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According to a report from the French news service Agence France Press (AFP), advisors to Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged a visiting Hollywood delegation to apologize for "insults and slanders" about Iranians in films. "(Iranian) cinema officials will only have the right to have official sessions with... Hollywood movie makers when they 
apologize to the Iranians for their 30 years of insults and slanders," Javad Shamaghdari, the art advisor to Iran's president, said Saturday. "The Iranian people and our revolution has been repeatedly unjustly attacked by Hollywood." He cited among the offending films 300, for showing Iranian ancestors as bloodthirsty, and The Wrestler , for a scene tearing up the Iranian flag. "We will believe Obama's policy of change when we see change in Hollywood too, and if Hollywood wants to correct its behavior towards Iranian people and Islamic culture then they have to officially apologise," Shamaghdari added. The visiting filmmakers are from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, and include president Sid Ganis, former president Frank Pierson, actress Annette Bening, and producer Walter Horberg who were invited by the Iranian Alliance Of Motion Pictures to hold a series of workshop meetings in Tehran. An AMPAS rep told AFP it's supposed to be a private initiative for educational and creative exchange without a political agenda. Guess it didn't turn out that way.
AMPAS Gets Punk'd By Iran Government
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Comments On Deadline Hollywood are monitored. So don't go off topic, don't impersonate anyone, don't get your facts wrong, and don't bore me.
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Fuck Iran
Is this a joke?
Too funny. We no longer have a clown for a president. The Iranians better hurry up and get rid of theirs as well.
REALLY!!What else did they expect? How naive! So tired of entertainment people not getting the fundamental truths of how the world works! Looking at life through rose colored glasses only works in movies!! Get real!
They were being used!
I think President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is absolutely correct concerning this matter. Can we fit the words “We’re Sorry!” on the tip of a nuke?
Well the Iranians are quite right. Reemeber “Not without my Daughter”? How many racist movies about swarthy terrorists has Hollywood produced? Has Hollywood ever shown Iran as a place where people ski and which has an ancient culture and beautiful, hospitable people? Marlin Brando said it best: Hollywood is happy to promote negative ethnic stereotypes about blacks, mexicans etc but NEVER about jews, oh no.
Maybe they should have sent Ahamdinejad’s close personal friend, Sean Penn, on another “fact-finding mission” instead. He could have brought along his new Oscar as a sign of support for all the gays Iran executes.
It was so predictable. I can’t believe they walked right into that trap.
AMPAS is either incredibly naive or lying. No way the Iranian government would not use this cultural exchange meeting as a chance to score points.
That said I wouldn’t be surprised if Hollywood does go all the way in saying sorry. The movie Crossing Over Wayne Kramer changed a storyline because an Iran American group complained about the honor killing sub-plot.
Some liberals are so incredibly naive it is beyond laughable. They think that the world is a soft fuzzy place where everyone drinks lattes and sings Kumbaya.
This is world of the real where people hate us for just being American. Maybe the self-described commy Sean Penn could over their and straighten them out…
By the way, I voted for Obama.
Was the Hollywood delegation wearing white knots on their lapels?
i’m looking forward to seeing mahmoud get the boot in this year’s elections
Why would AMPAS make real big fools by taking a trip in Tehran in the first place? Beside low neilson rating why tarnish their image further?
The Iranians are correct. Anti-Iranian and anti-Muslim bigotry has been promoted by Hollywood for decades. I’m sorry that people on this site share that bigotry.
Ahmadinejad should apologize for breaking children’s arms for stealing food.
i have a picture of them running over a six year old’s with a jeep if you’d like to see it.
Ahmadinejad, don’t poke this angry bear because i just might be the one to make the movie that gives your friendly to us populace their own Revolutionary Road – and ya never know when a bodyguard might change his mind.
Watch your fucking back.
ps – but if you open up your nuclear program and make it completely transparent someday i’ll be president and i won’t personally write the sequel to 300.
Fuck Xeres. We are free men.
and ‘hollywood delegation’? – what dumbshits are stupid enough to do business with a sworn of enemy of The United States? Iran is under sanctions and it is a felony to do business with them. And probably treason.
and does this ‘hollywood delegation’ mark the historic event of the first gays in Iran?
i love donuts.
Well, gee, what were they expecting? Tea and glorious platitudes about the wonders of a free expression????? The naivete of those in Hollywood never ceases to amaze me.
“I think President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is absolutely correct concerning this matter. Can we fit the words “We’re Sorry!” on the tip of a nuke?” Comment by Bryan — February 28, 2009 @ 4:42 pm
“Yes we can”
Sid Ganis is right on with his efforts to reach out to Iranian filmmakers, who are no more responsible for the conduct of their idiot president than we in Hollywood were responsible for President Cheney’s conduct.
I wonder what all the Jews in Hollywood who just adore Obama are going to say when the Ayatollah turns Tel Aviv into a radioactive wasteland, all while good ol’ Barry is preoccupied trying to give illegal immigrants full health and dental…
In Iran, little girls are beaten to death with rocks for alleged promiscuity. In Iran, teenaged boys are hung from construction cranes for alleged homosexuality. These are some deeply sick, evil people and they’re working to export their fucked-up practices. If anything, “300″ and “Not Without My Daughter” let them off too easy…
Rhett, What about the Iranian government’s bigotry against gays and women, which is often enforced by stoning or slow strangulation and death by being strung up from crane wires as two teenage boys were, and too many others to mention?
A regime that cliams there are no gays in Iran, then does everything possible to make that a reality, as Hitler did?
What about their highly public genocidal bigotry against Israel and the Jews in direct contravention of the UN Charter??
Oh, but all those bigotries are justified. I get it.
Are you sure your name isn’t Mahmoud?
Yea, right.
Just because Iran has laws against homosexuals and is in general not a shinig beacon of democracy gives Hollywood every right to use unshaven Muslim men as the generic bad boys.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not a very wise, benevolent or peaceful president. This does not change the fact that here, in this one instance, he has a point.
Nikki, I know you moderate the comments on here, and you put up “Fuck Iran”?
Mertel, By that reasoning, just because Nazi Germany had laws against Jews, fags and Gypsies (as Mel Brooks might put it) and was in general not a shining beacon of democracy didn’t give Hollywood every right to use brutal blond-haired blue-eyed Krauts as generic bad boys.
Hey, seen Saving Private Ryan? The Pianist? Escape from Sobibor? How about Schindler’s List? Boy, were those films stereotypical, huh? Slandering a good and cultured race because of a few bad eggs?
BTW Can’t wait to see Inglorious Basterds! I just LOVE seeing brutal Aryan Kraut types get it, LOL!
Ya, Hitler had his points too. Nobody really wanted peace but him. I’m sure Hollywood stereotypes like those in Charlie Chaplin’s ‘The Great Dictator’ or the Three Stooges’ short ‘You Nazty Spy’ helped push him over the edge, huh? Especially the jokes about Ersatz beans! That would have definitely gotten my Master Race goat too!
God forbid we do anything to offend genocidal Islamist longbeards who want to kill us all and bring Armageddon down on our heads! God forbid we break an Iranian flag WWF-style in The Wrestler and offend a nation which desecrates ours as a national sport.
You know, maybe if Islamic terrorists didn’t behead and butcher innocent people for purely PR reasons, or blow themselves up in marketplaces, or butcher Israeli athletes at Munich, or hijack planes and fly them into buildings, or burn down embassies and threaten cartoonists with violent death (like, say, Theo van Gogh) or take hostages as SOP, or issue fatwas of death against novelists like Salman Rushdie, or threaten the LiveLeak staff with violent death over its broadcast of Geert Wilders’ FITNA, or stone women and hang gays from crane wires, or rally en masse for an Islamic caliphate and declare we’ll all be on prayer rugs with a sword to our throat (as they did in Britain this past weekend), or constantly declare how they’ll exterminate Israel in general and the Jewish race in particular (with us next in line, of course, Jew-lovers that we are), or commit over 10,000 terrorist acts since 9/11, or fire more rockets into Israel than the Fourth of July, or dress their kindergartners in fake suicide vests and train them in martyrdom, or TAKE VIOLENT OFFENSE AT EVERY SLIGHT REAL OR IMAGINED (as in, say, 300 and The Wrestler), maybe they wouldn’t be stereotyped as evil in shows like 24 and films like The Naked Gun and Bounty Hunter. Maybe their rep just might improve some.
Sure, no doubt most of the world’s 1.2B Muslims are peaceful. If they were all like bin Laden we’d be truly f*cked. But as long as organizations like the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Al Aqsa, Islamic Jihad, HAMAS and Hezbollah and their state benefactors in nations like Saudi Arabia, Syria and most particularly Iran choose the paths of brutal and bloody misogyny, homophobia, megalomaniac Islamic expansionism, anti-Semitism and a total disregard for basic human rights (or even human life for that matter) they got whatever’s coming to them, IMHO.
Don’t want to be portrayed as evil? Don’t BE evil! Simple as that.
By the way, how do you think Americans are portrayed in most films and TV shows in the Middle East? Horns and pitchforks ring a bell?
Oh, but we deserve that for all our unforgivable evils, right? You should have joined the Nine Stooges on their trip to gay-hanging Iran. I’m sure you would have apologized at the drop of a hat.
My hero.
Sorry, Nikki. I really hate politics. But sometimes you just have to tell it like it is without all the liberal frosting to cover things up.
–The Iranians are correct. Anti-Iranian and anti-Muslim bigotry has been promoted by Hollywood for decades. I’m sorry that people on this site share that bigotry.–
Uh…examples, please.
Who exactly speaks for all of Hollywood? Do we have a spokesperson – I always thought Hollywood was a whole bunch of artists and technicians, who usually diagree.
As soon as this little twirp apologizes for being one of the dirtbags that took American hostages years ago,then we might apologize.Ok ,i will apologize.Sorry that your country sucks and you have a president that is 4 ft tall.
@MadKing:
I obviously did not bring my point over clear enough, but your answer is helpful in pointing it out:
‘Sure, no doubt most of the world’s 1.2B Muslims are peaceful.’
…but they are judged, in recent (last 20 years or so) Hollywood movies by the actions of the extremists.
Case in point: Flight Plan. The Muslim men on board are the prime suspects – just because they are bearded strangers. This film actually had an intelligent approach to it.
In no way do I want to protect Mr. Ahmadinejad. I just wanted to point out that he mgiht have a valid point this one time. But he is instantly discredited because of his vast, vast history of beeing offended to easily.
(And yes, counting ‘300′ as an offense is nonsense once more, of course.)
Maybe the movies are just propaganda in the ongoing war in Irak and Afghanistan. Let’s incite hatred in our people so we have more volunteers to fight in our wars. So let’s portray each and every bearded Muslim as a terrorist.
The tone of your port is pretty outraged. This is because of the actions committed – evil is the correct word, you are absolutely right.
The Nazis were evil. And aryan men made up a bulk of baddies in the decades following WW2, gradually supplanted by Russians. The movies you listed – they were made 40+ years after the end of the war. Valkyrie, never mind the Tom Cruise controversy, came more than 60 years later, depicting that there was, after all, resistance in Germany. Might these films be Hollywoods ‘excuse’ to Germans?
If this is so, Mr. Ahmadinejad will have to wait at least another 40 years.
why do you only report negative things… there is a positive side to this story i am sure… maybe that through the arts, AMPAS is bridging cultural gaps in ways politicals have not been able to???
If Hollywood is going to apologize for something, they need to start with “Milk”…
So long as there are brutal dictatorships, there will always be useful idiots living comfortable lives in the free world to be their apologists.
Alleged stereotypes in film do not equal human rights violations. But let’s indulge the defense for a moment:
If someone wanted to make a pro-Iran or pro-Islam movie in America, they could do it and face no worse reprisal than possible low box-office sales and public criticism. It’s possible that there are people in Hollywood making deliberately anti-Islamic movies. But nothing exists to stop anyone from doing the opposite. It’s a free country.
If someone wanted to make a pro-America, pro-Judaism or pro-Christianity movie in Iran, I wonder how long they’d remain alive, much less stay out of prison.
I see nothing to apologize for.
Ahmadinejad and his cronies have no business demanding apologies from anyone. If they want us to stop portraying them as villains, then perhaps they should stop behaving like villains.
@Mertel -
“Maybe the movies are just propaganda in the ongoing war in Irak and Afghanistan. Let’s incite hatred in our people so we have more volunteers to fight in our wars. So let’s portray each and every bearded Muslim as a terrorist.”
Or maybe they aren’t. After all, everyone knows how much support Hollywood has shown for the Iraq war. Why, one can barely get through an hour-long show without a character expressing precisely how they feel about the war in Iraq, and in case you’ve not been paying attention, it’s about the same way Hollywood felt about Vietnam. How many movies and television shows have we seen where the terrorist villains were “white supremacists”, such as in the movie re-write of The Sum of All Fears, or some other ersatz villain? Is this somehow more reflective of reality, or an obvious concession to a part of the world known for its histrionic overreactions?
I would love to see a movie about freedom fighters in Iran. A movie adaptation of “Prince of Persia” is coming out soon, directed by Jerry Bruckheimer; I sincerely hope they mine Persian culture and history to maintain a uniquely Persian storytelling style (though I realize it’s more likely to end up a watered-down Western-style epic, as is usual for blockbuster movies). I eagerly read Persepolis 1 & 2, and have been wanting to see the animated film adaptation. While I’m at it, Sayid, an Iraqi, is one of my favorite characters on “Lost”.
But while Sayid is sympathetically portrayed, as is the protagonist of Persepolis, the brutal regimes they dealt with are not.
How is this a problem? Call a spade a spade.
FWIW Devin, Iran’s leaders have declared PERSEPOLIS as “anti-Iranian Revolution”.
Funny. That’s exactly the same charge Stalin used to lay on his enemies: ‘counter-revolutionaries.’
Be your revolution religious fanatic or atheist Communist, people always seem to wind up at the same place: up against the wall.
To tell you the truth, if films like PERSEPOLIS are anti-Iranian Revolution, a charge filmmakers can be sentenced to death for in Iran, maybe it wasn’t such a good Revolution after all.