Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Razzismo a Hollywood

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-arabactors4oct04,0,2117100.story?coll=la-home-center
More work, one role for Arab actors
For most Middle Eastern performers, the Hollywood dilemma is simple:
Play the terrorist or don't get paid.
"What kind of a name is that?" the voice coach asked at the end of the
lesson. The name on the check he'd been handed by his student didn't
match the young actor's European-sounding stage name.
The actor hesitated. He was fairly new in town and leery of any
missteps. "Umm, my grandfather was Middle Eastern," he said.
The actor said the room temperature seemed to drop. The teacher took
him aside and spoke urgently. "Look," the teacher said, "I see big
things for you, but if you tell people this, you will not work in this
town." Recently, the actor landed a prominent role in a big-studio
film. But he still feels compelled to keep his heritage under wraps.
Only his closest friends know his ethnicity; he tells others that his
parents are Italian, French, anything but the truth.
"I'm really proud of who I am, but I'm constantly having to lie about
it," said the actor, who didn't want to reveal his name for fear that
he would be relegated to playing terrorists, the new Arab acting
ghetto.
Arabs and Arab Americans in Hollywood live in an interesting time. The
appetite for Middle Eastern stories and themes boomed after 9/11 and
grew again with the ongoing grind of the war in Iraq. But the roles
suddenly being created for Arab-heritage actors often are limited to
those of terrorists or are otherwise so poorly drawn that actors must
swallow their pride to take them. And that's if they even get offered
the parts.
Some in the community still see the changes as a sign of progress.
"There is more work out there for the Arab actor than 10 years ago,"
said Ismail Kanater, a Moroccan actor who has been in Showtime's
"Sleeper Cell" and the now-canceled Steven Bochco series "Over There."
"Even though we get actors complaining about terrorist roles, there is
a natural interest in the region. That will open doors."
At least one actor made that interest pay off. Omar Metwally played a
Palestinian militant in "Munich" and has received good buzz about his
role in the current film "Rendition," in which he plays an Arab
American trapped in a war-on-terrorism nightmare when he becomes
suspected of being a terrorist. "Americans are hungry for
information," Metwally said. "They want to engage."
But until that engagement becomes a full-fledged conversation, the
enduring dilemma for Arab actors is whether to play terrorist roles.
It's often the only work available to them, but it can leave them
feeling guilty or conflicted.
Tony Shalhoub, the Emmy-winning star of "Monk" who's of Lebanese
descent, recalled his first television gig playing a terrorist on a
1986 episode of "The Equalizer." "I did it once, and once was enough,"
he said.
Writer-director Hesham Issawi, an Egyptian, said the increase in the
quantity of Arab roles hadn't been matched by an increase in quality.
"The roles are bigger, the scenes are bigger, the money is better. But
it's still a terrorist role." He cited two exceptions: the terrorist
recruiter character in "Syriana," played by Egyptian Amr Waked, and
Metwally's part in "Munich." Both were smart, nuanced militant roles,
he said. "There's a little more depth. There's more to the characters,
and they're not stupid," Issawi said.
Kanater says he doesn't object to playing the bad guy. "I can play a
villain. I played Caligula onstage." What he resents is a steady diet
of shallow, poorly written bad-guy roles. "You go for some Arab role
and they say, 'Can you do it again with a heavier accent?' " Kanater
said.
Yasmine Hanani, a young Iraqi American actress, has played roles in
"Over There" and "Sleeper Cell." Her character in "Sleeper Cell"
beheaded an FBI agent. "The thing about playing terrorists is they
exist too. It's real, even if it's only half the story," she said. "If
I don't do it, someone who knows less about my language and culture
will."
That terrorist dilemma has even been turned into comedy. The pilot
episode of "The Watch List," a Middle Eastern American show vying for
a spot on Comedy Central, features a skit in which young Arab actors
learn how to play terrorists. The students practice holding an assault
rifle, begging "24's" Jack Bauer for their lives and, finally, falling
down dead. In the end, the teacher, played by Iranian American
comedian Maz Jobrani, earnestly urges his students to learn how to
play these roles "so that Latino actors won't get them."
The undisputed champion of the Arab terrorist role is Sayed Badreya.
The burly, bearded Egyptian-born actor has played an array of menacing
characters in a 20-year Hollywood career. He'll appear with Robert
Downey Jr. in next year's "Iron Man" as an Arab arms dealer who
kidnaps the hero. In 2003, he and Issawi made a short film called "T
for Terrorist" in which an Arab actor, frustrated with endless
terrorist roles, takes over a movie set at gunpoint.
Badreya recalls when he first arrived in Hollywood in 1986. "I
couldn't work. I was too handsome," he laughs. "So I put on some
weight and grew a beard, and suddenly I was working every day and
playing the angry Arab."
Some of the younger Arab newcomers to Hollywood look down on Badreya's
career as one spent reinforcing stereotypes. Badreya, however, makes
no apologies.
"I never played something that didn't happen. We hijack airplanes, I
play a hijacker," he said. "I do my work. I'm not going to sit and cry
about it."
Still, even Badreya remembers some bad moments. He played a terrorist
and also consulted on the script for the 1996 Kurt Russell-Steven
Seagal action film "Executive Decision." Badreya used his contacts at
his local Los Angeles mosque to connect him with a Puerto Rican mosque
to shoot a wedding scene, with Muslims there playing extras.
"We told [the locals] it would be a positive portrayal of Arabs," he
said. "The wedding scene was just like the start of 'The Godfather';
it was beautiful."
The film's script also called for a moderate Arab ambassador character
who helps the heroes defeat the terrorists. Both that character and
the wedding scene were cut from the film. "They didn't want to see
good Arabs," Badreya said. "I got a lot of heat at the mosque from
that one."
Arab actors seeking to avoid terrorist roles typically hide their
heritage, said Omar Naim, the Lebanese-born director of the 2004 film
"The Final Cut." "If you see someone named Mohammed, people are going
to have unfortunate preconceptions about that. I know a couple of
really excellent Arab American actors, some of whom don't speak
Arabic, and all they play are Arab roles where they're forced to
fumble their way through some Arabic," Naim said.
Metwally, who is half Egyptian and was raised in Orange County and New
York, admits he's in some danger of being typecast, but he has also
appeared as a patient on "Grey's Anatomy" and as an American soldier
on the TV show "The Unit," with neither role revolving around his
ethnicity. "I think people are ready to accept an American named Omar
Metwally," he said matter-of-factly.
But Naim said the typecasting rut could also be self-inflicted. He
warns against Arab actors, writers and directors feeling compelled to
make every project some sort of definitive statement on the Arab
American experience.
"The overall goal is to do really good work and to make that the thing
that people notice us for," Naim said. "I have many Arab things I want
to do. But for now the stories that are coming out of me are just not
those stories."
Shalhoub memorably portrayed a conflicted Arab American FBI agent in
1998's "The Siege" with Denzel Washington and Bruce Willis but said he
evaluated potential roles on their quality, not their ethnicity. "My
life isn't about choosing Arab roles and non-Arab roles. There's a
potential pitfall in overstating and overusing this Arab American
term."
But a young crop of actors, writers and directors wants to create
overtly Arab- or Arab American-themed films, sometimes joining forces
to do so. One actor calls it HAM: the Hollywood Arab Mafia.
"There's a huge surge in Arab and Muslim filmmakers. Everyone's
wanting to express themselves," said Ahmad Zahra, a Syrian producer
working in the United States whose upcoming film, "AmericanEast," may
be a test case for the potential of this movement.
The movie tells of an ill-fated partnership between two businessmen --
one Muslim and one Jewish -- to open a restaurant. The film, which as
yet has no distributor, costars Shalhoub and Badreya, who co-wrote the
screenplay with Issawi, who directed it.
The key, Zahra said, is to show that Arab- and Arab American-themed
stories can turn a profit. "If everyone goes to see ["AmericanEast"],
of course Hollywood is going to come to me and say, 'Please make
another one,' " Zahra said.
The desire for an Arab-themed hit is a constant refrain among many in
the business. "Somebody just needs to do it on their own like Spike
Lee did it," said one young Arab. "We need a breakout hit -- and it
doesn't have to be particularly Arab or political. . . . It would be
easier to do 'My Big Fat Arab Wedding.' It would be an easier sell."
Says Shalhoub: "It has to be a cumulative thing. It's not going to be
just one movie."
One cause for optimism: the surprise success of the 2005 Palestinian
film "Paradise Now," a tale of two suicide bombers that was nominated
for an Oscar and won a Golden Globe. The film's director, Hany Abu-
Assad, has since moved to Hollywood.
"Hany kicked in all the doors," said Nizar Wattad, a young Palestinian
American screenwriter and USC film school graduate who is working with
Abu-Assad on his follow-up script. "Now he has to prove he can be
marketable. If he knocks one out of the park, it could really open the
floodgates."
But self-produced and -funded Arab films face one striking obstacle:
The Arab community -- both in America and the Middle East -- tends to
shy from funding movies.
"There's a lot of rich Arabs in America," Issawi said heatedly.
"Movies are considered a hobby. It's not a real investment. . . . The
community doesn't believe in the power of the media."
As for the residents of Hollywood's Arab closet, the young actor with
the European stage name anticipates a day when he won't feel the need
to tell people he's Italian.
"Just let me do three or four awesome American roles and then we'll
see," he says. But for now, "everybody's like, 'Where are you from?'
and I never want to answer. I'm like, 'Can we just do the audition?' "

he said.
E poi ha vinto un Emmy :)
E di certo sara' l'unico "middle eastern" che ha fatto carriera a
Hollywood :)
*LOL*
-Stefano