[Mb-hair] "Looking For Comedy In the Muslim World"

[Jim Burns]

Censorship, comes in all forms....
Jim Burns
_____


The Los Angeles Times,THE BIG PICTURE

Something's wrong when a studio balks at a comedy this inspired.
 
By Patrick Goldstein, Times Staff Writer
September 27, 2005

In the days after the calamitous 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, there
was a brief flurry of soul-searching in Hollywood, focusing in part on
how much of a role our movies played in stirring Muslim rage against
America. As innumerable cultural historians have discovered, many devout
Muslims are horrified by the sexual innuendo and crass materialism in
Hollywood films and music videos, not to mention Vanity Fair, whose
salacious cover spread this month of Paris Hilton pretty much says it
all when it comes to celebrating even the tawdriest members of our
celebrity culture.

Judging from the films in the multiplexes this summer, the
soul-searching in show business lasted about as long as Britney Spears'
first marriage. According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center,
an overwhelming majority of respondents in Middle Eastern countries were
opposed to the spread of American ideas and customs. I seriously doubt
that sitting through a double-bill of "The Dukes of Hazzard" and "Deuce
Bigalow: European Gigolo" will improve the polling numbers.
 
But the real problem with Hollywood isn't simply its glorification of
sex, money and lame old TV shows. It's that our Ivy League-educated
studio elite often don't know the difference between crass and class.
How's this for an example: Sony Pictures, the studio that made "European
Gigolo," has refused to release "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim
World," an inspired new film by Albert Brooks about a comedian —
Brooks, playing himself — who is recruited by the U.S. government to
go to India and Pakistan to find out what makes Muslims laugh.

The movie makes fun of comedians' neurotic neediness and State
Department ineffectuality, but seems to steer clear of anything that
would insult Muslims. Still, in a June 30 letter to Brooks, Sony
chairman Michael Lynton said that he wouldn't release the film unless
Brooks changed the title. Lynton wrote: "I do believe that recent
incidents have dramatically changed the landscape that we live in and
that this, among other things, warrants changing the title of the film."
Sony insiders say Lynton was alarmed by the violent reaction in the
Muslim world to Newsweek's May 9 story, since retracted, about a Koran
being flushed down the toilet by interrogators at the U.S. military
prison at Guantanamo Bay.

Brooks' movie, financed by producer Steve Bing, has now found a new home
at Warner Independent Pictures, which plans to release it early next
year. Warner Indy chief Mark Gill says he had no problems with the
title. "How often do you get a laugh simply from the title of a movie?"
Gill told me. "We saw the movie, and it was clear that Albert makes fun
of himself and America, not anybody else."

Lynton won't discuss the issue publicly, but perhaps he is worried that
merely having "Muslim" in a film title could cause the kind of outrage
that led to the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, whose film,
"Submission," showed naked women with verses of the Koran projected on
their bodies. 
I'd be worried if I'd made "Submission" too. But Brooks' film is a
comedy, not a political screed, closer in spirit to Randy Newman than
Salman Rushdie. I only wish I could get Lynton to explain why Sony was
squeamish about Brooks' film and not "European Gigolo," which makes fun
of a female Chernobyl victim who has a penis instead of a nose.

Brooks, in his first interview about the film, confirmed that Lynton
expressed concern about Muslim outrage over the alleged Koran incident.
"When we spoke, he told me, 'The Newsweek thing has changed the world.'
And I said, 'Wasn't it 9/11 that changed the world?' But Michael said he
just didn't want to take a chance."

Best known for such films as "Real Life" and "Lost in America," Brooks
says he was inspired to make "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World" in
the wake of 9/11. "For so long afterward, whenever I heard anyone talk
about Muslims, it was in association with terrorism," he explained after
screening the film for me at his Bel-Air office. "But I thought, what
could I do in a teeny way — and believe me, it's a teeny way — to
defuse this? There had to be some way to separate the 1.5 billion people
who don't want to kill us from the 100,000 or so who do. I thought if I
could get five Muslims and six Hindus and maybe 3 Jews to laugh for 90
minutes, then I've accomplished something."

In the film, Brooks is recruited for his mission by a government
official, played by former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, also portraying
himself. The comic heads for India, where he has a variety of
misadventures, including a disastrous stand-up comedy concert and a
botched meeting with Al Jazeera, which Brooks assumes is interested in
his search for comedy when, in fact, the network wants to audition him
for a sitcom. "At your age," says the Al Jazeera executive, as coolly
pragmatic as any Hollywood agent, "you should think about television."

As with most Brooks films, the movie, which was filmed in India late
last year, makes fun of showbiz self-absorption. But it also toys with
other cultural stereotypes, from young Pakistani terrorists who turn out
to be comedy connoisseurs to Brooks' hapless State Department minders,
who are so disorganized that they can't even rent a decent office in New
Delhi.

For Brooks, the film's title was an essential ingredient. "Even if you
didn't see the movie, you'd see two words you'd never seen put together
before — comedy and Muslim. Comedy is friendly — it's the least
offensive word in our language."

After the Newsweek/Koran incident, Lynton told Bing he wanted a title
change. "I was so upset I was throwing up at 3 a.m.," Brooks recalls.
"It felt wrong — it defeated the whole idea of why I went to India in
the first place." Bing took the film to Warner, where he'd put up half
the money for "The Polar Express" and has a long-standing relationship
with studio chief Alan Horn. After Horn watched Brooks' film and gave
his blessing, Warner Independent picked it up.

So why is one studio willing to embrace the film while another studio
runs and hides? In fairness to Sony, it has every right to reject any
movie it wants. Lynton may have his own personal reasons for being
gun-shy. Disney refused to let Miramax release "Fahrenheit 9/11" last
year, largely because Michael Eisner didn't want to deal with the
potential political fallout from its attack on the Bush administration.
None of the major Hollywood studios would release Mel Gibson's "Passion
of the Christ" either, fearing a barrage of criticism.

The truth is that we live in an era when the political agendas of most
media conglomerates are shaped by their core businesses, which often
have little to do with Hollywood. Rupert Murdoch famously refused to
publish a book critical of the Chinese government at a time when he
needed Chinese access for his satellite TV network. In the 1990s, Time
Warner mortally wounded its music division by selling off Interscope
Records and getting out of the rap business, largely because it feared
that gangsta-rap controversies would harm its relations with Congress,
whose largesse it needed for its more lucrative cable TV business.

When we spoke, Brooks eyed a Sony Trinitron TV set in the corner of his
office. "Sony makes televisions — and everything comes after that," he
says. "Time Warner is an entertainment company. They don't make TVs. My
impression was that if I got in the way of Sony selling one more TV set
somewhere, I was out of there."
Brooks, like me, is alarmed that Sony and other studios seem so
unconcerned about the dumb, sexist image of America their comedies
project to the the world. "We export films that are full of sleazy
[penis] jokes and toilet humor — that's why we've earned the
affectionate nickname of the Great Satan," he says. "What's seemingly
benign, by our standards, is doing more damage to us around the world
than anything I could ever do." Soon Brooks is on a comic roll,
wondering "if we actually find advanced life on another planet whether
they'll be as obsessed with their own genitals as we are."

Comedy is not just a laughing matter. For years, great American artists,
from Mark Twain to Richard Pryor to Jon Stewart, have used humor to
expose our foibles and help us grapple with our differences. Even today,
the popular Egyptian comic actor, Adel Imam, is starring in "The Embassy
Is in the Building," a movie that uses comedy to pursue a serious
premise — that making peace with Israel is a viable political option.
The movie is a hit in Egypt. And the fact that a comedian can raise an
issue that's too hot for Egypt's political leadership to touch shows
just how much influence laughter can wield. It lets us see the world —
and our fears — in a fresh light.

Brooks' movie may not have the box-office potential of an Adam Sandler
comedy, but at least it has something to say about our world, which is
why Sony's refusal to release it is so dispiriting. If Sony is this
timid about a well-intentioned comedy, imagine how timid it will be when
something really volatile comes along. 

© Copyright 2005 The Los Angeles Times