On April 11, 2012, TheWrap.com published a private letter from screenwriter Joe Eszterhas to director Mel Gibson. The letter chronicled, in alarming detail, their disastrous attempt to collaborate on a film version of the Biblical Book of Maccabees. The media flare-up that followed focused on Eszterhas’ characterization of Gibson as an angry, Jew-hating sociopath, but largely ignored the spiritual crisis at the story’s heart. Using the letter as a map, Surfing with Mel sets out to find some meaning within the madness, and winds up outlining a darkly satirical and deeply profane portrait of two men at war with each other, with their pasts, and with God.
About the Korrektiv Press series Lives of Famous Catholics: Writing in his journal about the celebrities of his day, the author John Cheever observed that "we have a hierarchy of demigods and heroes; they are a vital part of our lives and they should be a vital part of our literature." We agree, which is why the Lives of Famous Catholics series seeks to explore the life of faith by the light of the famous.
About the Korrektiv Press series Lives of Famous Catholics: Writing in his journal about the celebrities of his day, the author John Cheever observed that "we have a hierarchy of demigods and heroes; they are a vital part of our lives and they should be a vital part of our literature." We agree, which is why the Lives of Famous Catholics series seeks to explore the life of faith by the light of the famous.
