Jodie Foster Directs ‘The Beaver’

The new film The Beaver, starring Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster, combines comedy and harrowing drama in a hybrid rarely seen at the movies. Gibson plays Walter Black, a deeply depressed businessman whose life has gone down the tubes. His luck starts changing when he discovers he can function in everyday life if he talks through a beaver puppet on his hand. The puppet has sweet eyes, matted fur and a cheerful, mischievous cockney persona. Foster acknowledges the bizarre scenario – “it’s a fable,” she says.
Foster plays Walter’s wife and she’s also the film’s director.   She told Kurt Andersen that the role of Walter required an actor who could make the psychological leap and she had no doubt Gibson could pull it off: “He understands his own complexity and he understands struggle like nobody else… He has a childlike quality about him but something regretful as well. But [in] those two things combined I think there is a man searching. Some would say there’s a little madness in there. There’s a little madness.” The Beaver opens nationwide Friday, May 20th.