February 18, 2008, - 1:34 pm

“Harold & Kumar” Do Gitmo Trutherism

By Debbie Schlussel
It’s not exactly a newsflash that Hollywood sides with Islamic terrorists and is against the impotent War on Terror. And I’ve noted that actor Kal Penn, who played Kumar Patel in the hit movie, “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle,” is sympathetic with Muslims and Islamic terrorists. He’s against profiling of Islamic terrorists and, even though he played an Islamic terrorist on “24,” he taught a class at University of Pennsylvania, decrying–among other things–the portrayal of Asian Muslim terrorists on film.
Now, in the sequel to Harold & Kumar, “Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay,” we can expect more of this left-wing pan-terrorist pap. (Thanks to reader Barry Popik for the tip.) Filmmakers admit that they didn’t do any research on Gitmo and just presented things the way they believe they are in Gitmo. Unfortunately, America is populated by airheads like college student Cecily Pirozzoli, who feels for the terrorists, and is the likely audience of the Harold & Kumar sequel:
Harold & Kumar Escape From Gitmo Trailer (This is the WORK-SAFE version, and a lot was edited out.)


(The UNSAFE For Work R-Rated version, below–at the bottom of this entry, shows how stupid and disgusting this movie is.)

Because of some unfortunate confusion on an airplane between a “bong” and a “bomb” [DS: haha, funny], our slacker antiheroes are shipped off to the moviemakers’ idea of the worst prison imaginable.
On April 25, on a screen near you: “Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay.”
Seriously, dude. . . .
Harold and Kumar’s escape is only the latest cultural road trip through the detention center on Cuba’s southeast corner. And in most of them, Guantanamo is an eerie outpost, with scorpions, five-foot iguanas and banana rats – rodents the size of small dogs.
The image of a forbidding prison camp is not entirely false. But it is not the picture Bush administration officials would prefer to emphasize. They portray Guantanamo Bay as a clean and modern detention camp, where humane treatment of terror suspects is the rule.
But Guantanamo is no longer just a naval station or even just a detention center. It is an idea in worldwide culture – in more than 20 books and half a dozen movies and plays, with more coming out every month.
It has become shorthand for hopeless imprisonment and sweltering isolation. “The strange new Alcatraz,” one writer calls it, “the gulag of our times.” [DS: Um, weren’t those the words of Amnesty International?] . . .
Rear Adm. Mark H. Buzby, who runs the camp for the Pentagon . . . said that countering what he called preconceptions about Guant?°namo was “probably the biggest challenge that I face.”
The focus on Guantanamo as a creative subject can lead to distortions, Admiral Buzby said. “It’s as if someone turned up the gain on our life to make it sound really bad.” . . .
In her freshman seminar at the University of Denver this fall, Cecily Pirozzoli, an 18-year-old business major, read “Poems From Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak,” a slender volume edited by one of the detainees’ lawyers, Marc Falkoff. [DS: Read my post on this absurd book of drivel, here.]
Mr. Falkoff said his goal was partly to humanize the detainees. One poem asks: “What kind of spring is this, where there are no flowers?”
Ms. Pirozzoli said the book gave her insights into Guantanamo that she had not gained from news coverage. “I could feel what these people were feeling,” she said.
Pentagon officials simmer at the portrayals of Guantanamo, calling some of them propaganda. But that message has a difficult time catching up to the works themselves. . . .
The “Harold and Kumar” writer-director team, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, suggested in an interview that their script did not worry too much about Guantanamo’s actual details.
Mr. Schlossberg said their portrayal of Guantanamo involved darkness and dirt. They filmed at an abandoned prison in Shreveport, La., which Mr. Schlossberg described as “really creepy.”
“Our vision for Guantanamo,” he said, “was a place that doesn’t even feel like America.”

haroldkumargitmo.jpg

Yup, who cares about accuracy, when you’re showing your film to millions of Americans and others worldwide? Why bother with the truth? “It’s just a comedy, so no-one will believe it.” Right?
Don’t expect to see the giant halal buffets fit for a sultan, La-Z-Boy chairs and Harry Potter videos, and state-of-the-art gym Gitmo prisoners have, in this BS comedy. Or see the hotels nearby. It’s not supposed to “feel like America,” remember?
And while this movie will probably be a hit, based on the popularity of the first “Harold & Kumar” installment, it’s popularity will not have anything to do with Gitmo. Watch, though, for liberals to claim the opposite, that–despite the steady stream of anti-war box office bombs–this singular movie will prove the popularity of anti-war movies decrying Gitmo.
Oh, and don’t expect Hollywood to ever put out this film: “Harold & Kumar Go to the Set of the Nick Berg Video.”
Sadly, that one wouldn’t be a propaganda comedy, and they wouldn’t escape for another sequel. Instead, we’d see “Harold & Kumar’s Executioners Meet the 72 Virgins.”
haroldandkumargitmo.jpg

***
The VERY UNSAFE FOR WORK version shows how stupid and disgusting this movie is:




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9 Responses

The Hollywood Fifth Column strikes again. I hope the next film in the series is “Harold and Kumar Go To Hell (and Stay There).”

FreethinkerNY on February 18, 2008 at 3:08 pm

I look forward to seeing the movie.
I expect it to be funny, or at least as funny and sophomoric as the first. From what I recall about the first – I did not believe the scenes about the surgery, racoon, truck driver and wife, or the ‘Doogie Houser’ actor were the least bit credible. I imagine there will be similar scenes in the second movie, too.
Despite the fact that a knucklehead, or two, might take the sequel seriously as gospel truth there are those of us that understand such things as theatrical license.
Now ‘Scary Movie 1, 2, 3 and 4’ are definitely depictions of reality.

zyzzyg on February 18, 2008 at 4:24 pm

Great. I won’t be able to watch “House” while he’s still on it.

OldSchoolW on February 18, 2008 at 8:27 pm

Oh boy!! The 2 blowhards take a left-wing anti-american agenda! This should be garbage!

d2eux on February 18, 2008 at 8:40 pm

It seems hard to believe, but there was a time when Hollywood made movies that supported America’s war efforts.
Gone forever, those days are.

DocLiberty on February 18, 2008 at 9:08 pm

Obviously produced for an audience not old enough to legally see it.

Mike on February 19, 2008 at 10:59 am

I wonder how much money this anti-American movie will make. Probably more than “Redacted” because it’s a comedy. There’s another round of these movies coming. I saw the trailer for “Stop Loss” on imdb yesterday. There were so many things wrong with just the trailer, I don’t know where to begin. I’ll be watching to see if these movies start having success.
I hope not.

SMP on February 19, 2008 at 11:52 am

I just realized something: I saw the first Harold and Kumar movie while I was stationed at Guantanamo.
I wonder if the next one will be at Fort Knox (where I’m stationed now).
Circle of life, I guess.

SMP on February 19, 2008 at 11:54 am

seeing the second trailer I get the movie… it is a burnout/weed/satire movie (as was the first movie).
I thought the first one was going to be the dumbest thing ever and never bothered to catch it in the theater, it was absolutely hilarious when I saw it later on cable (especially as a jersey person).
The political slant was far less the emphasis in the second “disgusting” trailer. I think the post is an overreaction until the final cut is seen. The premise is equally as dumb as the first movie… but that turned out hysterical and had that 80s moment of “truth” (when harold tells off his coworker “cockboy”).
let’s not be so reactionary just yet… tar and feather me optimistic this turns out nearly as funny as the first one which included tons of stereotypes as well… (asian indian doctors anyone ?)

Ego on February 19, 2008 at 11:55 pm

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