Having been an invitee to A-list Red Carpet awards galas for my work, and having been optioned for the same, I can now call myself a professional screenwriter. I have been paid for my work. Though not a member of the
Writers' Guild, I am a scribe nonetheless. It is what I have worked hardest on for the past ten years, and I have only been getting better. I know this, because the professionals whom I have paid to do
coverage on my work have told me.
I, like every other creative film artist in the world, also dreamed of one day walking up the Kodak Red carpet as a nominee, then ascending to the stage in gold-plated victory. The Academy Award is the Lombardi Trophy of the creative arts. It is the absolute pinnacle of screenwriting.
Today, I must throw away every chance of ever walking that Red Carpet, or of ever clutching an Oscar in triumph, or even living the dream of optioning or selling my work ever again, for as long as I walk this earth.
Fact is, I will never work in that town again after all I have done lately, having waged a PR war against the Academy worthy of
Abu musab al-Zarqawi. I have been vicious, ruthless and extremely cruel in my attacks. But such is war. That I will never work as a screenwriter in Hollywood again is fact. I, unlike they seem to today, have no illusions as to the realities of how this world really works. I know their PR rage against me will exceed even that of the Mad Mullahs of Iran. And it has broken my heart to do any of this.
Throughout my life, I have had nothing but the greatest respect for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Board members such as
Kathleen Kennedy.
Karl Malden,
Eva Marie Saint, even The Great Fonz,
Henry Winkler, give the Academy board a character, dignity and respect you just could not buy. I adore them all for who they are, and for the magnificent celluloid treasures they have given we here in America, and the greater world at large, through some very hard work. And it breaks my heart to have to turn my pen from an instrument of my Hollywood dreams into a weapon of war against them.
Perhaps the most tragic and blackest of ironies in all this is that my current script was a labor of love to Oscar, a screwball romantic comedy that was
RUTHLESS PEOPLE,
LOONEY TUNES and
THE THREE STOOGES all rolled into one. Yet it treated all characters involved, and even the Academy itself, with great love, great respect, and even great tenderness. It was high concept, low budget, and my most commercially viable work to date. The one that really could have broke. It was a winner.
And now, I must throw it into the trashcan. Like I said, it makes me want to cry, no less than saying goodbye forever to a favored child I have struggled beyond measure to raise in the right way. But there are many other things that are much more tear-worthy on this earth. Like the unimaginable horrors everyday people like you and I must suffer without relent in the darkest corners of this earth, and to which violent and brutal death is not only an escape but a relief. That, too, is sad beyond measure. There are places on this earth where Satan rules supreme, as in the
genocide-wracked nation of Sudan.
Today's Islamic Republic of Iran is no less of an evil. They stone women to death, even writing into law the
size of the stones so as not to kill them right away, not so small you can't call it a stone. They savor the pain of the women they stone. It can take twenty minutes to die that way. It can be even worse for gays, whom the blood-drinking Islamist Gestapo stooges of Iran entrap online, as police do here with pedophiles, torture them to extract the names of other gays for even more torturing fun, then raise them slowly up by crane wires to die slow horrible death by suffocation and strangulation. It can take an hour to die that way. And all of it is done in full public view to cheering crowds. And all that is not the exception.
It is the rule.
Even filmmakers can suffer greatly, and even be
sentenced to death, for celluloid slanders. Sound familiar?
If South Africa was once unworthy of cultural exchange, as was symbolized in that era of Apartheid by the
Sun City album by Artists United Against Apartheid, today's Islamic Republic of Iran could not be less so. They operate in the same dark shadows of terror and blood thirst as Adolf Hitler and his SS death squads ever did. To think that they were worthy of collusion in film, given the current
Goebbels-like state of film and TV production in Iran today, was an abomination.
When I had heard the Academy was sending a delegation to Iran, it could not have angered me more than if they were heading off to Hitler's Third Reich on a cultural mission. If you know
the hard facts about today's Islamic Republic of Iran as I do, it really isn't much of a stretch.
That Team Oscar remained in Tehran after the humiliating demands for self-censorship not only of such films as '300' and The Wrestler (which also in effect slapped the one extended olive branch right out of President Obama's hand), but for
30 others still in production, was an insult in itself. By such outrageous demands for submission by Iran, it should have been quite clear to anyone that the attempt at diplomacy had failed, and failed miserably.
But to have remained in Tehran while mobs of Iranian leaders and their Hamas and Hezbollah Blackshirts stooges threw rallies of support for human butcher and now-international fugitive from justice Omar Bashir, and by default the genocide he committed and is STILL committing in Sudan, made me sick. What the Iranians did, and still do today, is no less of a crime and affront to humanity than if a nation threw parades for Hitler in Berlin during the Holocaust.
And to not leave, to not speak up, to do nothing, as your host country engages in these heinous and inhuman activities, in effect celebrating the worst crime know to man in the streets around them, is to become a silent accomplice. And that is an affront to every sensibility I have as a civilized human being. It is the same as seeing a crime happening, then doing less than nothing when you could have done something. And for ALL of Hollywood to remain silent in the face of this egregious insult to all we should and do stand for was both bewildering and gut-wrenching in the extreme.
THAT was my Causus Belli. That is what enraged me beyond measure. See, Team Oscar not only represents the Academy in Tehran, but by extension all of us here in America. Unlike the Team Oscar members in Tehran seem to be doing, I could not stand by in good conscience while these abominations and affronts to humanity occurred, and are STILL occurring, in the streets of Khartoum and Tehran. And for every moment they remain in Tehran, in silent complicity to crimes that could not be more heinous, I must remain in a State of War.
Their greatest fear is damage to their gold-plated public images. My mission in this war is to taint and damage those public images as badly as I can. I have been waging an effective insurgency in that respect. It extends all over the Internet and to many of its most popular websites. You have seen
unfavorable headlines I have generated. And for as long as Team Oscar remains in Tehran, you will see more.
At every Oscar gold-plated roadside crossing, I will be waiting there with my bad press IEDs. When the Red Carpet is laid out, I will pull the rug out from under them. I will scour the earth for the most damaging Weapons of Mass PR Destruction I can find, and I will find them. I already have. And will do so again. I will be cruel, brutal and ruthless in the extreme, as I must be. This is War.
I could have no greater love for the arts, film, screenwriting, even the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences itself. I LOVE film! I LOVE Hollywood! I even love and respect the Academy! As, I'm sure, our Founding Fathers once loved Merry Olde Englande and King George.
But when in the course of human events...
I hope someday that a state of war no longer exists between myself, the Academy and Hollywood. That, like the US and England of today, we could be allies working together to build a brighter celluloid future not only for ourselves, but for generations yet to come. But I have no illusions. You can stick a fork in me right now. I'm done. But, I hope you all can at least understand that the issues here go way beyond film. I will not pitch, market, option or sell the rights to my conscience at ANY price!
Perhaps today I must sacrifice my dream. But those who are trapped in the living Hell of today's genocide-wracked Sudan, or are being crushed under the dark reign of Gestapo-like terror in Islamist Iran, suffer far greater losses every day than you and I will ever know. It is a small price to pay in the end.
Signed, John T. Simpson.
