NOVANEWS |
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It appears the deceptive multi-aliased filmmaker behind the shlocky Islamophobic movie “Innocence of Muslims” is even more deceptive and shady than we thought. Another alias used by the now-jailed filmmaker — at least his 17th name — has been uncovered, along with the filmmaker’s history as a one-time flea market salesman of cigarettes and drug paraphernalia.
That’s according to a Monday report in The New York Times, which also features the first interview with filmmaker who called himself (among other things) Nakoula Basseley Nakoula since his movie about a child-molesting Prophet Muhammad went viral. Convicted earlier this month over probation violations, he’s now serving a one-year sentence in jail.
It was only a few weeks ago that federal prosecutors learned that the man they thought was named Nakoula had, in fact, legally changed his ”Mark Basseley Youssef” in 2002. That’s despite pleading guilty under the “Nakoula” moniker for a check-kiting scheme in which he used an array of 14 aliases —including “P.J. Tobacco” and “Kritbag Difrat.”
Under his probation agreement, the future filmmaker said he’d never change his identity again. Now, we learn through the Times, Nakoula changed his name right after he got out of jail, this time to “Ebrahem Fawzy Youssef.” And to the cast and crew of “Innocence,” he was known by a different name entirely: “Sam Bacile.” They believed the movie he was making wasn’t about the Prophet Muhammad at all, let alone a slanderous one. (Actors say they were deceived.)
The story also gets even more surreal. Nakoula was reportedly a one-time hawker of tobacco and drug paraphernalia, operating out of a flea market. The Times calls him a “bong salesman.” But he didn’t seem to move much merchandise and “spent most of his time on the phone, shouting in Arabic,” the paper reports. He also didn’t seem to do much work in offices he rented in Los Angeles, coming around “only at night for the most part” and using it for storing cartons of Marlboro cigarettes. In 1997, he was arrested in a conspiracy to manufacture the drug PCP, and was later given community service after another arrest over trying to sell meth ingredients.
Even worse, the 15-minute “Innocence” film is reportedly an incomplete version. The unreleased full version racks up to 140 minutes. That means there is 125 more minutes of the worst movie ever made.
Meanwhile, Nakoula’s son, Abanob, had helped with the social media campaign behind the film, owing to his father’s lack of technical know-how. Abanob uploaded the movie to YouTube under the name Sam Bacile — one of his father’s pseudonyms – where the video went viral. The son also said his dad left off the actors’ names “as a precaution for their safety” — though Nakoula never warned them about it — and because the film would cause a stir.
And how. Nakoula became an international figure in September when his movie became a flashpoint for anti-American protests throughout the Muslim world. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton blasted the movie as “disgusting and reprehensible” for its depiction of the Prophet Muhammad as a child molester. The White House later walked back claims the film was responsible for the attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi and the killing of the U.S. ambassador and three others, but the film had already become ensnared by the political fallout.
“My dad is not an evil man. He has had a hard life,” his son, Abanob, said. “He did something — the movie, something he felt strongly about — that was not frowned upon by the Constitution. He would always say, ‘Don’t fight Muslims; fight their ideology.’”
But Nakoula didn’t really ever make any distinctions, and he’s not in jail because his movie broke a speech code. Nor is he a martyr, as his supporters believe and he apparently fantasized about being. He was obsessed, with his anger against Muslims increasing after the 2009 Fort Hood massacre and as he watched protests intensify over a mosque near ground zero. ”I thought, before I wrote this script,” he told the Times, “that I should burn myself in a public square to let the American people and the people of the world know this message that I believe in.”
