At the South by Southwest Film Festival, Jodie Foster is ready to premier her new film The Beaver for the first time to American audiences.
Part of that publicity will be a social action campaign that involves awareness of mental illness, potential treatments and education.
None of which includes the film’s troubled star Mel Gibson.
As [The Beaver] depicts the devastating effects of mental illness on one family, Participant designed the Social Action Campaign to provide audiences with tools, resources and opportunities to heal the pain of those suffering from mental illnesses and their families and friends
Its not only good marketing, but its socially responsible and appropriate.
The film will be dealing with a crippling mental illness, and while its sure to have light moments of comedy (man with a puppet, yeah there’s going to be comedy) this film is certainly going to be addressing the mental illness.
Furthermore, Gibson has done a GREAT job staying under the radar since this film got a US release (Sheen is helping) so there is no reason to try and bring him any more to the forefront than they need to.
Gibson is a great character actor, and while clearly a flawed human being he is more than qualified to play out a heartfelt vulnerability that this film really needs.
But as far as the media spin, I think its BETTER that they allow the mental illness to be their publicity tie in as an awareness campaign. It not only shows that the film makers are sensitive to the condition they intend to portray on screen, but that they are not going to stoop to tabloid shock headlines to get people to watch this.
