Celebrity anti-Semite Mel Gibson has responded to screenwriter Joe Eszterhas’ blistering attack on him over the closure of his passion project The Maccabees. And… we don’t quite know how to deal with this emotion, but we feel quite sorry for him.

In a short, polite letter which conspicuously failed to cite the blood libel, refer to a policewoman as ‘sugar tits’ or blame any wars on the Elders of Zion, Gibson quietly pointed out that Eszterhas’ decision to stay with the project despite his stated view of its director as a raging madman was, perhaps, not overly principled. We shan’t regurgitate the entire letter (it’s here if you’re interested), but these observations seemed particularly salient to us:

“I guess you only had a problem with me after Warner Brothers rejected your script.” Didn’t mention that in your note, Joey boy, did you?

“I was very frustrated that when you arrived at my home at the expense of both Warner Brothers and myself you hadn’t written a single word of a script or even an outline after 15 months of research, meetings, discussions and the outpouring of my heartfelt vision for this story.” If this is true then it flies directly in the face of Eszterhas’ loud assertions about his passionate research and involvement in the story of The Maccabees.

“Contrary to your assertion that I was only developing Maccabees to burnish my tarnished reputation, I have been working on this project for over 10 years and it was publicly announced 8 years ago.” This is, to be fair, absolutely inarguable.

“Honestly, Joe, not only was the script delivered later than you promised, both Warner Brothers and I were extraordinarily disappointed with the draft. In 25 years of script development I have never seen a more substandard first draft or a more significant waste of time. The decision not to proceed with you was based on the quality of your script, not on any other factor.” OOH, SICK BURN.

Nobody’s arguing that Mel Gibson is Hollywood’s golden boy any longer, but this letter is much more measured and reasonable than Eszterhas’ nine page diatribe. Were we all a bit too quick to side with the bitter, rejected screenwriter in the wake of Mel’s past transgressions? Perhaps we were.

What do you make of the Gibson/Eszterhas war of words? Let us know below!