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HBO: This is perhaps one of the most personal films
you've ever made, in terms of putting yourself
in the movie. Tell us how it all came about.
Marc Levin: Well, that's true, it's certainly the only movie
I've ever put myself in, and it's definitely the
most personal. I think it started right after
9/11, hearing these rumors on the streets on
New York that Jews were being warned not to
go to work, and that rabbis were telling their
congregations don't go to work that Tuesday,
and then hearing this rumor that the Jews got
out, and no Jews died. I couldn't believe it,
reading the newspapers and seeing the
missing and the dead.
And as I say in the beginning of the film, it
was this encounter with an Egyptian cab
driver that was kind of the inciting incident
when it all came together.
There was a second part to that story which
isn't in the film, which had to do with the
young cab driver who picked me up. It was
late, and smoke was still coming up from
ground zero. He was Arab-American, so I
wanted to get his thoughts, and he was
listening to a Hip-Hop station that had The
Roots on, which is a group I've worked with,
so I figured, this kid is cool, we can level with
each other.
And he started repeating the same thing that
the rabbis warned the Jews, no Jews died. I
said, come on, man, you're out of your mind,
you can't believe this garbage. And he said it
was all written a hundred years ago in the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Now, I knew what the Protocols were. I had
read it back in the seventies, and I guess I
must have just flipped out in a way in that
moment, because I had heard parts of this
stuff, and I just lost it, and I said, my great-
grandfather was at that meeting, and the kid
froze.
HBO: Which meeting?
Marc Levin: At the Protocols. The Protocols is a notorious
fake document which alleges to be minutes of
a meeting of Jewish elders who were plotting
to take over the world. So here I was, and I
just kind of lost it, but I went along with the
charade. You know, this kid is telling me it
was all written a hundred years ago. I said,
OK, I'll tell you something, my great
grandfather was at the meeting, and he froze,
he was like, what? And he looked at me, and
we came to a red light, and he turned around,
and I looked right in his eyes, I said, let me
give you some advice. Shut up and do what we say! He pulls over, and we go into a coffee shop
and he starts telling me his life story.
He's from Alexandria, Egypt, he did love hip hop music, but every time he bought a rap CD and
the fundamentalists in his neighborhood saw,
they would take it and smash it and beat him
up. And this happened over and over. And
also with movies, if he bought a European or
an American DVD, they would take it, smash
it, and beat him down. So finally he couldn't
take it anymore, and he left his own country
and came to New York dreaming of getting
into the music business. And I'm thinking,
this is so crazy, this kid is actually a victim of
this fundamentalist fanaticism, and yet only
twenty minutes ago he's repeating this
nonsense to me about 'the Jews this' and 'the
Jews that.'
And so I left that evening confused. He was the first person that connected the 9/11 rumors about the Jews with the Protocols of Zion, this fraud that Hitler and Henry Ford had embraced but had been so discredited that I thought it was thrown away on the junk heap of history.
HBO: Henry Ford of the Ford Motor company?
Marc Levin: Henry Ford published it in the United States,
that's how it got to America, and that's why it
got such notoriety. He took the Protocols, and
then he offered a commentary to it, he
expanded on it, about how the Jews run
Hollywood, and the Jews run the media, and
the Jews run Wall Street. It's incredible.
So this kid was the first person who made me
realize that the Protocols were back. And I
thought, my God, this is hard to believe. And
then I saw in an article that in New Jersey, in
Patterson, that an Arab-American weekly
newspaper was serializing the Protocols just
as Henry Ford had in 1920. And I was like,
this is impossible.
And so that's how it started, it really started very small. I showed (HBO's) Sheila Nevins and Nancy Abraham some of
the stuff early on, and of course with the
invasion of Iraq, and then Passion of the Christ
coming out, a lot of these themes that I had
been discussing all the sudden were
everywhere, you know, in terms of what was
happening in the news and in our culture.
So I went up to HBO and I showed them some
of the stuff, and they said, my God, this is so
different than what we thought you were going
to do. You're talking about religion and faith
and fanaticism and anti-Semitism and hatred.
But in a way, this is very personal, this isn't
you just as a director, or you as a journalist,
you are part of what's happening here. And
they were the ones that said, you should be in
it.
And I have to admit that, I'm not a shy
person, but I'm more comfortable being a
provocateur behind the camera and letting
other people do their dance. So it was a big
step for me to be in it.
We then screened probably two and a half
hours of rough material for friends, and it was
fascinating. First of all, no one could talk;
they were just kind of stunned. And then as a
dialogue started it was like, this is too much,
Marc, it's like an overdose of hate. You need
other emotions, you need other colors.
That weekend, my editor Ken Eluto, came in and he had
seen some stuff I had shot with my father,
and he kind of just played around with it. And
when I looked at it, well, first of all, it was
funny. You know, my old man is a character,
so you had some humor, which was obviously
one thing people were saying it needed. And
then there was the love of a father and a son.
And that was a totally different emotion than
the hate people were spouting.
And I guess the final thing that surprised me
was all these people who were so fascinated
by the so-called Jewish conspiracy, I'm
looking at this and I'm thinking, well I guess if
they want to know what's the secret that I got
from my father and he got from his father,
here it is: God means, go do good. You know,
it's out in the open now, and maybe the world
would be a better place if we actually were
able to run things on this principle. I kind of
saw it as OK, here it's revealed, we're letting
you in.
So that was one of the last things that was
added to the film. And I'm thankful now that it was, since my father is gone now, he passed away in his sleep on Feb. 13th, and the film is in a way a kind of tribute to him.
HBO: One of the places you went in and spoke to
was at a prison. Talk a little bit about what
you discovered there.
Marc Levin: Well, I went there when we did Gladiator Days
for HBO. And that film is about a neo-Nazi on
death row in Utah who killed a black gang guy
in prison. My father and Eric Daniels, (the
accomplice in the murder) got to know each
other and eventually became good friends.
Eric's story is amazing because the guy was in
prison for writing a bad check, and was in for
like six months to a year, some ridiculous
thing like that. But he got thrown in this
prison, and he got in with a Neo-Nazi white
power group and a month or two later
becomes involved in a prison murder and is
sentenced to life without parole.
And it was in prison that he first read the
Protocols of Zion. And when I discovered this
he was like, yeah, this is where you learn this
stuff, in prison. It's like a university of hate.
We study this stuff in here.
So, I thought that's pretty interesting, and
then I thought, well, you got the white power
guys, but then you also have the black
Muslims, nation of Islam who also buy into
this. And I thought, this is so crazy, these two
groups are obviously on totally opposite ends
of the political spectrum, the racial spectrum,
and yet they have one common shared belief,
that the Jews run everything.
So, I had my father ask Eric if we could we
bring these groups together, how that would
be an amazing dialogue, and the fact that Eric
and my father became friends is an amazing
thing. Eric went through a transformation.
He discovered Christ, was born again in
prison, and became a musician in a black jazz
band. I mean, it's just an amazing story.
And that was the last thing my father was
really working on, because I had said to him
There was such interest on the web and places I speak, when I tell them a little about the
story. And people always ask, can people
change? And I say, look, most hard-core
haters, well, it's their job. But I'm going to tell
you a story about how even the most radical
can change. And I use Eric Daniels as an
example. Now, of course, it's one out of a
million, but my father, leave it to him to find
that one.
HBO: Why do you think it is, in the face of all of the
evidence to the contrary, that people still
believe in myths like the Protocols and the so-called Jewish conspiracy?
Marc Levin:
That is a great question, and one that I think
we're going to be wrestling with for many
years. I guess one of the revelations for me
was, this wasn't just a debate, meaning let me
prove to you that the Protocols is a fraud, and
that the Jews, yes, they have power here and
there, but you know, this idea they run this
world, this is ridiculous because it's really
much more like faith. You don't argue about
if somebody believes in the resurrection or the
virgin birth or the splitting of the Red Sea. It's
faith.
And somehow this hatred that is infused with
this kind of religious madness operates on
that same level. And at first it's hard to
accept, and at first you think only ignorant
people would ever believe this. And obviously
some of it is fear and ignorance and
scapegoating and blaming someone else, and
all those are part of it. But as I also
discovered, and I was shocked, there are
intelligent people that buy into this stuff.
And so I think we're always going to have hate
in the world, I mean, we know that's just part
of the equation. There's love, there's hate, but
this zealotry, this kind of fanaticism goes
beyond the Jews. The very definition of what
a Jew is has become totally plastic.
I think it was Thomas Friedman who wrote
that incredible article two years ago about the
Battle of Fallujah, when the American forces
were coming in, he said, what did the
insurgents yell? Here come the Jews. Maybe
there were one or two Jews there, but it was
the American Army and Marines and Special
Forces. So, in a sense, we have all become
Jews.
What do I mean by that? I mean, anybody
who believes in an open, tolerant, multi-cultural free society, if we're at war with
fundamentalism, across the board, obviously
militant Islam and Muslim fundamentalism.
But we see there is Christian fundamentalism,
Jewish fundamentalism, Hindu
fundamentalism, and they all basically are the
same, they believe God has spoken to them
and everybody else is an infidel, and if you've
got to get rid of everybody else, so be it, it's
God's plan.
How do you defuse that? I
think that's the big question, and I don't
pretend to have the answer to that. This film
is in many ways a stumbling from 9/11 to
begin to have a dialogue about that.
This is a battle of ideas and faiths and
consciousness really. And so in that sense
culture is a weapon, meaning art and movies
and poetry and music and humor, all of these
things that aren't totally rational. Because it's
not just a debate. You can't just say, I proved
to you, you're wrong. You've got to find other
ways to move people, to open people. And so I
think that question is one that is going to
remain on the table for all of us.
HBO: You mentioned earlier your father and
grandfather saying that God means go do
good. Talk a little more about that.
Marc Levin: That comes from the Hebrew expression, "Tikkun Olum" which means healing the world,
and it comes from a part of Jewish mysticism,
this idea that there are these divine sparks in
everything, in all humans, and in everything
that exists. And it's the role of humanity to
get those sparks, retrieve them and gather
them, and in doing that to heal the world and
make it better. And it's kind of a moral and
ethical code, it's very simple, and my
grandfather summed it up by saying, God
means go do good.
And it sounds trite in a certain way, and yet
many people ask me, my goodness, you did a
film like this, you know, you must be so
depressed, it must be terrible. Are you having
nightmares? But you know, the reaction was
the exact opposite.
I once heard, I don't know if it was an old
Hasidic tale, but it was, one good deed, one
mitzvah can save the world. And when you
see all this madness, it's just part of the
human condition. You see the violence and
the horrors, and yet we're still here, and there
are so many good people trying to make a
difference, trying to make things better.
Because maybe it just tips the scale in that
direction.
We constantly dance on the edge of
annihilation and self-destruction, but we are
still here, and we are still part of this miracle.
So that gives me optimism even in the face of
this hatred.
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