Warners may be a little too cocky. By opening ““Conspiracy Theory’’ this week, not just in the dog days of August but also in the wake of the Harrison Ford blockbuster ““Air Force One,’’ the studio is testing the limits of the ““Lethal Weapon’’ magic. Gibson’s offbeat performance is gripping, and his costar, Julia Roberts, has renewed strength off the success of ““My Best Friend’s Wedding,’’ but conventional wisdom says that their especially strong portrayals may find only a middling audience by the blockbuster standards of summer. It doesn’t help that the roller-coaster ride of a plot is supposed to be confusing, the definition of a marketing nightmare. Gibson’s character, Jerry Fletcher, is a cabby with tenuous ties to reality. He thinks the world is a giant web of conspiracies against ““us’’ by ““them.’’ And it turns out that he may be onto something. But the hows and whys don’t get sorted out until he works through his relationship with a Justice Department attorney played by Roberts. It’s hardly a romance, but the emotions do run deep.
No matter how it does at the box office, the studio already has the thing it wants most from this picture - ““Lethal Weapon 4.’’ As they tell it, the boys had so much fun making ““Conspiracy Theory,’’ they can’t wait to be together again. ““It’s a lot of them, isn’t it,’’ says Gibson with a grin. ““You know, Dick and Joel were sitting there, talking ideas. They get you laughing. There’s not a solid script, but they have some insanely funny ideas.’’ The explosions have been ordered up for filming to begin next year.
Gibson claims he finally agreed to make ““Conspiracy Theory’’ for laughs. ““I was sitting there with a phone call and I looked up and first I saw Dick walk in like this,’’ Gibson says, jumping up to do his best imitation of a man twice his age and a foot taller lumbering into a room. ““And Joel came in and then Brian (Helgeland, the screenwriter) behind them and then the door got shut like this,’’ he says, pretending to slam his office door shut with the aggressive drama that is the portly Silver’s signature. ““And they proceeded to beat me up - figuratively, of course. It was hilarious, a three-ring circus. I had already turned down the movie. Then I started laughing at these guys. And it was just “Oh, what the hell, if filming is going to be like this. Dick and Joel love what they do, see, and they’re good at it. I mean, they’re very slick operators.''
Gibson is nervous as he talks about his maniacal cabby, maybe his most challenging role since ““Hamlet.’’ His hand moves from chin to cheek to ear to nose, constantly touching, rubbing, almost as if he’s checking to see if all of the parts are still there. If he isn’t biting the inside of his cheek, he’s biting his lip. He chain-smokes Marlboros. ““I kept saying to Joel, “This guy is a bag man. I can’t be a bag man.’ And he says, “Yes. That’s what we want. We want a bag man, but we want to see through the bagness. You can make us see through the bagness’.’’ Gibson twirls the short locks of his hair at his collar. Sitting in his office with the film ready to be released, he seems to be just coming to grips with the risk he took in playing this character. ““He’s really a sick person. Someone’s gone inside the vault of his mind and removed a few files, and he’s just clutching at straws, trying to figure out what happened. It’s why he’s into all these theories.’’ It wasn’t that hard to find the character within himself, Gibson says. ““I know what it’s like to feel paranoid,’’ he says. ““I’ve had my phone bugged. I have people who want star gossip; they follow you around, stake you out. They eavesdrop on your life. It’s not always so nice. I know what it’s like to always be looking for the lens, to be careful with the children.''
Once Gibson signed on, he pushed to nab Roberts, an expensive luxury on a movie that already boasts such a pricey marquee. ““It seemed like a jolly good idea. She is the queen of subtext. She’s very expressive, very smart about the way she acts. Just watch her,’’ says Gibson.
Roberts knew it was a boy’s club when she signed on. ““At this point in all of their careers, they are all rich, all famous, yet they still put in 100 percent. It was surprisingly effortless to work with them, considering they all know each other so well,’’ she says. But there’s one thing Roberts wanted the guys to put in the movie that they wouldn’t: kissing. When her government lawyer takes Mel’s nutty paranoid cabby under her wing, she’s naturally more mother than lover. But each time the script called for intimacy but no passion between the two characters, Roberts lobbied to turn up the heat. ““I always want more,’’ she says (she made the same argument for her relationship with Denzel Washington in ““The Pelican Brief’’). ““Put me and Mel in a movie, and people are going to be waiting for a little smoochie. I hope people realize the value of the reality we give them rather than waiting to see us smooch.''
One new guy did manage to elbow his way into the boys’ club during the making of ““Conspiracy Theory’’: the screenwriter, Brian Helgeland, 36. A former New England fisherman who hates the cold and wears only shorts, he first came to California for a film-school fling. Within five years, he became one of the highest-paid screenwriters in Hollywood (““Nightmare on Elm Street 4’’). He has two other movies set to be released before the end of the year - Curtis Hanson’s ““L.A. Confidential’’ and Kevin Costner’s ““The Postman.’’ During the ““Conspiracy Theory’’ production, Donner tutored Helgeland, letting him stand by his side from the opening shot. Now Gibson’s agreed to star in the writer’s directorial debut, ““Parker,’’ Helgeland’s reworking of ““Point Blank,’’ a 1967 Lee Marvin movie, that’s set to film in September. It’s another juicy - and risky - part for Gibson, playing a guy so venal he’s ““without a heart.’’ But then, if you’re the founding member of this billionaire boys’ club, you can afford to take a chance.
