Do ya wanna?

Film At the risk of the blog becoming a shallow news update on male facial hair.

Mel Gibson.

Someone at BBC Online obviously saw that photograph and couldn't help themselves. Gaze into those eyes too -- I haven't seen Mel look like that since the 'Do ya wanna?' speech in Lethal Weapon (1987).

The news story itself is about Gibson's new film project about Mayans. Apparently he wants to "shun 'European faces' to keep it authentic." Oddly enough this past couple of weeks at college we've been studying Passolini's Arabian Nights referencing Edward Said's book on Orientalism [wiki] This seems like another extrapolation of that.

But it also reminds me of an interview I remember reading years ago with one of the script writers on the original Star Trek motion picture who was having producer problems. At one point the script was finally going well and then the producer had been watching National Geographic one morning before a meeting, came in and said he wanted the whole thing overhauled to include Mayans because they seemed 'spiritual' and 'cool'. The writer walked...