AMERICAN comedian Rob Schneider isn’t afraid to let the public know what he really thinks.
The Animal and Deuce Bigalow star has a habit of taking out open letters in newspapers addressed to high-profile people – quite often Australians – who get under his skin.
His first Australian target was Mel Gibson, following Gibson’s drink-driving arrest where he also made a series of anti-Semitic remarks.
Schneider took out a full-page ad in Hollywood trade rag Variety, vowing that as “a 1/2 Jew” to “never work with Mel Gibson-actor-director-producer and anti-Semite.”
“Mel is a good target to go after because you need to oppose hate in any form,” Schneider said.
“He seems like a nice guy, but he has a hankering for a bottle of tequila and then anti-Semitism just pours out, and that has to come from somewhere.
“I drink a lot of tequila, and you don’t hear me saying horrible things about any ethnic group. So that is in there; it is part of him.”
Michael Caton (The Castle, Packed to the Rafters) was Schneider’s next target.
In 2007, he took out a full-page ad in the Sydney Morning Herald after Caton suggested to the media that Schneider had helped Adam Sandler to plagiarise his 2004 film, Strange Bedfellows.
“I love Michael, but he should have stood up for me. Instead of doing that he said some snide joke,” he said.
“Whether a joke or not, being accused of plagiarising another comic’s work is not right.”
When asked why he feels the need to make his feelings so public, Schneider said “why not? I am a rich Hollywood movie star.”
“I will spend my money wherever I need to; what do I care? I don’t own a TV channel like Murdoch, so I am not able to influence the news like he does,” he said.
“What I am able to do is to take my f$#king Hollywood money and take out a full-page ad if someone is trying to challenge my integrity.”
These days, Schneider takes the same bull-by-the-horns approach with his films.
When he couldn’t get studio funding for his latest film, Big Stan, he decided to go independent.
“I wanted to give the audience something they hadn’t seen before, but Hollywood studios aren’t interested in things that haven’t worked in the past,” he said.
“I wanted to do it exactly how I wanted and it was a little too rough for them in the language and ideas.
“So I said ‘we will make it ourselves’ and I am very proud of it.”
The comedic film, also marking Schneider’s directorial debut, revolves around a petty conman who is sent to jail, but is petrified of being sexually assaulted.
“The original title was Unrapeable but I had to work on it,” he said.
“It is every guy’s fear. I don’t know what could be worse than that; if there are worse things than this I don’t want to know about them.”
Big Stan is in cinemas from November 27.