I got tipped a couple of days ago about an impending storm over a film that was in the works which actually showed Muslims as the bad guys, but which suddenly had its funding pulled. The reader who tipped me claimed, at first, that the funding was yanked when an investment company run by al-Arabiya's Sheikh Waleed al Ibrahim and a Palestinian named Zeid Masri, who has ties to the PLO, became involved.

I didn't run the story, because in my mind it really wasn't notable: when was the last time there was a Hollywood movie where Muslims were the bad guys? Because if there's anything Hollywood has taught me, it's that Muslim terrorists are always just the low-level players. The real enemy of liberty are the greedy capitalists. Oh, and the government. Which uses Muslim terrorists for its own diabolical plans to suppress civil liberties.....

So, let me just say that I'm not convinced that al Ibrahim and Masri's connection to the movie is the key. Hollywood is just too full of all sorts of idiots who want to be "taken seriously". Which means adopting a "more sophisticated" narrative than one in which Osama bin Laden is the bad guy, terrorists are Muslim, and America is good.

Not convinced, but I wouldn't be shocked if a couple of rich Muslims put their thumbs down and made the project go away either.

The timing of the money for the project being pulled certainly is suspicious. The project was cancelled shortly after al Ibrahim and Masri joined the investment company. But timing is really never enough, is it?

So, I asked the tipster, who seems to have a connection to some of the players in the film, if there was anything more? She e-mailed back this morning with this Venture Beat article, which notes that the film's script-writer was told that it was the investors who were responsible for the decision. Which still doesn't tell us why, but does raise, I think, more legitimate suspicions:

But [Jason] Ressler wrote an international secret-agent action/love story called “Dove Hunting,” set in the Middle East. He says it included examples of ways that Saudis “influence Western governments by putting their money in the right places and playing both sides of the fence.” Bizarrely, he says, his screenplay came true in this case....

Ressler, who wouldn’t disclose his ethnic background but is nonreligious, says that Gill acknowledged to him by email that he couldn’t make the screenplay because of his investors.

Posted by: Rusty at 09:58 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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