Sometimes the lies are not what is in the script, but what is removed under pressure from whining, politically correct interest groups. These days, those groups are primarily Muslim and Middle Eastern.
Muslim groups have successfully gotten scenes--accurately depicting them as terrorists and murderers--removed from scripts or changed to another, more acceptable nationality. Brilliant blogger Sultan Knish drew my attention to the latest such cave-in: "Crossing Over," starring Harrison Ford and Sean Penn and produced by the Weinstein Brothers. I've been writing extensively about this movie and have a copy of the original script.
Muslim Iranians were upset that a scene portrays them committing an honor killing. Late last week, they succeeded in getting it removed from the film. No worries, though, about the anti-Semitic scenes in the movie. Those remain. The Weinsteins and Writer/Director Wayne Kramer are Jewish, and we can't expect them to cave on those the way they did for the "more worthy" Muslims. It's politically correct to attack Jews, not so--these days in Hollywood--to attack those who attacked us before and on 9/11 and repeatedly try to again.
In the movie--about immigration, illegal aliens, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents--Hamid Baraheri is a Muslim Iranian ICE agent in his early forties. Predictably, he is Hollywood's version of a kind, decent, hard-working, loyal American agent, much unlike the real-life Muslim federal agents, many of whom have been the subject of insubordination and tipping off targets in federal terrorism investigations.
But Baraheri's brother, Farid, murders his sister, Zahra, in an honor-killing, and ICE Special Agent Hamid Baraheri is in on it. After all, Zahra is dating non-Muslim men and sleeping with a Latino. An honorable Muslim family cannot allow her to live and continue to shame them with her existence.
And though you will never get to see that scene, my spies in Hollywood got me the script, so I'm reposting the scene below (scanned from the script).
**** HERE IS THE MUSLIM HONOR KILLING SCENE, recently deleted from the "Crossing Over" script:
In their successful campaign to get the scene removed, Iranian Muslims whined that Iranians don't commit honor killings. But they should tell that to the Iranian Supreme Court, which--only four months ago--acquitted a gang of six men who brutally murdering a woman because she was holding hands with a man to whom she was engaged. And there have been many other instances of honor-killing in the country (including here and here). To claim that Iranians don't commit honor killings is like saying Americans don't eat at McDonalds.
It appears that the part which most offended Muslim Iranians was not the honor killing itself, but the invocation of the name in the script that we all know comes with most honor killings:
May Allah have mercy on your soul.
Of course, even that was a sanitized version of what happens at Muslim honor killings. Usually there are no well-wishes for Allah's mercy on the "dishonorable" victim. Instead, it's the general, Allahu Akbar [Allah is the Greatest/Greater, as in "Greater" than other gods], asserting the "godliness" of the despicable cold-blooded murder.
Since the honor-killing is a theme discussed in several scenes toward the end of "Crossing Over," one wonders whether it will be sanitized out completely from the movie, which has already wrapped filming. That's a likely bet.
The Weinsteins say they removed the scene because:
While we believe strongly in freedom of expression, we also believe in the importance of constructive dialogue between artists and the communities they seek to portray.
Apparently they and Wayne Kramer had no dialogue between their own community of fellow co-religionists because these scenes remain:
* Gavin Kossef, a Jewish illegal alien Hebrew Teacher (who barely knows Hebrew) from South Africa, and the Israeli principal of the L.A. Jewish school where he teaches discuss their plan to openly defraud Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) officials so he can get U.S. citizenship and keep teaching at the school. This is phony, since there are no shortage of U.S. citizens trying to get jobs at Hebrew schools. And unlike him, they can actually speak Hebrew.
* Gavin is sleeping with an illegal alien Australian actress who is also sleeping with a CIS adjudicator, so she can get citizenship. After one of their sex-scenes, she throws a Siddur (Jewish prayer book) at his naked body, while she gets dressed. Ask yourself: Would this scene remain in the movie if it was a Koran being thrown? Trust me, if this guy doesn't know Hebrew and is sleeping around with a gentile actress, he ain't carrying around a Siddur (it's in Hebrew).
* The CIS adjudicator assigned to Gavin's case doesn't believe he knows Hebrew, that he is lying to get a special skills visa (as I said before, Hebrew-speaking is not a "special skill"; Enough Americans speak it to keep the Hebrew schools running). The adjudicator brings in a rabbi, Rabbi Yoffie, to hear Gavin sing a Hebrew song or prayer. Gavin hasn't a clue and sings something completely jumbled and non-sensical. Yet, the "trusted Rabbi" lies to the adjudicator, saying Gavin did well, and bingo, he's approved.
Yes, Muslim imams never do this, but Rabbis are defrauding immigration all the time. Right? That's despite report after report from Homeland Security and Congress that MUSLIMS--not Jews, not any other religion--are fraudulently obtaining special visas for "religious workers." But, hey, it's Hollywood. Who cares about facts?
And while we're discussing facts, there are the "facts" of Writer/Director Wayne Kramer that remain in question. He recently became a U.S. citizen, and as Sultan Knish (who gave me a lot of background on Kramer) points out, Kramer says the script is based on his own life:
"I've lived every step of the way in the screenplay. The average American citizen does not understand how hard it is to get status in America."The director said the immigration issue is much bigger than people crossing the Mexican border illegally. For that reason, his script also examines "how the system works and who are the people caught up in it and forced to do fraudulent things."
Sultan Knish notes that like, Gavin Kossef, the Jewish South-African character who defrauds Immigration officials to get citizenship, Kramer is also a Jewish South-African. And Sultan Knish raises another point:
It's also listed elsewhere that Kramer had malaria back in South Africa. Is malaria a condition that bars immigrants? Did he lie about it?
Is Wayne Kramer "Gavin"? Did he fraudulently obtain citizenship? If so, his citizenship application can be re-opened and he can be stripped of it and deported.
Based on this horrid PC movie, that would be just desserts. But don't hold your breath for ICE and CIS--the two largest Homeland Security agencies--to even care.
Their "leadership" is too busy doing more important things, like recruiting new Muslim agents to honor-kill their sisters.
