Mel helps (sort of)

LOS ANGELES — ABC is promoting its new sitcom "Complete Savages" by trumpeting Mel Gibson's name. He's an executive producer, and he directed the pilot episode.

But any stories you may have read about how this sitcom, about a single father of six rambunctious boys, is based on Gibson's life are pretty much baloney.

Yes, Gibson is the father of a bunch of boys — six — as well as a daughter. But, unlike the fictional father (played by Keith Carradine) in "Complete Savages," his wife didn't try to kill him and then abandon the family.

The show wasn't his idea, and he didn't inspire it. "Well, basically, to be honest with you, Julie (Thacker-Scully) had the original idea for the show," said executive producer Mike Scully, who, along with his wife, is a former writer/producer on "The Simpsons."

So what exactly is Gibson's involvement on the show, which ABC keeps trumpeting? "Mel actually had a lot of input on the show. First of all, he directed the pilot," Mike Scully said. "He comes from a large family himself. . . . The week we were shooting (the pilot), he was in the writers' room every night pitching jokes. I mean, we can't say enough good things about all the stuff he's done for the show."

So . . . what exactly is he doing for the show beyond the pilot? "What's he doing? Oh, my gosh," said Thacker-Scully while she tried to think of something.

Basically, the show is being produced by Gibson's production company, and written and produced by the Scullys, who have been Gibson's friends for "about eight years." Which is about where his involvement ends . . . ABC promotions aside.

"We run ideas by him. We sit around the kitchen table and pick his brain on what his sons are doing," Thacker-Scully said. "It's a combination. It isn't based on his life, but we have certainly stolen crazy things that our children have done and combined incidents."

There is a bit in the pilot episode in which a housekeeper who's quitting sets the boys' clothes on fire out in the yard — an incident that "came right out of Mel's childhood, because they had 11 kids, and it was a story about his mother who, one day, was just carting out loads and loads of laundry while the boys were all (lying) around," Scully said. "And finally . . . she actually set their laundry on fire. She had just had it with the family."

If having Gibson's name associated with the show helped get it on the air, well, nobody involved is complaining. Not that they'd dare complain about Gibson, anyway. And not that they have anything to complain about, apparently.