If anyone wrote a script like this, no one would believe it.
But I already read the book.
That they even went to Iran in the first place was an abomination, especially given their three-hour gay rights infomercial called The Oscars just five days earlier.
And it only kept getting worse.
Or better, depending on your POV.
For this Most Humble DJ Contributor and Critic of Stage and Screen?
Definitely better!
So here’s the skinny to date on ‘MGGTT’ and this Most Humble Critic’s Zero Star Review:
First, President Obama himself must approve Team Hollywood’s visas, as Iran is under sanction from just about every nation on earth. Has been by the US ever since the Embassy and hostage seizures in 1979.
That’s the setup.
Now here are the punchlines!
After all that trouble Team AMPASS (the last S is for “stooge”) no sooner sets down in Tehran than they are welcomed by irate ‘culture ministers‘ demanding apologies for such celluloid affronts to Iranian civilization as “300′” and “The Wrestler” or they won’t be able to meet with their Iranian film counterparts.
See, these eminently cultured, erudite and most intellectual film elites of Iran were incensed by “The Wrestler” because in the film Mickey Rourke takes an Iranian flag from his ring opponent, The Ayatollah, breaks it over his knee and tosses it into the crowd. Deliciously ironic, considering desecration of the American flag is a national sport over there, even for kids.
Actually, especially for kids. Look familiar?
No word on if Mr. Ganis et al apologized. But they DID get to meet with their heel-ground Iranian film buddies shortly thereafter.
Curious. Loose end of the story so far.
Did they apologize or not?
So, not only does Team Hollywood no sooner land in Iran and get totally punked, President Obama has his one extended olive branch slapped out of his hand.
But wait! There’s more!
The apology-demanders were then officially called before Iran’s Parliament, the Majlis, to explain their own cultural slander on inviting the Ziono-Hollywoodist conspirators into their pure Islamist Paradise in the first place!
How great a story twist is THAT?
The demands for apologies just never end in totalitarian dictatorships. It’s par for the course.
No word yet on if the ministers’ contrite apologies were accepted by the Majlis’ Cultural Commission.
In fact, no word on them at all. Considering the culture ministers are Iran’s Hollywood Left, they could be in for it. Hell, they’re the liberals!
Curious. Another loose end.
Although it is rumored Mr. Ganis can’t find his ministerial escort anywhere.
One particularly laugh riot sidebar was an Open Letter To President Obama by Iranian filmmaker, domestic stooge and Team AMPASS’ new Best Friend Forever Alireza Davudnejad informing Mr. Obama that the only way to achieve peace, justice and freedom in the world was for the US to give up its UN veto power and dismantle all of its nuclear weapons.
Mr. Davudnejad also requested a schedule as to when Mr. Obama would implement these historic peace, freedom and justice-creating landmarks.
This, from a regime that foments war, writes injustice into its penal codes, crushes freedom with an iron boot and races to build nuclear weapons of its own.
Now THAT’S Comedy!
Even funnier?
AMPASS’ new BFF, Ali-Da, couldn’t resist one last Ziono-Hollywoodist Conspiracy backhand of his own:
“My last recommendation is not to follow your previous cultural policies and avoid your Hollywood friends from playing any tricks to dominate the cinemas of Iran. The United States once removed Iranian cinema from the Iranian life with the help of the former dictatorship; and sacrificed our industry with the import of foreign films. The fallen cinema of Iran has once again regained its footing with the Islamic Revolution and has been fighting to survive for thirty years.
“We will not forgive the enemies of this cinema wherever they are. By the way, which is harder, to relinquish the veto right, or to forbear the domination of Iran’s cinema again?”
How about neither, Ali-Duh?
Over my dead body!
But I digress.
“You have a hard path ahead. I pray for you. Only the right path has no deviation,” the letter ends.
Ya got all that, Sid?
No more Zionist tricks!
Or they won’t even let you apologize next time!
Q. What is the difference between Mr. Davudnejad and the AMPASS team?
A. He’s a domestic film industry stooge.
To this point, the AMPASS/IRAN road production was playing out in Joker-like blackly comic fashion and had this Humble Critic’s Five Gold Stars On The Forehead Stamp Of Approval.
But they lost me in the Final Act. And it wiped out all that good setup work.
See, yesterday, top Iranian government officials were highly upset with the ICC warrant for innocent genocide master and Dear Leader Gen. Omar Bashir of Sudan. So they took action, holding pep rallies in the streets with their Hamas and other Blackshirt Jew-slaughtering stooges for bloody brother Omar.
Then, led by Ali Larijani, the ‘moderate’ Speaker of the Iranian Parliament who once stated that 100 million Muslims killed in a nuclear exchange with Israel was acceptable (see, he’s a moderate in Iran like Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad’s the extremist) and the rest of Iran’s modern-day SS flew off to Khartoum to throw parades in support of their BFF O-Bash.
So in essence, Mr. Ganis et al have all remained in Tehran, schmoozing and teaching film seminars to Iran’s Goebbels-like propagandists that made these classics while top leaders of Iran’s government and their Brownshirt proxies not only celebrate genocide in the streets of Tehran, they then fly over to the streets of Khartoum where the genocide was committed to throw parades for the man who did it all and is now an international fugitive!
So now, not only is Mr. Ganis et al complicit by their gold-plated silence on the gay pogrom in Iran (which Iran’s culture experts are now trying to export to Iraq), they are now silent accomplices to Sudan’s genocide for remaining in Iran while all this is all going on around them instead of hightailing it out of Dodge as they should have when this obscene news broke.
Like I said, they had me till the Last Act.
One last curious loose end.
No word on if the AMPASS team generated any roar of support for missing American reporter and former Miss North Dakota Roxana Saberi. After their rough landing, I’m sure they didn’t want to have to apologize for any more impudence.
One charming and heartwarming story twist?
The only one, in fact?
Ms. Saberi will soon be released from her Tehran hellhole. It seems Secretary of State Clinton demanded it. Now THERE’S someone the Iranians can fear!
I know I would. Wisely, they seem to also.
At least her. I’m sure Mr. Ganis et al aren’t throwing too many scares into them.
Damn shame those kind of happy endings can’t happen to ALL the women in Iran.
They sure as hell won’t with hopelessly duped Stooges like Ganis, Bening and the rest of the AMPASS team giving Imadinnerjacket, Larijani, Rafsanjani and all of the other Mad Mullahs of Iran their gold-plated, boot-licking, butt-kissing stamp of approval.
But maybe if more people spoke out alongside Secretary of State Clinton on these heinous crimes against humanity on just about every person in Iran by today’s Islamist Third Reich, things might change.
The silence from Hollywood’s gay and women’s rights “activists,” who seem to be the loudest in condemning we here in America as misogynist and Hitlerite vis-a-vis gay and women’s rights, is deafening.
Where’s Sean Penn?
Where’s Dustin Lance Black?
They’re the tearful advocates.
And I’m the one that has to be “Damn The Torpedoes and Full Speed Ahead”?
Disgraceful!
Don’t wanna rock the boat?
Screw that! I’m sinking it!
Where’s the press, which can’t condemn ordinary Americans enough over glass ceilings for women and Prop 8? The ceiling for women and gays in Iran is Hell!
Where is Darfur Champion George Clooney’s raised-to-the-roof outrage over Iran’s state-sanctioned Dear Leader Bashir rallies while AMPASS is still sharing tea and pleasantries with the human vampires doing it?
Nothing but crickets.
Oh, well.
I guess the Dirty Jobs fall in my lap once again.
But they shouldn’t.
By the way, this stellar AMPASS/IRAN road production isn’t wrapped yet, people. May still get a star or two yet from this Critic and Your Most Obedient and Humble Servant. But it better be a spectacular ending to save this naively idealistic, incredibly flawed and ill-advised production.
Still, the AMPASS/IRAN Roadkill Show has had some surprising developments to date.
One ending is for sure, though.
After all the bad PR I’ve generated (yeah, that PUNK’D byline was mine), I’ll never eat lunch as a screenwriter in THAT town again!
But like Georgie Patton famously stated, ‘Sometimes you have to shame cowards in order to give them back their self-respect.”
And if there’s one thing people don’t like, it’s being shamed.
But the root question here is, shouldn’t they be?
Damn. I sure wish Hollywood made films like PATTON again instead of films that portray US as the Dark Side. Don’t you?
Forget it, Jake. It’s Hollywood.
Oh well.
At least some of them DO pay a price at the box office.
And if there’s one I’ve learned from Hollywood, it’s that Box Office Talks And Bullshite Walks.
One last tragically ironic twist on that subject?
I have a couple of GREAT film ideas like that!
Had, anyway.
Oh well. I can always write novels and nonfiction under a pen name.
Wouldn’t want to eat lunch there now anyway. Not after this cultural Hollywood abomination no apology can paper over. This whole fiasco goes WAY beyond film!
Hell, I’m madder than the Iranians right now!
In fact, I’m so upset, I’m boycotting Hollywood for the duration.
As long as Sid Ganis and his Motley Stooge Road Crew are not ejected off the Academy Board and into the Pacific for this egregious affront to civilized people everywhere (particularly in Iran and Sudan), my wallet is officially Closed For Business. No DVDs, no Blu-Rays, no downloads, no box office receipts at their MacDonald’s-like fast-film franchise cinemaplexes.
Damn shame too. Lot of upcoming movies I wanted to see.
So It Goes in War. Some sacrifices must be made.
But they sure don’t compare to the sacrifices Iranian gays betrayed by Ganis et al make every day at the hands of our modern-day Totenkopfverbande.
In closing, let it be known far and wide that I love film, I love Hollywood, and I even love and respect the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Just not today.
Because I just happen to love freedom, justice and human rights a little bit more.
Toodles, all!
Champagne Wishes and Caviar Dreams!
PS: I’m on the War Front now, people.
Give me a vote and strike a blow for Liberty!
All that said, Peace.
I hope.
Best to all, J.
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