LOS ANGELES - That it was supposed to be Robert Downey Jr.'s night, but somehow Friday's American Cinematheque Award ceremony became facts about Mel Gibson.After the evening's honoree took to the stage at the Beverly Hills Hilton to be able to his doorstop, he an apparent message for Hollywood.
"I urge anyone to forgive my pal his trespasses," Downey stated to loud applause. "Allow him to pursue this art with no shame."
It absolutely was Gibson who passed out the award towards the "Iron Man" star. Which has been a option Downey made clear he'd produced in part to assist his friend rehabilitate his image.
Gibson has develop into something connected with an business pariah in the wake of taped telephone calls throughout that he had applied racial slurs and threatened to get over his estranged girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva. Prior to that, Gibson is on thin ice with Hollywood, getting made anti-Semitic remarks when he was arrested in 2006 for a dui.
Gibson was dropped with a cameo in "Hangover 2" right after cast-members rebelled, while lately Warner Brothers has created a cope with the actor-director to discover an action film in regards to Biblical-era Jewish rebellion against oppressors. That has drawn angry responses from Jewish leaders.
Downey, who had well-publicized bouts with drinking and abusing drugs, said that by sticking up for Gibson, he was merely giving back the favor. Soon after his imprisonment and arrests on drug charges made him uninsurable and therefore prevented him from becoming hired in Hollywood, it turned out Gibson who stepped up and paid his insurance bond to the 2003 film "The Singing Detective."
"He kept a roof more than my head and put food in this little table," Downey remembered.
He said that each Gibson asked in turn was that Downey do the same for an additional individual who was simply struggling. "It is reasonable to visualize he did not are aware of the subsequent guy would be him," Downey joked.
Replying, Gibson mockingly hit his head resistant to the set.
It's not yet determined when the gambit worked. Gibson's appearance in a sketch video ribbing Downey for playing a white man pretending as a black man in "Tropic Thunder" drew laughs, however, some had been in the uncomfortable assortment.
Moreover, the "Lethal Weapon" star stuck not far away his friend and fellow presenter Jodie Foster when he entered the accommodation ballroom and remained affixed to her all through the evening as she were a bulwark against an unfriendly press and public.
Nevertheless, as Downey has revealed, Hollywood loves a comeback.
As "Iron Man" director Jon Favreau said of Downey at one point throughout the evening: "Not because Joseph in the Bible went from prison to prophecy has a person elevated themselves from so low."
Now it is Gibson's choose do magic.
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