The Maccabees was part of Mel Gibson’s plan to win back the “hebes,” says Maccabees screenwriter Joe Eszterhaus
In the continuing fallout from the decision to shelve Mel Gibson’s planned film about Judah Maccabee, TheWrap has published a nine-page letter from The Maccabees screenwriter Joe Eszterhaus, in which the writer of Basic Instinct and Showgirls (as well as the “Oh shoot, my dad’s a Nazi war criminal!” thriller Music Box) accuses Gibson of never having really wanted to make the movie. Instead, Eszterhaus says, the actor was cynically using the project to “deflect continuing charges of anti-Semitism which have dogged you, charges which have crippled your career.”