We Are From The Same Planet
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Author: Michael Saba
Released 24 September 2007
Washington, D.C. - Recently, I attended an Aramco Brats reunion in Asheville, North Carolina.
For those who don't know, Aramco Brats are the sons and daughters of former employees of international oil company Saudi Aramco. There are thousands of them spread all over the United States and the rest of the world and their organisation have about 4,500 members. They have had as many as one thousand people attending their reunions.
I listened as one of the American Aramco Brats was being interviewed. "Where are you from, Bob?" Bob answered, "Saudi Arabia". "But where were you born?"
"Saudi Arabia", Bob said.
"OK, what about your parents, where are they from?"
"Saudi Arabia", he answered again.
"But, but where were they born?"
"Saudi Arabia", Bob proudly replied.
Many of these Aramco Brats truly call Saudi Arabia home. And that is exactly what the title of a new feature documentary film is called, "Home".
"Home" is a movie produced and directed by three Aramco Brats, brothers Todd and Zach Nims and Mathew Kuehn Miller who was born in Saudi Arabia. It was done on a shoestring budget. Hundreds of Aramco Brats and I watched the premier of this film at the Asheville reunion. They laughed and cried together and at the end of the movie the producers and director were given a standing ovation. A similar reaction was seen a few weeks earlier when a mini-version of the film was shown in Orlando, Florida. And the majority of the audience in Orlando knew nothing about Saudi Arabia. The filmmakers stress the commonalities between Saudis and Americans.
The Nims brothers and Miller have formed Aramco Brat Media. On their website they state, "We at Aramco Brat Media, being Westerners who have lived in Saudi Arabia, feel it is our responsibility to protect American-Saudi relations by documenting and revealing the true-to-life cross-cultural relationships existing between Saudis and Americans that go unreported by the media." They go on to say that this film is the first in a series that will further explore relationships between Saudis and Americans and they even plan a film about Ferial Masry, a Saudi American woman who has run and is running for political office in the United States. The Hollywood premier of their film is scheduled for Saturday at the Linwood Dunn Theater Academy Motion Picture Theater of Arts and Sciences.
Contrast this film with a Hollywood blockbuster entitled "The Kingdom" set to be released Sept. 28 throughout the United States. I have previously written about this movie in the Arab News. This movie focuses on terrorist incidents in Saudi Arabia where Americans living in Western compounds were killed. It stars two Academy Award winners, Jamie Foxx and Chris Cooper, along with superstar Jennifer Garner and even country star Tim McGraw. It has an $80 million budget, will spend tens of millions of dollars more on promotion and with its thriller, shoot-em-up style looks to be a real box-office winner.
The PR campaign for "The Kingdom" has recently been jump-started with an article in the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune. In this article, the director Peter Berg and the producer, Mathew Michael Carnahan are quoted extensively. In Carnahan's words,"' The Kingdom' is intended to figure out what would a murder investigation look like on Mars." On Mars? Mr. Carnahan, we, Saudis and Americans, are all from the same planet! And you need to go see "Home" so you might better understand that. By the way, at the recent Orlando event mentioned earlier in this article, Saudi and American women played golf together as part of the occasion. Some of the media called and asked, "Do Saudi women really play golf?" The answer was, "Yes and they eat and sleep and walk also."
The New York Times article begins, "'The Kingdom,' a coming film about the FBI's pursuit of Islamic bad guys in a not particularly hospitable Saudi Arabia, appears on the surface to tread on treacherous and polarised political ground."
"Home" begins with warm hugs between Saudis and Americans. "Home" stresses similarities and commonalities whereas "The Kingdom" appears to be stressing differences and discord.
After this columnist wrote about the movie, "The Kingdom" in the Arab News earlier this year, he was contacted by the vice president of Universal Studios, which produced the movie, and the technical adviser to the film.
To the credit of the producers, subsequently the movie's trailer was changed, as was the original poster. And the text write-up of the film was altered, all for a more fair representation of Saudis and Saudi Arabia.
There appear also to be some redeeming qualities in the movie. One of the co-heroes of the film is a Saudi colonel who works closely with the Americans to capture and kill the terrorists in the movie. And a reviewer who viewed an advance showing of the movie stated, "'The Kingdom' gets across its message of the need for different cultures to work out their problems and perspectives of each other without getting too preachy or political".
I would like to make a suggestion. Since "Home" and "The Kingdom" are contemporary films, why doesn't Universal Studios add a trailer at the end of "The Kingdom" which states that people who desire another perspective on Saudi Arabia might want to obtain a copy of "Home" and list how to do that. And, oh, "Home" can be purchased on planet Earth. You don't have to go to Mars to get a copy.
Michael Saba is an international relations consultant. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org.