CALL him unhinged, call him rabidly religious – but you can’t call him humorless.
In the trailer for his upcoming movie, “Apocalypto,” director Mel Gibson has a bizarre one-frame cameo that’s got online film buffs in hysterics.
A fast-paced montage of scenes from the film, about the demise of an ancient Mayan society, features a fleeting shot of Gibson standing at the end of a line of nearly naked, body-painted warriors.
He’s bearded, wearing a plaid shirt, smoking a cigarette – and looking an awful lot like his wild-eyed “Lethal Weapon” cop character, Martin Riggs.
The appearance is so quick, it can’t be spotted watching the trailer at regular speed, but in a frame-by-frame online viewing, starting at the 1:45 mark, it’s as clear as day.
The easter egg (lingo for a hidden media feature) is a surprisingly lighthearted move from an actor and director who’s been increasingly pegged as a heavy-handed Christian evangelist and artistic crackpot.
First, there was his controversial 2004 film “The Passion of the Christ,” in which the dialogue was spoken in the ancient language Aramaic.
“Passion,” which depicted the biblical story of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ in gory detail, ended up being the highest-grossing independent film ever, at more than $370 million – but also came under fire for its damning portrayal of Jewish characters.
Then last summer, Gibson announced that his follow-up film, “Apocalypto,” would be shot entirely in the long-dead Mayan language and feature a cast of complete unknowns. It would tell the story of a Mayan warrior who attempts to save his civilization from annihilation.
The director wrote, directed and financed the movie himself, through his company, Icon Productions. So he didn’t have to answer to naysayers, who might have suggested that there would be limited interest in a violent foreign-language film about a little-known civilization.
But the trailer’s easter egg has begun generating so much positive buzz, it seems to be one of the smartest moves any director could have made.
It’s also a gesture evocative of late director Alfred Hitchcock, who had a long-standing tradition of including cameos of himself in his films.
In fact, maybe Gibson’s entire approach to filmmaking was inspired by Hitchcock, who once wryly remarked that one should “always make the audience suffer as much as possible.”
You can watch the “Apocalyto” trailer at apple.com/trailers/touchstone/apocalypto/
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