Mel Gibson and Britney Spears in paradise

There. So Mel Gibson and Britney Spears flew off to Costa Rica together.

No, it wasn’t a naughty tryst. It wasn’t a wacky celebrity skit on “Saturday Night Live.” It wasn’t even a copy of People magazine sent through the office shredder and reconstituted like a Franken-story. Nope, just one inhabitant of the celebrity “Truman Show” lending a hand to another denizen of the bubbled universe. Unlikely as it sounds.

The two — accompanied by his wife and her father — had gone to vacation and look at property. Mel already has a home there. And Britney could certainly use a refuge from the paparazzi, though wouldn’t you know it; the tabloids even followed the songstress there, and snapped pictures of her swimming off Barrigona Beach.

It’s not hard to figure out how the 52-year-old Gibson and the 26-year-old Spears know each other — through Blair Berk, defense lawyer to the stars, who has helped both of them sort out their legal problems. Berk declined to comment, as did Spears, and Gibson’s publicist said that Gibson would not be able to comment as he was out of the country.

But what are these two really doing together? According to those who know (who declined to be named for fear of angering the actor), Gibson — and his wife, Robyn — reached out to Spears back in the dark days of February, around the time the troubled songstress was committed to the UCLA Medical Center’s psychiatric unit. He was tortured by the idea that the pop star might end up dead, in part a casualty of the public’s lurid fascination with her. Says one informed source, “There was no religious overtones, no endgame other than trying to show her there’s a way to live your life without being in the fishbowl, and learning how to raise kids that way.” Indeed, unlike Suri Cruise or Jaden Smith, the seven Gibson kids have avoided becoming tabloid grist.

- From LATimes