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The guidelines for outdoor advertising on Hollywood's legendary Sunset Strip are becoming clearer now: If you're a megalomaniac actor/director who'd like to erect a billboard over the boulevard depicting yourself getting a pretty sweet hummer, fine, let's see that check. But if you'd like to put one up protesting the anti-Semitic comments of a megalomaniac actor/director with whom studios might like to work with once the whole "fucking Jews start all the wars" business blows over: Perhaps we can show you something in some blurry, Xeroxed handbills to pass out in front of the Chinese Theatre? The Scoop reports on one group's difficulty in securing some billboard space to symbolically declare Hollywood a "No Mel" zone:

"We wanted to make a statement that anti-Semitism is not okay in Hollywood — or anywhere else," says publicist Andy Behrman, who is spearheading the effort. "They tell us it will be fine, and then when they learn we want to protest Mel Gibson, there's suddenly some problem."

Behrman says that he even got an okay for a $40,000 deal from Regency Outdoor to erect the sign on a billboard at Sunset and Holloway on Aug. 15, but was told that the sales rep "had to run this by my boss." He got a call back saying "my boss doesn't want to touch this Mel Gibson thing," Behrman tells The Scoop.

Behrman says he's been told that billboard operators don't want to risk alienating studios, who account for most of their ad dollars and might want to work with Gibson if the controversy over his recent drunken, anti-Semitic tirade dies down.

Maybe there's room for compromise here, incorporating controversial precedent into a revised billboard featuring an image of Gibson blowing Vincent Gallo. (The studios might go for it if just the back of Gibson's head is shown, giving them plausible deniability.) Failing that, we bet that $40,000 would be enough money to convince the guy with the El Camino to change his opinion of Gibson and drive his newly repainted "No Melmobile" up and down Sunset Boulevard every day for the rest of the year.