Will Mel Gibson‘s Hacksaw Ridge (Summit, 11.4) earn any Oscar nominations? The favorable reviews and robust box office (it earned $12 million from 2886 theatres last weekend) suggest that Gibson could earn a Best Director nom…maybe. But that bushy white beard he’s been wearing makes him look like Duck Dynasty‘s Phil Robertson, and this only reminds industry yoters that he’s a rabid arch-conservative, which in turn reminds everyone of his fly-off-the-handle comments of a decade ago that turned him into an industry pariah.
So if Gibson really wants to turn over a new leaf he’ll lose the beard. But the beard isn’t “his” — it’s for a film he’s shooting (or about to shoot) called The Madman and the Scholar. Gibson will portray noted lexicographer and Oxford English Dictionary author James Murray“>James Murray, and Sean Penn will play Penn will play Dr. William Chester Minor, a retired army surgeon who contributed thousands of quotations to the O.E.D., while residing in an insane asylum. (Here’s my Hacksaw Ridge review.) So the beard stays.
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(l. to r.) Hacksaw Ridge director, Madman and the Scholar star Mel Gibson, British lexicographer and Oxford English Dictionary editor James Murray, Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson.
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