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Variety reports that Mel Gibson will next star in the action drama How I Spent My Summer Vacation, which is based off a screenplay he wrote.  The film, "centers on a career criminal who gets caught by Mexican authorities and is sent to a drug- and crime-filled prison, where he learns how to survive with the help of a 9-year-old boy."  The secret to survival?  Never drop the soap and no cookies in bed.

Gibson has only written two other screenplays in his career and they're both films he directed: Apocalypto and The Passion of the Christ.  However, he has no plans to direct Summer Vacation, but will direct Leonardo DiCaprio in a Viking movie we reported on yesterday.  Adrian Grunberg, Gibson's First Assistant Director on Apocalypto, will take the helm on Summer Vacation with Stacy Perskie, Apocalypto's Second AD, producing.

I'm really happy that another Gibson story broke so soon after yesterday's news about his viking movie, because I now have the opportunity to address those comments in this article.  Hit the jump for my full thoughts on Mel Gibson.

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To begin, I think Mel Gibson is a talented actor and has turned in great comic and dramatic work.  I love Maverick to death and while Signs doesn't hold up very well as a movie, his performance in it is one of his best.  On screen, he's charming and funny.  Off-screen, he's funny but in a completely different way.  It's painfully hilarious when you get pulled over for drunk driving, call the arresting officer "sugartits", and then say Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.  However, none of that bothers me.  I legitimately find that funny and will continue to do so for the remainder of Gibson's career.

But I seriously think Gibson has a disturbing penchant for violence beyond what is necessary.  His violence isn't shocking as much as it is gratuitous.  It turns Passion of the Christ comical as it showed Jesus not dying from blood loss was an unheralded miracle as was the savior's ability to fall down in slow motion eight hundred times.  The idea of that film is to show how Jesus' suffered for the sins of humanity but since it skips right to the Passion, it's really just an excuse to show Jesus getting tortured for two hours.

Apocalypto not only has the benefit of violence, but a nice slathering of racism.  When Gibson was confronted by a Mayan studies professor during a screening of the film at USC Northridge, he responded to her criticisms by saying, "Lady, fuck off," and screamed at other members of the Mayan community to make their own movie.  Classy.

And as for Braveheart, his most popular and revered film, Nick Nunziata of CHUD.com said it best: "It's death wish in a kilt."  Just think how the course of history would have been changed if the English hadn't murdered William Wallace's girlfriend.

So if my criticism of Gibson in my previous article seemed jealous and mean towards the poor, defenseless actor/writer/director, now you know where I'm coming from and it's not so much jealousy as bewilderment and disappointment.

Also, to the commenter who put my last name in quotations when referring to me: I love you.