Braveheart

Mel Gibson shouts his way to a bigger budget, no one cares about historical accuracy, and somehow the most Scottish movie ever was filmed… in Ireland. Join Lizzie and Chris for a wild journey through Mad Mel’s sophomore directorial effort: 1995’s ‘Braveheart’. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Winterbauer?

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• 0:31Lizzie Bassett?

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• 1:15Lizzie Bassett?

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• 1:56Chris Winterbauer?

  And action. Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to another episode of What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast full stop that just so happens to be about movies and how it is nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one. Let alone a rousing, hey, geography of Scotland's greatest warrior. I can take our lives, but I'll never take our freedom. Oh, boy. I am excited for this just relentlessly specific, attentive to historical detail dad movie. Lizzie, as always, I am Chris Winterbauer, joined by my co-host, Lizzie Bassett. Lizzie, what do you have in store for us today?

• 2:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Braveheart, Chris.

• 2:40Chris Winterbauer?

  Braveheart.

• 2:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, boy. Yeah, Braveheart. This year marked the 30th anniversary of our dear Braveheart. Of course, the story of William Wallace, or is it? We'll find out. And I don't know if you had this experience. I saw this movie so many times as a kid. And I had a very specific idea of what it was like in my head. And boy, was I surprised upon rewatching it. So we'll get to that in a minute. But Chris, what was your initial experience with Braveheart? And what was it again upon watching it for the podcast?

• 3:15Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, so I also saw Braveheart a number of times. I was born in 89. This movie came out when I was six, so I did not see it initially. But I think I saw it by the time I was 10 or 11.

• 3:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Your parents didn't want to let you watch multiple limbs being lopped off.

• 3:27Chris Winterbauer?

  No, it was.

• 3:28Lizzie Bassett?

  For 40 minutes.

• 3:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Fairly graphic, yeah. I loved it in part because it was, I was allowed to see it, you know, as a kid.

• 3:37Lizzie Bassett?

  There's boobs.

• 3:37Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, there's, there's, there's more penises, but there are boobs. And lots of butts. And what I still, still think is a very funny sight gag.

• 3:45Lizzie Bassett?

  It is.

• 3:45Chris Winterbauer?

  It makes me laugh every time.

• 3:46Lizzie Bassett?

  It's even funnier when you learn a little bit more about it. We'll get to it.

• 3:49Chris Winterbauer?

  I'm excited. I really loved this movie as a kid until I saw Gladiator. And then I just thought Gladiator was the better version of the same movie, more or less. I have two distinct opinions, I guess, about this movie. And let's get this out of the way. I'm going to try to separate Mel Gibson, the person, from Mel Gibson, the actor and the director. Mel Gibson, the person, it seems like a very troubled. Individual who has said and done some pretty heinous things and maybe in the throes of an alcohol problem. And Lizzie, you can probably guide us through some of that. Yes. For this moment, I'm going to separate, note that and separate that for a second. So I was a big Mel Gibson fan as a kid, Lethal Weapon, Mad Max.

• 4:34Chris Winterbauer?

  I remain, I still think he's a really, really talented director overall. I think Apocalypto is a really accomplished movie. And so with Braveheart, on the one hand, as a giant kind of empty calorie, but really entertaining, big budget. Yes. Epic sword movie. I think this movie works really well. There's a lot I really like about it. I think it's shot beautifully. It hits a lot of easy notes that are really fun to digest and the bagpipes are always rousing. We're gonna talk about those too. Right. And on the other hand, it feels like such a relentless hagiography and candidly

• 5:19Chris Winterbauer?

  retelling of William Wallace in almost a Christ-like, like a vengeful Jesus sort of way. Mm hmm. That there, I found that those two experiences were a bit at odds when I was rewatching it. On the one hand, I really enjoyed it. I could appreciate a lot of the craftsmanship. I do think there are some fantastic performances in this movie and just great, great sets and great locations and stunt work. And at the same time, it's so simplistic with the way that it presents this story that I couldn't really take it seriously at the end of the day. Yes. Either. That's just, just my opinion. I know this movie is very beloved by many people. And I had a history, I was telling you, Lizzie, I had a history teacher in high

• 6:01Chris Winterbauer?

  school who hated Gladiator and this movie in particular because they were so historically. Well, Gladiator is fun, but my teacher said there were some historical inaccuracies. Lizzie, I am excited to learn if those were accurate or not. I'm not going to spoil them now. You spoil them for me when we get there. I will. But I'll just say, there is one line in this movie, Lizzie, and that I thought. It opened the movie up very briefly to what could have been maybe a more interesting or more shaded or nuanced version of the movie. And it's when Robert the Bruce's, is it his father who has leprosy?

• 6:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, it's his father.

• 6:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Says uncompromising men are easy to admire. He has courage, so does a dog, but it is exactly the ability to compromise that makes a man noble. I think that's actually a really interesting idea and it complicates William Wallace's no holds barred, you know, uncompromising approach and asks, is this realistic? Is it what's best for the people?

• 6:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 7:00Chris Winterbauer?

  And in that, there's that one moment where it tips toward something a little more interesting and then it goes to the cartoonish villainy of Edward throwing his son's gay lover out the window.

• 7:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 7:10Chris Winterbauer?

  Which we'll get to, I'm sure. But my point is, on the one hand, as spectacle, I really appreciated the movie and as thoughtful historical examination, I thought it was ridiculous and a little silly.

• 7:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I agree with all of that. I think that's a very good assessment. I think we're gonna have a bit of a hard time separating Mel Gibson, the person from this movie for a couple of reasons. That's not to say that you can't enjoy this movie. I think you absolutely can if that is something that you choose to do. I agree, I think he's a very talented director, but I will tell you, researching this made me maybe angrier than most other things that we have covered and we will get into why.

• 7:54Chris Winterbauer?

  All right.

• 7:55Lizzie Bassett?

  I will quote my friend Cyrilia when she said that Braveheart both sucks and rules. And I think that that is the most apt description of this movie. It does, in many ways, it sucks. Like, it's ridiculous, it's so cartoonish, everybody is, you know, just, well, most people are just eating up the scenery in this, Mel Gibson included. And at the same time, yeah, it totally rules. Like, it's very fun, it is long as hell, but you are not bored at any point. Again, look, Mel Gibson is a really good director.

• 8:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, just, you know what, we're just, we're gonna get into it because he is a lot of things. So my experience was similar to you, Chris. I remembered watching this very young. Again, as with most of my movie experience as a kid, I think my mom really liked this movie, my dad really liked this movie. So we did watch it. And I remember thinking it was like, so good. Like, in my head, this was at the same level as like Last of the Mohicans. It's nowhere near that league. Like, in terms of Gladiator, Last of the Mohicans, some of these like, big historical epics of the kind of late 90s, early 2000s, it is completely

• 9:14Lizzie Bassett?

  in a different camp. I just had no idea how sort of overblown and cartoonish this movie is. I think on purpose, very much on purpose, which like, that I do respect about it. They're not really trying to hide that. But to say that this is a historical epic, honestly, is generous, which we will get into as we discuss this. And I also think it's interesting, you mentioned that one line about Robert the Bruce's father, speaking to Robert the Bruce, because I actually think, of all the characters in the movie, the most interesting one in many ways is Robert the Bruce. And he actually was the character that screenwriter Randall Wallace was more familiar with going into this. And he was sort of the impetus

• 9:57Lizzie Bassett?

  for why he wanted to tell this story. I think it's interesting, he chose to tell it about William Wallace, and not about Robert the Bruce, but we will get there. So here are the basics, as always. Braveheart was directed by Mel Gibson. It was written by Randall Wallace. It was released May 24, 1995. It starred Mel Gibson, Sophie Marceau, Catherine McCormick, Patrick Magouin, of course, as Longshanks, Angus McFadyen as Robert the Bruce, Brian Cox, in a short appearance as Argyle, his uncle.

• 10:34Lizzie Bassett?

  Didn't exist. Anyway, Brendan Gleeson as Hamish, Peter Hanley as Prince Edward, Tommy Flanagan, and many, many more, including, I don't know if you noticed, but Peter Mullen.

• 10:44Chris Winterbauer?

  Peter Mullen, yeah, as one of the young soldiers. And I do want to call out David O'Hara as Stephen the Irishman, the crazy Irishman.

• 10:53Lizzie Bassett?

  I love him. I'm so sorry. I forgot that.

• 10:56Chris Winterbauer?

  He's fantastic. He steals this movie.

• 10:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 10:59Chris Winterbauer?

  I think he's wonderful. I can think he gives arguably the the best performance of the whole film.

• 11:05Lizzie Bassett?

  100% he does. And I will say this, as I was watching it, I'm so sorry, I forgot to mention him in the cast. He honestly, he should have been William Wallace, because William Wallace was fucking nuts. And that energy that he has, like that genuinely crazy, it's my island energy. Like, that is what you needed for this to work.

• 11:27Chris Winterbauer?

  He's fantastic.

• 11:28Lizzie Bassett?

  He is so good. God, I love him.

• 11:30Chris Winterbauer?

  My lord says, I'm going to make it. It doesn't look good for you. It's so good.

• 11:34Lizzie Bassett?

  So good, so funny. Yeah, he does absolutely steal this movie. I think he's wonderful. And of course, also wonderful in The Departed.

• 11:41Chris Winterbauer?

  He's a fantastic character actor.

• 11:43Lizzie Bassett?

  So it is produced by Icon Entertainment. Of course, that's Mel Gibson's production company and the Ladd Company. Alan Ladd Jr. is back. The IMDb log line is Scottish warrior William Wallace leads his countrymen in a rebellion to free his homeland from the tyranny of King Edward I of England.

• 12:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 12:03Lizzie Bassett?

  That is it. And also, Chris, how about the tagline this time?

• 12:08Speaker 02

  The story of a man with a free soul and with the courage to follow it.

• 12:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Okay.

• 12:15Lizzie Bassett?

  The story of Braveheart begins not with William Wallace, but as we said, with Randall Wallace. Now, before he was a screenwriter and eventually director, he's actually directed quite a few movies, some of which were decently successful. Randall Wallace was a young aspiring singer songwriter who had just moved to LA from Nashville. In the early 80s, he began writing short stories, novels, and screenplays. But in 1983, he took a trip to Scotland to get in touch with his heritage. And at Edinburgh Castle, he came across a statue. Guarding the drawbridge entrance to the castle are two statues, actually. One of Robert the Bruce, the legendary Scottish king who Wallace had long been obsessed with, and one of a man named William Wallace.

• 13:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, seeing his name on a statue was pretty cool, so he asked a guard, "Who is this man?", to which the guard said, "This is our greatest hero." I'm going to apologize in advance for the accents. We're not going to stop because Mel Gibson didn't. So Randall thought to himself, "Here I was, an American named Wallace, hungry for history, especially the stories of heroes and rebellions and the fight to be free. Here I was, and I had never heard of William Wallace. How could this be? How could the story of Scotland's greatest hero remain untold and unknown to someone like me?" So he kept asking some more questions, Chris. "Were Wallace and Bruce allies in fighting the English?", he asked. "No one will ever know for sure", the guard said. "But our legends say the Bruce may have been one of those who betrayed William Wallace

• 13:45Lizzie Bassett?

  to clear the way for him to become king himself." Cue a million Scottish light bulbs going off in Randall's head, because he began to wonder, "What if there was something in the life and death of William Wallace that had the power to transform Robert the Bruce from a plotting, cowardly betrayer to the greatest king in the country's history?" I think this is exactly the moment that you highlighted, Chris.

• 14:08Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:09Lizzie Bassett?

  So he heads back to Hollywood and spends the next decade not turning this into a movie. Instead, he spent years working under legendary TV producer Stephen J. Cannell. Think The A-Team, 21 Jump Street. And he also wrote and created some TV series of his own. By the end of the 80s, though, he decided it was time to tell the story of William Wallace. So he got to work on the screenplay. Now, obviously, the old adage is, write what you know. But Randall didn't know shit about William Wallace, and it turns out neither did most people. Most of what we know about William Wallace comes from an epic poem called "The Wallace", written by a minstrel named Blind Harry.

• 14:47Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, I thought, yeah, I thought it was Harry the Blind for some reason. But yeah, that's one. That was the first fact of my English teacher was this whole thing's based on a poem that was written by a blind man like 200 years after William Wallace lived.

• 15:00Lizzie Bassett?

  It is 150 years after William Wallace was already extremely dead. Yes.

• 15:05Chris Winterbauer?

  All right. So, so one point for history teachers so far.

• 15:08Lizzie Bassett?

  One point for history teacher. Yes.

• 15:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Got it.

• 15:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Now Blind Harry says that his work was based on

• 15:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Blind Harry says that his work was based on a, Chris is losing it, was based on a lost biography that one of Wallace's childhood buddies had written, but no one's ever seen this, and the evidence of it-

• 15:27Chris Winterbauer?

  Including Blind Harry.

• 15:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Including Blind Harry, who's blind.

• 15:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Unless it was written in Braille.

• 15:32Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No one's ever seen it. The evidence of it is very shaky at best. This is very Joseph Smith of him. This is very, the seeing stones are in the hat. You can't see them, only I can. "The Wallace" is clearly filled with some larger-than-life tales and exaggerations about William Wallace, as well as its own historical inaccuracies. This makes sense. As you said, it was written more than a century after he died and was most likely written specifically to elevate Wallace to the status of folk hero and symbol of Scottish independence. It was intended to drive patriotism, and it worked.

• 16:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:03Lizzie Bassett?

  So, faced with a folk hero of legend with very few proven undeniable facts, Randall Wallace said, quote, "I was freed from the notion that research into such facts, which are, in fact, a historian's own perception of what is significant, is required to yield a true story. I decided to tell the story that was true for me."

• 16:23Chris Winterbauer?

  Wow. Okay, Randall. That is a slippery sentence, my friend.

• 16:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Indeed it is.

• 16:31Chris Winterbauer?

  You know, that what historians perceive to be one set of facts are really just opinions.

• 16:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Uh-huh. You were gonna get a lot of this is my truth over the course of this episode. By the way, most of these quotes from Randall Wallace that I will be reading come from a book that he wrote about the experience of making Braveheart called, "Living the Braveheart Life: Finding the Courage to Follow Your Heart." So before we go any further, I would like to take a moment to talk about what we do definitely know about the real William Wallace. Now Braveheart opens with a line of VO, read by Angus McFadyen, who plays Robert the Bruce. And he says, "I shall tell you of William Wallace. Historians from England will say I am a liar, but history is written by those who have hanged heroes." Now, here's the thing, Chris. Historians from everywhere will say

• 17:21Lizzie Bassett?

  you're a liar, because Braveheart is, as you've probably figured out, one of the most historically inaccurate movies ever made.

• 17:28Chris Winterbauer?

  Lizzie.

• 17:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 17:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Is it true that Braveheart was not, that name was not associated with William Wallace?

• 17:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, it is. And we will get there. Braveheart pulls mostly from The Wallace, that poem, which accounts for some of its inaccuracies, but it also just makes its own shit up whenever it feels like it. Now, Chris, I thought, well, I'll just read this poem for myself. And then I opened it up and it's in Middle English.

• 17:54Chris Winterbauer?

  Which is basically German.

• 17:56Lizzie Bassett?

  Basically. If you're not familiar with Middle English, an easy reference point is the prologue to The Canterbury Tales, which if you open that, you're going to be like, nope.

• 18:04Chris Winterbauer?

  Which I spent a whole semester trying to understand in college. Didn't get through it.

• 18:09Lizzie Bassett?

  I did read a summary of The Wallace, and that was hard enough. Based on that summary, though, it does seem like the poem contains a decent amount of Wallace crossdressing to evade the English, which it seems that Gibson and Randall have conveniently left out. And I would just like to say, bring it back. Why not? So let's talk really briefly about the real Willie Dubs. He was born around 1270 AD, either in Ayrshire or Renfrewshire in Scotland. He was born into a gentry land-owning family, Chris. None of this primitive hut, covered in mud nonsense. He was not a commoner.

• 18:42Chris Winterbauer?

  So he wasn't a caveman?

• 18:44Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 18:45Chris Winterbauer?

  The Scots are mud-dwelling cave people in this movie. They present them.

• 18:52Lizzie Bassett?

  David made such a good point, which is that they live next to a river. Why would you be that dirty when you live next to a river? They're covered in mud.

• 19:02Chris Winterbauer?

  With always with a blowout, a backlit lion-like mane blowout.

• 19:08Lizzie Bassett?

  A really, really dried out blowout.

• 19:11Chris Winterbauer?

  I mean, look, they're doing a shorthand for class differences. I totally get it. They want to express that there are, you know, Robert the Bruce, he comes from money within Scotland. He has a vested interest. He's therefore, you know, suspicious and has ties to to England and King Edward.

• 19:25Lizzie Bassett?

  That's all true. The Scottish nobility did, you know, they were very entangled with England, but.

• 19:30Chris Winterbauer?

  I think what we'll get to is like, this movie uses every single possible shorthand.

• 19:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 19:36Chris Winterbauer?

  To communicate the story. And so as a result, everything is just kind of easy calories.

• 19:41Lizzie Bassett?

  I think that is spot on. I think it's something to keep in mind when we do talk about some of the caricatures and portrayal in this movie. I don't think it singles them out. I think it does it across the board for better or for worse.

• 19:53Chris Winterbauer?

  For everybody.

• 19:53Lizzie Bassett?

  For everybody, but we will get there.

• 19:55Chris Winterbauer?

  Everybody's simplistic in this movie.

• 19:56Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, I agree.

• 19:57Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, Robert the Bruce, actually.

• 19:58Lizzie Bassett?

  He's not. He's the only one.

• 20:00Chris Winterbauer?

  He's the most interesting character.

• 20:01Lizzie Bassett?

  And to some extent, also Sophie Marceau's character, Princess Isabelle.

• 20:04Chris Winterbauer?

  She's, yeah, yeah, she's actually given something to do unlike any other woman.

• 20:08Lizzie Bassett?

  Unlike anyone else. Yeah, in this, basically. So around 1290, Scotland faced a succession crisis. So the Scottish nobility asked King Edward the First Longshanks, who, by the way, he had that name because he was six foot two in 1290, which is horrifying. Everybody was like four foot 11 at that point.

• 20:25Chris Winterbauer?

  Long legs was Longshanks.

• 20:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, they asked him to help them pick a new king. So Longshanks picked a guy named John Balian, but he also decided to start asserting dominance over Scotland and generally was just a giant bag of dicks demanding soldiers and taxes from the Scots to pay for his war with France. Now, speaking of France, though Braveheart depicts Edward the Second's marriage to Isabella of France as happening in tandem with Wallace's campaign, they didn't marry until three years after Wallace's death, and she was 12 years old. However, there may be the tiniest grain of truth to the way Braveheart depicts Edward the Second's relationship with, in the film, Philip, in reality named Piers Gaveston. It seems very likely they were romantically involved and Gaveston's eventual exile and execution at the hands of some rival nobles, notably not Longshanks throwing him out of a window.

• 21:12Lizzie Bassett?

  No, we will talk about that. Did cause trouble for Edward's reign. His second, maybe boyfriend or just very, very close confidant, really caused problems and Isabella eventually ditched him, turned against him, took over as regent, and also probably kind of had him killed. Show me that movie. So we're gonna talk about it because the depiction of Edward the second in this movie is something that I think understandably made a lot of people very upset, but I do want to hold that. All I want to say is that he did not pull the idea of him being in love with a man out of nowhere.

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• 23:00Lizzie Bassett?

  By May of 1297, Longshanks' campaign to seize control in Scotland was very well underway. And it's around this time that William Wallace killed the English sheriff of the town of Landlark, which this is the first time we see him go ham on the English. Now, in the movie, that's because his wife was murdered. But according to leading Scottish historian Fiona Watson, William Wallace may have been an outlaw who killed the sheriff because of a personal vendetta, but in the name of a Scottish rebellion. Regardless of intention, which we just don't know, people were really pissed at the English and started rallying around Wallace. Now, another fact check. There is not much evidence that Wallace had a wife, let alone that she was murdered by the English.

• 23:41Lizzie Bassett?

  A wife does appear in a revised version of the poem that came out about 200 plus years, I believe after the first edition of the poem. Also, she has multiple names, one of which is Marian, none of which are Murrin, which is what appears in the film. But I think they chose that in order to not have it sound close to Maid Marian of Robin Hood. Yeah.

• 24:03Chris Winterbauer?

  Right.

• 24:03Lizzie Bassett?

  Another fact check, Chris. According to medieval historian Albrecht Klassen and many other historians, Prima Noctis, the law they reference in this, okay, Chris is holding up his hands, this teacher told him this too, which supposedly gave these feudal lords the right to sleep with a Scottish woman on the first night of her marriage, you know, as a way for them to breed the Scots out, is what they say in this, almost certainly never existed, never happened, maybe did not happen at all, period, across other cultures as well.

• 24:38Chris Winterbauer?

  That was one I'd forgotten that my history teacher had mentioned to us.

• 24:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 24:42Chris Winterbauer?

  Really briefly, I was just looking through Mel Gibson's filmography, but also a lot of movies from the 90s. And there's this term, I love the term, I don't like the practice. It's called, have you ever heard of fridging the bride?

• 24:54Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 24:55Chris Winterbauer?

  It's where you, it's where you kill the, the love interest or the wife to motivate the hero.

• 25:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, it's every 90s movie. Yeah.

• 25:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Right?

• 25:04Lizzie Bassett?

  Just kill that wife right away.

• 25:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. And it's, it's like speedrunning empathy for, for your audience and your hero. And it happens a lot with Mel Gibson. So like, you have something like Mad Max, Lethal Weapon in his backstory, Lethal Weapon 2, it happens in the movie, Payback, Signs, he's got the dead wife, The Patriot, he's got the dead wife. It's like a really easy shorthand to get the audience to understand the motivation of a character. Right?

• 25:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 25:28Chris Winterbauer?

  And one of the issues I had, again, watching this the second time, just my opinion, but I was like, could we not come up with something more interesting and more complicated or accurate or realistic than just all of our women are being raped and murdered and therefore we must go to war? You know what I'm saying? It just felt like it was this one, like, we have to go to this one violating extreme. And every Englishman is a, is like a dirty rapist, you know, pig. And they all deserve, and again, it, it's easy. It's a, it gives you that rah rah feeling of yes, they're justified. And it definitely gets your blood going. But it's kind of a cheap trick was my, is my problem with it.

• 26:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I agree. And I, I think while it does get you on board very quickly, obviously, because it's horrible. The other problem is it makes the Scottish nobility make zero sense and it makes them look like crazy people because why would you not be trying to drive these people out if they are literally coming in and raping all of the women on the first night of their wedding? Like, it doesn't make any sense. And that's because it probably didn't happen. Most likely, it was a myth that was spread purposely to portray the British as more barbaric. I, I think to sort of portray history as more barbaric than it was versus then even just trying to portray the English that way.

• 26:51Lizzie Bassett?

  So, September of 1297, Wallace had joined forces with Andrew Moray, Scottish leader of the Northern Rebels, who is notably completely omitted from the film, even though he was Wallace's right-hand man. And they defeated the English in a total upset at the Battle of Sterling Bridge. Now, Chris, do you remember any big battles that happened on a real skinny little bridge? I remember a big field. Okay, great. We'll come back to that. Now, next comes the Battle of Falkirk, which Wallace loses. And by the way, that is where they actually use the Shiltran Formation, which is the giant spiky pikes that they hold up. And again, they lost. So, he escapes to France, eventually comes back to Scotland years later, is captured, declared a traitor to Longshanks, hung, drawn, and quartered.

• 27:37Lizzie Bassett?

  According to Michael Brown, a historian at the University of St. Andrews, Wallace is remembered as, quote, "the disinterested patriotic hero whose only concern was the liberty and protection of his fellow Scots." And by 1328, Scotland, led by Robert the Bruce, secured formal independence from England. And this is, of course, not depicted in Braveheart because he was extra dead at that point. Now, this wouldn't be a what went wrong episode without an appearance by the one and only Alan Ladd Jr. So here he is. Welcome back, Alan. Laddie. Laddie. Ladd received a screenplay of Braveheart when he was the CEO of MGM. This was following the collapse of his own production company, The Lat Company. Now, Chris, what can you tell our audience briefly about Alan Ladd Jr. up to this point?

• 28:21Lizzie Bassett?

  If you remember, obviously, you covered him on the Star Wars episode.

• 28:24Chris Winterbauer?

  So I think one of the best ways to think about a maverick producer who was willing to take risks on both projects and filmmakers that other studios were not willing to do. And so, an obvious example was George Lucas's Star Wars, which, as the story goes, was roundly rejected around town. And Alan Ladd Jr. at 20th Century Fox at the time, took the risk on that film that nobody else was willing to.

• 28:56Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 28:56Chris Winterbauer?

  And he's, you know, he's a Hollywood guy through and through. And then when he was with the Ladd Company, he was instrumental in a number of other films that were also often very risky. Blade Runner is a big one that comes to mind, which was a flop.

• 29:08Lizzie Bassett?

  But obviously it became a classic over time. I think the thing to know about Alan Ladd Jr. is that he had incredibly good instincts about who to trust and what material to throw his weight behind. So, in the early 90s, MGM defaulted on a loan and the French bank, Credit Lyonnais, took control dismissing Ladd. Now, he received about $10 million and was allowed to choose two projects that he could take with him. He chose the Brady Bunch movie and Braveheart. Later, in 1993, Alan Ladd Jr. revived the Ladd Company with backing from Paramount Pictures. So with the Braveheart script in hand, Laddie set up a breakfast meeting at the Four Seasons between major movie star Mel Gibson and Paramount

• 29:49Lizzie Bassett?

  studio head Sherri Lancing, who we have also talked about a bunch. And she was very eager to persuade Gibson to join the project as they're starting to kind of pull the team together for this.

• 30:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:01Lizzie Bassett?

  We've covered her a whole bunch. She was the first female to head a major Hollywood studio. She is really amazing. And I think also someone who has very good instincts about what to back and who to trust. Now, Lancing and Ladd were eager for Gibson to join Braveheart as an actor. They were not considering him to direct this initially at all, which makes sense. He had one directing credit under his belt at this point for 1993's The Man Without a Face, which he also produced under his at that point, still a very new company icon. And that's a very intimate, small, like, low budget, you know, we are focused on the actors movie.

• 30:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Now Gibson thought the script for Braveheart was, quote, "a bit over the top, but everything that seemed like a script device turned out to have a basis in history." It did not. But...

• 30:50Lizzie Bassett?

  He didn't read beyond that. But as Gibson kept thinking about Braveheart, he realized he didn't want a star in it. He wanted to direct it. Quote, "The script was given to me on an acting basis, of course, but I felt like I had to tell a story all of a sudden because I kept reworking scenes in my head." That's a fairly good indication that you should probably direct it if you're building the images and sequences in your head. Fair enough.

• 31:10Chris Winterbauer?

  Fair enough.

• 31:11Lizzie Bassett?

  So, Chris, here we are. Let's take a moment to talk about Mad Mel, since this is unbelievably the first time we are covering a movie with him in it.

• 31:22Chris Winterbauer?

  That's true.

• 31:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Yep. Fasten, fasten your seatbelts.

• 31:28Lizzie Bassett?

  So, in 1956, Mel Gibson was born on January 3rd in Peekskill, New York. He was the sixth of 11 children.

• 31:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Wow.

• 31:37Lizzie Bassett?

  His father, Hutton Gibson, was a railway brakeman, conspiracy theorist. He once called Vatican II, which is the effort to slightly update Catholicism by the Vatican in the 60s, "a, quote, Masonic plot backed by the Jews." And, as you may have guessed by that statement, traditionalist Catholic with some rather extreme views.

• 31:56Chris Winterbauer?

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:57Lizzie Bassett?

  He's like very anti the Pope. He thinks the Pope is too liberal. So like his whole thing-

• 32:01Chris Winterbauer?

  He thinks the Pope is too Jewish.

• 32:03Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. The Pope is too liberal, he's too Jewish, he's also too gay, and yes, yeah.

• 32:09Lizzie Bassett?

  This guy. Who? So, Hutton had considered priesthood and even enrolled in a seminary before dropping out and instead went to work for the railroad. Now, this career was cut short when an accident left him unable to work.

• 32:21Chris Winterbauer?

  Hmm.

• 32:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Hutton sat around watching game shows when a light bulb went off. Why not go on one? So, he went on Jeopardy and he absolutely crushed it. He was undefeated and got invited back for a Champions game.

• 32:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Interesting.

• 32:35Lizzie Bassett?

  So, he used the winnings from Jeopardy, along with a large settlement from the railway company, to move his family to Australia in 1968, when Gibson was 12 years old. By the way, this was mostly to avoid Gibson's older brother being drafted into the Vietnam War, which Hutton was vehemently against. The war, to be clear, not the draft.

• 32:54Chris Winterbauer?

  Can I mention something briefly? Because it's really interesting. I was reading an article recently about how- It's often portrayed that people who are susceptible to conspiracy theories are in some way, let's just say slower, for example, but this article was making that actually very intelligent people are often the ones who are have bigger blind spots. They have very specific areas of expertise that may allow them to go on to something like Jeopardy, and then they look for the same sort of patterns in other areas of life.

• 33:25Lizzie Bassett?

  That's it. That's exactly what it is.

• 33:26Chris Winterbauer?

  And so obviously, this Hutton sounds like he was very smart.

• 33:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 33:31Chris Winterbauer?

  Very, he was, he sounds very intelligent, and yet, he looks at the papacy and cannot see it's simply a very big bureaucracy and instead sees the fingers of some.

• 33:42Lizzie Bassett?

  A Masonic plot backed by the Jews.

• 33:43Chris Winterbauer?

  Masonic cabal backed by the Jews behind it.

• 33:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. I think, when I think of people who believe in conspiracy theories, I think it is, all it is, is trying to find a pattern in the chaos. And I think you are right, that frequently, it is smarter people who are susceptible to this because they are, I think they recognize that chaos potentially on a level that people who maybe are not as intelligent might not be able to, but the difference is that they are not able to process it or be comfortable with it. And the only way that they can is they have to say, no, it's happening for a reason. So, lest you think that Hutton was just a charming Jeopardy-winning conspiracy theorist railway brakeman, he was also physically abusive to his children on at least one occasion, according to a CNN special on Mel Gibson, grabbing Mel and

• 34:28Lizzie Bassett?

  one of his brothers and slamming their heads together because he was fed up with them. I don't know if this was a frequent occurrence, that was mentioned in this. As a teen, Mel Gibson followed in his father's footsteps by considering priesthood and then not following through on it. Instead, his sister secretly submitted him to Australia's top acting school, National Institute of Dramatic Arts. He got in, and he attended.

• 34:48Chris Winterbauer?

  Hmm.

• 34:49Lizzie Bassett?

  He briefly lived with Geoffrey Rush in the late 70s while they co-starred in Waiting for Godot, Waiting for Godot, sorry, I always forget.

• 34:56Chris Winterbauer?

  Geoffrey Rush of Pirates of the Caribbean?

• 34:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, coming up next. He got a few small roles in low-budget film productions, and he also, Chris, got into more and more trouble. Now, part of this was, you know, growing up in Australia as an American, I think he got a lot of shit for that. And also, growing up in what sounds like a pretty tumultuous household, you know, he did take out a lot of his frustrations with physical violence. At one point, apparently getting into a bar brawl right before an audition. And according to writer Lawrence Grobel, who interviewed him for Playboy, getting beaten up so badly, his eye was basically falling out of his head.

• 35:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Jesus.

• 35:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Now Mel took an important learning from this experience, telling Grobel, quote, "I'm never gonna let that happen again. If I ever get a chance to punch a guy, I'm gonna make sure I punch him enough." Now, in this same interview, which we are gonna talk about again in this episode, because it was published right after Braveheart came out, he referred to his former female business partner as the C-word, said men and women are not equal, referred to a new world order, and much, much more.

• 36:00Chris Winterbauer?

  That's, so, I knew eventually Mr. Gibson had some very strange views that were revealed through, let's say drunken voicemails, or, you know, interactions with police. I did not know that some of this stuff had come out this early.

• 36:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Chris, this is why I'm mad. It is readily available from day one. Day one, long before that interview as well. So, he then landed the lead role in George Miller's Mad Max, of course, in 1979, which set a Guinness World Record for the most profitable film. We talked about this a little bit when we covered Fury Road. Though it was the sequel Road Warrior that really broke him out in Hollywood. Now, in the early 80s, he married dental nurse Robin Moore, he starred in the World War I drama Gallipoli, and then he moved to Hollywood to pursue his film career. In 1983, he got a DUI and was briefly banned from driving in Canada because it was so bad. He also starred opposite Anthony Hopkins in The Bounty, which we will certainly cover.

• 37:03Chris Winterbauer?

  The follow-up to Mutiny on the Bounty, which I think, I think it may be the third adaptation of that story. I was looking it up a little bit for Pirates.

• 37:11Lizzie Bassett?

  There's a lot of different versions of that.

• 37:13Chris Winterbauer?

  All of which were so troubled.

• 37:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, don't make that again. It doesn't seem to go well.

• 37:17Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 37:17Lizzie Bassett?

  But during that production, he actually got into another bar brawl so bad, they couldn't film one side of his face for a week.

• 37:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Jeez Louise.

• 37:25Lizzie Bassett?

  The nickname Mad Mel started to stick, but in 1985, he was voted People Magazine's first sexiest man alive. In 1987, he starred in Lethal Weapon, of course, which is written by Shane Black, directed by, we just talked about him, Richard Donner. The film launched, obviously, the buddy cop action franchise. It was a massive success, but Richard Donner said Gibson apparently drank a six pack before work, but that it never affected his performance.

• 37:52Chris Winterbauer?

  The character is written so effectively for him, whether intentional or not, it is that exact combustible

• 38:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Yep.

• 38:02Chris Winterbauer?

  bad boy, extremely charismatic, but ultimately dangerous personality. That's why his character, I mean, he's, he really, he's great in those movies.

• 38:13Lizzie Bassett?

  He is great. Look, he's a good actor. I don't think Braveheart is his finest performance. I have really enjoyed him in some other things. I actually really, I really like Conspiracy Theory, interestingly enough, with him and Julia Roberts.

• 38:23Chris Winterbauer?

  I think it's a really good movie.

• 38:24Lizzie Bassett?

  It is a good movie. However, Donner, like Anthony Hopkins before, did express concern over Gibson's behavior. According, again, to Lawrence Grobel, Donner felt there was, quote, "an undercurrent in Mel that could be very dangerous and very volatile." Now, around this time, Gibson obviously established himself as a top box office draw. He starred in Hamlet as the title role in 1990, which was a bit of a slog. That was the first film produced by his production company, Icon, which he co-founded with his longtime producing partner, Bruce Davy. Now Gibson clearly understood very early on that he needed to be working behind the camera in order to truly take control of his career. He also had about six children at this point, and they would travel everywhere with him like

• 39:08Lizzie Bassett?

  a little army. In 1993, Chris, Mel Gibson made a series of unquestionably homophobic comments to the Spanish newspaper, El Pace. He claimed they were taken out of context. I can promise you, there is no context in which these comments are not homophobic. I'm not going to read them, because I know we have some younger folks who listen to this podcast, and they're explicit. This got the attention of GLAD, who spoke out against him, but it didn't matter, because in 1993, he made his directorial debut with The Man Without a Face, in which he also starred. By the mid 90s, he was absolutely Hollywood's golden boy, as well as being box office gold. But again, to your point, Chris, his true colors continued to peek through. In 2010, Winona Ryder told the following story to GQ.

• 39:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Quote, "I remember like 15 years ago," so right around 1995, "I was at one of those big Hollywood parties and he was really drunk," he being Mel Gibson. "I was with my friend who's gay. He made a really horrible gay joke and somehow it came up that I was Jewish. He said something about oven Dodgers, but I didn't get it. I'd never heard it before. It was just this weird, weird moment. I was like, he's anti-Semitic and he's homophobic. No one believed me." By the way, I think she mentioned this again at some point and, you know, his team was like, "This never happened. He reached out to her to discuss it. He never apologized to her." And she had a really great quote where she was like, "Listen, I believe in redemption.

• 40:36Lizzie Bassett?

  I know he's wrestling with demons. I am not one of them. This happened." But Chris, there were at least a couple of roles that did elude him, that he really wanted, but didn't get.

• 40:47Chris Winterbauer?

  Hmm.

• 40:48Lizzie Bassett?

  One of them was Oscar Schindler in Schindler's List.

• 40:53Chris Winterbauer?

  Really?

• 40:55Lizzie Bassett?

  Indeed. And I would just like to point out, his father was a Holocaust denier. I will just quote him directly. According to Hutton Gibson, the Holocaust was, quote, "Maybe not all fiction, but most of it is."

• 41:08Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, first of all, obviously, the Holocaust obviously happened. So let's just make sure we button that up before we move on. That's so, I mean, it seems like, like most people in Hollywood, obviously, Mr. Gibson was probably willing to suspend his disbelief for certain roles. And my guess is whether or not he thought the Holocaust was real, he knew it was a great Oscar bait role and that he'd be working with Steven Spielberg. And I'm wondering if that's his motivation, you know, at this point. And he may not be a Holocaust denier. We have, I have no idea. His father obviously was.

• 41:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. I mean, when he was asked about this comment later on from his father, he refused to outright. Basically, his response was, "That's my dad. I'm not going to talk about my dad. So do with that what you will." All right. After that lead up, and this is why I said it may be a bit difficult to separate Mel Gibson, the man, from Braveheart, because all of this was public knowledge prior to Braveheart. Let's go back to Braveheart. Though he expressed interest in directing, he was not the first choice. Apparently, the job was offered to Terry Gilliam, who was also trying to make a version of A Tale of Two Cities starring Mel Gibson.

• 42:23Lizzie Bassett?

  So Gilliam actually turned down Braveheart in order to try and make A Tale of Two Cities. But the joke's on poor Terry Gilliam, because Mel Gibson got the job he wanted when Terry Gilliam turned down Braveheart as director, and he dropped out of A Tale of Two Cities, which then fell apart and became one in a long list of Terry Gilliam movies that never made it to the screen.

• 42:43Chris Winterbauer?

  And if you guys are unfamiliar, Terry Gilliam was one of the founding members of Monty Python.

• 42:47Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 42:47Chris Winterbauer?

  And he would go on to become a very celebrated director, primarily for his creativity and use of practical effects in a lot of great 80s films.

• 42:55Lizzie Bassett?

  Brazil.

• 42:55Chris Winterbauer?

  Brazil, Time Bandits. We discussed his career briefly in our coverage of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, and we definitely will need to get to The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, a film that, it was revealed by actress and Canadian director Sarah Polley, who was a child actor in that film, was quite dangerous, and it does not seem that Mr. Gilliam was prioritizing the safety of his performers, notably a child performer.

• 44:05Lizzie Bassett?

  So from the very beginning, it sounds like Paramount was only interested in Gibson directing if he also starred as William Wallace. Again, this makes sense. This is a huge, huge project to put in his hands. He had not directed something at this scale before. But that didn't stop Gibson from looking at other stars like Brad Pitt and Jason Patrick to play the lead. It sounds like he really didn't want to do it, which again, I understand. This is a massive undertaking. I think he is smart enough to know it's going to be really hard to be in front of the camera and behind the camera on this. And I think he wanted to focus on directing at this point.

• 44:39Chris Winterbauer?

  And hadn't Brad Pitt just done Legends of the Fall?

• 44:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, he had, which we're going to talk about. Gibson also felt that at 38, he was too old to play William Wallace, who would have been in his late twenties during most of the events depicted in the film. Although, he did die in his mid 30s. So it's not unbelievable that he would be this age.

• 44:57Chris Winterbauer?

  No, but he looks, he looks older than Brendan Gleeson in this movie. Yeah, so that is noticeable. It feels like 35 years have passed, not 20 years, you know what I mean? When he returns to his village, but.

• 45:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. But Sherry Lancing and Paramount put their foot down and said, the only way this gets made with Paramount's backing is if he stars as William Wallace. So Gibson relented. So Braveheart was ready to roll as a co-production between, again, Gibson's Icon Productions and Alan Ladd Jr.'s very recently reestablished, The Ladd Company. And they estimated their initial budget to be around 65 to 70 million dollars. That seems pretty low to me for what they're trying to do.

• 45:37Chris Winterbauer?

  So here's what I'd say. For reference, I do, I, I understand why that sounds low relative to the films that would come shortly after Braveheart, like Saving Private Ryan, but Dances with Wolves, for example, was 22 million dollars. Last of the Mohicans was 40 million dollars. That was a few years prior.

• 45:54Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay, so this is not as low.

• 45:56Chris Winterbauer?

  So maybe 60 to 70 sounds reasonable.

• 45:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, for what they're trying to do, I think so. So they got 20th Century Fox to agree to come on board and fund 2/3 of that budget in exchange for the international distribution rights.

• 46:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Wow.

• 46:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Now Gibson was counting on Paramount to come through with the remaining 3rd, which seems reasonable, given how this whole thing started.

• 46:17Chris Winterbauer?

  Especially if Paramount's gonna get domestic rights.

• 46:20Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, it seems like a weird-

• 46:22Chris Winterbauer?

  For only a 3rd of the budget. That seems like a good deal for Paramount.

• 46:25Lizzie Bassett?

  I know. It seems like a weird deal to me. I'm not entirely sure, but I did look for a bunch of different sources on this and it kept saying 2/3s.

• 46:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Hmm. Maybe they're thinking he's a Scottish folkloric hero, a European hero. There's maybe more- Mel Gibson is an international star. There might be more worldwide appeal to this story. Who knows?

• 46:45Lizzie Bassett?

  I don't know. It seems like a strange deal to me as well. I did look into this. That's what I kept seeing.

• 46:49Chris Winterbauer?

  No, I believe it.

• 46:50Lizzie Bassett?

  But, much to Gibson's chagrin, when he met with Paramount's Head of Business Affairs, Bill Bernstein, they were only offering $15 million and asking for 25% of ticket sales as a distribution fee.

• 47:03Chris Winterbauer?

  Hmm.

• 47:04Lizzie Bassett?

  Now Gibson described his reaction as, quote, "a little over the top." He said he had just turned down 3 jobs to take this, which by the way was probably true. He was very in demand. And he was just, you know, a bit upset, Chris. However, Agent Jeff Berg remembers it a little differently. Gibson, quote, "grabbed a large glass ashtray and threw it through the wall." He threw the ashtray through the wall.

• 47:29Chris Winterbauer?

  Okay, hold on. Here's why I don't believe this story. I watched Mel Gibson throw a rock in this movie. He couldn't throw a baseball 40 feet. Mel Gibson cannot throw. I'm sorry.

• 47:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, he can throw ashtrays, Chris.

• 47:42Chris Winterbauer?

  Apparently. Obviously. Don't throw ashtrays through walls. That seems a bit unnecessary.

• 47:46Lizzie Bassett?

  I don't know. Maybe we all should be throwing ashtrays through walls because the negotiation tactic worked. Paramount responded by coming back a week later with a satisfactory offer. Gibson deferred his acting and directing salaries of $15 million and $2.5 million respectively, and they were off to the races.

• 48:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, okay, so he made the concession. He deferred his acting-

• 48:05Lizzie Bassett?

  He did.

• 48:06Chris Winterbauer?

  And his directing fees. I mean, there we go. It's not because of the ashtray.

• 48:09Lizzie Bassett?

  He thinks it's because of the ashtray. So intimidated by the task-

• 48:11Chris Winterbauer?

  I'm sure he does.

• 48:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Intimidated by the task ahead of him, Gibson spoke with frequent What Went Wrong protagonist slash antagonist Kevin Costner. He was so impressed by Dances with Wolves and wanted to know how Costner had done it. By the way, now that you mentioned the budget, I am too.

• 48:29Chris Winterbauer?

  Dances with Wolves is a remarkable accomplishment.

• 48:31Lizzie Bassett?

  It is. I think more so than this.

• 48:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes.

• 48:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Costner replied, quote, "There's only one way to go, man. Big." So that's exactly what Gibson set out to do.

• 48:45Chris Winterbauer?

  By the way, Costner's in prep on Waterworld at this point.

• 48:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. So let's talk about the casting. If you think about it, while there are some major stars in Braveheart like Brendan Gleeson and Brian Cox, they were not big stars at the time. In fact, Gibson really only went after two huge names while casting. One wound up in the movie, and that is Sophie Marceau. While this was her English language debut, she was a huge star in France who had been working since she was a teenager. And the other was someone he pursued for the role of Longshanks. Chris, any guesses?

• 49:16Chris Winterbauer?

  Uh.

• 49:17Lizzie Bassett?

  He's Scottish.

• 49:18Chris Winterbauer?

  Sean Connery.

• 49:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Sean Connery.

• 49:20Chris Winterbauer?

  I was wondering if Connery was approached for this movie because I had just watched Trainspotting, and there's this running gag where they keep talking about Sean Connery as James Bond throughout the movie. And I kept thinking, he's got to be the most famous Scot in Hollywood at this point in time. You know, Ewan McGregor hadn't broken out yet.

• 49:36Lizzie Bassett?

  No, he's very young.

• 49:37Chris Winterbauer?

  There's this great generation of Scottish actors, actually, that were about to break out, I feel like, with Trainspotting, and they hadn't yet.

• 49:45Lizzie Bassett?

  So Sean Connery could not do Braveheart because of a scheduling conflict. And honestly, thank God, he would never have been anywhere near as bitchy as Patrick McGoon is, who of course is who we get.

• 49:55Chris Winterbauer?

  Patrick McGoon is great.

• 49:57Lizzie Bassett?

  He is such a jerk in this, and he delivers, some of his line deliveries are like laugh out loud funny, which I think-

• 50:03Chris Winterbauer?

  So arch.

• 50:04Lizzie Bassett?

  You do need, yeah.

• 50:06Chris Winterbauer?

  He very mu- it's not dissimilar, although it is not as extreme. It's not dissimilar to Alan Rickman in, ironically, the Kevin Costner Robin Hood Prince of Thieves as the Sheriff of Nottingham.

• 50:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I agree.

• 50:18Chris Winterbauer?

  Patrick McGoon, also who was considered initially for- James Bond.

• 50:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, yes, Chris, he actually turned down James Bond because as a devout Catholic, he felt that the glamorization of womanizing and drinking went against his beliefs, to which I say, had he met Mel Gibson, maybe not. Now Gibson filled out the rest of the cast with actors like Gleason and Angus McFadyen, who had been working for years without a big break. And he chose British actress Catherine McCormack, who only had one small film role prior to this, for his wife, Muran. Interestingly, she had a pretty bad experience on her first film, Loaded, directed by Anna Campion, saying she felt like she really needed to be coddled, sounds like did not get along with that director, but she had nothing but good things to say about Mel Gibson, at least in the DVD commentary. There is another interview with her where she refers to having worked with male directors who have no clue how to handle women, but that is widely suspected to be about Tony

• 51:08Lizzie Bassett?

  Scott, not Gibson, however, she doesn't specify, so I don't know. And for the record, I can see why he would be a very exciting director to work with as an actor. He's got that kind of manic excitement. He is an actor. I think he understands where they're coming from. That being said, I don't think people should work with him. Let's keep going. While casting, Gibson had stopped by the editing room for Legends of the Fall to scope out some actors, I think probably Brad Pitt, but it was cinematographer John Toll who caught his eye, so he brought him onboard Braveheart next.

• 51:35Chris Winterbauer?

  Maybe the best decision he made in, this movie looks so good. And John Toll would go on to do The Thin Red Line, for example, and he has one of the most naturalistic approaches to cinematography and his color palettes are so good in an era that I think could feel a little overlit or, you know, over contrasty. This movie looks amazing.

• 51:58Lizzie Bassett?

  It does. There's another reason for that, which we're going to get to as well. So of hearing about the project, Toll said, quote, "I thought it couldn't be very complicated if he was directing and acting in it. And then they sent me the script about two hours before I met Mel. Legends of the Fall had some limited battle scenes, so I understood how complicated they could get, and I was reading this script thinking, they can't be serious." But they were very, very much serious. In June of 1994, principal photography began at Fort William in Scotland, but Chris, it didn't stay there long. They shot out what they could in Scotland, including some of the early skirmishes and establishing shots of the Highlands. But when it came to the bigger battle sequences, like the Battle of Stirling Bridge, Mel Gibson wanted wide open, flat fields. And I don't think the Highlands

• 52:42Lizzie Bassett?

  have too many of those. It's a notoriously rugged, mountainous terrain, which is probably why the actual Battle of Stirling took place on a tiny ass bridge.

• 52:53Lizzie Bassett?

  It was also quite expensive to actually shoot in Scotland. Had they stayed, it would have put them way over their estimated budget. Now, again, Chris, he is moving this because he wants wide open grassland for these battle sequences, a topography that does not exist in the area that this actually took place. But that's neither here nor there. So, Chris, it turns out the majority of Braveheart was not shot in Scotland, but in Ireland. Couple of reasons. Tax incentives. Obviously, that made it substantially cheaper to shoot. And it seems that that actually influenced a lot of major films to start shooting in Ireland, including Saving Private Ryan. Location. As I said, Gibson wanted big, sweeping battle

• 53:36Lizzie Bassett?

  sequences across pretty flat plains. And they don't have those. They also got easy access to Ireland's Ardmore Studios. In exchange for being able to film at major Irish landmarks like Trim Castle, they had to agree to hire Irish extras. And boy, did they ever. Chris, where do you think they found 1,500-plus scruffy young men with fighting experience and a willingness to do both frontal and rear nudity? Hooligans? The Irish Army Reserves. Oh, there we go. The Irish government decided to kill two birds with one stone because their Army Reserves were required to put in a few weeks of military drills every year. So Ireland said, "Yeah, go ahead and do those drills as 13th century Scotsmen." And also, English

• 54:18Lizzie Bassett?

  and Irish, they played everyone. Here is Mel Gibson talking about how they got 1,500 men ready to shoot these battle sequences.

• 54:25Speaker 05

  But it was an incredible system. They'd start in the wardrobe tent and put on their battle gear. Then they moved down to makeup.

• 54:31Speaker 06

  Get your sunscreen on. Then get your dirt on.

• 54:34Speaker 05

  And we'd put war paint on them. And then they'd smear themselves with dirt and mud to make them look like real savages.

• 54:40Speaker 03

  Rub it well in. Backs of your legs, backs of your necks. Do your ears. Check the guy up next door.

• 54:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Get your darts on.

• 54:50Chris Winterbauer?

  Regardless of the historical accuracy of all of these people being supposed savages, I do want to just shout out, I did not have an appreciation for not only the talent of the wardrobe and makeup departments on these enormous feature films, but the logistical strengths of these departments as well. They are running a garrison's worth of men through hair and makeup.

• 55:15Lizzie Bassett?

  They had an interlocking tent system. And the clip I just showed Chris was from the DVD extras for Braveheart. And they are literally running them through an interlocking tent system where they stop in one tent, they put on the outfits, they literally are just like walking in in their panties and they come out on the other side as 13th century Scots.

• 55:34Chris Winterbauer?

  And they're doing it, by the way, you know, these departments are given no time and no grace. And so if an actor slows things down because they need extra time for a take, that's understandable. You know, if the DP needs a little more time to light, that's a little less understandable, but still understandable. If the director needs more time, you know, you're given more grace the higher up the totem pole you are. And so again, just shout out to hair and makeup and wardrobe. It's a very thankless job, I think. And this movie would be nothing without the incredible coordination of these teams.

• 56:06Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. Now, the Irish Army reserves were not the only Irish extras on set. According to Wicklow Tourism, so many horses were needed that they actually reached out to horse owners from the Wicklow and killed their areas and invited them to participate as extras with their horses.

• 56:21Chris Winterbauer?

  Very smart.

• 56:22Lizzie Bassett?

  So let's talk about the horses, Chris. Mel Gibson was nearly crushed when a stunt horse reared up and fell backward, forcing him to, quote, "fire the animal." The only reason he did not get smushed to death was that his stunt double literally reached in and dragged him out of the way before that thing landed, which is terrifying.

• 56:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. There's a couple of moments on screen where I thought it looked like he or somebody else was either going to get crushed or had been crushed by one of these horses.

• 56:50Lizzie Bassett?

  So let's talk about this, Chris. How many horses do you think were injured in the making of Braveheart?

• 56:55Chris Winterbauer?

  I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if it was upward of a dozen or two dozen horses.

• 57:00Lizzie Bassett?

  The answer is zero.

• 57:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Really?

• 57:03Lizzie Bassett?

  This, so this is amazing. You may wonder how they captured so many shots, as you said, of horses flopping around on people, Mel Gibson murdering horses, horses getting thrown over spikes.

• 57:14Lizzie Bassett?

  They did some really incredible things here with practical effects. Some of the battle horses were dummy horses that were made from steel skeletons with foam, rubber and fur, and they put them on air jacks and tracks to have them make an undulating motion to look like they were running. These look amazing.

• 57:30Chris Winterbauer?

  They, I never, I picked out one fake horse and it's the one that falls in the water when he leaps off the tower garrison.

• 57:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 57:38Chris Winterbauer?

  And it's only because you know it has to be a fake horse at the end. That they did such a good job.

• 57:43Lizzie Bassett?

  There's tons. So they also built these lifelike nitrogen powered mechanical horses and these were mounted on tracks that could accelerate from zero to 30 miles per hour within 20 feet.

• 57:54Chris Winterbauer?

  Wow.

• 57:55Lizzie Bassett?

  Then when they had impact, there was a piston that would activate and it would launch the stunt rider from the saddle and launch the horse over to simulate a fall. Those reportedly cost around a hundred thousand dollars to build. They look incredible and the way that they shoot this is so smart because if you watch the horses that are, you know, catapulting over the pikes and the people are falling off of them, they have some people in the foreground and if you look carefully, there's nobody behind them. So the horses that are continuing to move forward behind them are just running straight past the crowd.

• 58:28Chris Winterbauer?

  And to that cost, you know, a hundred thousand dollars each, worth every penny.

• 58:32Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, of course.

• 58:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Okay, yes, from, obviously from a moral and ethical perspective, but also you can reset and shoot it again quickly. If a horse gets injured and I'm, I'm going to be grossly pragmatic, that's going to shut down your whole day, right? It's gonna, you're, you have to replace the horse, you have to replace the costume and the makeup, et cetera. So it's again, obviously do it from a moral and ethical perspective, but it's, it's such a good practical decision as well.

• 58:59Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. So you mentioned horses falling on people. They actually built dummy horses that they could literally toss around and those are what you see landing on guys. They only weighed about a hundred and 50 pounds. So you can really drop them on somebody. They do look great. And again, the way that it is shot is fantastic.

• 59:17Chris Winterbauer?

  I'm really, I'm like, this makes me like happy right now. So inventive, this is the best part of filmmaking, right? Is when they come up with something really creative that totally tricks you as an audience member.

• 59:28Lizzie Bassett?

  It's really, really cool. And yeah, shout out to the special effects team and the special effects supervisor, Nick Alder, on this movie, who, by the way, had previously won an Academy Award for Visual Effects on Alien.

• 59:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Wow.

• 59:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Really did an incredible, incredible job on this. It is very funny. If you watch the DVD extras, you can hear legendary stunt choreographer Simon Crane kind of talking about the horses and then doing the jumps. And he's kind of like, oh, I guess you can't toss horses around anymore. So I guess you can't. In fact, Chris, the horses were so realistic looking that Gibson had to send behind the scenes footage to Ireland's Animal Cruelty Society, which was investigating Braveheart, because it looks so good.

• 1:00:10Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, remember the Battle of Sterling not on a bridge? This shot-

• 1:00:16Chris Winterbauer?

  We're never gonna get past this.

• 1:00:18Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm so mad. This shot at Curra Camp, the training grounds for the Irish Defense Forces. And this was a great location. It's exactly what he wanted. It is wide. It is flat. They also had the barracks were right there. They had a firing range. They had stables for the horses. So I understand, logistically, it was a great place to shoot. In addition to this very famous bridge battle, including zero actual bridges, though, there are a couple of other major historical inaccuracies. So let's get into them. There is no record of William Wallace wearing blue war face paint. The idea likely came from the Picts, an ancient tribe who stained their entire bodies blue. They were probably, you know, several hundred, maybe even a thousand years too late for that to be happening in this.

• 1:01:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Also, Chris, you mentioned this, but tartan kilts were not worn until many, many decades later, around the end of the 16th century.

• 1:01:09Chris Winterbauer?

  That was the third point that my history teacher made.

• 1:01:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:01:12Chris Winterbauer?

  My history teacher, who I believe wore a kilt to school at one-

• 1:01:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Good for him.

• 1:01:16Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, with underwear. Let's be clear.

• 1:01:20Lizzie Bassett?

  Speaking of that, Chris, according to Mel Gibson, that scene of hundreds of Scots mooning their British enemies was historically accurate. Not a lot of evidence of that. There is evidence of mooning in medieval times, though, so maybe. And there's some evidence that claims that the English actually may have mooned the Scots to insult them. So again, who knows?

• 1:01:40Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't mind if it's not true.

• 1:01:41Lizzie Bassett?

  I don't care.

• 1:01:42Chris Winterbauer?

  It's funny. It's very funny. It's a great moment.

• 1:01:45Lizzie Bassett?

  I want to be clear. I don't necessarily care about a ton of the historical inaccuracies in this, except when it presents them as fact. Something like that is sort of like license that I can be okay with. But anyway.

• 1:01:57Chris Winterbauer?

  It's when it's supposed to be on a bridge. And it's on a field.

• 1:02:03Lizzie Bassett?

  That hedgehog formation of the soldiers with long spears was not used as the Battle of Stirling, again, because how would they do that on a bridge? It was used at the Battle of Falkirk, which also the Scots lost. So I don't know if that was as successful as it was portrayed. Many of the weapons are also not accurate, including the sword that Gibson carries. Even the score, Chris, by James Horner, most prominently features Irish bagpipes, not Highland pipes, which Piper Eric Riggler says he still gets shit for. They're called illen pipes, by the way. When asked about why Horner did this, he said Horner knew exactly what he was doing, and he wanted the instrument that would blend better with the orchestra.

• 1:02:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:42Lizzie Bassett?

  I think the score for this movie is gorgeous. Again, I get it.

• 1:02:45Chris Winterbauer?

  It gets your blood pumping. It really works, again, as a shorthand to get you into the story. And again, any one of these decisions, I don't have a problem with necessarily. It's the cumulative effect that starts to feel like we're really painting by numbers here, aren't we?

• 1:03:04Lizzie Bassett?

  We really don't care. All right. And they really don't care, Chris. And you know what? They were honest about that, at least.

• 1:03:12Chris Winterbauer?

  That's fair.

• 1:03:13Lizzie Bassett?

  And also, the title. Braveheart is actually said to be a name given to Robert the Bruce when his right hand man threw his actual heart into battle and screeched out, "Lead on, Braveheart!" When speaking about these historical inaccuracies, Gibson told USA Today, "Yes, there was a bridge involved in the Battle of Stirling Bridge. We didn't have a bridge because that would have made it too puny. I wanted to do it big, so we nixed the bridge. I'll admit, where I may have distorted history a little bit. That's okay. I'm in the business of cinema. I'm not a fucking historian."

• 1:03:46Chris Winterbauer?

  Honestly, it's the Ridley Scott approach. I feel like, you know, with Napoleon, for example, more recently. And as long as you own it, I think it's fine.

• 1:03:54Lizzie Bassett?

  He does own it. He basically said, I don't care. I don't care about what's true.

• 1:03:57Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:58Lizzie Bassett?

  I, it's my true truth. Him and Randall Wallace do not care. He did build a working battery gram, which is pretty cool when they filmed The Siege of York.

• 1:04:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:05Lizzie Bassett?

  And also Paul Newman visited the set during that scene. He ran a nearby camp for children with cancer and the Braveheart cast had actually gone to visit them and he was coming over to say thank you. And he stuck around to watch that. Mel Gibson was understandably very excited to have Paul Newman there. Now, what's one thing you may have noticed about this movie, specifically about the weather?

• 1:04:29Chris Winterbauer?

  It's very wet.

• 1:04:30Lizzie Bassett?

  There you go. It's never not raining and they're always outside.

• 1:04:35Chris Winterbauer?

  Yep.

• 1:04:35Lizzie Bassett?

  So here's a little bit more from the DVD commentary.

• 1:04:39Speaker 07

  They had chosen to do the filming up near Inverness. And when the filming began, they discovered that it was one of the rainiest places, in fact, the rainiest spot in all of Europe.

• 1:04:53Speaker 05

  It's all a question of conditioning.

• 1:04:56Speaker 07

  We just decided to shoot. I just said, you can't worry about the weather. You've just got to go for it. Otherwise, you'd never get it done if you stopped every time it rained. And so we just shot it.

• 1:05:06Speaker 05

  I gotta get used to it anyway. Let's do it.

• 1:05:09Lizzie Bassett?

  You know what? Credit to Mel Gibson for just being like, whatever. I don't care. We just got to keep moving.

• 1:05:15Chris Winterbauer?

  I think it's one of the reasons the movie looks so good.

• 1:05:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, it is.

• 1:05:18Chris Winterbauer?

  It's so atmospheric as a result. You have mist in every shot, which gives you a wonderful sense of depth and mystery as the, you know, background fades away into nothing.

• 1:05:30Lizzie Bassett?

  It's beautiful.

• 1:05:31Chris Winterbauer?

  It's really a fantastic look.

• 1:05:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Not only was this uncomfortable, it also did prove problematic for some of the cameras. If you notice, there are some out of focus shots that do still make it into the final cut. Doesn't bother me. Still looks great.

• 1:05:43Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes, I've noticed the one early on with Aragail.

• 1:05:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:05:46Chris Winterbauer?

  Brian Cox. There's an angle up on him. There's a couple of Sophie Marceau later. And they're obviously shooting film at this time, so you're not getting, you know, real time digital display.

• 1:05:56Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, and it's mostly not controlled rain. It is real rain, which is very hard to shoot around. It did cause continuity issues because on the few occasions where it wasn't raining, they had to literally bring in fire hoses to make it look like it was, which I feel like you can tell because there are a couple of shots when all of a sudden it's just like.

• 1:06:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, the rain changes from like a very fine mist to like a very thick torrential downpour.

• 1:06:18Lizzie Bassett?

  But when Sherri Lancing visited the set and found herself stomping through feet of mud, her reaction was, do you understand how great this is? John Toll would later credit the rain for his Oscar win, saying, quote, "It brought so much to the film, the fact that we were able to shoot in that weather, and especially for this story, it would not have been the same movie if it had been bright and sunny every day. The photography would not have looked the same." He did, however, comment that it was difficult to have Gibson both in front of and behind the camera, and Gibson referred to himself as behaving like, quote, "the Antichrist." Didn't find a lot more information on that. I will say, the cast and crew from this movie seemed to be pretty complimentary about him. I think they all were willing to acknowledge that he's doing two massive jobs, so he was very stressed out.

• 1:07:02Lizzie Bassett?

  I do have to imagine that Braveheart's infamous continuity errors stem from the fact that he was torn between these two jobs. My favorite, I don't know if you noticed this, but it's in the Battle of Sterling, when he is charging forward.

• 1:07:14Chris Winterbauer?

  And it switches between the sword and the...

• 1:07:16Lizzie Bassett?

  Axe. He starts with an axe, I think, then all of a sudden he has a sword, then he has nothing, then he has an axe. And you know what? Good on him for just being like, whatever, we're cutting together what we have.

• 1:07:28Chris Winterbauer?

  You don't notice, you know?

• 1:07:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, you notice, but you don't care.

• 1:07:31Chris Winterbauer?

  The opening scene, the opening battle of Gladiators is a great example, where the weather changes nine times. It's snowing, it's raining, it's backlit, it's sun. But the emotional through line of that sequence is so propulsive, and the sequence is so kinetic, that ultimately, what are you gonna do?

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• 1:09:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, for post-production, Gibson borrowed more talent from Legends of the Fall in the form of editor Stephen Rosenblum. Speaking about his vision for the edit, Gibson would later say, "It's nothing compared to what you see now on TV with Game of Thrones, but back then it was graphic. I wanted really quick cuts and very staccato. I figured that's the way it is. It just comes out of the blue and hits you in the head. So I wanted it to be like a blunt instrument and kind of shocking." I think they achieved that. Although, I will say, you reference Gladiator. The battles in Gladiator look and feel quite a bit more realistic, and that's only a couple of years later. This ends up looking almost like a parody of itself at certain points when they're lopping off limbs and stuff.

• 1:09:42Chris Winterbauer?

  I think it's early in the process. Yeah, you're halfway between, you know, It's a Flesh Wound, Monty Python, and Gladiator. To be fair, Gladiator was almost six years later.

• 1:09:51Lizzie Bassett?

  That's true.

• 1:09:52Chris Winterbauer?

  And I do think there were a number of advancements. I think Braveheart does move the ball forward in a lot of ways. But I do agree, some of the limb chopping in particular, where it's just these clean cuts, do feel a little over the top.

• 1:10:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, they did. They built dummies for those, obviously.

• 1:10:10Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:10Lizzie Bassett?

  And they look really good.

• 1:10:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Great special effects work. It's not execution, it's style.

• 1:10:16Lizzie Bassett?

  I will say, though, we keep mentioning it, but Last of the Mohicans was, I believe, before this movie. And if you watch those battle sequences, they look way better.

• 1:10:25Chris Winterbauer?

  But Michael Mann is like a monster for detail. Yeah, I mean, that's why he is so good with the gunfight in Los Angeles.

• 1:10:34Lizzie Bassett?

  Just saying, it looks better.

• 1:10:35Chris Winterbauer?

  No, that's fair. It's fair. It's fair criticism.

• 1:10:38Lizzie Bassett?

  For visual effects, he turned to Michael Fink and Trisha Henry Ashford. And according to Ashford, it was a very challenging job. Quote, "When Mike Fink and I sat through dailies looking at all this beautiful film shot by John Toll, we felt a tremendous amount of pressure. We knew that if you ever thought you were looking at an effect, it would take you right out of the film. That's probably why 75% of the FX shots in this are just amplifying the armies. Now, as we learned in Lord of the Rings, prior to that film, digital replication of crowds and armies was not quite there yet. So instead of creating soldiers in post, they had to film four separate wedges of the army reserves and composite them together to create the giant army you see Wallace riding his horse in front of. It looks great, and that is an enormous accomplishment to have pulled that off. It's really hard.

• 1:11:23Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. Michael Fink was one of the heads of USC Film School when I was there.

• 1:11:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, cool.

• 1:11:28Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, he's a really nice guy. I met him a couple of times.

• 1:11:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Did an amazing job on this.

• 1:11:31Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, very soft spoken, very nice guy.

• 1:11:33Lizzie Bassett?

  So Gibson's original cut of the film was three hours and 45 minutes long. And Sherry Lancing was like, Mel, my friend, you have to cut an hour. That's insane. So he did, and he acknowledges that it was the right hour. But he also says there's the possibility of a truly extended cut if Fox and Paramount ever want to finance it. And I don't need it. In order to avoid an NC 17 rating, Gibson did have to tone down the violence. I guess maybe lop off a few, couple fewer legs. In particular, though, he had to change the focus of Wallace's execution to his face instead of what they were doing to his body. Yeah.

• 1:12:08Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, the disemboweling that they're implying.

• 1:12:11Lizzie Bassett?

  That's right.

• 1:12:11Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, which I actually think is very effective, that you don't see it, that you just see his face. Ironically, though, Chris, that's actually one of the more accurate elements of the film. And I wonder if the original footage included his intestines being burned in front of him.

• 1:12:25Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, that was done at the time. It's terrifying.

• 1:12:30Lizzie Bassett?

  It sounds like he identified quite a bit with the Christ-like death of William Wallace.

• 1:12:35Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, so I'll say two things. I think they actually make a couple of tasteful choices on the violence when they decide not to show Murren's throat being slit.

• 1:12:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:43Chris Winterbauer?

  But they do show the sheriff's throat being slit. I thought that was an effective narrative choice. I agree. We don't need to see his guts getting ripped out at the end. There is so much Christ iconography in this movie in particular. My favorite part of this movie, and the part where it just kind of jumps the shark early on, is when he comes back into the village after Murren has been murdered, and he's on horseback, and he holds his arms out in a truly Christ-like gesture, only to reveal that what he's really doing is a John McClane diehard sword reveal out of the back to chop somebody's head off.

• 1:13:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, he is Battle Jesus in this.

• 1:13:22Chris Winterbauer?

  He's Battle Jesus. And again, super entertaining, really fun, not really historically accurate necessarily, but very.

• 1:13:33Lizzie Bassett?

  It should be noted that Randall Wallace is, of course, who wrote The Passion of the Christ.

• 1:13:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:13:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, you might think that audiences and critics would be stoked about the impending release of Braveheart, but you'd be wrong.

• 1:13:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Hmm.

• 1:13:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Because audiences were a little tired of Highland Warrior content at this point. Rob Roy, starring Liam Neeson, Jessica Lange, and Tim Roth, had just premiered in April of 1995 and received mixed to OK reviews from critics. But that, coupled with the incredibly corny trailers for Braveheart, had people kind of snickering about it.

• 1:14:06Chris Winterbauer?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:14:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Also, it's Mel Gibson directing this. He's never directed something on this scale. I can see why people were like, no way.

• 1:14:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:14:13Lizzie Bassett?

  But on May 18th of 1995, Braveheart premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival and surprised everyone by becoming a runaway hit, both critically and commercially. It would end up pulling in $213 million worldwide. But not everyone was so stoked on the film. In particular, GLAD was pretty pissed off about the portrayal of Edward II in the film, and especially Longshanks tossing his lover out the window, which again, never happened. Protests of the film were held around the country. To quote Kathy Renna, co-chairman of a GLAD local chapter, quote, "It's discouraging and disappointing that there are major studios in Hollywood still willing to peddle this kind of homophobia in films. But it's no surprise that it's in a Mel Gibson film.

• 1:14:58Lizzie Bassett?

  Gibson is to Hollywood what Jesse Helms is to Washington. Helms, of course, was an extremely conservative senator who disagreed with civil rights, gay rights, abortion laundry list." Now, remember that Playboy interview I mentioned earlier on? It was released in July of 1995, essentially right after Braveheart's big premiere. In it, Gibson was asked if he would apologize to GLAD. His response was, quote, "I'll apologize when hell freezes over. They can fuck off." He did eventually have sort of a détente hosted by Cher's son Chaz Bono, but obviously he has continued to make plenty of comments. Now, I think the objection to the character of Edward II in this movie is interesting. So let's talk about it.

• 1:15:42Lizzie Bassett?

  We mentioned at the top, there is some historical context to back up the idea that he may have been gay. Quite a bit of historical context. What there isn't is historical context to back up the way that he and his lover slash confidant are treated in this film, and also the way that they're portrayed. I think you can definitely argue that Peter Hanley's performance is cartoonish, but at the same time, so is everyone's, so is Patrick McGoohan's.

• 1:16:06Chris Winterbauer?

  That's the thing. It's, I would, it's equal opportunity caricature work across the movie.

• 1:16:14Lizzie Bassett?

  I think I agree.

• 1:16:15Chris Winterbauer?

  You could argue the only minority, you know, character in, in the film.

• 1:16:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 1:16:20Chris Winterbauer?

  But I, I don't, I don't read it as the filmmakers singling him out so much as them saying, "We're gonna paint with as broad a brush as possible with every single character in this movie."

• 1:16:33Lizzie Bassett?

  So I I agree with you. I think that GLAD is responding here to Gibson's history of homophobic comments more than they are the actual portrayal in the film, which again, I understand because he had made them, he had made them publicly and people were still working with him. So I completely understand seeing this movie, latching on to that and saying this was homophobic. I don't necessarily know that I agree. You know, I I do think that throwing his lover out the window, very over the top, again, didn't happen. That guy was killed eventually, but it was a political maneuver made by other barons. It wasn't anything like this. And it is done very flippantly in the film. But yeah, I I think everyone is a cartoon with a couple of notable

• 1:17:17Lizzie Bassett?

  exceptions. But you know what? It didn't matter because the GLAD campaign failed to make a dent. At the European premiere in September, which took place in Stirling Castle, even Mel Gibson couldn't believe the turnout. Crowds lined the streets on the way to the screening. And Chris, the accolades continued, with Braveheart receiving 10 Oscar nominations, the most of any film that year. Interestingly, none were in acting categories. It walked away with five Academy Awards, including Best Director and Best Picture. This is an interesting year. You might say not a ton of competition, although there's a couple of really big movies that I think it is a bit surprising that it beat. One is Sense and Sensibility, which was nominated for Best Picture. We mentioned that in the Hulk episode, that was Ang Lee. And the other is Apollo

• 1:18:02Lizzie Bassett?

  13, directed by Ron Howard, which it also beat. And I would say both of those movies are much bigger achievements in certain ways than than this was.

• 1:18:14Chris Winterbauer?

  In some, I think from

• 1:18:16Lizzie Bassett?

  From a technical perspective, this this, well,

• 1:18:18Chris Winterbauer?

  That's what I was gonna say. I I could see this, like, for example, cinematography, John Toll. Take it a

• 1:18:23Lizzie Bassett?

  A hundred percent.

• 1:18:24Chris Winterbauer?

  But I I agree.

• 1:18:25Lizzie Bassett?

  Best Picture, Best Director, I don't know.

• 1:18:27Chris Winterbauer?

  Directing, here's what I'll say. Again, the story is very broad. It's jingoistic. But if you think about the accomplishment, he's both on camera and behind it. This has an incredible amount of scope. You know, they always reward war movies. They always reward period pieces. I don't know. I guess I can, I'm not saying it's a better movie. I'm just saying I can understand the perspective. And as we know, with the Academy Awards, Once movies develop a certain amount of political momentum within the industry, they become hard to stop, and that may have happened.

• 1:18:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, many saw Braveheart's Best Picture win as a vindication for Alan Ladd's excellent instincts. As Richard Donner said, quote, "There are snakes in this business, and then there's Alan Ladd." Braveheart massively boosted tourism in Scotland also and actually helped fuel a referendum in 1997 where Scots voted for an independent parliament. And I believe true Scottish independence has continued to be a big topic of discussion since Brexit. Mel Gibson continued and continues to be, I don't even want to say a controversial figure because I don't think that's accurate. In 2004, Gibson and his co-producer Bruce Davy, who of course also worked on this, would fund The Passion of the Christ themselves through Icon Productions when no other studios would touch it.

• 1:19:41Lizzie Bassett?

  And I'm sure this movie will get its own episode. It became an enormous financial success, but obviously drew criticism for its anti-Semitic portrayal of Jews. In 2006, he was arrested for a DUI in Malibu and his anti-Semitic rant at the arresting officer was made public. He apologized for this and blamed his battle with alcoholism. But in July of 2010, Chris, audio leaked of Gibson's phone calls to his then-girlfriend and mother of his child, Oksana Grigoryeva, including threats of violence and horrific racist language, including the N-word. He had separated from his wife at that point. But the threats of violence were not just threats. Grigoryeva said he had hit her repeatedly in an argument, breaking her front teeth while she held their infant daughter in her arms.

• 1:20:24Lizzie Bassett?

  She went to a dentist after this, who took pictures and confirmed the damage. Gibson eventually pled no contest to a misdemeanor battery charge to avoid jail time, but said he was only doing so for the sake of the children. When asked by Larry King why she recorded these phone calls, Grigoryeva explained that she did so because, quote, "I wanted my mother to be able to prove that if I'm dead, this is who did it." I mention all of this because in 2017, sorry, this really makes me mad. Gibson's fifth directorial effort, Hacksaw Ridge, was nominated for six Academy Awards, including one for director Mel Gibson himself. When asked about the then news that Gibson would potentially be helming the next installment of the Lethal Weapons franchise, actor Joshua Melina, who you'd know from The West Wing and Scandal, had this to say.

• 1:21:06Lizzie Bassett?

  "It may be time to stop publishing op-eds about the power of cancel culture. Because if Gibson can continue to find money and approval in Hollywood, cancel culture simply doesn't exist. Gibson and Randall Wallace will team up again for the resurrection of the Christ, and I'm sure that'll make a bajillion bucks too, but it will not get a cent from me." I'll end with a quote from Gibson himself. "History is very interesting to me, and I do appreciate the veracity of true history, but I don't know that history is always true. It's written by the winners all the time." I think what he doesn't get is that he's the winner. He's rewriting it. And just erasing all the shit that he's done. He does not apologize for it. He does not really acknowledge it. He just keeps going, and we keep letting him do it.

• 1:21:50Lizzie Bassett?

  My big takeaway from this and researching this, maybe similar to you, was I had no idea that he was as open and honest as early on as he was about his feelings on women, the LGBTQ community, Jews. I mean, it's just, it's just there from day one. And nobody cared. And they still don't.

• 1:22:14Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't think it's that nobody cared. I think people clearly did care. I mean, GLAD obviously cared and protested the film.

• 1:22:19Lizzie Bassett?

  That's true.

• 1:22:19Chris Winterbauer?

  Winona Ryder spoke up. A number of people have cared. And I know at the time, people, as you mentioned, didn't start, stop working with him. He went on to star in a number of films and, and very successful ones. 2002 Signs was obviously enormous, for example. But at a certain point, I would argue, he was and has been mostly phased out of Hollywood. And With respect to Josh Molina, and leaving aside any personal feelings I have about the idea of cancel culture, I do think Mel Gibson was effectively pushed out of mainstream Hollywood, at least in the way that he once enjoyed a privileged position. If you look at the films he's done, you know, from Edge of Darkness, I think it was like 2010 onwards, it's basically

• 1:23:03Chris Winterbauer?

  just direct-to-video DVD fare or religiously affiliated Mark Wahlberg movies, like Father Stu. And Mark's kind of like his only friend in Hollywood, it seems.

• 1:23:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Sure. I think all of that is true. However, I think the point stands that it took an awfully long time for that to start happening, in terms of how long he had been active saying this stuff, being physically violent, for people to actually stop working with him. And I also think, you know, yes, he may be getting phased out of Hollywood, however, he's not phased out of incredibly financially successful productions. I know you referenced some straight-to-DVD stuff, but he is going to come back with the resurrection of the Christ. I am sure that's gonna absolutely do gangbusters. And this may also be controversial to say, but I actually think the turning point at which he was truly phased, begun

• 1:23:52Lizzie Bassett?

  to be phased out of Hollywood, was not the physical or verbal violence, but actually the passion of the Christ. I think, you know, that's the first, one of the first movies that he financed entirely by himself, with his own production company, because nobody wanted to finance it, not because of Mel Gibson, but because of the religious material. So, all goes to say, yes, is he, is he a huge name and star in mainstream Hollywood currently? No. Is he going to be able to keep working? Because plenty of people will continue to work with him? And will plenty of people show up to see the resurrection of the Christ? Yes, they will. And I just think...

• 1:24:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Money matters. Who you work with matters. They always say vote with your wallet. And to anybody who is intending to go see that movie, I would just ask that you take a moment to think about who made it.

• 1:24:51Chris Winterbauer?

  That being said, to be fair, and if we're going to be really honest with ourselves, we will make money off of this episode. We will make money covering Mel Gibson's career. And I don't think this is going to be the last movie of his that we cover. And there are a lot of controversial people we cover. You know, The Twilight Zone movie is one. That's kind of the line that makes me feel really uncomfortable, given what happened on that set. And Landis is an example of someone that I really don't want to watch anymore. Landis movies now, after I've, you know, after I learned what you told me about that movie. My, my only point, I don't disagree with anything you said, Lizzie. And I'm not trying to suggest that Hollywood had some sort of moral awakening. I think that at the end of the day, people get pushed away when they are viewed as no longer economically viable.

• 1:25:35Lizzie Bassett?

  It's money. That's all it is.

• 1:25:37Chris Winterbauer?

  I completely agree. And I think that's true of every industry. And I think that Gibson, Mel Gibson, will continue to find success with audiences that feel underserved by Hollywood. And that would be, for example, the Christian audience, which does feel, fairly or not, feels underserved by Hollywood, which led, you know, to the success, the surprise success of The First Passion of the Christ. And even something like Hacksaw Ridge, if you look at the producers on that film, the number of production companies, that movie's financing was cobbled together, you know, internationally, basically, and shot for a very low budget for a war film in Australia. I just, I will personally would stop short of telling somebody not to work with him or telling somebody not to watch his movies because candidly, I just feel like a hypocrite,

• 1:26:21Chris Winterbauer?

  given that I continue to enjoy some of his movies and I'll probably re-watch Lethal Weapon. And for me, it becomes a bit of a slippery slope when I think of like, well, what do we do with Andrew Garfield, you know, or, or Robert Downey Jr., who's called for his, you know, rehabilitation, et cetera.

• 1:26:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Look, I'm not condemning the people who continue to work with him. I think that they are working within a system. I don't blame them necessarily. I don't blame them at all. All I'm saying is just listen to him, go in wide eyed, listen to what he is saying to your face. And if you're okay with that, and you're okay with working with somebody who said that, that is your decision. It certainly would not be mine. But to your point, will we continue to cover Mel Gibson movies? Yes. Will we continue to watch them? Yeah, I'm I am sure that we will, and that's okay. And as I said at the top of this, totally fine to enjoy Braveheart. I enjoyed Braveheart. There's nothing wrong with that.

• 1:27:17Lizzie Bassett?

  But I do think it's important to look at him as a complicated and I think very dark and troubled individual in Hollywood.

• 1:27:26Chris Winterbauer?

  And just last clarification, because somebody made this comment that I do think is a good comment on our Spotify. We offer these as our opinions, not some sort of moral absolute.

• 1:27:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Of course. It is just my opinion.

• 1:27:37Chris Winterbauer?

  This is just how we feel, and it's a complicated subject. So, Lizzie, thank you for walking us through a very complicated, well, a very simplistic movie, but a very complicated history. The story of a very complicated person behind it, and a difficult one to talk about. And I appreciate you bringing all this information to light and guiding me through why I shouldn't have told my history teacher he was wrong about Braveheart. Clearly, he was right about Braveheart. And I was just a dumb high school kid.

• 1:28:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Speaking of right, Chris, what went right?

• 1:28:08Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes, I know exactly what went right. Aside from David O'Hara as Stephen, I am going to give, this is a no brainer for me, and we don't acknowledge this department enough, 100% the special effects team on this movie. I cannot believe what you told me about the horses. That is amazing.

• 1:28:30Lizzie Bassett?

  It's not even that. They also built like incredible devices to launch the arrows the way that you see them. Like, that stuff is real. That is not computer generated.

• 1:28:40Chris Winterbauer?

  Everything that they did in this movie looks wonderful. I was never taken out by any of the stunts or the effects work. As you mentioned, some of the lopping off of limbs and heads looks a little exaggerated. Again, that's a stylistic choice that is not an execution error. So my what went right goes to special effects supervisor, chief of special effects, Nick Alder, and the entire special effects team on this movie. I think it looks amazing and it was innovative and ultimately achieved what was needed to tell the story without putting people and animals in harm's way. And that should be the goal.

• 1:29:21Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. We also didn't get to this in the main part of the episode, but there were some rumors around the time that it was filming that there were, you know, like a bunch of injuries happening to people on the set. Mel Gibson and others confirmed that that was not true. I think there was like some minor injuries. Somebody may have broken a nose, but that's not super uncommon when you're doing these kinds of battle sequences.

• 1:29:40Chris Winterbauer?

  No, and that's just the person Mel Gibson punched in the face.

• 1:29:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, unrelated, that was a bar fight. But he did interestingly say in that same interview, he referred to like people trying to sabotage them with the fake news. I don't know if that's true.

• 1:29:53Chris Winterbauer?

  That's the conspiratorial thinking. That's just dad.

• 1:29:56Lizzie Bassett?

  That's just dad. That's good old Hutton coming through. What went right? I am going to have to give it to John Toll. I think that this movie looks beautiful. He had a really hard job because Mel Gibson had a really hard job and Mel Gibson was, his attention was very divided. So John Toll didn't maybe get the amount of time you would normally get with a director to discuss things. He was having to do it very, very quickly on the fly because Mel Gibson was pulled in a million different directions. And what he did is beautiful. This movie looks fantastic. Also, you know, the way that this stuff is set up and shot, Mel Gibson was not a super experienced director at this

• 1:30:40Lizzie Bassett?

  point. He'd done one feature. He'd never done anything like this. I think a lot of that has to go to John Toll in terms of knowing how to set this stuff up. And again, he had some experience shooting battles previously. I just think he did a beautiful job and he deserved every accolade he got for this. So I will give it to him.

• 1:30:58Chris Winterbauer?

  My speculation, and this is just speculation, is that in these instances when an actor is also directing, the cinematographer ends up taking on a decent amount of the directing load. You know, I'm thinking of Ben Affleck in The Town or Argo, for example. And I think that these cinematographers often have really great directorial instincts. And I'm guessing, you know, he's a bit of an unsung hero in that respect as well.

• 1:31:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I think that's true. Well, that wraps up our coverage of Braveheart.

• 1:31:28Chris Winterbauer?

  Thank you, Lizzie. Thank you, everybody, for listening. And, Lizzie, can you let the folks know what's coming next week?

• 1:31:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, it's Pirates of the Caribbean. And you know what? I don't care what you say. It's fun. And I'm excited to talk about it.

• 1:31:46Chris Winterbauer?

  I'm very excited to talk about it. We are diving into 2003's Pirates of the Caribbean, The Curse of the Black Pearl.

• 1:31:56Chris Winterbauer?

  I'm really excited. It's a very fun story, and we are going to also be bringing you guys a primer, primer. Guys, either pronunciation is fine.

• 1:32:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, but I'm with the angry people. I hate primer. Just go ahead and give it to us.

• 1:32:13Chris Winterbauer?

  All right, fine. You guys warned me down. It's a primer. We're gonna give you a primer on Pirates, which will be very fun. Again, not a super historically accurate film, as we're diving into Pirates of the Caribbean. Who cares? It's so much fun. And of course, it's based on a Disney ride, and we'll give you all that history of that ride as well. If you are interested in supporting this podcast, in the meantime, there are four easy ways to do so. You can leave us a rating or review on whatever podcast you are listening to us on. You can hit that subscribe button and make sure that every time a new episode drops, it automatically downloads in your feed. You can tell a family member or friend about this show and how we try to be as historically accurate as possible, unlike Randall Wallace.

• 1:32:58Chris Winterbauer?

  Or you can join our Patreon. You can head to www.patreon.com/whatwentwrongpodcast to get additional bonus material. You can join for free and get corrections, musings, additional info on films that we cover. You can join for a dollar and vote on films that we cover in the future. Pirates of the Caribbean was the winner of a Pirates poll. For $5, you can get an ad-free RSS feed and sometimes some additional bonus episodes, like reviews. We just dropped one on 28 years later. For $50, you can get a shout out, just like one of these in our most offensive Scottish.

• 1:33:33Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm so sorry to Scotland. Here we go.

• 1:33:36Chris Winterbauer?

  I am so, and we also have to apologize to Scotland because we made, I know this is all my fault. I made a mistake because I'm an ignorant American in our 28 days later coverage and I referred to Danny Boyle as being not Scottish but British. Of course, Scottish people are British. What I should have said and meant to say was Danny Boyle is English, not Scottish.

• 1:33:57Lizzie Bassett?

  All right, here we go. To all of our Scottish listeners, our Scottish patrons, from the bottom of my brave heart, I am so sorry.

• 1:34:07Chris Winterbauer?

  We do love you and wish we could do your accents.

• 1:34:10Lizzie Bassett?

  And instead, I'm gonna do it just as good as Mel Gibson did. Here I go. Slipknots, Nain, Kay Canaba, Eleanor, James McAvoy, God, if that's who I think it is, you are Scottish, I'm sorry. Cameron Smith, Suzanne Johnson, Ben Schindelman, Scary Carey, The Provost Family, the O's sound like O's.

• 1:34:35Chris Winterbauer?

  Zach Everton, Galen and Miguel, The Broken Glass Kids, David Friskolanti, Adam Moffat, Film It Yourself, Chris Zaka, Kate Ellington, MX Oria.

• 1:34:49Lizzie Bassett?

  C Grace B, Jen Mastromarino.

• 1:34:56Chris Winterbauer?

  Straight Spanish, straight Spanish on that one.

• 1:35:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Christopher Elner, Blaze Ambrose, Jerome Wilkinson, Earl J, Lance Steter, Nick the Knife, Lena.

• 1:35:11Chris Winterbauer?

  Ramon Villanueva Jr., Half Grey Hound, Brittany Morris, it's getting like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Darren and Dale Conkling, Jake Killen, Marthy Jacobson, Grace Porter, Ellen Singleton, JJ Rápido, Juicy Samant.

• 1:35:31Lizzie Bassett?

  That one was full-blown Arnold.

• 1:35:33Chris Winterbauer?

  No, okay, I'm losing it. You go now.

• 1:35:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Scott Gerwin, Sadie, just Sadie, Brian Donahue, Adrian Penkaria, Chris Lale, Kathleen Olson, Brooke, Leah Bowman, Steve Winterbauer, Don Scheible, George Kay, Rosemary Southwood, Tom Kristin, Jason Frankel, Saman Chainani, Michael McGrath, Lan Relad, and Lydia Howes. Freedahhhhh.

• 1:36:09Chris Winterbauer?

  I think we can all agree Lizzie's Scottish accent is much better than Mel's and mine is actually a pirate, Arnold Schwarzenegger pirate. And so, thank you, everybody. Thank you to all of our Full Stop supporters. Thank you to everybody from Scotland who listens to this show. We hope that we have done your country and this movie justice. And we are excited to hopefully get to like something like Trainspotting, some actual, you know, Scottish, Scottish-produced films in the future.

• 1:36:36Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:37Chris Winterbauer?

  We will see you guys next week for Pirates of the Caribbean. Thanks again for listening.

• 1:36:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Bye.

• 1:36:43Speaker 09

  Go to patreon.com/whatwentwrongpodcast to support What Went Wrong and check out our website at whatwentwrongpod.com. What Went Wrong is a Sat Boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Editing and music by David Bowman. This episode was researched by Laura Woods.