Notorious racist Mel Gibson has a new film out, both here and in the US. Here, it’s called How I Spent My Summer Vacation and its tag line is ‘Plan your getaway’:
But over in the US, it’s called the much-catchier Get The Gringo but has the duller tagline ‘The odds are against him. So is everyone else’:
The question is why? Did they think the UK public was going to be less open to movies featuring Mel Gibson with racial epithets in their titles? Why is it ‘vacation’ rather than ‘holiday’, except to avoid possible Cliff Richard connotations?
I’m Rob Buckley, a journalist who writes for UK media magazines that most people have never heard of although you might have heard me on the podcast Lockdown Land or Radio 5 Live’s Saturday Edition or Afternoon Edition. I’ve edited Dreamwatch, Sprocket and Cambridge Film Festival Daily; been technical editor for TV producers magazine Televisual; reviewed films for the short-lived newspaper Cambridge Insider; written features for the even shorter-lived newspaper Soho Independent; and was regularly sarcastic about television on the blink-and-you-missed-it “web site for urban hedonists” The Tribe. Since going freelance, I've contributed to the likes of Broadcast, Total Content + Media, Action TV, Off The Telly, Action Network, TV Scoop and The Custard TV.
