N
nazemelmasri
Guest
I am looking for a part in a film to make some money and to find someone to collaborate with to form a film prooduction company to produce my screenplays, I want to produce, direct as well as play leading roles.
Here is my resume as well as synopsis for two of my scripts:
NAZEM KAMEL ELMASRI (NED MASRI)
720 South third street # 13
San Jose CA 95112
[email protected]
AFTRA honorable withdrawal card # 177176
Actor’s Equity card # A3315 (expired)
FILM :
Ø AGENT AT LARGE currently attempting to Produce, direct and play leading role, in the process of forming a film production company for that purpose.
Ø Screenwriter ”Code named blue Cedar”, a spy fantasy thriller.
Ø Screenwriter : “ The Final Conflagration a doomsday nuclear holocaust scenario screenplay based on the Iraq war.
Ø Assisted with answering inquiries about Production package for untitled feature, with an all star cast film staring Robert Mitchum, David Caradine and others, directed by Bobby Davis, production shut down due to loss of funding, and Mr Davis illness and eventual death..
Ø The Thespian, screenwriter, producer, director and lead actor of experimental 35 minutes synchronized sound super 8 film.
Ø Fall 2003 De Anza college student films.
Ø 1985 to 1981 film extra LA CA.
.
THEATER:
Playwright/ lyricist: The Cowboy King and The Genie ( later and the magic carpet ) a Gilbert and Sullivan type operetta.
Ø Aug –2000 Titus Andronicus Roman citizen, tribune,
Hilo Community Players Hilo HI Directed By Cathy McPherson.
Ø Oct 2000 See how they run The Man
Hilo Community players Hilo HI Directed by Keith Richards
Ø Jan –7-97 Guest artist at the annual celebration of the international theater institute at the home of the Cypriot minister of culture in Nicosia Cyprus.
Ø Sep-Dec94 The Tiger turned pink (children’s theater) Hunter, written , produced and directed by Angela Randazo
Ø Jun-Sep 94 Night in Casablanca Ugarte
Port Royal productions Long Beach CA Directed by : Baron Mosely.
Ø Mar-Jul- 93 Oasis in Manhattan Khalifa(Understudy)
The Venture theater Burbank CA Directed by and staring the late Vic Tayback
Ø Nov 86-Aug 92 A small obscure theater company that is no longer there” The Royal Hollywood Shakespeare Company”, produced and directed and staring Sir Gregory Lansing. I played the following roles:
Ø Richard III Act 1 Scene 1, oration to his army, the nightmare scene.
Ø Hamlet To be or not to be…and Ghost
Ø Henry V Chorus
Ø Julius Caesar Soothsayer,Casca, Decius, Mettelus Cimber, Lucius, Cinna the poet.
Ø Macbeth Act 1 scene 1 3 witches, and the dagger scene.
Ø Othello Act 1 Scene 1 Iago
Ø Caligula Tribune, Pretorian guard.
Ø Mar85-Aug 86 The Magnolia Playhouse North Hollywood CA Produced , written and directed by Steve Oakley.
Ø Hostages in the terrorist zone,(musical) Ahmed the terrorist
Ø Freud Freud
Ø Other small supporting roles in other plays.
Ø Co-founder of Classical Productions and Enterprises, with Louise Hammet ( line producer, the dating game a Chuck Berry production, to produce the Broadway play Mr Roberts aboard the SS Independence at the Long Beach CA Harbor. Company was dissolved due to Louise’s illness
BEAUTY CONTESTS:
Ø Judged Miss Philippines LA CA at the Hollywood Palladium.1991
Ø Helped select wardrobe for Miss Philippines Honolulu Hawaii.1998
RADIO:
Ø Volunteer Receptionist and later on the air talent for KCIF 91.5 FM Hilo Christian radio a small radio station in Hilo Hawaii.1999-2000
TALENT CONTESTS:
MC, Producer and host of talent contests in
Espresso Bar Pasadena CA 1993-1995
Rayan hotel Kelwat Metn Lebanon, 1996
Club 92 Nicosia Cyprus,1997
Shambala Casa De Gloria 1990-1994 November -February
Zipolite Oaxaca Mexico.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE:
Ø Taught English to Zapotec Indians in Poerto Angel Oaxaca Mexico.
Ø Taught Shakespearean acting to fellow actors in small theater( The Royal Hollywood Shakespeare Company ), with Gregory Lansing Producer/director.
Ø Occasional Arabic tutor.
EDUCATION :
Ø Currenly attending De Anza College Cupertino CA and taking digital filmmaking and National Cinemas a study of American cinema in the 60s and 70s
Ø Fall 2005 Santa Barbara City College adult education at the Schott center I studied screenwriting acting for the camera , documentary filmmaking and film lighting with Mr Lars Nelson.
Ø Winter 2005 Community Scolars program Chicago IL studying research and writing and ethics.
Fall 2003 Screenwriting class, acting for the camera class.
Ø Feb79-Aug80 Pasadena city college CA
Theater arts major.
Ø Sep 75-Nov 76 Evangelical school Zahle Bekaa Lebanon
English and Arabic Literature major,
also performed in various school plays in Arabic, English and French.
Ø 65-74 Various school plays and poetry recitations in English Arabic and French.
Ø 1979 Hollywood CA Acting student with Michael Conrad a 50s B movies actor,
SPECIAL ABILITIES:
Ø Fluent in Arabic, French, Spanish and English. Accents, and dialects.
Ø
SPECIAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS: Wrote two poetry books:
Ø The Ghost Of Lebanon about the civil wars of Lebanon Bosnia and Afghanistan in 2001.
Ø Different Tunes From Iraq And The Rest Of The Third World.
Ø Wrote different research papers about the Middle East.
AGENT AT LARGE , SCREEPLAY SYNOPSIS
B Basil nick named Ben is an Arab American singer with a dying career. Finally his boss fires him. He is approached by two gentlemen posing as CIA recruiters who studied his personnel records as a US special forces member. They would like to entrust him to the mission of killing a wealthy industrialist whom they said is suspected of supplying terrorists with nuclear weapons. Ben dores not buy the story and does not want to have anything to do anymore with any kind of intrigue anyway.
After refusing the mission adamntly, he goes home and realizes that his marriage is falling apart. So he takes his last paycheck and buys a one way ticket to Paris France. Upon arrival he has a nice dinner with lots of wine. As he staggers out of the restaurant drunk. He is appraoached by a stranded American tourist. Ben gives him his last 3 dollars.
Later that night he jumps in the Seine attempting to commit suicide. His attempt is a failure, and he is rescued wet, cold, and miserable, and is taken to the largest mental hospital in Paris, where he falls in love with Laochi a Vietnamese beauty, who is so uninhibited that she shows him a hole in the fence in the back where she takes him skinny dipping in the woods. Ben assures the penniless Laochi that he will help her return to Vietnam to take care of her ailing father and little brother. meanwhile Laochi is released and is accepted in a catholic convent where she waits for Ben to fulfil his promise.
Upon release from the hospital he is refered to an Islamic charity agency where he quickly befriends the owner a wealthy eccentric Egyptian who promises to become his mentor and show him how to live a happy fulfilled life. However, Basil(Ben) is adamant about going to see an an Algerian acqaintance who works at the docks in Marseille who supposedly will help him get to Vietnam with his girlfriend as a stowaway.
However he finds out that the Algerian is an Al- Qaeda operative who is intending to blow up a jewish synagogue in Marseille an attempt which is foiled when Ben reports him to the police. Ben then returns to Paris to the eccentric Egyptian who gives him two airfares to Saigon.
As Ben and Laochi are about to board the plane, the persistant gentlemen posing as CIA recruiters appear and kidnaps them, taking them to where the wealthy industrialist is having a dinner and ordering Ben to shoot the industrialist, however instead Ben shoots the gentlemen instead leaves them dying in pools of blood. Ben them seeks refuge in a small Paris mosque where he seeks advice from the Imam in charge who panics and tells him to turn himself in to the police. Ben does that and is promptly arrested.
a court date is set and the trial of the century begins which stirrs the debate about immigration reform and foreign nationals commiting crimes on French soil, with both the prosecuting attorney and the defense making passionate speeches outlining their POVs.
At last Laochi and Ben are acquitted and freed and they are flown to Saigon where the Vietnamese government where they recieve a royal reception for overcoming all their obstacles. The Vietnamese government also gives them 10 acres of land in the highlands to build a resort. The couple's fortunes become even brighter as the US embassy contacts them about a reward for killing two most wanted fugitives for killing an FBI agent and posing as CIA agents.
The couple are then flown to Washington DC to be honored at a formal dinner at the White House for over coming their mental illness and achieving so much. the film ends with the couple sitting at the balcony of their resort in the Vietnamese highlands with children playing at their feet.
CODE NAMED BLUE CEDAR SCREENPLAY SYNOPSIS
My screenplay titled: “Code named Blue Cedar” is a spy thriller; it is a character driven plot. The main character Mohammed is an ex-marine who is a never do well kind of guy neither financially nor emotionally.
Over opening credits we see an old man beckoning 3-year-old Mohammed to come towards him. They are in an apple orchard in the spring, the trees are in white bloom, and the ground is covered with green grass strewn with multicolored wild flowers, as Mohammed drinks fresh water from a spring, lifted up by his grandpa’s cupped hands.
Later we see Mohammed drafted into the militias and after 15 days of training he is sent to fight in Beirut in the bitterly contested hotel district until he is captured and taken to an underground interrogation center where he is beaten , tortured and almost killed, before the Lebanese army overran the underground bunker killing his captors and freeing him.
20 years later we see Mohammed standing at a street corner in San Jose CA, he is taken by an ambulance to a mental hospital because he had been standing there for a couple of days , he had been in a catatonic state, when he wakes up from a deep coma. He becomes very violent and has to be subdued and injected with a myriad of psychiatric drugs.
He is finally released after seven months in a state mental hospital, but he is penniless and ashamed to go back to his family, so he takes off and becomes a drifter riding cargo trains all over the US.
For the next 11 years he is in and out of mental hospitals, and homeless shelters nationwide, until he finally gets fed up with institutional living and recalling with sadness and melancholy the times when he had jobs with friends and family and a cozy living arrangement with them, those were happy times when he was care free. Finally he makes up his mind that he is going to go back to live with an Arab American family whenever he gets his first opportunity.
So he returns to southern California and is accepted at the salvation army, where he gets is accepted into a long term treatment program for alcohol addiction and mental illness. On his day off he visits the area around Pasadena citiy college where he frequents the coffee houses in the area and chats with young patrons who remind him of his lost youth.
Then his opportunity comes one day when he meets a young Saudi student at an internet cafe in that area, who befriends him after hearing his life story and vows to help him, eventually he moves in with the Saudi student and his four other roommates.
However Mohammed gets an unsettling feeling from a mysterious Latino young man named Louie who doesn’t say much, but spends a lot of time with Mustafa the head of the household. Mustafa is a middle aged Yemeni who exhibits leadership and mystery, who seemed not to object to Mohammed moving in.
However,Mustafa has an aura about him of extreme seriousness and depth. Seldom has he smiled and even when he does, he does it in such a sarcastic way that scares Mohammed.
The combination of the last two characters, keeps Mohammed on the edge and he makes up his mind to flee again. However that never comes to fruition, for he has been stung by the scorpion of Middle Eastern intrigue.
Mohammed’s roommates continue to joke and irritate him with their nosy inquisitive interrogation that he had even fantasized about becoming a CIA agent, he had gone to the library and read books about different intelligence agencies world wide, even while his roommates were playing cards he had gone on the CIA website and applied for a job as an agent.
Now it is April 2003 America had just invaded Iraq, and in retaliation Al-Qaeda had set off a car bomb downtown San Francisco killing 64 people and wounding 248 and as the terrorists were trying to escape to Mexico there was a huge shootout at the border checkpoint at Nogales Arizona 4 boarder patrol agents lay dead and 9 are wounded in addition to 23 innocent migrant workers killed and 197 wounded.
Mohammed had no idea that his worst fears had become a reality, the people whom he is sharing an apartment with, are the Al-Qaeda cell responsible for those acts, he had never suspected it since they are so kind and they had helped him get a job at an Arab American club, and even got him a singing gig over there.
Mustafa the leader of the cell had finally decided that Mohammed already had seen and knows too much, therefore he had to be eliminated, but that doesn’t work out because after Mustafa lured Mohammed into an abandoned building downtown LA under the pretense of showing him the next location for his next half owned club, Mustafa had drawn the gun prematurely and Mohamed had overpowered and killed him.
Mohamed was now is in limbo, he cannot go back to his apartment because Mustafa’s attack was the proof beyond the shadow of any doubt that his roommates were Al-Qaeda operatives, so he took the money and all of Mustafa’s belongings from his body, and drove the car away eastward staying in motels in the California desert, until a Motel clerk recognized him after seeing his picture on America’s most wanted, and called the police.
As part of a plea bargain the FBI asked him to co-operate with the CIA since he is so knowledgeable about al the warring factions in Lebanon and sent him back there after training in Langley VA to track a terrorist by the nom de guerre of Abu Saad.Abu Saad instead turns out to be an intelligrence agent working for an Arab country that is unfriendly with the USA, and who informs the Lebanese security forces about Mohammed.
Mohammed was promptly arrested by the Lebanese internal security forces. The arrest happened after Tom, Mohamed’s trainer in VA and contact in Lebanon is killed in a drive by shooting while having coffee in a side walk café in the fashionable Hamra Street.
After a lengthy trial, Mohammed is sentenced to die by a firing squad, because the best Lebanese defense attorney could not argue successfully against the prosecutor who based his argument on the nation’s constitution and its laws regarding high treason.
Even the fact that the American Ambassador was given his turn to plead on Mohammed’s behalf since he is a US citizen, all that was in vain since Mohammed had dual citizenship.
At last the CIA, with help from the Ambassador and Mohammed’s uncle the chief of police in Beirut, hatched a plan, as the hooded Mohammed is lead to his death, suddenly the lights in the prison hallway, went out and Mohammed was switched by another prisoner who is led to his death by a firing squad.
In the prison basement Mohammed is stashed in a coffin that was draped with the American flag, and driven out to the airport where he is flown out to Dover Air force base.
The movie ends with the US Ambassador informing the Lebanese authorites that they nust release Mohammed or risk military action by the USA.
PS: In the first draft Mohammed dies in car bomb on his way to the airport and his car becomes a space ship with Arab, American, French, and British, angels who exchange sarcastic remarks about the evils of colonialism
Here is my resume as well as synopsis for two of my scripts:
NAZEM KAMEL ELMASRI (NED MASRI)
720 South third street # 13
San Jose CA 95112
[email protected]
AFTRA honorable withdrawal card # 177176
Actor’s Equity card # A3315 (expired)
FILM :
Ø AGENT AT LARGE currently attempting to Produce, direct and play leading role, in the process of forming a film production company for that purpose.
Ø Screenwriter ”Code named blue Cedar”, a spy fantasy thriller.
Ø Screenwriter : “ The Final Conflagration a doomsday nuclear holocaust scenario screenplay based on the Iraq war.
Ø Assisted with answering inquiries about Production package for untitled feature, with an all star cast film staring Robert Mitchum, David Caradine and others, directed by Bobby Davis, production shut down due to loss of funding, and Mr Davis illness and eventual death..
Ø The Thespian, screenwriter, producer, director and lead actor of experimental 35 minutes synchronized sound super 8 film.
Ø Fall 2003 De Anza college student films.
Ø 1985 to 1981 film extra LA CA.
.
THEATER:
Playwright/ lyricist: The Cowboy King and The Genie ( later and the magic carpet ) a Gilbert and Sullivan type operetta.
Ø Aug –2000 Titus Andronicus Roman citizen, tribune,
Hilo Community Players Hilo HI Directed By Cathy McPherson.
Ø Oct 2000 See how they run The Man
Hilo Community players Hilo HI Directed by Keith Richards
Ø Jan –7-97 Guest artist at the annual celebration of the international theater institute at the home of the Cypriot minister of culture in Nicosia Cyprus.
Ø Sep-Dec94 The Tiger turned pink (children’s theater) Hunter, written , produced and directed by Angela Randazo
Ø Jun-Sep 94 Night in Casablanca Ugarte
Port Royal productions Long Beach CA Directed by : Baron Mosely.
Ø Mar-Jul- 93 Oasis in Manhattan Khalifa(Understudy)
The Venture theater Burbank CA Directed by and staring the late Vic Tayback
Ø Nov 86-Aug 92 A small obscure theater company that is no longer there” The Royal Hollywood Shakespeare Company”, produced and directed and staring Sir Gregory Lansing. I played the following roles:
Ø Richard III Act 1 Scene 1, oration to his army, the nightmare scene.
Ø Hamlet To be or not to be…and Ghost
Ø Henry V Chorus
Ø Julius Caesar Soothsayer,Casca, Decius, Mettelus Cimber, Lucius, Cinna the poet.
Ø Macbeth Act 1 scene 1 3 witches, and the dagger scene.
Ø Othello Act 1 Scene 1 Iago
Ø Caligula Tribune, Pretorian guard.
Ø Mar85-Aug 86 The Magnolia Playhouse North Hollywood CA Produced , written and directed by Steve Oakley.
Ø Hostages in the terrorist zone,(musical) Ahmed the terrorist
Ø Freud Freud
Ø Other small supporting roles in other plays.
Ø Co-founder of Classical Productions and Enterprises, with Louise Hammet ( line producer, the dating game a Chuck Berry production, to produce the Broadway play Mr Roberts aboard the SS Independence at the Long Beach CA Harbor. Company was dissolved due to Louise’s illness
BEAUTY CONTESTS:
Ø Judged Miss Philippines LA CA at the Hollywood Palladium.1991
Ø Helped select wardrobe for Miss Philippines Honolulu Hawaii.1998
RADIO:
Ø Volunteer Receptionist and later on the air talent for KCIF 91.5 FM Hilo Christian radio a small radio station in Hilo Hawaii.1999-2000
TALENT CONTESTS:
MC, Producer and host of talent contests in
Espresso Bar Pasadena CA 1993-1995
Rayan hotel Kelwat Metn Lebanon, 1996
Club 92 Nicosia Cyprus,1997
Shambala Casa De Gloria 1990-1994 November -February
Zipolite Oaxaca Mexico.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE:
Ø Taught English to Zapotec Indians in Poerto Angel Oaxaca Mexico.
Ø Taught Shakespearean acting to fellow actors in small theater( The Royal Hollywood Shakespeare Company ), with Gregory Lansing Producer/director.
Ø Occasional Arabic tutor.
EDUCATION :
Ø Currenly attending De Anza College Cupertino CA and taking digital filmmaking and National Cinemas a study of American cinema in the 60s and 70s
Ø Fall 2005 Santa Barbara City College adult education at the Schott center I studied screenwriting acting for the camera , documentary filmmaking and film lighting with Mr Lars Nelson.
Ø Winter 2005 Community Scolars program Chicago IL studying research and writing and ethics.
Fall 2003 Screenwriting class, acting for the camera class.
Ø Feb79-Aug80 Pasadena city college CA
Theater arts major.
Ø Sep 75-Nov 76 Evangelical school Zahle Bekaa Lebanon
English and Arabic Literature major,
also performed in various school plays in Arabic, English and French.
Ø 65-74 Various school plays and poetry recitations in English Arabic and French.
Ø 1979 Hollywood CA Acting student with Michael Conrad a 50s B movies actor,
SPECIAL ABILITIES:
Ø Fluent in Arabic, French, Spanish and English. Accents, and dialects.
Ø
SPECIAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS: Wrote two poetry books:
Ø The Ghost Of Lebanon about the civil wars of Lebanon Bosnia and Afghanistan in 2001.
Ø Different Tunes From Iraq And The Rest Of The Third World.
Ø Wrote different research papers about the Middle East.
AGENT AT LARGE , SCREEPLAY SYNOPSIS
B Basil nick named Ben is an Arab American singer with a dying career. Finally his boss fires him. He is approached by two gentlemen posing as CIA recruiters who studied his personnel records as a US special forces member. They would like to entrust him to the mission of killing a wealthy industrialist whom they said is suspected of supplying terrorists with nuclear weapons. Ben dores not buy the story and does not want to have anything to do anymore with any kind of intrigue anyway.
After refusing the mission adamntly, he goes home and realizes that his marriage is falling apart. So he takes his last paycheck and buys a one way ticket to Paris France. Upon arrival he has a nice dinner with lots of wine. As he staggers out of the restaurant drunk. He is appraoached by a stranded American tourist. Ben gives him his last 3 dollars.
Later that night he jumps in the Seine attempting to commit suicide. His attempt is a failure, and he is rescued wet, cold, and miserable, and is taken to the largest mental hospital in Paris, where he falls in love with Laochi a Vietnamese beauty, who is so uninhibited that she shows him a hole in the fence in the back where she takes him skinny dipping in the woods. Ben assures the penniless Laochi that he will help her return to Vietnam to take care of her ailing father and little brother. meanwhile Laochi is released and is accepted in a catholic convent where she waits for Ben to fulfil his promise.
Upon release from the hospital he is refered to an Islamic charity agency where he quickly befriends the owner a wealthy eccentric Egyptian who promises to become his mentor and show him how to live a happy fulfilled life. However, Basil(Ben) is adamant about going to see an an Algerian acqaintance who works at the docks in Marseille who supposedly will help him get to Vietnam with his girlfriend as a stowaway.
However he finds out that the Algerian is an Al- Qaeda operative who is intending to blow up a jewish synagogue in Marseille an attempt which is foiled when Ben reports him to the police. Ben then returns to Paris to the eccentric Egyptian who gives him two airfares to Saigon.
As Ben and Laochi are about to board the plane, the persistant gentlemen posing as CIA recruiters appear and kidnaps them, taking them to where the wealthy industrialist is having a dinner and ordering Ben to shoot the industrialist, however instead Ben shoots the gentlemen instead leaves them dying in pools of blood. Ben them seeks refuge in a small Paris mosque where he seeks advice from the Imam in charge who panics and tells him to turn himself in to the police. Ben does that and is promptly arrested.
a court date is set and the trial of the century begins which stirrs the debate about immigration reform and foreign nationals commiting crimes on French soil, with both the prosecuting attorney and the defense making passionate speeches outlining their POVs.
At last Laochi and Ben are acquitted and freed and they are flown to Saigon where the Vietnamese government where they recieve a royal reception for overcoming all their obstacles. The Vietnamese government also gives them 10 acres of land in the highlands to build a resort. The couple's fortunes become even brighter as the US embassy contacts them about a reward for killing two most wanted fugitives for killing an FBI agent and posing as CIA agents.
The couple are then flown to Washington DC to be honored at a formal dinner at the White House for over coming their mental illness and achieving so much. the film ends with the couple sitting at the balcony of their resort in the Vietnamese highlands with children playing at their feet.
CODE NAMED BLUE CEDAR SCREENPLAY SYNOPSIS
My screenplay titled: “Code named Blue Cedar” is a spy thriller; it is a character driven plot. The main character Mohammed is an ex-marine who is a never do well kind of guy neither financially nor emotionally.
Over opening credits we see an old man beckoning 3-year-old Mohammed to come towards him. They are in an apple orchard in the spring, the trees are in white bloom, and the ground is covered with green grass strewn with multicolored wild flowers, as Mohammed drinks fresh water from a spring, lifted up by his grandpa’s cupped hands.
Later we see Mohammed drafted into the militias and after 15 days of training he is sent to fight in Beirut in the bitterly contested hotel district until he is captured and taken to an underground interrogation center where he is beaten , tortured and almost killed, before the Lebanese army overran the underground bunker killing his captors and freeing him.
20 years later we see Mohammed standing at a street corner in San Jose CA, he is taken by an ambulance to a mental hospital because he had been standing there for a couple of days , he had been in a catatonic state, when he wakes up from a deep coma. He becomes very violent and has to be subdued and injected with a myriad of psychiatric drugs.
He is finally released after seven months in a state mental hospital, but he is penniless and ashamed to go back to his family, so he takes off and becomes a drifter riding cargo trains all over the US.
For the next 11 years he is in and out of mental hospitals, and homeless shelters nationwide, until he finally gets fed up with institutional living and recalling with sadness and melancholy the times when he had jobs with friends and family and a cozy living arrangement with them, those were happy times when he was care free. Finally he makes up his mind that he is going to go back to live with an Arab American family whenever he gets his first opportunity.
So he returns to southern California and is accepted at the salvation army, where he gets is accepted into a long term treatment program for alcohol addiction and mental illness. On his day off he visits the area around Pasadena citiy college where he frequents the coffee houses in the area and chats with young patrons who remind him of his lost youth.
Then his opportunity comes one day when he meets a young Saudi student at an internet cafe in that area, who befriends him after hearing his life story and vows to help him, eventually he moves in with the Saudi student and his four other roommates.
However Mohammed gets an unsettling feeling from a mysterious Latino young man named Louie who doesn’t say much, but spends a lot of time with Mustafa the head of the household. Mustafa is a middle aged Yemeni who exhibits leadership and mystery, who seemed not to object to Mohammed moving in.
However,Mustafa has an aura about him of extreme seriousness and depth. Seldom has he smiled and even when he does, he does it in such a sarcastic way that scares Mohammed.
The combination of the last two characters, keeps Mohammed on the edge and he makes up his mind to flee again. However that never comes to fruition, for he has been stung by the scorpion of Middle Eastern intrigue.
Mohammed’s roommates continue to joke and irritate him with their nosy inquisitive interrogation that he had even fantasized about becoming a CIA agent, he had gone to the library and read books about different intelligence agencies world wide, even while his roommates were playing cards he had gone on the CIA website and applied for a job as an agent.
Now it is April 2003 America had just invaded Iraq, and in retaliation Al-Qaeda had set off a car bomb downtown San Francisco killing 64 people and wounding 248 and as the terrorists were trying to escape to Mexico there was a huge shootout at the border checkpoint at Nogales Arizona 4 boarder patrol agents lay dead and 9 are wounded in addition to 23 innocent migrant workers killed and 197 wounded.
Mohammed had no idea that his worst fears had become a reality, the people whom he is sharing an apartment with, are the Al-Qaeda cell responsible for those acts, he had never suspected it since they are so kind and they had helped him get a job at an Arab American club, and even got him a singing gig over there.
Mustafa the leader of the cell had finally decided that Mohammed already had seen and knows too much, therefore he had to be eliminated, but that doesn’t work out because after Mustafa lured Mohammed into an abandoned building downtown LA under the pretense of showing him the next location for his next half owned club, Mustafa had drawn the gun prematurely and Mohamed had overpowered and killed him.
Mohamed was now is in limbo, he cannot go back to his apartment because Mustafa’s attack was the proof beyond the shadow of any doubt that his roommates were Al-Qaeda operatives, so he took the money and all of Mustafa’s belongings from his body, and drove the car away eastward staying in motels in the California desert, until a Motel clerk recognized him after seeing his picture on America’s most wanted, and called the police.
As part of a plea bargain the FBI asked him to co-operate with the CIA since he is so knowledgeable about al the warring factions in Lebanon and sent him back there after training in Langley VA to track a terrorist by the nom de guerre of Abu Saad.Abu Saad instead turns out to be an intelligrence agent working for an Arab country that is unfriendly with the USA, and who informs the Lebanese security forces about Mohammed.
Mohammed was promptly arrested by the Lebanese internal security forces. The arrest happened after Tom, Mohamed’s trainer in VA and contact in Lebanon is killed in a drive by shooting while having coffee in a side walk café in the fashionable Hamra Street.
After a lengthy trial, Mohammed is sentenced to die by a firing squad, because the best Lebanese defense attorney could not argue successfully against the prosecutor who based his argument on the nation’s constitution and its laws regarding high treason.
Even the fact that the American Ambassador was given his turn to plead on Mohammed’s behalf since he is a US citizen, all that was in vain since Mohammed had dual citizenship.
At last the CIA, with help from the Ambassador and Mohammed’s uncle the chief of police in Beirut, hatched a plan, as the hooded Mohammed is lead to his death, suddenly the lights in the prison hallway, went out and Mohammed was switched by another prisoner who is led to his death by a firing squad.
In the prison basement Mohammed is stashed in a coffin that was draped with the American flag, and driven out to the airport where he is flown out to Dover Air force base.
The movie ends with the US Ambassador informing the Lebanese authorites that they nust release Mohammed or risk military action by the USA.
PS: In the first draft Mohammed dies in car bomb on his way to the airport and his car becomes a space ship with Arab, American, French, and British, angels who exchange sarcastic remarks about the evils of colonialism
