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The book on celebrity temper tantrums is replete with fascinating chapters—from Orson Welles’s Great Pea Meltdown to Christian Bale’s 2009 R-Rated On-Set Outburst. And now Mel Gibson, good sport that he is, has submitted a tale of his own movie-star misconduct for the annals. Cue the dissolve and flashback music—preferably the Forever Young “Love Theme.”
It was the 90s, and Gibson was fresh off of _Lethal Weapon 3—_the third installment in the franchise that first buoyed him to box-office stardom. The Australian-born actor was in his 30s, or as he charmingly refers to that chapter of his career, “the Bradley Cooper-Leo DiCaprio stage.” And he was in the process of carefully plotting his next professional move—one in which he hoped to artfully pivot away from the buddy-cop genre. He had already starred as a bleached blonde Hamlet, and was determined to follow that up with another historical drama about an impossibly coiffed hunk, the Scottish warrior William Wallace.
According to Leading Lady, Stephen Galloway’s upcoming book about studio executive Sherry Lansing available for pre-order (via The Hollywood Reporter), Gibson and Lansing had already settled matters of major cast and crew—Gibson would direct and star—and now the filmmaker was left to negotiate the budget. Only during a meeting with Paramount, the studio offered him $50 million less than what he was expecting—after he had already secured the majority of the budget elsewhere. It was then that Gibson’s temper took hold.
Gibson confirms that he did, in fact, throw an ashtray through the wall as a negotiating tactic.
“I was like, ‘What the fuck do you people mean?’” Gibson tells Galloway in Leading Lady. “‘I turned down three jobs—blah, blah, blah.’” In retrospect, Gibson explains, “I was kind of upset, probably a little over the top. It was all posturing bullshit.”
Say what you will about the style of the negotiation tactic—it worked! The Hollywood Reporter notes that, within a week, Paramount “revised its offer” to make up the difference Gibson had hoped for. Gibson’s hurled-ashtray-induced-budget ended up being worth the gamble—as the film grossed over $200 million worldwide and earned five Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director.
