The Daily Campus, Page 10
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Focus
» FILM
Muslims seek change in their Hollywood story
LOS ANGELES (AP) – After years of watching Muslims portrayed as terrorists in mainstream TV and movies, an advocacy group hopes to change that image by grooming a crop of aspiring Muslim screenwriters who can bring their stories – and perspective – to Hollywood. The Muslim Public Affairs Council is hosting a series of workshops taught by Emmywinning and Oscar-nominated veterans over the next month, an initiative that builds on the group’s outreach for a more representative picture of MuslimAmericans on the screen. The workshops are the natural evolution of MPAC’s efforts to lobby TV networks and movie studios from the outside, and they fit into a small, but growing, movement to get more Muslim-Americans behind the cameras. MPAC dubbed its effort the Hollywood Bureau, while Unity Productions Foundation recently started a similar project called Muslims on Screen and Television. Other nonprofit arts foundations, such as the Levantine Cultural Center and Film Independent, have joined forces by planning networking events for Muslim actors and training and mentoring young filmmakers. “The idea is to really give Muslims an avenue to tell our stories. It’s as simple as that. There’s a curiosity about Islam and a curiosity about who Muslims are – and a lot of the fear that we’re seeing comes from only hearing one story or these constant negative stories,” said Deana Nassar, MPAC’s Hollywood liaison. At the council’s first screenwriting workshop last Saturday, three dozen attendees packed into a classroom in downtown Los Angeles to hear Emmywinning comedy writer Ed Driscoll give tips of the trade, from knowing the audience to
making a script outline. The students reflected a diversity not often seen in Hollywood’s portrayal of Muslim-Americans, from a black woman who grew up in Mississippi to a stay-at-home mom to a defense attorney who dabbles in screenwriting on the side. Khadijah Rashid, 33, said before class that her Hollywood experience included working behind the scenes on everything from reality TV to the awardwinning biopic “Ray.” But Rashid said she had always felt her own story – growing up Muslim in the Deep South – was the tale she most wanted to tell. She recalled being teased as a child for her unusual last name and choking down chunks of dry cheese for lunch when the school cafeteria served pork, a forbidden food in Islam. “I don’t think it’s much drama, but it’s my own personal drama,” said Rashid, now a single mother living in Pasadena. “I definitely want to tell my story, but I need to learn how. If I get the tools, I’ll just pour it out.” With any luck, Hollywood will listen. The industry has taken more interest in telling authentic Muslim stories in recent years, said Ahmos Hassan, a Muslim-American talent manager who has been in the business for more than two decades. “There’s a demand for Muslim stories, but whether it’s Muslim writers or not depends on the talent they bring to the table,” Hassan, who owns Chariot Management, said during a break in the class. “They need to bring that to the industry ... and I think the industry is open to it now, more so than any time before.” MPAC has had some success working with writers and pro-
» MUSIC
ducers from the outside. Its Hollywood Bureau was founded after Sept. 11, 2001, with a simple strategy: to make sure the portrayal of Islam on TV screens was accurate, even if it was negative. Since then, the organization has consulted on a parade of hit TV shows, including “24,” ‘’Bones,” ‘’Lie to Me,” ‘’7th Heaven,” ‘’Saving Grace” and “Aliens in America.” The group also has held meetings with top network executives from ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC, and throws a Muslim-inspired version of a Hollywood awards show each year for productions, both mainstream and independent, that advance understanding of Islam. In 2009, winners included “Slumdog Millionaire” and “The Simpsons,” for an episode that featured Bart befriending a Muslim boy named Bashir. The goal is not to spoon-feed Hollywood Muslim-friendly story lines, but to increase awareness of the diversity of American Muslims and to be a resource for writers and producers, Nassar said. “There’s only a small, small number of people who are trying to drive a negative agenda. Most of the time it’s innocent oversight, and they’re very happy to get our take on what they’re doing, to get our feedback,” said Nassar, who also attended the workshop and is an entertainment lawyer by training. That feedback has been an eye-opener and a challenge for some in the industry, where the Muslim-as-terrorist plot line has been an accepted story for years. “When you’re sitting in the writer’s room, and you’ve got to come up with a plot line and you’ve got to come up with a bad guy, it’s really easy to pull that out and say, ‘OK, Muslim terrorist,’” said T.S.
Cook, an Oscar-nominated screenwriter who will teach two of the four sessions. “It’s a lazy man’s way to villainy – and it’s pretty ingrained.” Writer Roger Wolfsen, who worked on the TNT drama “Saving Grace,” said MPAC consultants were invaluable when he was assigned to write a script for an episode that featured a black death-row inmate who was converting to Islam. In the plot, the inmate Leon had a personal angel, Earl, who had been guiding him. Wolfsen’s challenge was to show Leon’s conversion and decide if his angel would change in appearance – or if he would continue to exist for Leon at all. MPAC’s consultants urged Wolfsen to resist making Leon’s character a militant, angry black man and instead suggested that he focus on the beauty and mystery of the moment of conversion. The collaboration paid off, he said. “Everything was my idea, but I didn’t know a single detail. I didn’t know how you convert; I didn’t know what it means; I didn’t know what an Islamic angel would say, how an Islamic angel would behave,” Wolfsen recalled in a phone interview. In the end, Wolfsen showed Leon reciting the Islamic declaration of faith in his prison cell as his angel watches. When Leon opens his eyes, the angel is still there and greets him with a simple “Us salaamu alaykum,” or “Peace be upon you” in Arabic. The episode was one of the high points of Wolfsen’s career. “With every writer, you’re always looking for new ways to provide freshness to your characters in abbreviated fashion,” Wolfsen said. “You can do that, sometimes, by making somebody a believable Muslim.”
AP
The photo collage above shows producer-Khadijah Rashid praying at her home. Rashid started her production company ‘Muslimah Movies’ in order to tell the true story of MuslimAmericans as they really are in their daily lives.
» TV
Writing songs triggered Is $3M worth it for a Super Bowl ad? Ask GoDaddy new start for Martin
AP
Ricky Martin.
NEW YORK (AP) – Ricky Martin began writing a new CD, but then he had to stop. The singer says he got so comfortable revealing his feelings – and his sexuality – that he needed to explore that in another way. “When I started writing my music, in this cathartic process, I started writing my book ... and I had to stop doing music because what was coming out was really intense,” Martin said. His memoir “Me” hit The New York Times best-seller list in November. And while Martin says he’d love to release a book of photos next, he’s putting out the album that somewhat served as the prequel to “Me.” “Because of what I learned about myself with the book, I ended up writing the music for this album,” he said of “Musica + Alma + Sexo,” his twelfth effort, out this week. “For the first time in my life I was not forced to release an album.” The Puerto Rican singer said that kind of freedom allowed him to take risks and get emotional. “There were emotions (and) it was not easy,” he said. “You have to start opening doors within your mind, opening doors and closing them (like), ‘I don’t want to go into that room ... Should I? No, but I have to,’” he recalled. “It was very liberating (and) very healing.” Martin spent two years making the mostly Spanish CD, cowriting each track and reuniting with Desmond Child, the pro-
ducer behind his hits “Livin’ la Vida Loca” and “She Bangs.” He will support the disc when his U.S. tour kicks off in Puerto Rico on March 25 and wraps up on May 8 in San Diego. He says he plans to bring sexy back on tour. “It’s going to be a very sexual tour ‘cause it is a sexual album. So let’s just have fun and provoke,” he said. Martin became a father to twin boys through a surrogate mother two years ago. And he’s looking to expand his family: “Of course I want daddy’s girl. In a couple of years, not now.” He also said though his boys are young, they’re catching the music bug. He’s even open to them being teen singers like he did when he debuted in the boy band Menudo. “I’m very lucky because my parents supported this... If they didn’t support me, today I would be so frustrated,” he said. “I want (my kids) to be happy. I would never force them into anything ... What I’m trying to say here is that for many years I did things for others to be happy. I don’t want them to go through that.” While Martin, now 39, was not open about his sexuality for many years, he was a musical success: He sold more than 20 million albums in the United States, won a Grammy and toured the world. But now, he says, he’s reached a new high. “I feel balanced,” he said, pausing, then smiling: “I feel like I can touch the sky.”
LOS ANGELES (AP) – GoDaddy.com was almost unheard of six years ago. Then it ran the most talked-about ad of Super Bowl XXXIX – a spoof of Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” in which a busty woman appears before a censorship board and a strap breaks on her skimpy top. The spot was so racy that Fox yanked a second airing scheduled for later in the game. The other fallout? The Super Bowl ad rolled out each year by GoDaddy, which registers Internet domain names, is now almost as eagerly awaited as the halftime show. Fox is charging about $3 million for 30 seconds of ad time this Sunday during Super Bowl XLV. So is the gamble worth it for companies? “It’s not a bet,” GoDaddy founder Bob Parsons says, “if you know the outcome.” Online businesses in particular reap big benefits from pitching during the big game. Viewers see the ads, then rush to the Web to see uncut versions of the commercial or snag freebies – and they end up becoming paying customers. Take Homeaway.com, which last year hired Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo to send up the old National Lampoon movies in a Super Bowl ad. (A snooty concierge tells Chase he’s booked in the “Napoleon Suite,” which turns out to have a comically low ceiling.) The ad, the site’s first during a Super Bowl, resulted in a huge increase in traffic, which lets
vacationers book rental properties. The new business from the Super Bowl ad allowed the site to recoup 60 percent to 70 percent of the cost. “The rest you’re attributing to future value,” co-founder and CEO Brian Sharples says. The company is buying time during Sunday’s PackersSteelers game and will save money on production by not using celebrities. It already spent $1 million on servers to handle the Internet traffic bump last year and can reuse the equipment. CareerBuilder’s ads helped the job-listing site leapfrog rival Monster after its first Super Bowl ad in 2005. The amount of money billed to companies posting new job listings in the month after the Super Bowl has risen, on average, by 39 percent above the same month the previous year. It’s back again this year, despite the tough economy. “What we’ve found year in and year out is that it effectively moves our business,” says chief marketing officer Richard Castellini. And then there’s GoDaddy. After Super Bowl XXXIX, it added race car driver Danica Patrick as a “GoDaddy girl,” and last year signed “The Biggest Loser” trainer Jillian Michaels. It’s already encouraging customers to check out this year’s Super Bowl for “our hottest ads yet.” Since the Jackson spoof in 2005, GoDaddy has gone from single digits to nearly 50 percent of market share in domain-
AP
GoDaddy.com CEO Bob Parsons.
name registry. On average, the site says, it has picked up 5 percentage points of market share within the first 48 hours after a Super Bowl ad. It posted almost $1 billion in revenue last year. For other big brands, the link between sales and awareness is harder to measure. Most people knew Budweiser before its helmet-wearing bottles squared off in the first Bud Bowl, and most people had tried McDonald’s before Larry Bird and Michael Jordan played extreme Horse for a Big Mac. Still, this year, several major companies are returning to the game after absences to save cash or try different marketing strategies. General Motors, which
was under majority government ownership this time last year but has since gone public, will try to drum up excitement for its small Chevrolet Cruze. PepsiCo wants to put Pepsi Max back on people’s radars as a zero-calorie drink after a year of focusing on community grants. The attraction for advertisers is playing to an audience of about 100 million people all at once. The 68 spots were sold out by Fox in October, an indication that companies are more eager than ever to appeal to the masses. Last year, some spots remained unsold until six days before kickoff. In some cases, the ads can work too well, especially if they’re linked to online giveaways. Dockers, a Levi Strauss & Co. brand, promised free pants in its ad last year and ended up mailing out twice as many pairs as it expected. Jen Sey, senior vice president of global marketing, says the strategy paid off by revitalizing the brand and helping the company find new distributors. But this year, it’s doing a cheaper pre-game ad and not promising any freebies. “We’re taking those resources and spreading them throughout the year,” says Sey. And Denny’s Corp., whose free Grand Slam breakfast campaign created huge lines around the country last year, is staying clear of the game. It has a new ad campaign that won’t be shown during the Super Bowl and won’t offer anything for free.
Broadcaster gives American outlet to Al-Jazeera NEW YORK (AP) – Al-Jazeera English has temporarily gained a long-sought American television outlet for its coverage of the Egyptian turmoil, an event that the Qatarbased news network hopes is a turning point for its acceptance in the U.S. market. Link TV, an independent broadcaster seen primarily on the DirecTV and Dish satellite systems, said Wednesday it is simulcasting about 12 hours
a day of live Al-Jazeera coverage to about 33 million of the nation’s nearly 116 million homes with televisions. Al-Jazeera’s in-depth treatment of the story has won praise from journalists and hostility from Egyptian authorities, who closed the channel’s Cairo office and briefly detained six of its journalists. When the story calms down, Al-Jazeera plans go back to cable operators in the U.S. to
seek permanent spots on the air, said Al Anstey, the network’s managing director. “This is a really important moment for us in the United States,” Anstey said. “To me, this is evidence that there is a clear demand for Al-Jazeera English and the content that we put out.” Link already airs documentaries from Al-Jazeera, includes some of its material in its daily “Mosaic” program about
news from the Arab world, and once a week it airs a halfhour Al-Jazeera newscast. It is part of the Link’s mission to provide news and information from across the world through difference perspectives, said Kim Spencer, chief content officer of the San Franciscobased network. Al-Jazeera offers a perspective that Americans need to see, with a wealth of contacts in the Middle East, he said.