Not sure why the above link didn't work. Below is the article that mentions the Ulmer Scale.
www.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/movies/22gibson.html‘Bad Boy’ Star Loses Support Abroad
By MICHAEL CIEPLY and BROOKS BARNES
Published: July 21, 2010
LOS ANGELES — Mel Gibson’s recorded rants, now part of a domestic violence investigation here, are taking a toll where it can hurt an aging action star the most: among foreign film buyers.
Fred Prouser/Reuters
Mel Gibson
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Jacques Brinon/Associated Press
Mr. Gibson, who turned 54 in January, has not starred in a Hollywood studio film since 2002, when he helped make a hit out of the sci-fi thriller “Signs” for the Walt Disney Company. So most of the speculation in the news media since the recordings became public has been built around a moot issue: Is Mr. Gibson’s acting career in Hollywood over? It was pretty much ashes to begin with.
But Mr. Gibson has remained an enormous star overseas, where companies have invested millions to help him finance recent pictures like “Edge of Darkness” and the still-unreleased crime drama “How I Spent My Summer Vacation.” Agents who buy films for foreign theater chains and television networks have also been generally supportive of his efforts as an independent star and filmmaker.
That may change.
“Less and less interesting as an actor as he ages — not aging well! Or behaving well either,” wrote Hilary Davis, the co-managing director of Bankside Films, a movie buyer in London, in an unusually blunt e-mail message on Tuesday.
James Ulmer, who for years has ranked actors’ value, with a close eye on foreign markets, through the his Ulmer Scale, said he was hearing much the same from buyers in Europe and the Middle East.
“I was surprised at how much of an emotional impact this has had on the Europeans,” Mr. Ulmer said.
Fallout from Mr. Gibson’s anti-Semitic outburst in 2006, which followed his arrest for drunken driving, had already marked the actor as a risky prospect for foreign buyers. The soft performance of “Edge of Darkness,” which took in only about $37 million in foreign theaters after its release in January, increased skepticism about his bankability.
Now, Mr. Ulmer said, foreign distributors are “starting to think he may just be too hot to handle.”
Mr. Gibson’s latest woes have clustered around recordings, dribbled out by the Web site Radaronline.com, that appear to capture him screaming insults, threats and at least one racial epithet at the Russian model and musician Oksana Grigorieva, with whom he has been in a custody dispute over their child. Earlier this month the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department publicly acknowledged that it was investigating possible domestic violence involving the two.
A spokesman for Mr. Gibson declined to comment.
Normally, foreign film markets are deeply forgiving of idiosyncratic behavior or the ravages of time when it comes to action-oriented male stars who have reliably turned out hits.
Tom Cruise, under pressure from a run of bad publicity in the United States, found a host of foreign buyers for his “Valkyrie” in 2008, and the film ultimately got about 59 percent of its $200 million in ticket sales from abroad. Sylvester Stallone was 61 that year, when his latest “Rambo” opened and picked up about $70 million, or 62 percent of its $113 million in total ticket sales, from international markets.
Historically, some of Mr. Gibson’s hits have had disproportionate appeal internationally. While Hollywood films on average get about half their ticket sales from abroad, Mr. Gibson’s “Braveheart,” for instance, earned 64 percent of its $210 million in box office sales from foreign theaters, signaling a powerful appeal in countries around the world.
In Mr. Ulmer’s published ranking for 2009-10, compiled before the recorded rants, Mr. Gibson had a score of 62 among 1,402 stars, putting him on a par with Ben Stiller and a bit above Robert Redford and Jake Gyllenhaal.
But Mr. Gibson’s latest outburst, with its overtones of violence and racial hostility, appears to have turned off supporters in markets like Germany, France, Italy, the Middle East and Scandinavia, according to movie buyers and distributors.
“He’s obviously lost the plot — his latest antics have been reported here in the U.K.,” noted Ms. Davis, the London buyer.
Some bright spots remain, however.
One may be Latin America, a market that is relatively minor for Hollywood but is growing quickly. Mr. Gibson’s fan base there has been especially strong since “Apocalypto,” his 2006 film about the decline of the Mayan civilization.
Japan may also have a soft spot for Mr. Gibson. “Mel Gibson is still widely known as an actor and director among Japanese movie fans, and it is no mistake that he is one of the elements which can differentiate” a film from others, said the international department of Toho-Towa, a Japanese film distributor, in an e-mail message.
Oddly, some American film sales executives appear to take a brighter view of Mr. Gibson’s prospects than their European counterparts, perhaps because he has already been operating outside of conventional studio circles, so has little to fear from banishment. (Summit Entertainment has not decided how or when it will release “The Beaver,” starring Mr. Gibson as a man who walks around with a puppet on his hand and treats it like a living creature. The film, directed by Jodie Foster, is in post production.)
“I think he’s still a huge movie star,” said Andrew Herwitz, president of the Film Sales Company, which helps to sell film rights in the United States and abroad.
Mr. Herwitz, who said he was not handling the current Gibson films, predicted that Mr. Gibson’s work would prevail over his “bad boy” image, though it might take some time for the shock over his behavior to fade.
“This may be an unpopular point of view,” he said. “But I think he’s a great actor, and that matters.”
He is also one of the reasons why I watch Robin Hood from time to time (isn´t there something wrong when Robin Hood is the least interesting character in a TV show about Robin Hood?)
