This is Nabil.

Last week, my thirteen year-old sister’s Middle School received a bomb threat. Thankfully, it was just a prank. During my tenure at Loganville High School, we also received bomb threats.  However, my experiences and my sister’s experiences were totally different.  My school got threatened BEFORE 9/11/2001.  My sister’s school got threatened right after the Fort Hood Shootings.  Bomb threats are nothing new to public schools in America.  They’re very serious, but most of the time they’re just pranks to get out of taking tests or what-have-you.  And that’s exactly how I remember them: nonthreatening.  My sister, on the other hand, felt very different about them.

My thirteen-year-old sister was harassed and made-fun-of by many of the other students at her school.  Their first response to the bomb threat? It must have been my sister because she is Arab and Muslim.  A couple of students even approached her directly, calling her a “Muslim Terrorist” and a “Bitch”.  Okay, so maybe the second name is just something kids do – but the first one is very troubling. My sister came home that night, crying her eyes out, because the negative perceptions of Islam have gotten so mainstream and universally accepted that even school children are spreading them. I really wished my sister hadn’t experienced that ridicule, but it’s something that many American Muslims are experiencing.

Colin Ferri recently handed our feature screenplay to one of the head readers at Dreamworks Pictures (nice score, Colin!).  And out of the goodness of his heart, he read our screenplay and gave us his notes.  First thing’s first.  He thought the screenplay was, “a hoot”.  Awesome.  Having our screenplay come off as “funny” and “hilarious” was one of our main goals, and according to the reader, we succeeded. Yay!

The problem? The reader was very concerned that our screenplay wasn’t relevant anymore.  His argument: The United States of America has elected an African-American president with the name, Barack Hussein Obama.  Because the plot of Arab in America relies heavily on Osama changing his name to Samuel – the reader was wondering if having a name like Osama would still be a roadblock. He thought America was becoming more accepting of Arabs and Muslims and that our screenplay addresses a non-issue.

And then I got to thinking…  If things are getting better, then why is my sister being harassed by all the kids in her school when some punk calls in a bomb threat?  Why is my father still running a Middle Eastern Restaurant with his 22 years of Engineering experience?  And why in the hell am I seeing Time Magazine running a cover like this?

Reminds of A Teaser Trailer...

Back in 2006, Colin and I shot the first half of our short film, Arab in America.  There was a scene that was cut from the movie that we used for a Teaser Trailer.  Most of our friends and family who saw the Teaser Trailer, complained that it was too “outlandish and ridiculous” and “Time Magazine would never have a cover like that.”  I’ve included the Teaser Trailer below…

We think Arab in America is still relevant.  Arabs and Muslims are still having a hard time in this country and many are treated like second-class citizens.  And because some people might think that the topic is fading in the background and “getting better” that only emboldens us even more to get this thing made.

Keep checking back for some new updates, including – your very own copy of The Arab in America Pitch Packet! – AND – DVD News! – AND – Even More Arab News!

-Nabil

Y'all Rawk!

I just wanted to thank everyone for voting in the Link TV One Nation Many Voices Film Competition!  We have OFFICIALLY made it as a finalist!  Thanks to your hard work, we’ll be judged against 24 the other top films for the top spot!

We wouldn’t have made it this far without all your hard voting work and I just wanted to let you guys know that we’re indebted to you all!  If you need anything – let us know.

(Colin is good at doing dishes, Tim is good at changing tires, Tom likes to vaccum, and Mike is good at looking important!)

Look out in March when they declare the winners!  Hopefully Arab in America will be on television!  Yay!

-Nabil

We Can Do It!!!

I know you guys are really sick of all my posts about this Film Contest, but something’s happening…  I don’t know if it was my last post, or if it was the amazing prowess of one of our dedicated fans, but Arab in America is now 3 places away from making it into the FINALS!!!  I don’t know how we jumped 20 films in less than a day, but it happened, and it’s AMAZING!!!

We are so close to making Arab in America a finalist in the One Nation Many Voices Film Competition!  So, please, if you haven’t voted yet, please go to http://www.linktv.org/onenation/films/view/419 and sign up to Link TV and VOTE 5 Stars!!!!

If you’d like to leave a comment, that’d be fantastic too!  I want to thank everyone who’s voted and commented so far!!!  And if you’ve already voted, you can sign up and vote again with another email address I guess (wink, wink) -OR- you can email the link to a bunch of friends and get them to do it…  We’re SOOO Close!!!  We can do it!

-Nabil

AIA at the One Nation Film Competition!

Hey guys!  A five minute edit of the Arab in America short has just been added to the One Nation Many Voices Film Competition hosted by Link TV! However, before I give you guys the direct link, I have to make a plea.

The only way to get into the semi-finals of this competition is to get a ton votes and comments. So, if you would all please, after seeing the film, vote AND comment on the film, that’d mean the world to us!

Okay, so without further ado, the 5 minute cut of the Arab in America short Film!

http://www.linktv.org/onenation/films/view/419 – Tell Your Friends!

(there are some jokes and scenes that didn’t make this 5 minute cut…  don’t get sad if you don’t see your favorite part of the trailer in this edit…  the dvd is in the works and you’ll be able to get the film in its entirety, soon…  please be patient! -thanks)

-Nabil

The whole project feels old and the subject matter isn’t nearly as pertinent today as it was when the project was first concieved.  It’s definitely still a good idea for a film, but the approach that we applied to the script a year and a half ago doesn’t still hold up today, so we need to take the project in a new direction.

This blog is kind of an outlet for us to pour our experiences out there and reflect out loud where we are and what to do next.  In the following weeks/months you’ll learn in detail about all of those close “studio and investor” calls and perhaps what we could have done differently if we could go back and do it all over again…

We’re currently getting the short (DVD) to be sold on Amazon.com and when the DVD is finalized (with commentary track, of course!) we’ll let you guys know!  Anyway, thanks again for your continued interest in Arab in America please keep checking back to the blog for more information.

Despite the feelings of some of the crew members (and I totally understand their frustration), Arab in America has NEVER been dead to me and it will still be a project of mine for a long time to come.

-Nabil

This is Tom.

Hello World.

Tom here. I am one of the writers of Arab In America. Not the short one, the long one. Or the one that’s too long. Whatever. Most of you probably don’t know of me as my involvement with the short was very limited, but I like to think I had some helpful pointers here and there. I suppose that lead me to writing here — on the ‘Making Arab In America‘ blog.

YESTERDAY, Nabil told me he had this idea to do this blog, and so here I am. This is my first blog ever. I have never once thought about starting, writing, participating, reading, loving, hating, obsessing, fantasizing, dreaming, or smearing a blog, so if it is a bit uneven, sue me. (Seriously don’t really, I’m a broke filmmaker too!) Okay! So far, so good. I feel like I can say whatever I want, and it doesn’t matter. So a blog is for venting then? A perfect place for the guys behind Arab In America!

Except for one thing. Where to start?

I am honestly not bitter about any of our close calls, potential buys, and even a few name actors who enjoyed our story but didn’t want to bite. Seriously, who gets that lucky immediately after graduating film school?! It has been one of the most rewarding and informative journeys I have endured in my young twenty-three years. It was fun, and above all, was the kind of thing I want to be doing. That being said, none of us have any intention of giving up. We may move on to other things, and Arab may never get made, but giving up is for losers, getting smart is for us.

I think we’re smart guys. Nabil and Colin were smart enough to know they had a good idea on their hands. They asked for my help, so naturally that’s another check on the smart list. My credibility I suppose lied with my own limited (but existent) feature film knowledge (called I Am The Bluebird for anyone listening). Anyway, so I helped. And we worked together hard and long for many many months — I’m going to skip a year of that process and go right to the ‘Oh-Shit-Houston-We-Have-A-Problem!’ moment — the political climate keeps changing!

It took us smart guys a long time to realize that right!? Now before you tell yourselves, “No shit Sherlock! My dead parakeet’s rotten corpse fifteen inches under the rock in my backyard could’ve called that!?”, it gets a bit more complicated.

See, everyone knows someone with a great movie idea. We were those people to a lot of others. And haven’t you noticed that those movie ideas are almost always films perfectly acclimated for a studio? Doesn’t Arab In America sound like that? It’s the perfect edgy tent-pole comedy! Maybe that’s where we made our mistake. If Akiva Goldsman wrote it, it would’ve been shot before any studio exec green-lit the thing. I’ll sum it up by saying that for unknowns like ourselves with a politically satirical script relevant to TODAY, it proved a lot harder for anyone who had the power to say yes. Don’t worry, I haven’t gotten to the complicated part yet. We got this script (and idea) into many people’s hands who had the power to say yes, believe me. Turns out, when you have a good idea, that wasn’t so hard. It was the time it took to get the thing into those people’s hands that became the stinker.

You get the idea...

A stinker you say!? Imagine a 12 once rib eye cooked to perfection. But somehow it gets misplaced in the middle of the desert and sits in the scorching heat for days. Vultures one by one peck at what was once the divine steak. Their nasty bald heads throw bacteria around like a wet dog. And to top it off, they’ve been enjoying themselves for so long that by the time they leave, there is nothing left but a pile of vulture dung. Yes, that kind of stinker.

I think normally, most aspiring filmmakers would not be so crushed by the amount of time between submitting a script, and it actually getting read. “What’s the problem!? It’s getting read!?” Well, if you have a script about killer monkeys in the jungle and some half-cyborg gorilla who speaks fluent English, lets just say you have a different kind of script. Nabil, Colin, and I spent a great deal of time writing about the current misconceptions and interpretations of the world — from the preposterous and obnoxious to the revealing and inspiring — all while putting our genuine humorous twist on it all for a full blown Arab “comedy of racial proportions!”

Turns out, by the time the guy read it. It was YESTERDAY’S news.

So, here we have the ‘Making Arab In America’ blog. My goals for this thing, while obviously hoping to provide some sort of perspective on the whole affair, is to keep moving forward. We have all decided, not only as the owners of this idea but as members of the next generation, that we all had something that we believed in. As screenwriters, we have the power to say something, to change something, and perhaps one day, make something. Whether its Arab In America or something else, I have no doubt we will get there. TOMORROW is a new day, and no one knows what will happen. Maybe somebody reads this and says, “Fuck it. Here’s four million dollars.”

That’s doubtful, but you never know.

-Tom

This is Colin.

This is Colin Ferri writing, co-writer/producer of the Arab in America short, and co-writer of the Arab in America feature.

Out of the small creative team behind Arab in America I am currently the only one living in LA. I moved here a little over a year ago, and I’m living with an old high school friend. When I arrived, I was excited about being the front man of the crew, pitching the script to the Hollywood bigwigs, then relaying the info back to Nabil and Tom in Georgia.  Oh, how that all changed when I arrived.

Having barely any money and no job, Arab in America got put on the back burner because of my human need to feed and clothe myself. I had to get a job at a restaurant … I once told my self, that once I graduated, I would never work in a restaurant again… oh, how life always seems to humble you.

Now that I had a somewhat steady income, I was poised to get Arab made. All we needed to do was punch up the script and then that would be that, right? Well… We had a pretty good draft finished but at whopping 140 pages… that’s far too long for a comedy. Trimming the fat is what was needed. Much easier said then done.

Some things got cut here and there… and we had, what we thought, was a better version. Not perfect, but something we could work with and show people. It got read by some people. Tom managed to get it into the hands of a pretty well-known Hollywood producer. I talked with his assistant (who also happened to be a girl I went to school with).  “Its okay, but it’s too long” she said, with a condescendingly smug smile.   When we were in school, she was in my writing class and her worked sucked! When I say “sucked”, it’s not because she had potential and didn’t use it, it’s because she was a just a bad writer who produced nothing but god-awful scripts!  So when she said “it’s too long”, my response was “Well, you’re too fat! And you’re ugly to boot!”….That’s what I would have said… but I’m a professional (well not yet but I will be soon). My REAL response was “yeah, we’re working on trimming it down.”  I then smiled. But in my brain I was kicking her in the shins.

Strike one. Whatever. I wasn’t fazed. I’m still gonna make something of myself. A few months go by and I start chatting with my boss’s girlfriend, who is an entertainment lawyer. We chat about work and whatnot, and then she asks me “What do you do?” I tell her “I’m a writer.” Then I tell her about this wonderful project Arab in America. She seems intrigued. “Can I read it?” She asks me as she exhales the smoke from her slender 100cm cigarette. “Sure. If you want.” Maybe she can offer some feedback. “I know some people at Lionsgate.” She tells me. “Cool.” Was my response however, I wanted to go call Nabil right then and tell him “DUDE! Lionsgate is gonna read our script!!!” I don’t, though. Like I said before. I’m a professional.

I never heard anything from her again about it. Strike two. I’m getting a little discouraged.

A few months pass. I tell myself “Colin, take a break from Arab, work on some of your own things. Then you can go back to it with fresh eyes.” I take my own advice. I write three story outlines, I finish a short story, I start writing what turns out to be a book (still unfinished), and I begin a script that I still grapple with to this day. But Arab sits there. I never get back to it. A few more months go by. Tom is working on Bluebird and Nabil is working for a dumb TV station in GA. And I’m working more and more at my job. A few more months go by. Arab is still collecting dust… Not real dust but the dust that collects on files that sit in unopened folders on the hard drives of computers. A few more months go by. Arab is on life support. Nabil and I hardly ever speak of it, and when we do it is always “yeah, we should do something about that.”

More time passes. I become a jaded LA resident. I haven’t really worked on anything for a while. I’ve lost my creativity. I end up working more and more at my job waiting tables. My roommate David, who is an Actor (which means he’s also a Server) says to me “Lets go on a trip.”

“Sure.”

A few months later I’m in Europe, drinking beer in Ireland and touring wineries in France and Italy. I love it… it changes me. I’m creative again. I sit on a vineyard with a bottle of Chardonnay sketching the landscape and scribbling down more ideas for movies and stories. But I never once think of Arab.

I come back to LA and continue to work at the restaurant. But I’m working on my own writing as well. Just not Arab.

Arab is dead.

A few days ago, Nabil calls me and tells me about his idea of starting a blog and really getting Arab off the ground again. “We need to do this man, I think it can work.” he convinces me. “I’m moving out there with Tim, in January, and we need to start moving on Arab. If it doesn’t work this time, then we’re done. We’ll move on and work on something else, but we need to give it one more try.”

So there you have it. Arab is back from the dead. And I’m happy about it. We didn’t get strike three, and I hope we never do. I’ve been in LA for over a year, and now the reason I came out here has come back to me. So this blog will chronicle what is being done to get Arab made into a feature. I’m sure there will be plenty of posts about the history of the short, and how we got it made. I’m sure I’ll make a few post about it, too. But now you know me, and you know that the LA man will hold down the fort until the re-enforcements arrive. I didn’t do the greatest job before, but the best is yet to come.

~Colin

Karrabba's: Good Food, Bad Tips

Most of my first few posts will try to get everyone up to speed on the constant roller coaster that has been Arab in America.  We’re kind of starting this blog late in the game (over 2 years since we started the project) so there’s a lot of ground to catch up…

I can remember it like it was yesterday…  Here, lets set the scene a bit.  Close your eyes and think of Savannah, Georgia, USA.  If you’ve never been to Savannah, think of heaven, take away a little bit of beauty, add in some old, and and top it off with a horrible paper mill smell.  Anyway, it was the spring of 2006.  I had just broken up with my girlfriend and started working at an Italian Chain restaurant (lets call it Karrabba’s).  I was kind of going through a little dilemma at the time…  No, it wasn’t because I had just lost my girlfriend (I was pretty relieved about it, actually) nor was it because I was getting tired of having extra virgin olive oil spilled all over my clothes (the smell stays even after multiple showers)…

My senior year was fast approaching and I had to make a movie to graduate the Savannah College of Art and Design.  I already had a hilariously, dorky screenplay that my entire Advanced Writing Class loved and couldn’t wait for me to make…  The problem?  My crew.  Ever since I was a Sophomore in college, I’ve worked with the same two people on every movie I made.  Tim Bryan and Jason Wheeler.  Tim was my DP (director of photography).  Any project or movie I wanted to make, Tim was there to light it and Jason was there to film it (camera op).  And whenever they needed help on their projects, of course, I would lend my services (writer, director, lugging equipment, getting the coffee, etc.).  When you find people that you work well together, you don’t want to lose them.  You want to keep working with them as long as possible.  And my latest “stroke of genius” wasn’t sitting too well with my crew-mates.

I believe that Tim’s exact words were, “Why am I mad?  Because you screwed me, that’s why I’m mad!”.  Tim had partnered with me through some pretty horrible projects because he believed that I had something in me.  He thought I had some amazing story in my brain that would make an incredible movie and he’d be there to make it happen.  And at the time, for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what Tim’s problem was with my screenplay.  I mean, everyone in my Writing Class liked it.  My friends and family liked it.  Even my professors liked it.

The screenplay in question was titled, Assassinate George.  It was the story of two fed up twenty-something nerds that got so pissed at George Lucas for screwing up the new Star Wars prequels, that they decided to go on a cross-country trip to kill George Lucas before he messes up the Original Trilogy.  Tim referred to the project as a “dumb fan-film” and insisted “that’s not the reason I came to film school.”

So, it’s Sunday morning and I’m standing in my Karrabba’s-wait-staff-attire, cleaning my section, and getting ready for the church crowd to come in and tip me like poop when it hit me…  I called my high school friend, Jamie Gaar (he’s since changed his name after getting married to Jamie Hawkins-Gaar, please give him crap for it) and quickly pitched the idea to him.

If I remember correctly, it was a story of an alien abduction set in 15 BC.  The abductees turned out to be our religious prophets (David, Abraham, Moses, etc.) who in turn, dictated what was told to them from the aliens…  At the time I thought it was hilarious.  Since then, I only find it a mildly-entertaining observation.  Jamie quickly stopped me in the middle of my pitch and told me to stop.  I guess after listening to fifteen super-cliché pitches he’d had enough.

“Nabil,” he said, “just write about what you know.  It’ll be personal and it’ll be funny.  It’ll be everything you want it to be because it’s yours and you know it.  Now stop calling me, I’m at work.”

For the rest of the shift I was in a daze.  Handing customers their drinks and taking their orders there was only one thing that was constantly spinning through my mind.  A title…  Arab in America.

-Nabil

This is Nabil.

Hello interwebs,

My name is Nabil Abou-Harb, and I’m the creator/co-writer/director/producer of the short comedy film, Arab in America. We shot Arab in America in late 2006 and early 2007 and since completion of the film, its played at many film festivals around the world including: The Cannes International Film Festival, The Memphis International Film Festival, and the Washington D.C. International Film Festival (where it also took home the Audience Award for Best Short).

We’ve been painstakingly trying to get the film picked up as a full-fledged feature film for almost two years.  Trying to get your movie made is not easy…  There’s an entire world of Agents, Producers, Executives, Investors, and Assistants that all successfully set up a firewall.  If you can break the firewall, you’re in.  Breaking that firewall, is an entirely different story.  Over the course of two years, we’ve chipped away at the wall…  However, if we continue at the current pace, it’ll take 20 years…  We kind of feel like Andy Dufrane in Shawshank…

So we decided to do this…  With some 5,000 unique hits a week to this site, why not start a blog?!?  Not just any blog…  The Ultimate Blog!  A blog designed to show the world how hard it is to get your movie made.  A blog that chronicles the entire history of an awesome, thought-provoking film (I’m a little biased).  A blog that lets our fans and passerby to have a say in the process.

We hope you join us on our journey to change the hearts of the world through our film…

Throughout the next few weeks, we’re all going to be chronicling all the past stories and encounters that brought our project to this juncture.  All these posts will be tagged with the “history of arab” tag.  For more basic information on the film, don’t forget to click the “About The Film” link at the top of the page for a current synopsis and movie trailer.  Also, please feel free to comment on anything.  This blog won’t work all that well without you participating.  To leave a comment on a post, click the icon right underneath the date of the post.  That will open up the comments area.  From there you can comment to your heart’s desire.

If you’re looking for the old Arab website, it can be accessed at any time by going to http://www.fiveonfifty.com/arabinamerica whenever you’d like.  I’d beware, however…  The site looks like it was made in 1994 and hasn’t been updated in over a year (sorry about that).

Thanks everybody, and now…  let the blogging begin!

-Nabil