Mel Gibson ‘needs medication’

The screenwriter behind “Basic Instinct” thinks Mel Gibson “needs medication” – but is still working with him on a movie about the Hanukkah story.

Joe Esztherhas, whose credits also include the scripts for “Flashdance” and “Showgirls,” tells Sunday’s New York Times that he “jumped” at the chance to work with Gibson, who infamously told a police officer during a 2006 drunk driving arrest that “Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.” Eszterhas tells the Times he’s just “a couple weeks away from finishing” the Hanukkah film’s script, which portrays what he calls “an absolutely glorious chapter in Jewish history.”

The Dutch-born screenwriter, 67, reflects on a number of past mistakes during the interview, saying he regrets glamorizing cigarettes in “Basic Instinct” – he later developed throat cancer – and cutting ties with his father after learning he’d written anti-Semitic propaganda in Hungary during the 1930s and ’40s.

One wonders if Eszterhas might be working through those daddy issues via his relationship with Gibson. While Eszterhas disagrees with those who viewed Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” as anti-Semitic, he concedes that the former A-lister can be volatile. “I’ve seen him explode at guests in his houses. And I think that his ex-girlfriend is probably right about one thing,” he says. “He needs medication.”