Well, not literally. But when you’re talking about a movie like “The Hebrew Hammer“–the blaxploitation-style Jewish comedy film of a few years ago, which bombed at the theaters but inspired wild fan devotion–it’s not surprising that the sequel would involve taking down the Mad Prince of Malibu.
TMZ reports that the sequel, which has already been written by HH1 scribe Jonathan Kesselman, features the following sure-to-be-memorable–and-memorably protested–opening scene:
The sequel, called “The Hebrew Hammer 2: Hammer vs. Hitler,” depicts a very drunk Mel Gibson spilling out of Moonshadows, two blondes on each arm, and a bottle of Irish whiskey in hand. Gibson then obnoxiously berates the valets, leaps into his Lexus and speeds off, screaming obscenities about the Jews. Apprehended by a policeman down the road from Moonshadows, Gibson’s anti-Semitic tirade is cut short when the cop–“The Hebrew Hammer”–puts a bullet in Gibson’s head, spraying a bloody Star of David onto the windshield of his Lexus.
“Don’t mess with the Heebs,” the Hammer grunts at the bloodied superstar. “Jesus was our homeboy first.”
OK, so I made up that last line of dialogue. (Note to Jonathan Kesselman: If you’d like to use that line, give my agent a call.) But no studio is going to make this film. It’s one thing to put Mel in rehab. But proposing to blow away the former Braveheart? Never gonna happen. The only people who shoot and bomb celebrities are Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and even they use puppet and animated surrogates (see also “South Park”: “Canada bombs the Baldwins” and “the Film Actors Guild” in Team America, particularly Matt Damon). I think the only real-life people you can safely blow away on screen are Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein. Anyone else is going to cause an uproar.
But Mel might be able to rest easy, since I’m not sure that that scene actually exists. The “proof” for this story is apparently this opening page of HH2’s script. I know that TMZ boasts an exclusive interview with Kesselman, but it seems to me like the writer/director is joking about the Kill Mel opening scene. The page in question contains two different fonts, and seems awfully unprofessional, even for a draft.
Maybe I’m wrong. But the story seems a little off to me–perhaps the script page is part of an internet buzz campaign designed to evince online support for a movie sequel that’s going to be a tough sell in today’s Hollywood. At least the rest of the movie–The Hebrew Hammer is called out of retirement to take on a time-traveling Hitler–sounds like a premise worth watching.