There are no movie theaters in Saudi Arabia. Considering that there is no booze in the Kingdom of Saud, that there are no nightclubs, that 114 degree temperatures make sports all but impossible, and the shabobs (Arabic for young men) have to resort to driving like maniacs in order to let off steam, one would think they’d have a movie theater or two. But in the early 80s, the Saudi government decided to become a bit more pious and ban theaters altogether. And that’s a shame.
This does not mean that Saudis don’t watch movies. When the ban took place, it must have been a real boon for salesmen of home theaters: the early 80s, of course, marked the dawn of video. And everyone watches video in Saudi, catches Al Jazeera (also frowned upon) through their satellites, which rust by the thousands on the flat rooftops of this desert country. Theaters are gone, but film thrives in Saudi.
My wife and I were visiting friends at their home in the Aramco Oil Company compound in Dammam. The expats there, like most everyone in the world, have an insatiable hunger for movies. Problem is, they don’t like to leave the false safety of the high-walled paradise, and are afraid of both driving conditions and the rampant terrorists walking everywhere (I’m being facetious). Public video stores are only going to serve up the most innocuous fare, and I’m guessing that anything that’s even remotely dirty is going to be censored–much like the magazines, whose advertisements of midriff-exposed women have been blacked out with a permanent marker (there’s a job for you!)
However, like the clandestine alcohol market in Aramco (garage-distilled gin, a nasty concoction called ‘Sid’, and homemade wine that leans more toward vinegar), there’s a surreptitious fellow who runs a video store out of his home, utterly illegal, probably above-radar but tolerated for the pleasure it brings the employees. It’s a strange experience: we went to go return some movies and my friend suddenly pulled into the parking lot of an apartment complex and then walked right into this guy’s front door. There, on bookshelves in his living room, and across from a dirty kitchen, is the video library. He’s got all the new stuff, copied from DVD to video for those too cheap to pay the exorbitant DVD rental fee, everything but porn. An Indian guest worker took our money with utter indifference, while hovering in the shadows was his boss, an American or Englishman, slobbering over some meal and no doubt counting the rials dropping into his account.
Movies on vacation are usually numbing affairs: on the plane south from Amsterdam, fatigued beyond belief, I set down Bryson’s Brief History of Nearly Everything to watch Failure To Launch, which I didn’t realize was about freaks and prostitutes. Our friends have two amazing children, but like all kids nine and twelve, they love fare like the new Pink Panther, which was seen three times in the first week we were there, and was awful. But I managed to be a bully, forcing our kind hosts to watch Cache, which says more about terrorism than any film in recent memory. Everyone dug it, even the twelve-year-old, who we to shoo out of the room at a violent moment. There was also the documentary Control Room, about the Al Jazeera network, which Saudis keep a trained eye on, hungry for coverage of the Palestinian crisis, which boiled over while we were there.
Perhaps this is what makes this community so intriguing: you can get these movies, watch these shows, when you want, but not together. You cannot congregate and see Lagaan, as innocent a Bollywood film as you’re bound to see. Walking on the Jeddah boardwalk, you can buy pirated copies of the latest flicks (they had Superman Returns and Click) and Fahrenheit 9/11 (banned there) from a kid who can fold up his wares and bolt in a heartbeat (and did at the sight of a cop, setting up shop moments later).
According to the Arab News, there was a Saudi Film Festival playing in Jeddah while we were in-country. One of the films was in black-and-white, and dedicated to Charlie Chaplin. However, according to Muhammed Salam, the deputy manager of the Jeddah Science and Technology Center (who was sponsoring the fest), “The films are considerate of the values and traditions of Saudi Arabia. This is an impressively unique and rare collection of movies that we didn’t know about before and carries a meaningful cultural message different to the nonsense that we see on satellite TV.” Which means they’re government approved, uncritical, and probably not worth the time it takes to see them.
Not an hour from the city of Dammam is the island kingdom of Bahrain, which is where Saudis go to do the things they cannot do at home, namely drink and see movies. One expat, who dropped his family off at the airport, made a beeline to see Mission:Impossible 3 and X-Men 3 back-to-back. “Well, he certainly got his fill of sequels,” our host said. This fellow could have spent the equivalent of two bucks on a bootleg, which look as if they were shot with handheld cameras from row three, and are frequently out of synch.
So for three short weeks (the time just flew–it was an incredible trip) we did not get the pleasure of the big screen, except to watch the Germany/Argentina World Cup match on a drive-in sized screen by the Persian Gulf, while shabobs smoked sheeshas (hookahs) that smelled of sweet apple.
But a movie would be a wonderful thing to see in this desert, especially considering the nationalities present and the food: seeing an Indian film anywhere (even Minneapolis) is a joy not just for the madness that will unfold onscreen, but because you can eat piping hot pakoras with them, and drink sweet tea. As per the custom, you’d have to have a separate-but-equal (again I’m facetious) section for men and families (the families have to hide their women from the watchful eyes of shabobs), but theater balconies would probably be perfect–and who needs windows in a theater?
On the return flight, fried again from jet-lag and listless sleep, I was hungry for a movie, any movie. Or so I thought. King Kong, which I’d missed last Christmas, was so awful I couldn’t continue. Oddly enough, there was a bat-shit crazy film called from 1974 called 11 Harrowhouse, starring Charles Grodin, Candace Bergen, James Mason, John Geilgud, and Trevor Howard. Who the hell thought to show this thing, of all possible films? Awful, not available on DVD (it will probably never see the light of a laser beam), and baffling: Charles Grodin plays this kooky, swingin’-70s guy who gets involved in a jewel heist. There’s free love, stickin’ it to the man, and making funny faces out of diamonds in peanut butter. For two hours, flying over the Atlantic, I was back in time to Channel 5’s Sunday afternoon movies of my youth. The film was even grainy and hard to see. But it was better than She’s the Man.
And now I’m back: to the land where women can walk around without black robes from top to bottom, where I can have a beer before sleep, and where, sadly, there is no crisis in the middle east–we can ignore it with impunity. Or so it would seem: last night, on the big screen, I took in, with a crowd of first-responders, Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center.
A REMINDER: In what might be the best venue yet, The Monster of Phantom Lake is playing at the late-late show–11:30pm at the Woodbury 10 Theater. Cost is a slim $4. Frankly, a late show like this would be even better served by quaffing a few, but then I’m trying to make up for three weeks of sobriety.
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