For the most part, anyway…though lord knows the replies to Buffybot’s post are exceptions to THAT rule!
Ahem.
Anyway, L.A. Times columnist Patrick Goldstein…I’ll pause to let the anti-semitics out there go ahead and register the man’s last name and get their slings and arrows in order…has cheered Amy Pascal, chairwoman of Sony Pictures, for being pretty much the only one to offer any sort of negative comment about our man Mel’s drunken stupidity the other night, though he admits that she didn’t exactly get nasty about it; she just said she found it “incredibly disappointing that somebody of his stature would speak out that way, especially at this sensitive time.” But, otherwise, almost no one’s offering any criticism; they’re just keeping their mouths shut.
Not Disney production chief Oren Aviv, though. He told Slate’s Kim Masters – and I’m sure this is nothing to do with the fact that Aviv’s studio is releasing Gibson’s “Apocalypto” in December – that “we all make mistakes, and I’ve accepted his apology to what was a regrettable situation.”
In his column, Goldstein muses that “only when you’re in business with someone in Hollywood do you get to describe a man who’s made vicious anti-Semitic slurs as being in a ‘regrettable situation.’ When Masters reminded Aviv that he had stopped talking to director Michael Mann because he’d been rude and disrespectful during the making of a film at Disney, Aviv demurred: ‘It’s behind us. He’s a talented director, and I respect his body of work.’ This is how Hollywood works. The only morality in this town that really means anything is the bottom line.”
