A look inside Hollywood and the movies : RISKY BUSINESS : ‘Man’ Without a Homosexual Face

When Mel Gibson reportedly made anti-gay remarks to a Spanish magazine more than a year ago, the news quickly put him at odds with the homosexual community.

So it’s understandable that seeing Gibson in “The Man Without a Face,” a project that marks his directorial debut, comes as a bit of a surprise: the character he plays, recluse Justin McLeod, was originally written as a homosexual. In the 1972 Isabelle Holland novel, McLeod engages in a homosexual episode with a child.

In the film, which opened last month, Gibson plays a disfigured former teacher who finds a new lease on life tutoring a troubled, fatherless youngster (Nick Stahl). Although townspeople in the movie clearly question the extent of the friendship that develops between the two, the insinuations are much more subtle than in the novel--which some critics found too daring for its young adult readership.

The episode was obviously too risky for film backers too.

“The fact that the (McLeod) character was gay was prohibitive in selling the book,” said Lisa Callamaro of the Callamaro Agency, which represents both novelist Holland and “Man Without a Face” screenwriter Malcolm MacRury.

“The thought was: How do we get this movie made? One of those (concerns) was not to scare people off in terms of pedophilia and the gay community. Nobody wanted to offend the gay community, and none of us really felt that the sexuality had anything to do with the basic story,” she added.

Sources close to “The Man Without a Face” contend that the decision to alter the character’s sexuality was made long before Gibson was ever involved with the project.

It was MacRury who decided to alter the novel with regard to the character’s homosexuality in the first draft of the screenplay in 1990. By the time Gibson and his production company, Icon Pictures, got involved in late 1991, the screenplay was complete.

“When we first bought the screenplay, we didn’t even know that the book existed,” said Kari Messina, Icon publicist. “(Gibson) fell in love with the screenplay that he thought was really well written and had a story he wanted to tell.”

In fact, Gibson only recently read the novel, and was not concerned that the character was originally homosexual. “I don’t think he thinks that it’s an issue,” she said.

Gibson has contended that the remarks he made in January, 1992, to the Spanish magazine El Pais were taken out of context in a mistranslation. Yet he was reminded of the anti-homosexual stance he took as recently as his handprint session in front of Mann’s Chinese Theater last month, when he saw signs reading “Mel Gibson: Man Without a Conscience.”