Only a week or so on the job and Disney production chief Oren Aviv has already defined himself as a disciplined dispenser of carefully composed (read: disengenuous) press statements.
First he told N.Y. Times reporter Laura Holson that he was “surprised when Disney chairman Dick Cook asked him…to succeed [Nina] Jacobson” and that he “never asked for [the] job.” Now he’s telling Slate‘s Kim Masters that he’s ready to look past Mel Gibson’s attitudes about Jews. “I’ve worked with Mel on several films over the years and we have a great relationship, ” he said. “We all make mistakes and I’ve accepted his apology to what was a regrettable situation. I wish him the very best on his path to healing.”
That’s a nice Christian comradely thing to say, and also a necessary thing considering that Disney is stuck with the task of distributing Gibson’s Apocalypto, but there’s an art to bullshitting the press that Aviv hasn’t gotten the hang of yet. You have to try and sound like someone who hasn’t rehearsed his quotes ten times over before picking up the phone. Every now and then you have to just blurt something out that sounds tossed-off and what-the-hellish and and 90% true. If you say too many half-true, half-horseshit statements, reporters will get wind of your character sooner or later and then they’ll stop listening.