This replies to embedded stuff in the movie review of The Patriot.
Terry
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Ref: S[n]opes - Urban Legends.
This is a piece too inane even for glurgemeister Paul Harvey. Suffice it to
say that someone has taken the framework of Mel Gibson's biography and built
upon it a touching but completely fictitious house of glurge.
Mel Gibson's father did move his family from New York to Sydney, Australia,
when Mel was 12, but the similarities between this piece and Mel's real life
end there. Young Mel wasn't dreaming of "joining the circus as a trapeze
artist"; he was a Catholic high school student mulling over the
possibilities of becoming a chef or a journalist who ended up enrolling in
the University of New South Wales' National Institute of Dramatic Art. Young
Mel had a role in the low-budget film Summer City while still a student and
then appeared in a number of productions with the State Theatre Company of
South Australia before the lucky break that catapulted him to stardom: being
chosen for the lead role in George Miller's action film Mad Max.
A little bit of truth sneaks into the story at this point. The night before
his Mad Max audition, Gibson reportedly came in a poor second in a barroom
brawl, ending up with a face "like a busted grapefruit." He then had to
audition for the Mad Max role with a bruised, swollen, discolored, and
freshly stitched face -- an appearance that, legend has it, helped win over
producers who wanted someone weathered and rough-looking to take the part.
The beating Gibson received did not, however, leave him with "smashed eye
sockets," fracture his "skull, legs, and arms," result in the loss of "all
his teeth" or a nose that was "hanging from his face" or a "jaw almost
completely torn from his skull." He didn't spend "over a year in the
hospital," nor did five years pass with Mel in agony before "plastic surgery
restored his looks." His face got smashed up a bit, he required a few
stitches to close some open cuts, and a few weeks later he was good as new.
< http://www.snopes.com/spoons/glurge/noface.htm >
--
Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA)
< fortean1@frontiernet.net >
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