Time magazine interviews Mel Gibson

Time magazine recently interviewed Mel Gibson on the set of his next movie, Apocalypto:

Mel Gibson's Casting Call: For his new film, Apocalypto, the director went for authenticity over star power

The star of the film is a movie novice who was only recently working at a Lowe's in Texas and dancing with a Native American theater troupe. His leading lady is also a movie first-timer, from Cuautitla¡n Izcalli, Mexico. The oldest and youngest actors on the set know no other language but Maya and never saw a tall building before their first make-up call.

No, this isn't the no-name lineup for the newest Blair Witch Project. They're the cast of Mel Gibson's new feature, Apocalypto, an action epic about the ancient Mayas currently filming in southern Mexico.

Their obscurity should come as little surprise. Just as he did in The Passion of The Christ, Gibson is using relatively unknown actors in the film (in which the actors speak only in Yucata¡n Maya), many of whom either are Mayas or are descendants of other New World tribes. "It brings an honesty and a valuable reality to what we're doing," Gibson tells TIME, which was given the first exclusive look at the Apocalypto production for an upcoming story in the magazine. "These characters have to be utterly believable as pre-Columbian Mesoamericans."

Read the rest.

This interview (like the others I've read) tries to stress that this movie won't be as controversial as the Passion of the Christ, and I'm sure it won't be. However, a movie about the fall of the Mayan civilization (that practiced human sacrifice, and other unsavory customs) and titled "Apocalypto" (clearly meant to evoke the word "Apocalypse") doesn't seem like the most neutral of topics to me in the least. Oh well - time will tell, I guess.