ABSTRACT
It was a very raw film in that first draft. Everything I was feeling about 9/11 was vented right there on the surface of the script. The two characters were broad frames for my sympathy for Arab-Americans in post-9/11 America, and in clinging so much to that aspect of the script I went overboard and presented clichés as commentary on American Society. I was trying to do too much. The frame of the story was always one night in the life of these two characters. In earlier drafts of the script, this frame served only as a vehicle for the extreme act of misplaced vengeance enacted at the script’s climax (Aadid is slain by a random, middle-aged American Caucasian male in the first three drafts of the script). It was an extremely sensational and ultimately wrong moment. I tried for months to make this moment work but in the end couldn’t get it to translate as anything but sensationalism.
