Hollywood as Willie Horton and Team Oscar’s Iran Blog

Some interesting news on Team Oscar in Iran. It seems both Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei (he of the murdered blogger and post-Obama video Death to America rallies) and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are actually using Team Oscar’s visit to Iran as hard-line ideological weapons against their “soft” political opponents in upcoming elections.

In the Iranian Daily Kayhan, Ali Khamenei’s own personal Islamist rag, the Supreme Asswipe in his March 2nd Op-ed titled “What Are the Producers of Anti-Iranian Films Doing Here?” called Team Oscar, “the planners and heads of a new Hollywood project against Iranian national security.”

The article then stated that an examination of Universal Pictures’ output in recent years shows that of over 200 films, 200 insult God, Islam, and Muslims, promote propaganda of the CIA and of the “Israeli terror organization” the Mossad, and contain other shameful content.

In addition, it said, in the past two years Universal promoted an anti-Iranian revolution animated feature titled “Persepolis.” The article expressed opposition to the visit, and added that “it remains only to hope that this type of anti-Iranian attempt will not cross over to our cinema.”

Also, Mr. Ahmadinejad had his own harsh words for Team Oscar and Tinseltown. On top of his Foreign Minister demanding apologies from Team Oscar for celluloid slanders, that is: “We believe that the American cinema system is devoid of all culture and art and is only used as a device to further Western imperialism.”

Ya got all that, Sid? Annette? William? Alfre? All you guys?

In other words, Iranian leaders are using Team Oscar’s visit to Iran as an ideological battering ram in their upcoming political campaigns, in much the same way George H.W. Bush used Willie Horton against Michael Dukakis in the 1988 US presidential campaign.

The whole soft on the Great Satan thing, you know?

Speaking of Team Oscar, it has been very tough to find any news on them at all, lately. Even the Academy hasn’t issued any Team Oscar press releases since March 2nd. Given the gold-plated PR status and historic implications of Team Oscar’s Iran trip, very odd. Then again, maybe not.

I had actually begun to wonder whether Team Oscar had suffered the same fate as Roxana Saberi, though they are not out of the Iranian woods yet. Hope Springs Eternal. However, I have discovered a blog by Team Oscar member William Horberg, the Executive Producer of “Milk,” following his experiences in today’s Islamic Republic of Iran that butchers their Harvey Milks worse than cattle.

Anyway, some snippets from Mr. Horberg’s Team Oscar in Iran blog.

From his March 9th entry, a lovely picture of Team Oscar holding roses at Imam Khomeini Airport in Iran. No determination if this photo was pre or post-punked. Hard to tell. They seem to smile like idiots no matter how badly they’re treated.

In his March 11th entry, “Cool Hand Frank,” Mr. Holberg tells of a screening of “Cool Hand Luke” at the Iran House of Cinema, with a follow-up by screenwriter Frank Pierson, who adapted the novel to the screen. Here’s an enlightening excerpt:

It was an inspired piece of casting, but (one) scene whose very Hollywood and Western depiction of yearning sexual desire, while hardly explicit by today’s standards, nonetheless had our Iranian hosts quite glad that the movie was only being shown to a select, hand-picked private audience of filmmakers from the House of Cinema, and not to the public-at-large.

In Mr. Holberg’s March 12th entry, he compares a photo of he and three burqa-clad Team Oscar members walking in Tehran as The Power Walk. The Power Burqa Walk is more like it.

In his March 13th entry, Mr. Holberg adopts Iranian-style clothing himself. No doubt to show off for his next Power Burqa Walk. Five more Iranian clothing-clad Team Oscars members to go, and the transformation of Team Oscar to full-fledged Stooges will be complete. Who needs Jim Carrey and Sean Penn?

On March 14th, William Holberg celebrated his fiftieth birthday in Tehran. Is he a Jolly Good Fellow or what? No word on if fellow American Roxana Saberi was invited. In fact, no word on her at all to date in his blog. I mean, it’s not like Roxana Saberi hasn’t been in the news. Actually, I take that back.

On March 16th, Mr. Holberg meets up with Iranian actor and old friend Homayoun Ershadi, who invited him up to his upscale apartment in Northern Tehran. Upscale, as opposed to say, Evin Prison. Mr. Ershadi is well known for his role as a suicidal character in the film “A Taste of Cherry.”

Much like, say, the blogger who committed suicide in Evin Prison after insulting the aforementioned Supreme Asswipe Khamenei. Lot of that going around in Evin Prison, you know. An unexplained epidemic of suicides. Maybe that’s endemic to today’s Iran as well.

On March 19th, Mr. Holbert visited Persepolis, and also praised the graphic novels and animated film of the same name. You know, the same animated film the Supreme Asswipe called “anti-Irainian revolution” in his political campaign to use Stooge Team Oscar as his Willie Horton against Iranian lefties. 

In Mr. Holberg’s March 20th blog entry “Lost In Translation,” Mr. Holberg describes how he and Annette Bening encountered two young Iranian men in the ancient city of Isfahan who wanted some Eminem lyrics explained to them. Terms like “my dogs are barking” and “roll like a renegade.” Just read it. Although from what I can see in today’s Islamist extremist Iran, most renegades don’t roll. They hang. Or commit suicide in Evin Prison.

In his March 23rd entry “Noir in Iran,” Mr. Holberg describes how many locations in Iran would be perfect for B&W Noir film shooting. Fittingly, his blog entry has a “Brute Force” movie poster of Burt Lancaster standing behind bars, with only darkness as a backdrop. Again, Evin Prison comes to mind as a perfect noir shooting location. Scouting time!

In his March 25th blog entry “Farsfilm,” Mr. Horberg refers in-depth to an opinion piece by Iranian film stalwart Massoud Mehrabi, in which the esteemed Iranian filmmaker bemoans the state of Iranian film after the CIA coup and instatement of the Shah to power in 1953:

During the decade (1953-63) the history of Iranian cinema presents no event of major significance. Public screens catered to the tastes of the mass audience with mass productions of utter worthlessness, and no sign of any rejuvenation or emergence of new talents brightened the prospects. Under the circumstances any hope for the birth of an avant-garde cinema for an intellectual elite would have been highly unrealistic.

Sounds like our Hollywood of today. But I digress.

The rigorous censorship imposed after the 1953 coup d’etat made it impossible for the intelligentsia to dictate its elitist modes of thinking to people through a mass medium such as cinema.

No mention of the rigorous censorship imposed by the Iranian Thugocracy. What else is new?

In his March 28th entry, “Persian Bloggers,” Mr. Holberg tell us of his meeting with two Iranian bloggers, and how he hopes for their success in the future. Considering the Iranian thugocracy will soon be passing a law giving the death penalty to “offensive bloggers” and have already murdered one blogger in Evin Prison, I don’t see much of a future for blogging in Iran. But that’s just me.

In his March 30th blog entry of yesterday entitled “The Bare Feet Shoe Store,” which is as analogous to the Team Oscar trip to Iran as “The Emperor’s Clothing Shoppe” might have been, Mr. Holberg puts the icing on Team Oscar’s utter idiocy cake with regard to the real Iran of today:

On the one hand, filmmakers in Iran face hurdles of lack of funding and resources (the average mid-level budget film is made for @ $500,000 there I was told) as well as quixotic government censorship (films can be approved by the ministry at the script stage there and yet the finished version might be banned from local release) that we would find insurmountable or intolerable here.

And yet these very pressures and lack of freedom might be said in some way to have fostered the subtlety and artistry of their internationally recognized and award-winning cinema, as the creativity born of great constraints has shaped their response to the world around them.

You got all that, people? Government censorship in Iran is actually a creative plus! Not one word of condemnation of the stifling prior censorship by the Iranian thugocracy! Not one word of support for Roxana Saberi, or for filmmakers and documentarians like Iranian-American Esha Momeni, who was thrown into Evin prison, and now awaits trial for the celluloid slander of interviewing women’s rights activists on the streets of Tehran for her UCLA master’s thesis.

Taking into account, of course, that the term ”women’s rights in Iran” could not be more oxymoronic.  

Throughout Mr. Horberg’s Kodak Moment Tour of the Islamist Republic of Iran, the Executive Producer of “Milk” had even less to say about the gay extermination program in Iran than fellow “Milk” superstars and Gay Heroes Sean Penn and Dustin Lance Black. In fact, Annette Bening’s burqa-clad praise for women’s rights in Iran actually does even more harm for women in Iran than the aforementioned’s silence on the Gay Holocaust in Iran.

Why? Because now Supreme Asswipes like Khamenei and Ahmadinejad can hold up Stooge Bening and say, “Look! Even Hollywood says we have full women’s rights!” Even as they continue to stone, hang and abuse women worse than any regime on the planet.

Judging by Mr. Horberg’s statements in his blog, the Iran trip only lasted ten days.  Yet the Academy and industry PR on this trip has been nonexistent. No Red Carpet landing at LAX. No Academy press releases on a Job Well Done. Think about it, people. The biggest PR machine in the world, a total black void on Team Oscar in Iran. Now that’s gold-plated silence you can’t buy! Or is it?