That's not entirely outside the realm of possibility, although Zach's been getting a lot of role lately too (mostly thanks to Hangover) and I'm sure he's got a good agent. Somehow I don't think he's making as much as the Doug character (can't remember the actor's name). But you might be right, about Mel getting a good cut of money for it, and others having issues about it.

Well I was thinking they would use those problems to joke about something in the film. This didnt go over too well with the cast, and they moved to a differnt joke.

Dont know if thats what Kiri was hinting at or not. I think both of you were leading towards this being an issue because of his problems?

That would have been interesting, but something tells me Gibson wouldn't have done it to poke fun those at those problems. Those are still a little too fresh and he's still catching backlash from it. I don't think he'd be comfortable with it, but he may have. The fact that he was replaced so quickly probably means the jokes weren't exactly actor specific.

It would have to be something about Mel that made him "perfect" for the role though. So I thought it was probably because the character is a drunk or something and he could use that to make fun of his mistakes. So I dont know.

It could still be that, the character could still be a drunk and what not and be funny. The cool thing is that now that we know Mel was originally there, we can laugh still if this is true.