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A Defamer operative at last night's cast and crew showing of Mel Gibson's jungle-set gorefest Apocalypto sends in this report, in which the nervous director himself was present to hand-deliver his barbaric, Mayan-flaying baby to the hard workers who helped bring it to the screen:

While I won't bore anyone with my review on APOCALYPTO (okay I lied — pompous, over-hyped snoozefest — there), I thought I might as well give a quick report on who attended last night's cast and crew screening in Westwood. Being neither cast nor crew, I can honestly report that Mel Gibson did attend, sans the Nazi uniform and 24-pack of Natural Light. The screening got started about forty minutes late, which, from what I can tell was because Gibson couldn't decide where he was sitting, despite two rows being corded off in the middle of the theater. Walk up the aisle, walk down the aisle. Shake some hands, look confused for what was an uncomfortably long period, think about sitting down, decide not to. Repeat.

The cast was there, although it would have been nice if they had attended in traditional garb — I was thrown off with Rudy Youngblood (lead actor, "Jaguar Paw", who strangely reminds me of an ex-boyfriend) without tribal shit darting from his face. Bizarre sightings of the night — Eriq La Salle, I'm assuming with time to kill since having left E.R., and Chad Lowe, with even more time to kill since being left by Hilary Swank. And no, they were not together.

Gibson's agitated behavior was of course due to the two rows' worth of Jewish community representatives the actor had personally Evited in order to see for themselves how not a single Jew was harmed during—nor blamed for—any of the sadistic deaths in his latest cinematic opus. Sadly, however, despite logging several "maybe" responses, none of them wound up showing up, and a dejected Gibson finally removed the cordoning, upon which the seats were quickly filled by the production's many standing-room-relegated PAs.