Mel Gibson Interview: ‘I never expected that Braveheart would become the success it did’

Mel Gibson thought ‘Braveheart’ would “do okay” when it was released in cinemas, but never expected it to become the success that it did.

“And in fact, if you look at it, it wasn’t a huge box office hit – it was okay, it certainly held its weight and made its money back,” he told the Meath Chronicle at Trim Castle Hotel on Saturday morning during the film’s 30th anniversary celebrations.

“It actually gained more renown as time went by – there were the Academy Awards that helped of course, and record VHS sales.”

Gibson made the Oscar-winning movie in Trim Castle, and Dunsany and Bective abbeys, as well as on the Curragh in Kildare, which featured epic battle scenes on horseback.

“Nobody had done anything like that for a long time,” he said. “Back in the sixties, Charlton Heston had El Cid, or Stanley Kubrick did Spartacas, but it was a genre that had kind of been abandoned. Like Lawrence of Arabia and all these people charging and doing all these things. So we resurrected the epic battle film. It was perfect because the fellow who wrote the script was a man named Randall Wallace, who lived in Tennessee, and he came over to Scotland, and was trying to visit his ancestors, and he said ‘there’s a famous Wallace over here, who is he?’.

“So he dug into it, and between history, which was piecemeal at best, but there was enough to hang on to. William Wallace existed, and he died like that. And there was another ballad writer, a guy called Blind Harry the Minstrel, and he had this epic poem, with all the various characters in it. So Randall Wallace took from history, and he took from Blind Harry’s exaggerations, and he crafted a decent script.”

Gibson said that William Wallace was a revolutionary, who almost took England.

“Almost took the whole thing – if he hadn’t been ratted out by some traitors!”

Filming had started in Scotland, around Ben Nevis.

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“It was beautiful there,” he says. “It was just made for an anamorphic screen. The peaks are the right size, and you get the right distance from it – perfect. And they were very hospitable. The ground, however, was not horse friendly, I said ‘I know where they’ve got horse friendly ground’, and it was across the pond.”

Gibson says they were very fortunate to make the acquaintance of Michael D Higgins, who was Minister for Arts and Culture at the time, “and we had a word with him to see what sort of resources and stuff there might be, and he really opened up the doors for us.

“And we had a stable near the Curragh; the Reserve Army close by, they’d walk to work; the horses would walk to work – it was ideal. And a perfect battlefield, for all intents and purposes it was an empty plain, but once you get stuff going on there, it worked.”

“The lads all got 35 quid a day and a boxed lunch. And they were great – they got into it. And they didn't hurt each other. They were starting to get pretty tough with one another. We’d say ‘you don’t have to do that you know, you can miss by three feet. It still looks good on the camera. I think there was a hang nail, a twisted foot and a broken nose. That was it!”

Gibson laughs as he recalled getting “nailed by a couple of turnips as big as your head, and some lads with some pretty good arms” at the final crowd scene at the castle, when the rebel’s execution was about to take place, and he was being decried by the throngs.

“They were going to get me! It was a 105-day shooting schedule, and I was on seven days a week. I wasn’t getting any time off, so I was losing my mind. Plus I was in it, directing it, calling the shots, you didn’t get any sleep, and for 105 days I was a complete lunatic.

“So occasionally I’d lose my temper and yell and scream about stuff – not very often – a couple of times – and these guys had goofed up a few shots and I sort of had a word with them – so they were getting even for that, and hitting me with turnips!”

He said the castle in Trim looks more substantial than he remembered. “We put battlements up on there. I’ll tell you – when you were walking around the top it was moving around – it was a little shaky!”

He had just met a woman who had been an extra in the movie and was delighted to be back in the town where the movie is still “a big deal”. She was 12 years old at the time, she told me – I guess she’s what, 43 or so now, with great memories.”

Having arrived into town for Friday night’s prom show, Gibson sent Saturday morning in a relaxed mood meeting fans and signing posters, as well as chatting and posing for selfies with hundreds of people. He later attended the second proms concert where he chatted to host Simon Delaney, before taking some private family time in the evening.