Is Muslim a Dirty Word in Hollywood?
Nov. 4, 2005 — -- This week's "Give Me a Break" goes to Sony Pictures, the movie company, for getting so upset about a "bad" word in the title of one of their movies.
The movie is titled "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World." And apparently that word "Muslim" is a problem.
In the film, the U.S. State Department, which wants the Muslim world to like us, is determined to find out what makes Muslims laugh.
The movie was written by and stars comedian Albert Brooks, playing himself. Summoned to Washington, Brooks is given the assignment: Go to India and Pakistan, write a 500-page report and find out what makes Muslims laugh.
What's controversial about that? The movie is a comedy about humor and cultural differences.
Brooks says he wanted to make this movie because after September 11th, he felt, Americans hated even the word "Muslim."
"A part of me always thought that, you know, what are there, a billion-and-a-half Muslim people on this planet and I never thought that all of them wanted us dead," says Brooks. "So I thought, what could I do to make a movie in, you know, my style, to sort of soften this subject?"
Sony Pictures, the film's distributor, planned to premiere the movie in October. Brooks described screening the movie for Sony executives.
"It went very well," Brooks says. "Posters were made, trailers were made. And then about three months later, on a Monday morning, I get this phone call: 'We can't release the movie with the title.'"
The call came shortly after a Newsweek story in May 2005 claimed that soldiers at Guantanamo Bay had flushed a Koran down the toilet and rioting broke out in the Middle East.
It turned out that the story was wrong; Newsweek retracted it. And the rioting may have been a previously planned anti-American demonstration that had nothing to do with Newsweek. But Sony Picture's president, Michael Lynton, still said he'd refuse to release a film called "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World."
Brooks says that Sony representatives told him that "the world has changed and we don't really think we should put the word 'Muslim' in the title."
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