Mel Gibson addresses rant: "I've got a little bit of a temper"

Published Apr 28 2012, 22:40 BST  |  By Emma Dibdin

Mel Gibson has addressed his recent and much-publiciised tirade against screenwriter Joe Eszterhas.

Eszterhas, who is best known for writing Showgirls and Basic Instinct, released a tape which appeared to feature Gibson using profane language against Eszterhas and his ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva.



In the recording, Gibson becomes angry when Eszterhas fails to deliver a first draft of The Maccabees, a passion project which Gibson hired him to write and has since been put on hold.

E! Online reports that during an appearance on The Tonight Show, Gibson discussed the tirade, and suggested that he was frustrated with Eszterhas because the writer had failed to deliver an acceptable first draft of the script Gibson had hired him to write for The Maccabees.

"Maybe you don't know this about me, but I've got a little bit of a temper," Gibson said. "It's kind of like you build a house, you hire a guy to put a roof on it. He comes over and talks about the roof and then you get rained on all night."

He went on to discuss the nine-page letter Eszterhas wrote to Gibson, accusing him of anti-semitism. Gibson has since written a letter in response, in which he dismisses the claims as "utter fabrications".

"The guy writes a nine-page letter... if he put half as much time and effort and creativity and imagination into a screenplay, which he was supposed to write, as he did into that letter... we wouldn't be having this conversation," he stated on the show.

"A guy tapes you in your own home... when did it come to the place where you can't blow off steam in your own home?"

Gibson recently completed an anger management programme.