ABSTRACT
In April 1989, the Los Angeles International Film Festival canceled at the last minute the première of Veiled Threat (1989), directed by Iranian-American filmmaker Cyrus Nowrasteh, because of a bomb threat – a controversial action that highlighted the festival’s dual responsibility for public safety and for First Amendment rights protection. The controversy continued for several days, but it was difficult to sort out definitively the real reasons behind either the bomb threat or the cancelation of the screening. The festival director claimed that the producers brought the threat on themselves as a publicity stunt by publicly linking their film and its anti-Islamist content to the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s fatwa against the author of The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie. The producers responded that the threat was real enough for the Federal Bureau of Investigation to have taken it seriously. This low-budget, low-velocity, lowbrow thriller finally opened in Los Angeles theaters to dismal reviews and attendance. Trying to recoup their losses by downplaying its Islamic connotations, the producers dropped the “veil” from the title. Apparently, neither the initial attempt to associate the film with political Islam as a threat nor the subsequent attempt at dissociating it from political Islam helped the film’s box office.
