Gibson says controversial tirade was ‘a gift’

Some in Hollywood thought that Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitic tirade would be a career-killer, but the controversial “Apocalyto” director says it was “a gift.”

The experience was “a gift to me because it’s made me really sort of scratch my head and focus on a couple of things that I needed to,” Gibson told DarkHorizons.com. “It’s working out real positive, and hopefully in other lives that I’ll touch.”

The “Mad Max” star also blames the media for hyping the negative. “Unfortunately I think it’s become more of a trend,” he said. “After all, it sells more newspapers to actually focus on and identify someone and sometimes it gets out of hand. I think the balance is way off, but that’s the way it is and you can’t change that. ... Everybody goofs, everybody screws up and I tell ya, if you ask everybody in the world to raise their hand if they never said something vicious, something that they regretted or something stupid, there wouldn’t be many people that wouldn’t be able to raise their hands.”

Love willing to meet Madonna halfway
Courtney Love wants to make up with Madonna — but she doesn’t want to be the first to apologize.

“We have not spoken since her wedding,” Love said, reports ContactMusic. “I want to make peace, but hey, I am not going to make the first move.”

Some date the ill will between the two to the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards when the Hole singer crashed the Material Girl’s interview and threw a make-up compact at her. Love, 42, feels it time for the two stars to put the past behind them and form a friendship.

Notes from all over
Scientology fans shouldn’t hold their breath waiting for Tom Cruise’s movie on the controversial religion. There are published reports that the “Minority Report” star is making “The Thetan” — a flick about Scientology and is casting former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham in a key role. His rep, however, tells The Scoop that there’s no such project in the works. ... Meanwhile, Katie Holmes’s rep is also dismissing reports that she’s pregnant again. ...  Hilary Swank says she has health problems because of her diet during one film. “Actually, I have some problems with elevated mercury in my system,” Swank told Reader’s Digest. “I wasn’t eating meat when I was filming ‘Million Dollar Baby’ but I had to put on 19 pounds of muscle, so I ate a lot of fish.”

Jeannette Walls Delivers the Scoop Mondays through Thursdays on MSNBC.com

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