Mel Gibson charged with drunk driving

By Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – “Passion of the Christ” filmmaker
Mel Gibson, who ignited a furor with a drunken, anti-Semitic
rant to a sheriff’s deputy who stopped him last week along the
California coast, was charged on Wednesday with driving under
the influence of alcohol.

Gibson, an actor and Oscar-winning director who was at the
center of a worldwide controversy over his 2004 blockbuster
“Christ,” was also accused of driving with an open container of
alcohol, Los Angeles County prosecutors said.

The two charges stem from Gibson’s arrest early on Friday
morning by a sheriff’s deputy who saw him speeding along
Pacific Coast Highway not far from his home in the exclusive
Southern California beach town of Malibu.

If convicted, the 50-year-old film star could face six
months in jail, Los Angeles County District Attorney’s
spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said. He was scheduled for an
arraignment on September 28 in a Malibu courtroom.

Gibson’s representatives declined comment on the charges,
which accuse him of driving with a blood alcohol count above
California’s legal limit of .08 percent.

The open container accusation apparently refers to a bottle
of tequila found in Gibson’s car by the deputy who stopped him
and wrote the police report that triggered a media frenzy.

Though Gibson has apologized for his actions that night and
offered to meet with Jewish leaders to make amends for the
inflammatory remarks, some have called on Hollywood to shun
him. Already, ABC has pulled a program about the Holocaust that
Gibson, a traditional Catholic who built his own church in
Malibu, was producing.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has defended
itself against accusations that Gibson was given special
treatment because of his fame, though the head of a watchdog
agency has pledged to investigate accusations that sheriff’s
brass tried to cover up the anti-Semitic rant.

Gibson has been one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars
since starring in the “Lethal Weapon” films of the late 1980s
and early 1990s. He won an Academy Award for directing 1995′s
“Braveheart,” which also won the Oscar for best picture.

Gibson spent $25 million of his own money to produce and
direct “Christ,” which recounts the Biblical tale in which
Jesus is betrayed by one of his followers and condemned to die
on the cross.

The movie caused a major outcry among Jewish groups who
considered it anti-Semitic, and at the time of the film’s
release they worried the movie could stir up anti-Jewish
sentiment.