SIGNS Q&A with Mel Gibson © 2002 PHASE9 ENTERTAINMENT

It's a film that has faith at its core. Since clearly you are a man of great faith, I wondered whether this helped you when you were getting under the skin of the character? MEL: I think these questions -- Is there something out there? Is there something greater than me? - are something that most of us have grappled with at some time or other, and I think that's kind of the universality of the theme of this film. I think most people will relate to it on that level, whether they accept or reject... it's interesting, and to couple that with the strange, sometimes inexplicable phenomena of crop circles. It really is a story about faith, though, and not so much about Martians. Some of the most emotional scenes in the film, the parental scenes, and your character with his brother... made we wonder whether as a father you were drawing on your own feelings for your offspring and reflecting them in the role? MEL: Not at all. I can't stand my kids [laughs]... You bring your own experience into play as much as possible, if you're trying to emulate some modicum of truth, you'll dig in there and try and get a grain of it now and then. I can't specifically say how, but I'm sure on some level it all comes into play. Do you believe in God? MEL: I do believe in God. Hey, look, there better be something greater than me out there or we're all in trouble. If I'm God, we're all in trouble. So I do. And if there is no God, why am I here? Why am I not invading other countries and ruling the world? What's to stop me if there's nothing to say I can't? I was wondering if you still have your ranch in Montana and if you were able to transfer some of the experiences that you had there into your role as a farmer in Signs? MEL: Yeah, I do, I've got the place up there... there's some crops they grow but it's mostly cattle munching the ground. To transfer it, nah, this guy wasn't much of a farmer really. He never really got out there. You never saw him working on a tractor or anything. Maybe he was renting the land, I don't know... I was wondering if ever in your life you have seriously doubted your faith and belief? MEL: Oh, yeah, sometimes you just wonder -- What's the point? What's the point? -- because nothing's ever going to go to plan, is it, ever? But that's the mistake. That's really a lack of humility. You have to be prepared to think that most of it's out of your hands anyway, and prepare to yield it. That's where humility starts, I guess. I'm not very good at humility. I have a struggle there. I don't think I ever had a crisis in faith really. I was raised in a certain way. I walked away from it for a long time... from about 17 to 35. That's a good 18 years of sort of wandering in the wasteland kind of thing. But eventually you mature and you start pondering these questions. I came back to some of that stuff. In the movie the fright is coming from above, last September we saw it could come from our backyard. Do you think indeed the human race is at risk or do you think on the contrary it's better to believe that there is hope and that we are coming together as a planet? MEL: One always has to have hope. It would be pointless to not have it. We're in dire straights as far as all this aggressive stuff goes overseas. I'd like to see it evaporate and go away, I'm sure everyone would, even the people involved in it would, except they're too full of hatred to let it go. Unfortunately, I think it's gonna drag us all in. And people are gonna have to choose sides somewhere along the line, and it's gonna get ugly. I'm not very optimistic about it, but I'm hopeful that some kind of resolve, peaceful resolve will get reached. Continued on page 2

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