AMPAS Gets Punk’d By Iran Government

COMMENTS (34)

• 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.

  Comment by HH — Monday March 2, 2009 @ 6:29pm PST  Reply to this post

• 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.

  Comment by Scew Iran — Monday March 2, 2009 @ 9:16pm PST  Reply to this post

• @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.

  Comment by Mertel — Tuesday March 3, 2009 @ 2:26am PST  Reply to this post

• 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???

  Comment by Anonymous — Wednesday March 4, 2009 @ 12:04pm PST  Reply to this post

• If Hollywood is going to apologize for something, they need to start with “Milk”…

  Comment by plissskin — Thursday March 12, 2009 @ 9:42am PDT  Reply to this post

• 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.

  Comment by Devin — Thursday April 2, 2009 @ 2:07am PDT  Reply to this post

• @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.

  Comment by Devin — Thursday April 2, 2009 @ 2:26am PDT  Reply to this post

• 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.

  Comment by Johnny Simpson — Thursday April 9, 2009 @ 5:56pm PDT  Reply to this post