Academy Award winning actor and director Mel Gibson told the media after losing his $14.5 million home located in Malibu to the wildfires obliterating Los Angeles and surrounding areas that, in the end, it’s all just “stuff.” NewsNation journalist Elizabeth Vargas interviewed Gibson via phone and asked him, “I’m looking at the video of ruins of what was once your home. How are you doing?”
I mean, despite his reply, he’s probably not doing too well, Elizabeth. Geesh.
“I’m doing good, you know, it’s just a thing,” the Christian actor responded. “But it is obviously kind of devastating emotionally. You know, you’ve lived there for a long time. And you had all your ‘stuff’… Do you remember George Carlin talking about your ‘stuff’?”
“I had all my ‘stuff’ there and it’s like I’ve been relieved from the burden of my stuff, because it’s all in cinders,” he continued during the interview. The “Braveheart” star was making a reference to a famous comedy skit by funnyman George Carlin who stated that “a house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it.”
“You can see that when you’re taking off in an airplane. You look down, you see everybody’s got a little pile of stuff. All the little piles of stuff,” Carlin stated during the bit. “That’s what your house is, a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get… more stuff!”
I don’t think that’s how the vast majority of us view our houses. Mostly because they are more than a house. They are a home. We raise our families in our houses. Parties, celebrations, Christmases, Halloweens, barbecues, you name it. We have our highest highs and lowest lows in our homes. In reality, they sort of being a living entity of their own, their lifeblood flowing from the memories made within.
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“Well, at least I haven’t got any of those pesky plumbing problems anymore,” Gibson zinged during his conversation with the anchor.
“I have never seen a place so perfectly burnt. You could put it in an urn, you know?” he added.
“Some of the neighbors really got it hard,” Gibson remarked. “You know, Ed Harris, the actor, lives down the street and I think his place is gone and many of my friends up and down the street. And it was kind of random. It wasn’t every place but it was quite a few places.”
“There were a dozen places or so that were just non-existent, I mean, nothing but a chimney and a few roof tiles and you dare not walk around for the nails,” he said to Vargas.
“It was completely toasted. It’s like somebody did it on purpose,” the “Apocalypto” director said. “It was the perfect firestorm, I mean, my place looked like Dresden.”
Gibson then said he’s lived in the home for close to 15 years.
“I had a lot of personal things there that, you know, I can’t get back … All kinds of stuff, everything from photographs to files… to just personal things that I had from over the years, clothes… pretty cool stuff, you know, but you know, hey, that can all be replaced. These are only things,” he explained.
“The good news is that those in my family and those that I love are all well and we’re all healthy and happy and out of harm’s way. That’s all I care about really,” he concluded.
And that’s definitely the most important thing. If you survived the fire with all of your loved ones, you have a lot to be grateful for.