Mel: Arrest was a "blessing"
Publicly discussing his infamous anti-Semitic rant for the first time on Thursday and Friday's Good Morning America, the fallen actor-producer told Diane Sawyer he had grown to view his arrest in July for drunk driving and his subsequent expletive-laden outburst as "kind of a blessing," saying he needed "public humiliation on a global scale" in order to get sober.
"Sometimes you need a cold bucket of water in the face to sort of snap to, because you're dealing with a sort of malady of the soul, an obsession of the mind and a physical allergy," Gibson said of his alcoholism.
Not that Gibson "snapped to" instantaneously. The Passion of the Christ mastermind admitted that he continued to drink at home the morning after his arrest as he spoke with his children.
"I just went home and saw my kids were there. You know, I talked to them for a little bit. And it was a little...rough that morning. I chased it down with a few cold ones," he told Sawyer.
Gibson also confessed to trying to spruce himself up for his mug shot in the interest of vanity--hence his slicked-back hair in the photo.
"I did my best with a finger combing in the water fountain, to sort of like splash a little water on my face, to not take one of those hideous mug shots, because I knew it would be around," he said.
Gibson told Sawyer that he believed that his rant stemmed from Jewish leaders' criticism of The Passion of the Christ when it was released and the charges of anti-Semitism he faced at the time.
"I was subjected to a pretty brutal public beating," Gibson recalled. "The film came out and, you could have heard a pin drop. Not even the crickets weren't chirping. But the other thing I never heard was one single word of apology.
"I thought I dealt with that stuff. But the human heart can bear the scars of resentment, and it will come out when you're overwrought and you take a few drinks," he said.
Though Gibson agrees that his remarks at the time of his arrest were anti-Semitic, he has denied that they reflect his actual beliefs.
"It sounds horrible, and I'm ashamed of that. That came out of my mouth. And I'm not that. That's not who I am, you know," he said.
The actor-producer said he thought he would be apologizing for his actions for his "whole life."
"I've apologized more than anyone I know, so it's getting old," he told Sawyer.
Meanwhile, Deputy James Mee, the officer who arrested Gibson and bore the brunt of his drunken rant, is reportedly going through some troubles of his own.
According to TMZ.com, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department obtained a search warrant and raided Mee's home on Sept. 13, seizing his computer, phone records and other documents because of the belief that Mee leaked Gibson's arrest report to the press.
The sheriff's department refused to confirm any specifics but confirmed that an internal investigation into the unauthorized release of documents related to the Gibson case was underway.
