Coolassprov MC
17-02-06, 06:47
http://breakfornews.com/my/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=466
Even before we got our kickers twisted in the Mohammed Catroon hysteria, Albert Brooks' movie "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World," (which had its world premiere in the second annual Dubai International Film Festival), was in trouble because distributors figured the title was risky.
But, at that Dubai screening, Sheik Abdullah bin Zaid al-Nahayan, who's the minister of information of the United Arab Emirates was: "laughing; he's talking to the guy next to him in Arabic and pointing at the screen. And no one walked out!"
Azhar Usman, a Muslim comedian who organized "Allah Made Me Funny," a touring show of Muslim comics says: "The notion that a Muslim audience wouldn't have the vaguest notion of what stand-up comedy or improvisation was is utterly false."
A Jew walks into a mosque
Comedian/filmmaker Albert Brooks talks about
'Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World'
Dave Kehr / New York Times
Freshly returned from the Middle East, where his new film, "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World," had its world premiere as part of the second annual Dubai International Film Festival, Albert Brooks sounds exhausted, elated and relieved.
"This had never happened before," says Brooks from Los Angeles. "There's been no other American comedy that's made light of anything after 9/11. Nobody knows what will happen. The audience could stand up and walk out, they could boo, who knows? I don't have any road map here. I was told that, 'We think it will be OK,' but I was also told that people don't mince words here. If you hit the nail wrongly, it's like your thumb: You know it right away."
This may be the first post-September 11 comedy to pass up broad satire for a more humanistic, interpersonal approach with all the attendant risks. "Looking for Comedy" is rooted in a solid, unbendable sense of reality that Brooks has cultivated since his first feature, "Real Life," in 1979.
A radical stylist among comedy filmmakers, Brooks shuns punch lines and emphatic editing in favor of long takes and wide framing, a technique that allows the inherent absurdity of a situation to emerge on its own. And for Brooks, there is nothing quite as absurd as a narcissistic professional who finds his hermetic view of the world challenged by the world itself. In "Real Life," Brooks plays a character named Albert Brooks, a comedian whose career has entered an ominously quiet phase. Trying to get things back on track, he persuades a middle-class family in a Phoenix suburb to let him film their lives as they unfold, but ends up burning their house down in an attempt to pump some entertainment value into the dull spectacle of quotidian existence.
His character in "Looking for Comedy" could be a direct extension of that earlier Albert: His career again in the doldrums (the opening scene finds him being rejected by the director Penny Marshall for a remake of "Harvey"), he is selected by the retired Tennessee senator Fred Thompson (also playing himself) for a high-level government mission: Albert is to travel to India and Pakistan, where he's to research and write a 500-page report on what, if anything, tickles the Subcontinental funny bone. There's no money in it, Thompson tells Albert, but there is the possibility of a big, shiny medal.
Before the Dubai screening began, Brooks took the stage for an introduction. "I said I thought the festival was important," he later recalls, "and I don't know where else in the Middle East I'd be invited to show this movie at this particular time. And I said, 'I have to be honest with you, a lot of my friends asked me: "Why are you doing this? Aren't you scared?" ' So I looked them in the eye, and I said, 'But I'm not scared!' They liked that."
At the Dubai premiere, Brooks says: "We were told right before the screening that Sheik Abdullah bin Zaid al-Nahayan, who's the minister of information of the United Arab Emirates, would be flying in from Abu Dhabi to see the film. And people are saying: 'Do you know what this means? He never goes anywhere.' OK, all right, good now, I'm even more worried. I thought, oh, my God if the sheik walks out, that means they all have to walk out together, you know? I asked the theater manager if he had a CD of 'Exodus' just in case we could play the theme while everyone leaves. He didn't know what I was talking about."
Distributor qualms
Sony Pictures, the film's original distributor, dropped the film after Brooks declined to change its title in the face of widespread Muslim anger over a Newsweek report, since retracted, that American interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had flushed a Quran down a toilet.
As Patrick Goldstein reported in the Los Angeles Times, Michael Lynton, the chairman and chief executive of Sony Pictures Entertainment, wrote in a letter to Brooks, "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."
According to Brooks, Steve Bing, one of the film's producers, was able to find the film a home at Warner Independent Pictures. The movie opened at the Birmingham 8 theater on Friday.
"The film is actually a skewering of our own lack of cultural understanding, and it comes at a time that is extremely sensitive and therefore it is all the more timely," says Mark Gill, Warner Independent's president, in an e-mail message.
Brooks says: "So I had the head of a studio telling me that this would cause a fatwa. But then, you've got to start somewhere. I didn't know what to expect. If I had gotten three or four polite laughs and no one walked out, I was willing to consider the film a success."
Reaction not bad
Aljazeera.net, the Web site of the satellite news channel, ran a Reuters story reporting that "Looking for Comedy" "received mixed reviews from audiences in Dubai," but quoted only one filmgoer. "Zeinab, 18, from the United Arab Emirates, said: 'It was different from the usual movies we see from America. It's good to show other cultures of the world.'"
Brooks, though, perceived a more enthusiastic reaction: "There's that scene where they call me to Washington, and they explain that Pakistan is all Muslim and I say, 'But I thought India was primarily Hindu.' Somebody at the table says, 'There's almost 150 million Muslims in India alone,' and Fred Thompson says, 'Is that enough for you?' They went crazy! I thought, I passed the test, it's OK! The sheik is laughing; he's talking to the guy next to him in Arabic and pointing at the screen. And no one walked out!"
Some of the Arab press, Brooks says, questioned his decision to set the film in India and Pakistan rather than an Arab country. "I said, 'Well, if you can get me permission to shoot in Saudi Arabia, let me know,' " he says.
"Because it was not happening when I was making calls. That was shut down within five 5 minutes, with 'What, are you insane?' They're not going to let a Jewish man, much less a filmmaker, in there. That's just not going to happen.
"But I wanted the conflict between the two countries. I knew in writing this that I wanted to take two existing powers that are always suspicious of each other, and that was the one place you could do that. The idea was always that I go to do a peace mission, and I almost start World War III."
Azhar Usman, a Muslim comedian who organized "Allah Made Me Funny," a touring show of Muslim comics that began in Toronto in May and stopped in Dearborn this past summer, says Brooks "has a point."
Comedy in the Muslim world (Arab or otherwise) can indeed be hard to find. "Today, stand-up comedians just don't really exist," Usman says. "But they did once. I have albums from the '70s. The big, towering guy from Pakistan is called Moin Akhtar, and another guy, who was his contemporary, was Umar Sharif. And there was a guy in India who was really famous, who used the name Johnny Lever. They basically did one-man shows, with a lot of improv and sketch comedy, but with a small portion of what we would call stand-up."
Their style of comedy, Usman says, would not be unfamiliar to viewers of "Seinfeld." "There's a lot of family humor, things about the difference between men and women, jabs at politicians daily life, situational stuff.
"The notion that a Muslim audience wouldn't have the vaguest notion of what stand-up comedy or improvisation was is utterly false."
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060121/ENT02/601210316/1032/ENT
Even before we got our kickers twisted in the Mohammed Catroon hysteria, Albert Brooks' movie "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World," (which had its world premiere in the second annual Dubai International Film Festival), was in trouble because distributors figured the title was risky.
But, at that Dubai screening, Sheik Abdullah bin Zaid al-Nahayan, who's the minister of information of the United Arab Emirates was: "laughing; he's talking to the guy next to him in Arabic and pointing at the screen. And no one walked out!"
Azhar Usman, a Muslim comedian who organized "Allah Made Me Funny," a touring show of Muslim comics says: "The notion that a Muslim audience wouldn't have the vaguest notion of what stand-up comedy or improvisation was is utterly false."
A Jew walks into a mosque
Comedian/filmmaker Albert Brooks talks about
'Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World'
Dave Kehr / New York Times
Freshly returned from the Middle East, where his new film, "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World," had its world premiere as part of the second annual Dubai International Film Festival, Albert Brooks sounds exhausted, elated and relieved.
"This had never happened before," says Brooks from Los Angeles. "There's been no other American comedy that's made light of anything after 9/11. Nobody knows what will happen. The audience could stand up and walk out, they could boo, who knows? I don't have any road map here. I was told that, 'We think it will be OK,' but I was also told that people don't mince words here. If you hit the nail wrongly, it's like your thumb: You know it right away."
This may be the first post-September 11 comedy to pass up broad satire for a more humanistic, interpersonal approach with all the attendant risks. "Looking for Comedy" is rooted in a solid, unbendable sense of reality that Brooks has cultivated since his first feature, "Real Life," in 1979.
A radical stylist among comedy filmmakers, Brooks shuns punch lines and emphatic editing in favor of long takes and wide framing, a technique that allows the inherent absurdity of a situation to emerge on its own. And for Brooks, there is nothing quite as absurd as a narcissistic professional who finds his hermetic view of the world challenged by the world itself. In "Real Life," Brooks plays a character named Albert Brooks, a comedian whose career has entered an ominously quiet phase. Trying to get things back on track, he persuades a middle-class family in a Phoenix suburb to let him film their lives as they unfold, but ends up burning their house down in an attempt to pump some entertainment value into the dull spectacle of quotidian existence.
His character in "Looking for Comedy" could be a direct extension of that earlier Albert: His career again in the doldrums (the opening scene finds him being rejected by the director Penny Marshall for a remake of "Harvey"), he is selected by the retired Tennessee senator Fred Thompson (also playing himself) for a high-level government mission: Albert is to travel to India and Pakistan, where he's to research and write a 500-page report on what, if anything, tickles the Subcontinental funny bone. There's no money in it, Thompson tells Albert, but there is the possibility of a big, shiny medal.
Before the Dubai screening began, Brooks took the stage for an introduction. "I said I thought the festival was important," he later recalls, "and I don't know where else in the Middle East I'd be invited to show this movie at this particular time. And I said, 'I have to be honest with you, a lot of my friends asked me: "Why are you doing this? Aren't you scared?" ' So I looked them in the eye, and I said, 'But I'm not scared!' They liked that."
At the Dubai premiere, Brooks says: "We were told right before the screening that Sheik Abdullah bin Zaid al-Nahayan, who's the minister of information of the United Arab Emirates, would be flying in from Abu Dhabi to see the film. And people are saying: 'Do you know what this means? He never goes anywhere.' OK, all right, good now, I'm even more worried. I thought, oh, my God if the sheik walks out, that means they all have to walk out together, you know? I asked the theater manager if he had a CD of 'Exodus' just in case we could play the theme while everyone leaves. He didn't know what I was talking about."
Distributor qualms
Sony Pictures, the film's original distributor, dropped the film after Brooks declined to change its title in the face of widespread Muslim anger over a Newsweek report, since retracted, that American interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had flushed a Quran down a toilet.
As Patrick Goldstein reported in the Los Angeles Times, Michael Lynton, the chairman and chief executive of Sony Pictures Entertainment, wrote in a letter to Brooks, "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."
According to Brooks, Steve Bing, one of the film's producers, was able to find the film a home at Warner Independent Pictures. The movie opened at the Birmingham 8 theater on Friday.
"The film is actually a skewering of our own lack of cultural understanding, and it comes at a time that is extremely sensitive and therefore it is all the more timely," says Mark Gill, Warner Independent's president, in an e-mail message.
Brooks says: "So I had the head of a studio telling me that this would cause a fatwa. But then, you've got to start somewhere. I didn't know what to expect. If I had gotten three or four polite laughs and no one walked out, I was willing to consider the film a success."
Reaction not bad
Aljazeera.net, the Web site of the satellite news channel, ran a Reuters story reporting that "Looking for Comedy" "received mixed reviews from audiences in Dubai," but quoted only one filmgoer. "Zeinab, 18, from the United Arab Emirates, said: 'It was different from the usual movies we see from America. It's good to show other cultures of the world.'"
Brooks, though, perceived a more enthusiastic reaction: "There's that scene where they call me to Washington, and they explain that Pakistan is all Muslim and I say, 'But I thought India was primarily Hindu.' Somebody at the table says, 'There's almost 150 million Muslims in India alone,' and Fred Thompson says, 'Is that enough for you?' They went crazy! I thought, I passed the test, it's OK! The sheik is laughing; he's talking to the guy next to him in Arabic and pointing at the screen. And no one walked out!"
Some of the Arab press, Brooks says, questioned his decision to set the film in India and Pakistan rather than an Arab country. "I said, 'Well, if you can get me permission to shoot in Saudi Arabia, let me know,' " he says.
"Because it was not happening when I was making calls. That was shut down within five 5 minutes, with 'What, are you insane?' They're not going to let a Jewish man, much less a filmmaker, in there. That's just not going to happen.
"But I wanted the conflict between the two countries. I knew in writing this that I wanted to take two existing powers that are always suspicious of each other, and that was the one place you could do that. The idea was always that I go to do a peace mission, and I almost start World War III."
Azhar Usman, a Muslim comedian who organized "Allah Made Me Funny," a touring show of Muslim comics that began in Toronto in May and stopped in Dearborn this past summer, says Brooks "has a point."
Comedy in the Muslim world (Arab or otherwise) can indeed be hard to find. "Today, stand-up comedians just don't really exist," Usman says. "But they did once. I have albums from the '70s. The big, towering guy from Pakistan is called Moin Akhtar, and another guy, who was his contemporary, was Umar Sharif. And there was a guy in India who was really famous, who used the name Johnny Lever. They basically did one-man shows, with a lot of improv and sketch comedy, but with a small portion of what we would call stand-up."
Their style of comedy, Usman says, would not be unfamiliar to viewers of "Seinfeld." "There's a lot of family humor, things about the difference between men and women, jabs at politicians daily life, situational stuff.
"The notion that a Muslim audience wouldn't have the vaguest notion of what stand-up comedy or improvisation was is utterly false."
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060121/ENT02/601210316/1032/ENT