Bizarre details about a YouTube film trailer that's continuing to fuel protests around the Middle East began to emerge late Wednesday evening.
The 14-minute trailer for the film, titled "Innocence of Islam," angered many Muslims across the world because of its derogatory stance towards Islam and its depiction of the Prophet Mohammad as a barbarian and abuser of women.
Early reports indicated that Sam Bacile, a California-based Israeli-American real estate developer, was behind the film. Bacile, who allegedly made the film to condemn Islam, was quoted as calling the religion a "cancer."
However, as the day went on, some wondered if the "Sam Bacile" name was an alias. One indictator that something was amiss, for example, was that there was no record of a registered real estate broker named Sam Bacile in the state of California.
On Wednesday afternoon, an associate of Bacile who claims to have worked on the film, Sam Klein, told The Atlantic that "Sam Bacile" was indeed a pseudonym and Bacile wasn't Israeli and probably wasn't Jewish. Klein was later identified as "a former Marine and longtime religious-right activist."
Terry Jones, the controversial Florida pastor whose support for the film helped propel it into the media spotlight this week, also told the Associated Press that "Sam Bacile" was a pseudonym.
"I have not met him. Sam Bacile, that is not his real name," Jones told the AP. "I just talked to him on the phone. He is definitely in hiding and does not reveal his identity. He was quite honestly fairly shook up concerning the events and what is happening. A lot of people are not supporting him. He was generally a little shook up concerning this situation."
Wednesday evening, the AP published a story suggesting that Bacile is, in reality, a California Coptic Christian named Nakoula Basseley Nakoula. Nakoula told the AP he was a manager for the company producing the film, but denied being the filmmaker known as Bacile. However, a record check done by the AP connected Nakoula to the Bacile alias.
According to the AP, Nakoula pleaded no contest in 2010 to federal bank fraud charges in California and was fined more than $790,000. He was also sentenced to nearly two years in federal prison and commanded not to use computers or the Internet for five years without prior approval from his probation officer.
The story gets weirder: As BuzzFeed pointed out, the trailer itself is poorly produced and several lines are overdubbed, signs that the actors involved were not aware of the filmmaker's final intentions and that the film likely cost far less than the initially reported $5 million figure.
Indeed, the actors in the film issued a joint statement claiming edits made in post-production drastically changed the meaning of the movie.
"The entire cast and crew are extremely upset and feel taken advantage of by the producer," said the actors. "We are 100 percent not behind this film and were grossly misled about its intent and purpose. We are shocked by the drastic rewrites of the script and lies that were told to all involved. We are deeply saddened by the tragedies that have occurred."
One actress in the film, originally titled Desert Warriors, told Gawker that she thought the movie was essentially a straight-laced historical piece.
"It was going to be a film based on how things were 2,000 years ago," Cindy Lee Garcia told Gawker. "It wasn't based on anything to do with religion, it was just on how things were run in Egypt. There wasn't anything about Mohammad or Muslims or anything."
It remains unknown if a full version of the film actually exists.
Protests related to the YouTube clip sparked protests in Egypt and Libya overnight after translated versions were broadcast on local media. Assailants targeting the American consolate in Benghazi, Libya on Tuesday reportedly used the demonstrations as cover for their assault, which claimed the life of an American ambassador and three of his staff members.
YouTube has since blocked the clip in Egypt and Libya.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, jcarillet
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