Origins

In March of 2003, writer/director Hesham Issawi and actor-writer Sayed Badreya, both Egyptian-born and living in Los Angeles, met with SAG, Golden Globe, and three-time Emmy-winning film and TV star Tony Shalhoub, then in his second season of the hit comedy series “Monk.” The two young filmmakers wanted the veteran actor to commit to a short film idea they wished to shoot. A few years previous, Badreya had met Shalhoub in a Cuban restaurant in L.A. by walking up to him and introducing himself and managing to leave the chance encounter with Shalhoub’s phone number in hand. Against all odds, and much to his credit, Shalhoub agreed to consider working with the two young men.

The concept for the short film, written by Issawi and writer Dick Grunert, was, in fact, very close to Sayed Badreya’s real-life conundrum as an Arab-American actor struggling to find roles in the U.S. – he was always cast as a terrorist. Shalhoub responded strongly to the idea, seeing both its poignant and comedic possibilities -- and so began the production of the short film “T for Terrorist,” which the three filmed in March of 2003 with Tony Shalhoub performing, Sayed Badreya starring and producing, and Hesham Issawi directing and producing.

When the short did well on the festival circuit, winning Best Short Film awards at the Boston International Film Festival and the San Francisco World Film Festival, the three determined to expand upon the idea of “T for Terrorist” to develop a bigger project that would represent more characters from the Arab-American community who they felt were constantly being stereotyped by Hollywood. Out of their frustration with that misrepresentation, the idea for “AmericanEast” began to take shape. Keeping the concept of the frustrated Muslim actor who is always cast as a terrorist, but now giving it a more tragic spin, they began to work on a storyline that touched on their own lives and experiences as Middle Easterners, and the lives and experiences of others, such as Tony Shalhoub’s father, himself a Lebanese immigrant. With Shalhoub providing support as an executive producer with development funds, and Issawi and Badreya writing, the project began to take form.

In 2005, once a feature length script was in hand, Shalhoub began looking for a producer and production company. Through a mutual friend, he approached producer Brian Cox at Distant Horizon, an international film financing company headed by Anant Singh and known for taking a stand on political and social issues in films such as the Oscar-nominated “Yesterday.” Cox read the script and immediately saw the relevance and timeliness of the project. The company optioned the rights to the project, which they considered the first true Arab-American film, and Cox began to develop the script further with the filmmakers. Eventually, co-production funding was sought through Zahra Pictures, a company run by independent producer Ahmad Zahra, and backed by investor Mohannad Malas, which had made its name specializing in films focusing on Muslim and interfaith issues. Next, line producer Jeff Kirshbaum was brought on to oversee day-to-day production. So, with the production team, the script, and the full funding in place, the film was slated to begin principal photography in the summer of 2006.


Filming in Los Angeles

Principal photography for “AmericanEast” began in July, 2006. Shooting primarily took place in the Atwater Village neighborhood of Los Angeles, the location of the film’s main set – Habibi’s Café. Because much of the story takes place at Habibi’s, it would have been impossible to close down a real Middle Eastern restaurant for such an extended period of time, so, instead, the design crew, led by production designer Frank Bollinger, converted a vacant, storefront retail property into a kawha that would look familiar to anyone who ever sipped an Arabic coffee in downtown Cairo. In fact, both the exterior and the interior of the building was so convincing that Atwater Village residents from time to time strode onto the set expecting to order falafels and kebabs. The smoky, hothouse look brought to the set through the lighting and lensing of director of photography Michael Wojciechowski added to the location’s Middle Eastern feel.

Casting was another particularly unique ingredient for the café, since the filmmakers were determined to people it with Arab-Americans and other actors of Middle Eastern descent for all the main roles. While the central role of Mustafa was always created for Sayed Badreya to perform, and while it was a given from the outset that Tony Shalhoub would play the role of Sam, Mustafa’s Jewish business partner, there was concern that the production would have a very small pool to cast from if only Middle Easterner actors were considered. But that was not the case. Early on, casting directors Gillian O’Neill and Jeanie Bacharach discovered that there was a fairly large and talented group of actors based in L.A. with Middle Eastern roots. In fact, the only actor brought in from outside the local community was Arab-Israeli actor, Kais Nashif, whose film “Paradise Now” had just been nominated for an Academy Award for best foreign language, the first film ever nominated from Palestine. Upon seeing Kais’ performance in that movie, the filmmakers unanimously agreed that if any performer from outside L.A. should be cast in the film, then it should be him. The role of Omar was immediately offered to Kais prior to the actual commencement of casting and, to everyone’s delight, he accepted the part as soon as he had read the screenplay.

Regardless of the local nature of the production, however, the themes of the movie and the backgrounds of its varied cast lent the set an international feel. As it turned out, news from the Middle East also kept everyone very much connected to the world-at-large. It was during principal photography, in early July of 2006, in fact, that Israel invaded southern Lebanon, which brought to the fore some of the main discussion points of the script – most specifically, the unending battle for land between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Although, Tony Shalhoub’s father had left Lebanon long ago and raised his family in Wisconsin, cast member Haaz Sleiman still had family in Lebanon, and their safety was an on-going concern of his throughout production. Other cast members, such as Sayed Badreya, Al Faris and Sammy Sheik, and director Hesham Issawi, were all born and raised for the most part in nearby Egypt, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had been a central political debate for most of their lives. Thus, the mostly non-Arabic crew, and the mostly Middle Eastern cast, engaged in well-intentioned and level-headed discussions and debates throughout the filming, which, in a sense, was what Issawi and Badreya had wanted all along when they conceived of the story – to engender open discussion about the differences between the two cultures.

By the time principal photography was concluded on-schedule in August, with the so-called “July War” slowly coming to a close, many of the American crew members had begun to have a new understanding of their Arab-American compatriots -- which the filmmakers saw as a hopeful sign for the film’s impact on the audience-at-large.


Post-Production

At year’s end, 2006, “AmericanEast” was basically completed, bringing to a close in less than one year a dream that had taken many years to gestate – a movie made by Arab-Americans telling the story of post-9/11 America from their perspective.

The post-production team was put together by producers Cox and Singh from a group of professionals they had worked with in the past – editor Chris Wright, composer Tony Humecke, and sound editor Mark Linden. Editor Chris Wright very quickly put together a cut of the picture within two months of the completion of principal photography, and after a few trial screenings, and minor tweaks, the picture-cut was locked. While sound editor Mark Linden and his team at Stage Two Audio began to prepare the various tracks of sound, composer Tony Humecke dove into the creation of what was to be a very ambitious musical score, incorporating Middle Eastern instruments that the composer had previously never worked with. His first order of business was to purchase an oud, a stringed instrument that is often referred to as the Arabic lute, and teach himself how to play it. He then began to assemble a group of experienced performers who could handle such Middle Eastern specialties as the oud; the duduk, a woodwind instrument; the darbuka, or goblet drum, also called the dumbek in Egypt; the tar, or Persian lute; the nay, a flute that dates back to the 3rd century B.C. in Egypt; the riqq or Arabic tambourine; the kamenche, a Turkish string and bow instrument similar to the cello; the bendir, a North African frame drum; and sagat, the tiny finger-cymbals used in Egyptian belly-dancing. Director Hesham Issawi was particularly delighted to incorporate the sagat in the soundtrack, as it reminded him of musical scores from countless classic Egyptian films of his youth -- a sound he felt had been lost from contemporary films in his country.

In keeping with one of the themes of the movie -- the clash of eastern and western cultures -- the musical score also sought to highlight cultural differences by juxtaposing western instruments with the sounds of the Middle East. This had been one of the hallmarks of the score even in the temp track assembled by director Issawi and the editor Chris Wright. Thus, recognizable instruments like the electric bass and piano, and particularly the saxophone theme used for the character of Omar, intermingle with the more exotic Arabic flavorings. It was director Issawi’s feeling, even at the script stage, that the music should reflect both sensibilities to become an audio metaphor for the idea of the Middle Eastern soul living in the physical body of the west, a metaphor and a feeling which he, and all of the Arab-Americans involved in the film, could identify with -- and one which they now hoped to share, through “AmericanEast,” with the rest of the world.