RUSH: I talked about the movie Obsession yesterday on the program, and we’ve linked to the website for that movie. We’ve got the director of that movie on the phone from South Africa. His name is Wayne Kopping. Wayne, it’s great to have you, and I’m appreciative of your call. Hello.
KOPPING: Hi, Rush. It’s great to be chatting to you.
RUSH: All right, now, Wayne, you know, one of the things I mentioned yesterday — I guess you’ve heard about the fact that we discussed Obsession on the program yesterday and you’re calling to add to it, I assume, correct?
RUSH: All right. One of the things I remembered about watching it was how much footage you found of Hassan Nasrallah and how really radical and dangerous he is and who his models are, such as Adolf Hitler and so forth. What about that?
KOPPING: You know, when people see the film Obsession, they always comment that it must have been so difficult for us to find the footage of these radical Islamic leaders all over the Arab world preaching hate against America, calling for genocide, calling for violence, and people say, “It must have been so difficult to get that footage,” and I explain to them that that was the easiest part of the entire filmmaking process. The organizations like MemriTV.org, and PMW.org.il, these are organizations that scour Arab media, and they just record what these leaders and these mullahs and these sheiks are saying on their own TV stations in their own language on satellite or free-to-air, and these organizations just record it, transcribe it, and put it up in their website for everyone to see. It’s all in English; it’s all transcribed, and this is footage that has been available for anyone to see and no one but no one has picked it up, and we —
RUSH: Now, that’s the question. Why is that? Why is what I call the Drive-By Media reluctant to show everybody this stuff?
KOPPING: (sigh) That’s the million-dollar question. It could either be that they are so afraid of raising the ire of 1.2, you know, billion Muslims in the world, and they don’t want to put their finger in their proverbial eye — or it could be that they have a blind spot, that they just refuse to see this and that’s why they portray these puff pieces as you mentioned, because I think the reality is if they show the audience, if they show the viewers what is really going on, who we really are facing, I guess they think that it could be too hard for us to deal with.
RUSH: I don’t think that. I think there’s —
KOPPING: I don’t think they’re giving the viewers the kind of credit that we need.
RUSH: I’ve got a different theory about it, Wayne. I think they’re afraid if they show the truth about what we face, that it will buttress the Bush administration’s policy, and these people — in our country anyway, the media the Drive-By Media — is interested in destroying the Bush administration. The second thing I think is because they’re leftists, mostly, they look at people like Nasrallah and the rest of these mullahs and sheiks essentially as victims. They’re poor; they’re backward; they live in the Fourteenth Century. Can you hold on through a break here? Because I want to ask some more about the movie, and it’s great that you called here. I didn’t even know. I wasn’t even expecting it.
KOPPING: Yeah.
RUSH: Hang on. I’ve got a take a break, but don’t go away, Wayne.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Wayne, I hate to be ignorant about this. Is this movie available to the general public right now?
CALLER: (chuckles) Rush, we’ve been desperately trying to find a distributor for the film. I get the same blind spot we’re finding with the media, we’re also finding with distribution companies. I guess they’re finding that this story is just too hot to break to the poor public. So we are struggling with that at the moment. But we have a website, if people want to find out more about the film, and as soon as we’re able to find that distributor, we’re going to get it out there.
RUSH: We linked to it.
CALLER: We’re looking at doing a series of September 11th screenings in key cities around the United States on that day, and so hopefully people will come and see that.
RUSH: We have linked to the website on my website. We did this yesterday when I discussed the film — and if you’re just joining us, we’re talking about the movie Obsession. But Wayne, you know, it’s hard to describe this, actually, as a movie. There aren’t any actors. These are all real people in this thing. You’ve got narrator and so forth, but how do you draw the line between this being a documentary and a movie, and how does that impact your ability to get it distributed?
CALLER: Well, you know, what we’ve found is that over the last few years, documentaries have found its way into the mainstream.
RUSH: Liberal documentaries.
CALLER: I beg your pardon?
RUSH: Liberal documentaries, like Al Gore’s stupid movie and Michael Moore.
CALLER: That goes without saying. And we figured this could be a way to kind of — it’s not a case of “showing the other side.” It’s just a case of showing the reality, what we’re dealing with and you know, and documentaries are finding their place in the market. People are fascinated by real stories, and I don’t think anything is more real than what we’re showing in the film.
RUSH: Oh, it’s chilling. It is chilling. You know, I had not really seen the Hezbollah leader much on mainstream media. He’s all over Obsession. He’s all over your film, and some things he says — I don’t specifically remember everything, but I mean it’s amazing how he’s portrayed as he is in the American media and what he’s really telling his own people and inspiring them to do or poisoning their minds to do. Tell me this one thing. One thing that surprised me, the one thing I really didn’t know when I watched the movie was the ties that militant Islam has to Nazism, in terms of philosophical agreement and strategic agreement.
RUSH: It’s amazing.
CALLER: It was astounding to us that people haven’t discussed it.
RUSH: In the meantime, the American left refers to George Bush as “Hitler” and continues to make these ridiculous assertions and comparisons. Wayne Kopping is his name, and he’s the director of this movie, Obsession. I really wish you the best in getting this out.
CALLER: Thank you.
RUSH: It’s shocking. It’s stunning to see it. Some of it, as I say, I knew, and some of the footage I’d actually seen little specks of, but most of it I had not seen, and the only thing that some people might have — and this is a very minor thing, but — how can viewers trust the translations from these various videos?
CALLER: That’s a great question, a great question. Unlike most documentaries, we didn’t put an English voiceover. You know, sometimes they do that because it’s easier for the audience, but what we did is we kept the actually video footage with the actual person there speaking Arabic and then you have the subtitles. On the screen at the same time we put the website where you can go to, for either MemriTV.org or PMW.org.IL and you can type in the name or an excerpt, and you can see that transcript, and in some cases, in many cases, you can actually watch that clip in its entirety. We’re also setting up links at our own website, ObsessionTheMovie.com, where people can see these clips in its entirety, and people should do their due diligence to see whether we’ve taken these clips out of context. We are happy for people to do this because we are so certain that we haven’t taken these clips out of context, and so we’re saying to people, “If you don’t trust us here is all the information you need. Please do your due diligence,” and I think people will be shocked when they find that they’ve only shown the tip of the iceberg. There’s so much more of this violent, anti-West and anti-American hatred that is leading to, you know, the war that we’re facing ourselves in today.
RUSH: Well, congratulations, Wayne. I know it was a lot of hard work putting this together in some sort of a timeline the way you did and I again wish you the best in getting it out, and thanks so much for having heard about the discussion yesterday giving us a call. Where in South Africa are you?
CALLER: I’m in Johannesburg.
RUSH: Johannesburg. Well, you’re the first person I’ve ever talked to while they’re in Johannesburg, so it’s an honor to have you with us.
CALLER: (laughing) Rush, a real pleasure.
RUSH: Thanks very much.
CALLER: Rush, thank so much, sir. All the best.
RUSH: Same to you. Wayne Kopping, the director of the movie, Obsession.
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