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Mel Gibson made a surprise appearance Tuesday night at the historic Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood for the American premiere of Dragged Across Concrete, the brutal heist movie from writer-director S. Craig Zahler that stars Gibson and Vince Vaughn as compromised cops planning a score of their own.
A subdued and bearded Gibson joined Vaughn and fellow cast members Tory Kittles, Michael Jai White and Fred Melamed and Zahler (Brawl in Cell Block 99) for a lengthy post-screening stage interview. When the Oscar-winning firebrand figure mentioned his just-announced plan to direct a remake of Sam Peckinpahs The Wild Bunch, he got an enthusiastic response from the crowd of genre fans.
“This film is related, its in that Peckinpah realm,” Gibson said about Dragged Across Concrete, which made its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival but screened Tuesday night as the finale-night programming for this years Beyond Fest. The script follows malevolent men whose lives are defined by their codes or their compromises and challenged Gibson to distill his performance to bare essentials.
“I wanted to strip away a lot of stuff, all my bad mannerisms and bad habits and just channel one of my heroes, the great Lee Marvin,” Gibson said to cheers. “The character is a cynical guy and tried to reflect what was there on the page. In the script it doesnt refer to my character by his name — it doesnt call him Ridgeman — it calls him the the grim fellow. That stuck with me. So I stayed as grim as possible.”
Marvin, interestingly, had been a front-runner to star in Peckinpahs muddy-and-bloody 1969 classic in the memorable part of gang leader Pike Bishop. In the role, the dour William Holden led a historic ensemble — with Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond OBrien, Warren Oates, Jaime Sanchez and Ben Johnson — as it rode into cinema history with Peckinpah and his unflinching gunfighter epic.
“I thought it was a bad idea at first,” Gibson said in a post-event interview. “Why make The Wild Bunch again? Who would do that? I thought about it and I thought about it some more, and then I thought of a way [into the story]. A way to tell the story. So Ive been sitting in a room with a writer and its been a blast. So it started as a bad idea, but its heading toward something that could be special. Its about last chances and guys with lives of accrued violence. … Those guys [in the original film]? They laugh a lot, but it isnt funny. “
The Western is Gibsons first return to the directors chair since Hacksaw Ridge, which co-starred Vaughn and earned Gibson his second career Oscar nomination as Best Director. He won the Academy Award for the 1995 historical epic Braveheart.
Gibson has a herd of projects in various stages, but The Wild Bunch has pushed to the fore. In the pipeline behind Destroyer, a remake of the World War II saga of the USS Laffey (which would reteam Gibson with Daddys Home 2 co-star Mark Wahlberg), and Berserker, a Viking epic set in Norse antiquity. Gibson is also directing The Passion of the Christ: Resurrection, a sequel to the controversial 2004 box office sensation that still reigns as the highest-grossing R-rated release in history.
“You write stuff and you never know, really, whats going to happen with it,” said the 62-year-old Gibson, whose big-screen breakthrough came in George Millers 1979 classic Mad Max. “Some things take 10 years before anything happens at all; other things come together after nine weeks.”
Gibson next stars alongside Colin Farrell in director Tommy Wirkolas War Pigs for Millennium. Hes repped by CAA. Bagby is CAA and Anonymous Content.
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