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

[Michael Butler]

Jim,
Great article
Thanks Michael

>  
> 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
> 
> 
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