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Neil Gaiman knows one of the people who were deceived into acting in the movie now known to the world as “Innocence of Muslims.” She tells her story in a letter on Neil’s blog:
People who were tricked into believing that we were making an adventure drama about a comet falling into a desert did nothing but take part in a low budget indie feature film called the “Desert Warrior” that WAS about a comet falling into a desert and tribes in ancient Egypt fighting to acquire it.Not much to say, except that I can barely imagine how it must feel to have your likeness kidnapped like this, for this kind of purpose.It’s painful to see how our faces were used to create something so atrocious without us knowing anything about it at all. It’s painful to see people being offended with the movie that used our faces to deliver lines (it’s obvious the movie was dubbed) that we were never informed of, it is painful to see people getting killed for this same movie, it is painful to hear people blame us when we did nothing but perform our art in the fictional adventure movie that was about a comet falling into a desert and tribes in ancient Egypt fighting to acquire it, it’s painful to be thought to be someone else when you are a completely different person.
This is just to say
I have taken
your face
that was in
your performance
and which
you were probably
saving for
a decent purpose
forgive me
it was beautiful
so strong
and so cheap
(It's WCW's 130th birthday today.)
This is a thoroughly gross sort of theft; theft of reputation, theft of trust, utter destruction of any chance anyone so deceived will be able to believe any authority or work contract. Theft of image, of features. The people who would do this have as much honour as hyenas - less, because hyenas don't turn on their own pack.
Many of those enraged by the film will be unable to see it, which is a great pity for the duped actors: any offended Muslim film-literate enough to recognise the worst. dubbing. ever. (I mean, it's casually, trollishly bad; an extravagant lack of effort) can see that the cast didn't speak that name and have been stitched up. What a rotten situation.
I wonder whether there's any legal recourse in cases like this, even despite what contract the artist might have signed. Those contracts generally give the producers lots of leeway, but is this outside what is legally permitted?
Tom, #4: That was my first thought as well, that perhaps some action for fraud/misrepresentation might be brought.
Failing that, would it be possible for the actors to get together as a group and present their side by way of a YouTube video?
While it's a minor issue compared with all the violence and misunderstanding these trolls have unleashed, I can't help but wonder if they've also made things even harder for legitimate indie film-makers, who'll now have to convince actors that they're not planning to pay them scale *and* use their faces for propaganda.
How unimaginably horrible.
As the parent of an actor, I'm getting chills right now imagining if my daughter had been one of those so abominably used.
Tom,
Well there is the fraud angle. The film industry unions can also take action on the workers' behalf, the agents of the actors could take action (or be acted against) and then there is old fashion civil lawsuit. Good odds a jury would be sympathetic with actors who now have reason to fear for their safety thanks to this shit. Then there are those publicity/identity IP laws for celebrities some people were bitching against a while back.
I'm surprised some white knight hackers haven't made the video go poof into thin air.
tw: I would be sorely tempted to re-cut and re-dub it to tell the story of what really happened, in vivid and damning detail.
Another cast member corroborates the story.
To a much lesser extent, isn't this what every 'Downfall' video that shows Hitler ranting about some random thing is doing?
On top of the gross deception and betrayal of the actors, this is all just weird.
Surely there are enough anti-Muslim bigots in this country, or just people who think they're being "edgy", who'd agree to do the actual lines. Why not just hire those people? Why the charade with the fake script and overdubbing the lines later? Moreover, why did Bacile lie about being an Israeli Jew?
I really don't get his motivations for pretty much any of this. Was it all just a big weird Producers-style financing scam? Apparently Bacile was previously convicted of bank fraud; it could be just another con.
Or was it the bait for a James O'Keefe-style "undercover sting" operation? The low-budget cheesiness and crudely provocative, offensive nature of the film reminds me a lot of O'Keefe's ACORN and Planned Parenthood "stings." But I can't tell who would have been the intended target, if it was supposed to be some sort of prank or exposé.
The apparent involvement of the representative of a right-wing Christian organization adds a whole different dimension, too. What was their angle? Or were they the marks?
Just a whole lot of WTF.
Yes, insofar as my 3 year old daughter hitting the side of my cheek and Mike Tyson beating me to a pulp is the same thing to a much lesser extent.
Put another way, I don't think the Downfall dubbers are actually trying to convince anyone that the original movie is about Hitler's rage over, frex, blu-ray vs HD, with the intention of fomenting war between the backers of those two formats.
If there's a lawyer out there who can partner up with these actors and sue Nassoula Basseley Nassoula into the 7th circle of next Tuesday, I'd happily make a small donation to the cause. (This would be the money I had mentally earmarked for sueing-the-Westboro-Baptist-Family-Scammers-into-oblivion, since that looks like that's never going to happen.)
An awful lot of people don't understand how movies are made -- they tend to think of them in terms of stage plays with a camera running. In reality, a movie is an enormous jigsaw puzzle, with little pieces filmed at different times. It's not surprising that the actors didn't really know what the film turned into.
As to dubbing -- I believe Woody Allen's first movie was "What's Up, Tiger Lily", which was a Japanese James Bond ripoff dubbed with Woody Allen dialog.
There's also the problem that a lot of people can't separate the actor from the role -- leading to things like Bad Guys in soap operas needing bodyguards.
While I agree the film was horrendous, and the editing worse, the idea of actors filing lawsuits against filmmakers over the use of their images opens up a whole Pandora's box of problems. So no, the actors shouldn't sue the filmmaker.
DanR @15: In general, I agree with you. And in this particular case, I think there's a line that's been crossed that might make it appropriate for them to sue. And a lot depends on exactly what contract the actors/actresses signed -- if it wasn't very carefully drawn, they might have appropriate redress to seek.
Marc Mielke @11
Well, sort of. But not really. For one thing, there's no fraud involved there: I didn't hire you to play Hitler in his last days, and then release something about Hitler's Blu-ray rage instead. For another, there's an original work to refer back to. (This is a bit of a mirror-image of the first: I'm not claiming to my audience that I hired you to portray Hitler yelling about Blu-ray. My audience knows or can easily find out that you were hired for a serious historical work, which is still out there for them to examine.)
Finally, there's a reason parody and satire are protected forms of fair use. I'm not up to the task of digging out and explaining why that should be so, but I'm sure someone here is. To me, it's obvious that a Downfall dub is parody, and equally obvious that redubbing some unreleased footage that you obtained under false pretenses is not and cannot be parody.
Re-posted from my blog and slightly edited:
I recently read a classic science fiction novel by Eric Frank Russell, a fellow who worked closely with a more famous Brit, Ian Fleming. The book is called Wasp, and not to give away too much of the plot, but in the book our hero, an Intrepid Earth-man, is dropped on an alien enemy-colonized planet and told to make trouble. The Intrepid Earth-man does this in part by hiring local criminals to assassinate people. The assassins neither know nor care why they are killing; they just want their money. Question – is Nakoula Basseley Nakoula being paid to cause trouble?
The scenario goes something like this – Nakoula is hired by a mysterious figure to make a movie. He, or somebody, later overdubs the thing, then translates it into Arabic. Our mysterious money-man then drops a dime on various hot-headed Muslim clerics who call attention to the movie. Whoever is calling the shots then uses the resulting rent-a-mob as cover to kill our ambassador.
Unfortunately for us, matters get worse. As I discussed earlier, any attempt to investigate the public front-man of this movie results in immediate protests from various Useful Idiots in the US. These protests are probably not enough to sway an election, but who knows? Stranger things have happened.
Casting for Chris Gerrib @20's film:
Karl Rove as "the money man"
Kurt Russell as "Nakoula Basseley Nakoula"
Marc, #11: Absolutely not. The "Downfall" re-dubbers are taking a well-known scene from an existing film that portrays recognizable historical characters and using it for obvious parody/satirical comic effects. Making a completely new film about fictional characters and then re-dubbing it to seriously slander every single member of a major world religion isn't even close to the same thing.
I've read at least one article that talks about some anti-Islam guy in Virginia getting a translated copy (of the dubbed version, honestly) and sending it to as many Middle Eastern sources as he possibly could a week or two ago. I'm curious: if they know this, is HE in any way legally liable? There's not much in the way of international law, but, seriously, throwing gasoline on a lit fire—which is what he was intending to do, there's small doubt of that—is all manner of stupid and evil.
B. Durbin @ #23
Unless the person sending out this translated copy included a message urging violence I doubt any criminal charge could stand. I do not know about Virginia law, but from a very brief search the definition of Inciting a Riot in NY is, "A person is guilty of inciting to riot when one urges ten or more persons to engage in tumultuous and violent conduct of a kind likely to create public alarm."
Since the conduct did not occur in the US I think he would have to be extradited, though. And that would be... potentially uncomfortable.
One of the things I read was that they titled it, "The Innocence of Bin Ladin" and advertised it at mosques, in an attempt to get radical Muslims to attend the screening.
Which failed, miserably; apparently a free movie only managed to get ten people in the door.
It looks as though the real history is enough to make the Prophet look bad to modern western eyes. But I am wary of trusting the Internet it's too easy to edit such things as Wikipedia.
Essentially, the plot element of the 7-year-old being betrothed to Muhammed appears to be correct. The ages mentioned when the footage was being shot match up. And it is not hard to find examples of film-makers having problems over depictions of Muhammed. Right from the start, the project reeks of deliberate provocation.
What we should recall is that there were similar arrangements made is such settings as medieval England: arranged marriages for political reasons. And in this case the girl's father was the first Caliph, after the death of the Prophet. She was one of the main sources for the Prophet's life. None of the characters were insignificant in that remarkable story.
The original film-makers changed the only name that everyone would recognise, using a rather odd place-holder. The whole business is not somebody getting hold of the footage and doing editing and dubbing. The provocation has to have been built-in from the start.
Caroline 2 #12: Surely there are enough anti-Muslim bigots in this country, or just people who think they're being "edgy", who'd agree to do the actual lines. Why not just hire those people? Why the charade with the fake script and overdubbing the lines later? Moreover, why did Bacile lie about being an Israeli Jew?
Note -- this is just me speculating in a paranoid manner while home with a headcold: The filmmakers may have wanted to make sure none of the actors would blab, even in the form of boasting, about the true origins of the film, if their original intention was to convince people it was Israeli-backed.
I suspect "Bacile" was trying to foment war between Israel and the rest of the Middle East -- if he's a (fanatical) Coptic Christian, his aim was probably to Yojimbo rival religions into killing each other off. The U.S. Fundamentalist, otoh, may have been trying to jump-start Armageddon.
I suspect getting the U.S. Embassy attacked wasn't their expected result -- someone said the "spontaneous mob violence," supposedly provoked by the film, was suspiciously well-organized; an equally-fanatical group in Libya may have been waiting for an excuse.
What's puzzling me is that the "Desert Warriors" script the actors were shown, despite being set in "Ancient Egypt," had characters named "George" and, according to the casting call:
Male Roles: DR. MATTHEW (Lead): Middle Eastern Pharmacist, 40-50, intelligent, family man; GEORGE (Lead); 40-50, Middle Eastern warrior leader, romantic, charismatic; YOUNG GEORGE (featured) 18-22; PRIEST (featured): 60-70, bearded; ABDO (featured), 60-70, Elder tribe leader; ISRAELI MEN 30-50 (featured); WARRIORS (featured) 18-50, Various Middle Eastern types, bearded.
Female Roles: CONDALISA (featured) 40, attractive, successful, strong willed; HILLARY (featured) 18 but must look younger, petite; innocent; YOUSTINA (featured) 16-18, Daughter of doctor; MIDDLE EASTERN WOMEN (Various Featured Roles) 18-40, attractive, exotic; OLDER WOMAN (featured) 60-70, feisty.
Did the actors think at the time they were participating in a satire on American politics?
Just to take a couple of loose connections in this thread, Wasp mentioned by Chris Gerrib @20 was at one time optioned by Neil Gaiman, who began the script but then decided to let it lapse after September 11, as mentioned in this Tor.com post (amongst other places).
[It is a grave irony that the URL format trap catches tor.com URLs.—Pinnosa Quilisma Neumes, Duty Gnome]
I have possibly the last tomatoes from my parents' garden of the season. Quick before the equinox!
Re: Downfall, this point may be so minor that it's meaningless, but unless I've missed a portion of that meme the clip is being re-subbed, not re-dubbed. The original German audio is left intact, and presumably after watching a few of the parodies one would catch on to the fact that it's just different text under the same audio.
Majorly pedantic, yes, but even if it's a nitpicky distinction I still feel like it's a meaningful one in the context of this conversation. As Devin @19 pointed out, there's a trail you can follow back to the original work, whereas part of Anna's real performance (and thus, really, the whole of her real performance, given how action works) is now lost.
The actors can sue. They don't have to win. They can sue. lose the case, have to pay the lawyers fees, and still come out ahead.
#26 Dave Bell
The age of Aisha at the time of her marriage to the Prophet, and more tellingly at the time of its consummation, are a point of considerable dispute.
The authority for putting her age at six at betrothal and nine at consummation rests on two related hadith, Bukhari Volume 5, Book 58, Number 234 and 236. The narrator is Hisham bin Urwah, quoting Aisha herself as saying that in so many words. He certainly knew her in her later years, but he was of an advanced age when the hadith was written, and he might have been unreliable.
As against this, Sunni scholars especially urge other hadith which may imply that she was older, up to 18 or 20, although these implications are at best indirect, and require assumptions that look shaky to me. Furthermore, these arguments do not appear to originate earlier than the twentieth century.
None of which is any excuse for calling the Prophet a paedophile, of course. The established facts about his life are enough for me to have formed an opinion about him without that.
Certainly not thematically comparable, but when the original "Star Wars" came out, David Prowse was astonished to discover that all of his lines had been redubbed by James Earl Jones. I would assume that the script itself remained the same, though. (Which supposedly wasn't the case for A Certain Line toward the end of "The Empire Strikes Back", but still not really comparable.)
Dave Luckett @32
It's odd how the young Ayesha version seems to be so prevalent. There is, as you say, only one source for that story. And there does seem to be a lot of indirect evidence for the older Ayesha: little bits of information which connect her life to other events, without being explicit about her age.
You could almost think that the young Ayesha story was put out to diminish her authority and reputation in Islam, just as in a later age there was the story of Catherine the Great and the horse.
Wikipedia doesn't seem to mention any scholastic dispute. It makes you wonder...
B Dubin:
I'd be careful looking for ways to arrest people for stirring up trouble with speech. The mood of the elites right now isn't all that favorable toward free speech, and it's very easy to imagine a precedent set here (where much of the left is offended at the content, and much of the establishment is offended at the throwing sands into the gears of our foreign policy) that we will not like one bit, once it's established.
Sarah:
Yeah, the makers of the film seem to have been hoping to maximize the chaos caused by their film. And in this, they were aided by extremists in the Muslim world looking for a way to whip up some mobs. Nice folks.
Once we figure out the actual name of this criminal who made the movie, we should always refer to him as "friend of Al Qaeda so-and-so" or "Al Qaeda Auxiliary member so-and-so."
The BBC is describing it as a crudely-made video, in a report on a French magazine which seems to be stoking the fires.
Yet it sounds, from the accounts of the shooting, that the live action was competently done. I suppose I should go look for myself...
[Later]
Why am I waiting for the line "This tape will self-destruct in ten seconds"? It does have that rather dated 1960s feel to it, in the way that the "foreigners" are sketched. I wonder, a little, if the style is more like current productions on, for instance, Egyptian TV.
I'll agree that criminal charges against the makers of this monstrosity are a Very Bad Idea. However, civil action is a definite possibility, assuming we can figure out who did what when.
There also needs to be a way of spreading the word in places like Pakistan, "This stuff just lets the Americans and Europeans think you're a bunch of barbarians. Something like this comes out, you dance like a monkey on a string. Why should you care what a bunch of infidels say, anyway?"
There is now a court case brought by Cindy Lee Garcia.
She alleges that Nakoula Basseley Nakoula directed the film. He has admitted being the manager of a company involved in the production of the film.
He also has previous for fraud, and appears to have been forbidden by a court, last year, from accessing the Internet or using an alias. It's a bit hard to imagine a company in the film business that doesn't use the Internet but if he's the PHB, maybe he can avoid the computers.
BM @ #15
You're better off donating your money to this fight or another one instead of waiting for someone to go after the Westboro Baptists.
It's a well known fact by people living in their region, that their picketing is actually business practice to raise money for their church. They wait for someone to try and restrict their civil liberties and then sue.
The quickest way to get them to close up shop and leave when they've begun a protest is to ignore them. They'll pack up after an hour or so of being ignored. At least, that's what happens in the various municipalities within a 3-4 hour drive of the Westboro church. The more the bystanders and news crews focus on them, the more likely someone will impinge on their freedom of religion and become a target for a lawsuit.
The best way to shut them down for good is to practice shunning on a nationwide level. Basically, it's a "Don't Feed the Trolls" situation where any attention whatsoever is feeding the trolls. If you really, really want to be mean, then look them in the eye as you walk past them. Most people in their home territory use the "pretend they're not there and avoid all eye contact" method. Unless it's a member of the Freedom Riders, retired miliary who self-organized to defend the grieving military families at funerals from Westboro protests. The mourners get sympathetic looks and brief nods from the leather clad, 'do rag wearing crew. The Westboro protestors get blank stares and crossed arms. Leaning on their motorcycle optional.
You can also stand there, not interacting, and stare at their crotches. I understand that makes them very nervous.
That's a technique I heard about from brtn clnc protection.
Victoria: The motorcycle-riding, flag-bearing group I'm familiar with from local Westb*ro encounters, who form a visual barrier between the Westb*ro assholes and the mourners, is the Patriot Guard.
There may be others as well.
Dave: I'm not looking to have him arrested. I think he's morally liable rather than legally liable. I was just wondering if there was any kind of incitement that applied.
I think he should be arrested for violating the terms of his probation, if arrest is the usual result of violations at this level.
Not for making the movie. For that, I think he should throw himself off a cliff.
(I've belatedly realized that "jump in front of a bus" and the like are deeply unkind to the driver of the bus, and the people I wish would do that are not worth that, or even worth inconveniencing the passengers or snarling traffic.)
Egypt: 8 Charged Over Anti-Islam Film
These are eight people inside the US.
Imagine the look of surprise on everyone's face if Egypt carried out an extraordinary rendition and those folks vanished off the streets of Florida and California, only to turn up on trial in Cairo.
But since Egypt is not a big bully superpower, they won't dare try and they would be stomped without pity if they did.
47
Xopher, they can ask for extradition, I think, depending on treaties. Given how much trouble that trailer has caused in Egypt alone, I'd say allow the extradition.
Really, P J? Extradite people for things they did in the US that are perfectly legal in the US? Extradite people to a country where we have good reason to think they'll be tortured and killed? Oh wait, we do that all the time.
But if we start extraditing people for things that are illegal in the extraditing country, when they did them here...well, what's to stop Uganda from extraditing me for being queer? Or Saudi Arabia for "possession of polytheistic texts" (punishable by death there, IIRC)?
I wouldn't want an immigrant from Uganda or Saudi Arabia to be extraditable either.
My point being not that putting those guys on trial in Egypt would be a good idea, but that extraordinary rendition is a bad idea, and our leading the way and setting the precedent was a phenomenally bad idea.
It's hard to speak from the moral high ground when you've abandoned it.
Xopher, it's because someone uploaded that to Youtube and publicized it in a way that was guaranteed to cause trouble, and I think that was done by people in the US, and they should be held responsible. They apparently did try to get Muslims here to see it first, probably hoping for word-of-mouth advertising of some kind.
Honestly, I suspect the entire point of the thing was to stay under the radar in the US while causing as much trouble as possibly in North Africa and the Middle East. I also suspect that least some of the people involved (under the radar) are known well enough that they'd prefer staying invisible.
The attacks on the embassies in Libya, Yemen, and Egypt were on September 11th.
I doubt this was a coincidence.
I expect there were going to be riots that day; this video merely provided a pretext. As to whose intelligence service came up with the idea and funded it, who was in on the plan and who was merely a dupe, I'll let people with more access figure out.