Famous director, actor, and producer Mel Gibson was recently interviewed about the loss of his grandiose $14.5 million home in Malibu amid the raging wildfires in Southern California. Instead of being in a mood of despair over the loss, Gibson maintained a surprisingly upbeat demeanor, stating that he had only lost “stuff.”
“I’m looking at video of ruins of what was once your home. How are you doing?” NewsNation journalist Elizabeth Vargas asked the celebrity during an interview over the phone. He responded, “I’m doing good, you know, it’s just a thing.” Referencing a bit from the late legendary comedian George Carlin, Gibson said, “But it is obviously kind of devastating emotionally. You know, you’ve lived there for a long time. And you had all your ‘stuff’… Do you remember George Carlin talking about your ‘stuff’?”
“I had all my ‘stuff’ there and it’s like I’ve been relieved from the burden of my stuff, because it’s all in cinders,” he added. Injecting a bit of humor in his statement, Gibson quipped, “Well, at least I haven’t got any of those pesky plumbing problems anymore.” He further noted, “I have never seen a place so perfectly burnt. You could put it in an urn, you know?”
He later said, illustrating just how brutal the fires were, “Some of the neighbors really got it hard.” Gibson pointed out many of the notable figures who had lost homes in the neighborhood. “You know, Ed Harris, the actor, lives down the street and I think his place is gone and many of my friends up and down the street. And it was kind of random. It wasn’t every place but it was quite a few places,” he said.
“There were a dozen places or so that were just non-existent, I mean, nothing but a chimney and a few roof tiles and you dare not walk around for the nails,” he told Vargas, as the footage practically showed the remains of his house in an identical state. “It was completely toasted. It’s like somebody did it on purpose,” he said.
“It was the perfect firestorm, I mean, my place looked like Dresden,” referencing the ruins of his house, looking as if they had been through the wars. “It’s emotional. I lived there for about 14, 15 years so it was home to me,” he said, acknowledging that he was in fact sad about the loss. “I had a lot of personal things there that, you know, I can’t get back … All kinds of stuff, everything from photographs to files… to just personal things that I had from over the years, clothes… pretty cool stuff, you know, but you know, hey, that can all be replaced. These are only things,” he added.
Gibson pointed out what is really important is that his family escaped from the blaze unharmed. “The good news is that those in my family and those that I love are all well and we’re all healthy and happy and out of harm’s way. That’s all I care about really,” he said. Watch the interview below:
Featured image credit: Georges Biard, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mel_Gibson_Cannes_2016_2.jpg
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