Saturday, September 15, 2012

My thoughts on Innocence of the Muslims: There IS no full-length movie.//UPDATED

Yesterday evening, Bloomberg news posted an article entitled Figure Tied to Anti-Islam Film Has Criminal Fraud Record.
With all due respect to the writers, the article mainly reports that which those of us following the developing story online already knew earlier yesterday: that Mr. Bacile/Nakoula was an ex-con with a pretty jaw-dropping history of bank fraud and identity theft, and in the late 1990's, involvement in methamphetamine trafficking/creating.
However, at the end of the article, I found an extremely revealing quote from Christian extremist, "Wake Up America" video-star, and Media For Christ figure Steve Klein (my emphasis):
Klein, 62, heads the group Concerned Citizens for the First Amendment, which stages rallies and educational events, contending Islam is a threat to U.S. democracy and freedom.  
He said he read the script before the movie was shot and advised the filmmaker to recruit actors through a Hollywood talent agency. Klein said he didn’t know the name of the agency.
The movie had one theatrical showing at a cinema on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, Klein said.
“I got there about a half hour before the movie started and stayed a half hour after it started and I saw zero -- nada, none, no people -- go inside,” Klein said.
To date, Klein is the only source I'm aware of for the assertion that Innocence of the Muslims was actually a movie--not just a 13-minute piece of agitprop--that was shown in a theatre, that is to say, an unnamed cinema on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.
Look at Klein's exact word choice: He says he got there thirty minutes before the movie allegedly began--a reasonable window of time while the lights are still on before assorted previews, commercials, and the actual movie begins and an important detail indicating you could see properly if you were going to later assert, believably, that no-one else walked in.
Klein then says he stayed a half-hour after the movie started and saw "zero -- nada, none, no people -- go inside,".  This time frame is important, too, because if he had claimed to have sat through the entire length of the alleged movie--let's say it was purported to be 90 minutes--he might have been asked about scenes and details that he saw which were not in the now-infamous 13-minute clip.  Klein needed to be able to explain the fact that he knew of no other scenes or details, so he kept the time frame of his alleged attendance very short.
Think about it: Why would the person who has, thus far, seemed rather proud of and unapologetic about the "film" NOT want to sit through the entirety of the project that he helped bring about--at least once? Even if it meant sitting all by himself in a dark theatre for 90 minutes (which would be preferred conditions for a critical screening anyway)?
I seriously doubt Klein sat in any theatre on Sunset and watched Innocence of the Muslims by himself for any length of time whatsoever.
And I strongly suspect, based on what we know so far, that there IS no full-length movie. Only the incendiary agitprop piece, timed to be just long enough, but not so long as to exceed the 15-minute time limit that YouTube places on uploads by non-verified accounts.

[I copied this post directly from a long comment I made this morning at Daily Kos; that site's font and typesetting styles remain intact.-- DNT]

UPDATE: It turns out I was wrong about the 13 minute clip being all there was. (I maintain Klein is still lying about having seen the movie in a theatre on Sunset. If evidence proving otherwise surfaces, I will publish it here.) This Monday morning, I'm learning there is a longer version--74 minutes--of the film that has recently been posted to YouTube. I will not link to it here, but readers should easily be able to find it if they are so inclined.

Furthermore, yesterday afternoon, I learned via the extremism-watchdog blog Talk To Action that islamophobic blogger Pamela Geller had not only co-hosted anti-Muslim rallys with Coptic Christian extremist Joseph Nassralla Abdelmasih, head of Media For Christ, but also had posted on her blog Atlas Shrugs a fundraising appeal for the "movie" by another figure involved in the making of the film--seemingly a screenwriter who goes by the name Ali Sina (his own website is currently offline, and all Internet archives after summer of 2011 have been scrubbed).

Ali Sina establishes a clear intent to inflame:
I am not thinking of a high budget movie, but given the subject matter, it can become one of the most seen motion pictures ever. (Recall Danish cartoons?)
And in a comment responding to another Atlas Shrugs reader, he offers details that would appear to line up with the content of the piece that would eventually be called Innocence of Muslims:
"Any film about Mohammed should not leave out the beheadings of 900 men and boys of the Banu Quraysha tribe, his 78 battles in the last nine years of his life, nor his thieving, misogyny, lying, murderous and paedophilic ways. But somehow, I would expect it to have these glaring omissions. We are in the politically correct self-loathing West and are afraid of offending a mouse if it sports a crescent." 
Not so! All those details are in the movie. That is the whole porpose of this movie - to tell what others don't. In 4 hours you can't tell everything, that is why I have chosen the parts that really matter. The devil is in the detail.
Obviously, this is a developing story. As further, updated information becomes available, I will share it in a new post.


-- DNT

15 comments:

  1. Excellent reasoning! Your logic is most likely absolutely right. No movie exists and never has.

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  2. Amazing insight! I abhor Klein - always have.

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  3. 'Muslims' Movie Producer Was Federal Informant --'I decide to cooperate with the government.' 14 Sep 2012 Before he was involved in the making of a noxious video that provided an excuse for anti-American riots in the Middle East, and before he was convicted of federal bank fraud, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula was arrested on charges relating to the making of phencyclidine (PCP). In recent days, we've learned that Nakoula used 14 different aliases in a complex check kiting scheme. We've learned that Nakoula was sentenced to 21 months in federal custody for the affair. According to The Smoking Gun, Nakoula was released from the United States Penitentiary in Lompoc, California in September, 2010... The punishment was relatively gentle, even though it wasn't Nakoula's first encounter with the law. That's because Nakoula had decided to become a federal informant.

    http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/09/pcp/

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  4. It wouldn't be that hard for an enterprising journalist to check all the theaters on Sunset, and see what was playing that night. I'm surprised no one has run this to ground.

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  5. The making of a full-length feature film is a VERY involved process that entails finding a producer to MARKET the film. NO filmmaker would be allowed to film a single second of footage if they hadn't already lined up a distribution link with promises to show the film in at least 3 major cities (single screen "pre-screenings" in NY, LA & Chicago are the most common), NOT an obscure rent-a-theater on Sunset.

    I have a hard time believing anyone that has ANY experience reporting on the movie industry would believe for one second that an actual feature-length production intended for wide release was ever produced.

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  6. Where are we going speculating on the existence or non-existence of this film, beyond its trailer?

    Well, one difference between full film and trailer might be a better idea of how much the project cost. If that figure looks anything like the $5 million claimed, then the hunt should be on to follow the money. On the other hand, if it looks more like a few thousand, then this could be a self-funded project by the already known cranks already known to be associated with it.

    But even knowing that 13 minutes is all that was ever "finished" wouldn't rule out a relatively expensive project, and even a relatively low budget product might still have been bank-rolled by people higher up in the wingnut food chain. the only difference a featuyre length film would make is if we were able to subject it to a review by people who know how to cost a film project, and that would just give us a better idea of the minimum possible cost.

    The point of following the money, if there is big money behind this, is that, contrary to Mugsy's view of this as if it were intended to be a money-making movie, a $5 million version of this film would obviously be a politically motivated vanity project. The folks who made it wouldn't care how much it cost and then failed to return, because the investment would be in the political, not box office, results. It would be nice to be able to hang this turkey on some higher ups in the wingnut food chain.

    We are more familiar with this sort of vanity project in the publishing industry, where they have whole houses, like Regnery, devoted to titles that predictably take losses, all in the interests of spreading the non-truth.

    The film analogy to Regnery products would be more like this Atlas Shrugged movie, a high production value financial flop. This Innocence of the Muslims would be more like The Turner Diaries, complete commercially non-viable hackwork, but that way precisely because refinement would knock the sharp edges off the extremity of the politics expressed. Propaganda with better production values might be intended to persuade. The low end stuff is better suited to provoke and outrage.

    So sure, whether its the Turner Diaries for "literature" , or this movie for "film", you could get a product that does the job for really cheap, because you actually want it to look cheap to help get the job of provocation done effectively. So maybe this thing was done on the cheap by little fish, and maybe it's really only 13 minutes of film -- though those two propositions don't logically require each other, and even just 13 minutes of final film could represent miles of footage generated with an eye for economy as bad as the thing's eye for film quality. The only important issue here is whether it givs us a way to pin this thing on bigger fish than Klein and Nakoula.

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  7. There is also a connection with an evangelical Christian group and some well known right wing nut antiislamists such as Pamela gellar.

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    1. Yes--I learned of Geller's connection yesterday. I've posted links in the update above. -- DNT

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  8. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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    1. [NOTE: After removing the above comment by ralph4America for reasons that will become immediately obvious should you keep reading, I decided to take the advice of my 1st Amendment-championing friend Lisa Simeone and re-post it with a solid warning preceding it. Given that a not-small group of people living in this great nation believe all manner of insane things about government, I think that even vile, hateful, deeply unbalanced, and risibly fact-free agitprop like this does need to be seen.

      And while my first impulse was to avoid offending or upsetting readers, upon reflection, I thought, How much better it is for us, and for the vaunted "conversation", if we're aware of the kind of speech that goes on in many political and religious circles that don't generally overlap with our own. I'm referring to the kind of speech we're occasionally subjected to in e-mails from right-wing relatives and acquaintances--the ones with Fw. Fw. Fw. Fw. Fw. (etc.) in the subject lines, prompting us to click Delete before reading them. The kind of speech we must counter--vigorously and relentlessly--with MORE speech. Just as the oft-referred to (but seldom heeded) Founding Fathers intended.

      Hence, ralph4america's comment:

      WARNING: This comment contains numerous homophobic, bigoted, and xenophobic remarks. Furthermore, it contains numerous smears of public figures, patently false information about the recent events in Libya, and a litany of graphic sexual terms a few of which, hitherto, this blogger had never seen named and is still puzzling over.

      ralph4America said, on 9/17/2012 at 1:00pm

      STATE DEPARTMENT’S “PRIDE AGENGA” TRAGICALLY BACKFIRES!!!!!

      http://americaphile.wordpress.com/2012/09/17/state-departments-pride-agenga-tragically-backfires/

      PIAPS AND HER SAPPHIC STATE DEPARTMENT ARE PROVOKING AND AGGRAVATING THE UNREST IN THE ISLAMOFASCIST WORLD BY PROMOTING HER LGBT/ANTI-CHICK-FIL-A® AGENDA!!!!!!!

      Serbian diplomat, and friend of Christopher Stevens, says State Department knowingly sent gay ambassador to Libya.

      Arab media says ambassador Stevens was gang raped and then his body was put on display.

      Hillary Clinton has been spending US taxpayer dollars to fund homosexual pride events in foreign countries. Her actions have prompted backlashes against the US in Italy, Russia, Pakistan, and other nations. Last year, Barack Obama made it official US policy.

      RATHER THAN ENGAGING AMERICA’S EMBASSIES AND CONSULATED TO PROMOTE FREEDOM, CAPITALISM, THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND OPENING UP THOSE COUNTRIES TO KNOWLEDGE OF THE COMING RAPTURE, PIAP’S NEST OF LESBIANS IS PROMOTING SODOMY, FELLATIO, FISTING, RIMMING, GERBILING, NAMBLA, DOUGHNUT-BUMPING, CARPET-CHOMPING, MUFF-SLURPING. TRIBADISM AND WITCHCRAFT!!!!!!!

      WE HAVE ALREADY SEEN THE TRAGIC RESULTS!!!!!!!!!

      PRO-AMERICANS MUST BE CERTAIN TO GET THE VOTE OUT FOR GOVERNOR ROMNEY ON ELECTION DAY SO THAT AS PRESIDENT, HE WILL BE ABLE TO HEAD THE WISE COUNSEL PROVIDED REGARING THE DEPARTMENTS OF STATE AND HOMELAND SECURITY!!!!!!

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  9. Deborah, the comment of ralph4america is so nuts, so batshit crazy, so WTF, I'm thinking maybe you should put it back. These lunatics thrive in darkness. Put them out there for all the world to see. Otherwise, nobody would even believe they exist. Truly, you can't make this shit up.

    Maybe you could bracket it with a warning, like a movie rating. R or XXX.

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    1. I've reposted it above. You are correct, my friend.

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  10. sounds ok apart from the gerbiling?

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  11. 'Innocence of Muslims' actress sues YouTube, filmmaker

    http://movies.msn.com/movies/article.aspx?news=758502

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