranteed yet that the project will be completed and broadcast.

Actually, I am thinking about taking a small part in the miniseries, as the brave Christian hero who shields the Jew girl from the Nazis, only to be captured and gruesomely tortured on screen. For some reason, the part speaks to me.

Anyway, it turns out that ABC was already doing a Holocaust miniseries, but went for mine instead because of me, of course, and also because my version is sexier.

The network chose Mr. Gibson's company when it learned of Ms. Van Beek's tale shortly after ABC had rejected a separate pitch by Con Artists' president, Nancy Cotton, for another Holocaust-related subject, Mr. Taylor said.

"This has the middle, the love story, that the other one didn't have," he explained.

Mr. Sladek said ABC's calculation in engaging Mr. Gibson was to win the largest possible audience. "I think that what ABC wants out of this is to build the biggest billboard imaginable in order to get everyone logically interested to tune in and watch this," he said.

I know that some East Coast intellectuals like the suspicious anti-American character who usually blogs here might think it's wrong somehow to turn what should be a serious consideration of one of the most tragic and dramatic events of the 20th Century into a snazzy marketing campaign. Just as they thought Disney turning the Battle of Pearl Harbor into a 2.5 hour Titanic rip-off was in poor taste. But they are totally wrong. It's not that we don't take the (possibly fictional) Holocaust seriosuly. It's that we can take it seriously and sell iPods at the same time. We're just skilled like that.

But what the article doesn't say, and what I'm going to share with you people before anyone else, is the ending to my miniseries. What I'm not telling the newspapers is that I've hired my old buddy and Signs director M. Night Shyamalan to come in and direct, and we've got an amazing mind-bending twist prepared.

Okay, so for most of M. Night Shyamalan's The Holocaust, wide-eyed, willowy and oddly-attractive Flory Van Beek hides out from the Nazis in the homes of compassionate Christians. Get this...We never actually see Nazis, because we always follow Flory, and she's hiding in the attic or some crap. But we hear them yelling in German and whatever, and it's totally creepy.

And, finally, at the end, some strange men burst into the attic and grab Flory, and we totally think it's the Nazis come to take her away to the death camps. But instead, it's a bunch of Old Jews from the village that she thought had been executed at Auschwitz! You see, the whole Holocaust thing was just a ploy to make the kind-hearted Nazis look bad, and to make sure the world had to let them have Israel after the war! They just couldn't tell Flory because she had a big mouth and would spoil the whole thing!

So, Flory and her family are reunited and they all move to America where they open the Van Beek Savings and Loan and Kosher Deli! Isn't that great? I have no idea where he comes up with this stuff. That little brown guy is one clever bastard!

So, okay, you gotta promise not to tell anybody, because we all know how much his movie's suck when he doesn't get the endings just right. (I mean, "swing away?" What the hell was that crap?) I personally think it's going to kick major ass.

And while I'm producing that, I've even got another project in the pipeline, as we Hollywood types say. I'll be helming The War on Christmas, from Fox Studios, set for a Christmas 2006 release. Bill O'Reilly plays himself, nobly battling the villainous "secular progressives" in an all-out grudge match in order to save the holiday of Christmas. You should see the fucking battle scenes we've designed for this thing - it's unbelievable. At one point, the entire city of San Francisco is engulfed in flames as Bill, John Gibson, Brit Hume and Sean Hannity order an emergency carpet bombing from atop the backs of a team of mighty reindeer, leading an army of young children dressed in suits of armor, swinging battleaxes whilst singing "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" as loud as humanly possible. And that's just the end of the first hour, baby!