A few days ago, a group of Hollyweirdos united by their feelings of self-importance (including the President of the Academy Sid Ganis, actresses Annette Benning and Alfre Woodard, producer William Horberg and former Universal Pictures chairman Tom Pollock) arrived in Iran for what the Academy called a “strictly cultural mission of creative exchange” (the notoriously unreliable DEBKA sees it rather as Barack Obama’s version of Nixon’s “ping pong” diplomacy).
But alas, their sycophancy and efforts to submit were not entirely appreciated by their Islamic overlords.
A team of visiting Hollywood actors and members of the movie industry, including Annette Bening, should apologize for films such as “300” and “The Wrestler” which have angered many in Iran, said the artistic advisor to Iran’s president Sunday.
Javad Shamaqdari, the art and cinema advisor to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said members of the Iranian cinema community should not meet with representatives from the nine-member team until they apologize.
“In my viewpoint, it is a failure to have an official meeting with one who is insulting,” Shamaqdari said.
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The film “300,” which portrays the battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C., in which a force of 300 Spartans held off a massive Persian army at a mountain pass in Greece for three days, angered many Iranians for the way Persians are depicted as decadent, sexually flamboyant and evil in contrast to the noble Greeks.
Iranians also criticized “The Wrestler” starring Mickey Rourke as a rundown professional wrestler who is preparing for a rematch with his old nemesis, “The Ayatollah.” During a fight scene, “The Ayatollah” tries to choke Rourke with an Iranian flag before Rourke pulls the flagpole away, breaks it and throws it into the cheering crowd.
Burn!
Meanwhile, I do not recall the last time a Hollywood delegation came to Israel to conduct a “cultural mission of creative exchange”, let alone express solidarity with the one country in the Middle East that fights for the right for the likes of Hollywood to make crappy movies in the first place.
