TURKS TAKE ON HOLLYWOOD . . . AGAIN

"In those days Turks had paid Armenians the most charming compliments, declaring their love."
~ The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, Franz Werfel.

In a continuing display of paranoia, Fethullahcı ragsheet, Zaman, featured an article the other day about an email campaign to dissuade actor Mel Gibson from starring in a film about the Armenian genocide.

Unfortunately for the lunatics at Zaman, Mel Gibson has no idea what Zaman is talking about:

D.U.I. darling Mel Gibson is back in the hot seat -- just in time for Hanukkah.

According to the Turkish newspaper Zaman, something called The Foundation for the Struggle Against Baseless Allegations of Genocide (ASİMED) has launched an e-mail campaign to try and dissuade the tequila-swilling star from taking part in an upcoming film about the genocide of Armenians during World War I.

Mel probably won't put up much of a fight. His rep tells TMZ: "We don't know where that started. He doesn't know anything about the project. Never heard of it." Oops!

We can probably say "Oops" about Zaman's allegations of Sylvester Stallone quashing his desire to create an epic film based on Franz Werfel's historical novel about the Armenian Genocide, The Forty Days at Musa Dagh:

For years Stallone's wanted to create an epic, and the book that intrigues him is Franz Werfel's "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh," detailing the Turkish genocide of its Armenian community in 1915. (After futile attempts to turn the novel into a movie, filmmakers finally succeeded in 1982, but it was a low-profile production.)

[ . . . ]

The movie would be "an epic about the complete destruction of a civilization," Stallone said. Then he laughed at the ambition. "Talk about a political hot potato. The Turks have been killing that subject for 85 years."

Well, the Turks have been killing the film version of that book for 63 years anyway, when Turkey pressured the US State Department to prevent a Hollywood's work on such a film in the 1930s.

It may be that the movie is underway, if we believe an item that appeared at the end of last month on Public Radio of Armenia, quoting Akşam:

Turkish Akşam reported that the Armenian Diaspora in Hollywood Is completing the preparations for shooting a film based on Franz Werfel's "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh," one of the most remarkable works on the Armenian Genocide.

According to the same source, authorities in South Kurdistan have invited Hollywood to South Kurdistan to shoot a film about Mustafa Barzanî. But the source being what it is, we probably shouldn't hold our breath.

If the Stallone film about Musa Dagh really is in the works, it'll be more than just a conversation piece when it opens at the local theater.