Why Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World filmed in India:
Some of the Arab press, Mr. Brooks said, questioned his decision to set the film in India and Pakistan rather than an Arab country. “I said, ‘Well, if you can get me permission to shoot in Saudi Arabia, let me know,’ ” he said. “Because it was not happening when I was making calls. That was shut down within five minutes, with ‘What, are you insane?’ They’re not going to let a Jewish man, much less a filmmaker, in there. That’s just not going to happen. But I wanted the conflict between the two countries. I knew in writing this that I wanted to take two existing powers that are always suspicious of each other, and that was the one place you could do that. The idea was always that I go to do a peace mission, and I almost start World War III.”
Dude, Johnny Lever is still very much around, on film and on stage:
Comedy in the Muslim world (Arab or otherwise) can indeed be hard to find. “Today, stand-up comedians just don’t really exist,” Mr. Usman said. “But they did once. I have albums from the 70’s. The big, towering guy from Pakistan is called Moin Akhtar, and another guy, who was his contemporary, was Umar Sharif. And there was a guy in India who was really famous, who used the name Johnny Lever. They basically did one-man shows, with a lot of improv and sketch comedy, but with a small portion of what we would call stand-up.”
I dunno, the previews seemed similarly lame to me:
Once Mr. Brooks chose India as his setting, he visited the minister of information. “He told me that Steven Spielberg had wanted to shoot ‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom’ there, and they wouldn’t allow it, because they didn’t like the scene where they ate monkey brains,” Mr. Brooks said. “I said, ‘I don’t do that,’ and I think they were really appreciative that I didn’t have the whole scene where the cow stops traffic. They’ve seen that so much, and they hate it…” “I get nervous when I hear people are doing something about India, because usually it’s done with so little intelligence,” Ms. Sheth said.
