The cast and crew of “Hangover 2” said no way to a cameo by Mel Gibson.
The troubled actor was dumped from “Hangover 2” after other actors and crew members threatened to walk out over his cameo role as a tattoo artist, according to the New York Daily News and other reports.
One of the biggest objectors was Zach Galifianakis, sources told TMZ.
The ouster is just the latest in a string of bad news for Gibson in the PR department. He’s had a drunken-driving arrest in which he spewed a barrage of anti-Semitic remarks at a police officer. And he’s been in embroiled in an ugly split with baby mama Oksana Grigorieva during which leaked recordings surfaced in which he uses racist, profanity-laced rants.
“Hangover” director Todd Phillips and Warner Bros. gave Gibson the boot after news of his cameo sparked a brushfire of outrage by the studio and on the film sets.
“I thought Mel would have been great in the movie and I had the full backing of (the studio),” said Phillips in a statement.
“But I realize filmmaking is a collaborative effort, and this decision ultimately did not have the full support of my entire cast and crew.”
In a Comedy Death Ray podcast interview that Galifianakis gave a week before the decision, the funny man hinted about trouble on a movie set.
In it Galifianakis, 41, told interviewer Scott Aukerman, “When it comes to “a movie you’re acting in you don’t have a lot of control – you just show up and vomit your lines out. I mean, I’m not the boss. I’m in a deep protest right now with a movie I’m working on, up in arms about something. But I can’t get the guys to … I’m not making any leeway.”
When Aukerman starts to reveal the title of the movie, “Hangover 2,” Galifianakis stops him cold.
“It has something to do with a movie I’m working on, yeah,” concedes Galifianakis. “I’ll tell you about it later. It’s very frustrating.”
“I’d love to hear about it,” responds Aukerman.
According to TMZ, some of the production people became upset because they were getting so much criticism from friends, so they began objecting.
There were other people in the cast and crew who were also making noise about walking off the set if Mel showed up. TMZ’s sources say Bradley Cooper was not among the group who complained.
So the day before Mel was supposed to shoot, Phillips pulled the plug.
As one person connected with Mel told TMZ, “It’s such hypocrisy. They cast a convicted rapist (Mike Tyson in the first “Hangover”) but 86’d Mel.”
World tennis star Maria Sharapova and her L.A. Lakers player boyfriend Sasha Vujacic are getting married.
The Slovenian basketball star, 26, proposed to the Russian champion, 23, at his home in Manhattan Beach last weekend with an enormous diamond ring.
The couple have been dating for a year after first going public with their relationship last November at a U2 concert at the Los Angeles Staples Center, according to London’s Daily Mail.
This past summer the pair spent time together in Florida, where the Lakers, for whom Sasha plays shooting guard, were taking part in the IMG academy before jetting off for a romantic holiday to Italy.
Sasha spole recently about why their relationship works so well, saying: ‘As two pro athletes — in different sports — we both understand what the other is doing and going through, and what it takes to do well in what we do,’ he told NBA Fan House.
Sasha won a Championship ring last year with the Lakers while his future wife has won three grand slam titles and in 2007 was the highest paid female athlete in the World.
Sharapova, 23, also has been voted the Hottest Athlete in the World by Maxim Magazine four years in a row.
Lindsay Lohan sidestepped another jail stint when a California judge ordered the 24-year-old troubled actress back to rehab for a failed drug test.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elden S. Fox ordered the actress to continue rehab until Jan. 3.
The judge had threatened to send the “Mean Girls” star to jail for 30 days for each drug test she skipped or failed. He ordered her held for nearly a month during a hearing in September, but another judge overturned his ruling and Lohan has been free on bail and in inpatient rehab voluntarily since then.
Friday’s hearing was Lohan’s fifth court appearance since May, when she ran into trouble with her probation for missing several weekly counseling sessions. She later spent 14 days in jail and 23 days in rehab as punishment.
More than a year after his death, Michael Jackson‘s ex-wife, Lisa Marie Presley, is opening up about how she found out about the pop star’s unexpected demise, what it was like to be married to him and how their relationship grew even more distant in the years following their divorce.
Presley, who is now wed to musician Michael Lockwood and living in England with her four children, appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” for her first television interview about Jackson since his death in June 2009 at age 50.
As for the continual speculation about the nature of theirs short marriage (they were wed for less than two years when Presley filed for divorce in Jan. 1996), Presley explained that “a lot of that is what I wanted to clear up in this interview.”
She repeated what she’s asserted in the past – the marriage was legitimate – with the admission that Jackson did put on a show for the media.
“I didn’t understand my relationship with him,” she said. “I always confused that manipulation thinking that it meant he didn’t love me. But I understand it better now. The manipulation was a survival tactic for him.”
Still, she said she has fond memories of their marriage.
“I loved taking care of him,” Presley recalled. “It was one of the highest points in my life when things were going really well, and he and I were united. It was a very profound time of my life.”
And, even though they had split publicly, Presley said they were still together on-and-off for four years following the divorce, even though she still questioned whether he truly loved her.
— The Associated Press also contributed to this report
lsmith@denverpost.com
