The bitter dispute between Mel Gibson and screenwriter Joe Eszterhas took another turn on Wednesday night when Eszterhas released an audio recording of Gibson bellowing at houseguests and labelling his ex-girlfriend "a filthy little cocksucker".

Basic Instinct screenwriter Eszterhas released the tape to the Wrap to give credence to his claim earlier this week that Gibson sabotaged a planned film about a famous 2nd-century BC Jewish revolt for antisemitic reasons. Warner Bros had passed on The Maccabees, which Gibson had been attached to direct, last week, suggesting Eszterhas's script lacked "a sense of triumph".

The tape was made at the Braveheart director's home in Costa Rica and further adds to the impression of Gibson as an unhinged, out-of-control figure. It was recorded on an iPod on 7 December by Eszterhas's 15-year-old son Nick, who was with his parents, Joe and Naomi. Eszterhas senior said he and his family were terrified during the rant.

"Why don't I have a first draft of The Maccabees?" asks Gibson, apparently of Eszterhas, as the tape begins. "What the fuck have you been doing?

"I go to work, you're getting paid, I'm not! Shit! I am earning money for a filthy little cocksucker who takes advantage of me! Just like every motherfucker! So hurry the fuck up!" The film-maker is then heard knocking something over, apparently a large totem pole.

Eszterhas said he released the tape in response to suggestions by Gibson that he fabricated some or all of his allegations. He also said he hoped the film-maker might get help once the extent of his problems became public knowledge.

"Mel publicly called me a liar," Eszterhas said. "I've heard from my media sources that he's trying to organise a PR offensive questioning my truthfulness. My son Nick, who made this recording, said to me: 'We were terrified up there last night.' Nick took a butcher's knife and slept with it under his pillow. This recording shows him the way he really is. If he doesn't get help and receive it then someone is going to get hurt."

Gibson's interest in filming The Maccabees emerged last year and has been greeted with dismay by Jewish community leaders. The actor and film-maker was arrested in 2006 for drink driving and an antisemitic outburst, and has also received criticism for what many complained was the dubious depiction of Jewish figures in his 2004 film The Passion of the Christ. Eszterhas has accused the director of Holocaust denial, using antisemitic epithets and claiming that The Maccabees was a project aimed at converting Jews to Christianity.

Judah Maccabee was the prime mover in the successful 167BC revolt of the Judean state against the Seleucid empire, which had conquered the region at the beginning of the 2nd century BC. The Jewish festival of Hanukah is a commemoration of Maccabee's restoration of Jewish worship in the temple in Jerusalem in 165BC. In the modern era, Maccabee became a powerful symbolic figure for Zionist campaigners against the British authorities in the run-up to Israeli statehood in 1948.