Larry David: more macho than action film director Roland Emmerich?
By David Savage
In Roland Emmerich's upcoming multi-billion-dollar
boondoggle 2012 (a date from which Mayan scholars have already distanced
themselves, unfortunately, since the whole plot hinges on a "Mayan
prophecy" that the world will end in that year), the director decided to
film a scene in which the iconic Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio is
destroyed, citing his belief against “organized religion.â€
Interestingly, though, he lost his nerve when it came time to follow through
with filming the destruction of another sacred site of organized religion: the
Kaaba -- that cube-shaped shrine that sits at the heart of Mecca. Explains
Emmerich: “Well, I wanted to do that, I have to admit. But my co-writer Harald
said I will not have a fatwa on my head because of a movie. And he was right.
We have to all in the Western world think about this [sic]. You can actually
let Christian symbols fall apart, but if you would do this with [an] Arab
symbol, you would have a fatwa, and that sounds a little bit like what the
state of this world is. So it's just something which I kind of didn't [think]
was [an] important element, anyway, in the film, so I kind of left it out.â€