A group in Los Angeles wants to buy billboard space on Sunset Boulevard so they can put up a sign of Mel Gibson's face with the international sign for "no" over it in red, according to MSNBC's The Scoop. But the group's leader, publicist Andy Behrman, says billboard companies keep turning them down.

Behrman told The Scoop, "We wanted to make a statement that anti-Semitism is not okay in Hollywood - or anywhere else. They tell us it will be fine, and then when they learn we want to protest Mel Gibson, there's suddenly some problem."

Behrman said the group made a $40,000 deal with a Regency Outdoor salesman to erect the billboard on August 15. The rep told him he had to run the deal by his boss, Behrman said, and then called him back saying "my boss doesn't want to touch this Mel Gibson thing."

Behrman said he was told that billboard operators fear alienating studios that may want to work with Gibson if the controversy over his recent drunken anti-Semitic rant ever subsides. Billboard operators get most of their ad dollars from film studios.

The Scoop reports that Regency Outdoor co-owner Brian Kennedy would not comment about the subject when contacted.