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.)

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?

As the parent of an actor, I'm getting chills right now imagining if my daughter had been one of those so abominably used.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Karl Rove as "the money man"

Kurt Russell as "Nakoula Basseley Nakoula"

Since the conduct did not occur in the US I think he would have to be extradited, though. And that would be... potentially uncomfortable.

Which failed, miserably; apparently a free movie only managed to get ten people in the door.

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.

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?

[It is a grave irony that the URL format trap catches tor.com URLs.—Pinnosa Quilisma Neumes, Duty Gnome]

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 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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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?"

BBC Report here

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.

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.

That's a technique I heard about from brtn clnc protection.

There may be others as well.

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.)

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 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.

It's hard to speak from the moral high ground when you've abandoned it.

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.

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.