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Too bizarre not to post:

Saddam and Uday go to the movies

By Patrick Healy, Globe Staff, 5/15/2003

BAGHDAD -- For Uday Hussein, the cutthroat son of Saddam, high culture came to Iraq when Russell Crowe entered the arena, sword in hand, ready to kill.

Three days after ''Gladiator'' was released in the United States, Uday was ''going mad'' to find a bootleg copy of the swords-and-sandals epic, his chief movie translator recalled in an interview. Uday had followed the buzz about ''Gladiator'' on the Internet, which he checked weekly for US box office tallies, and it sounded like his kind of picture: severed limbs, bloody revenge, and a take-no-prisoners antihero.

His translator, Saad Al-Izzi, scoured Baghdad for a tape for five days. His boss wasn't the most patient of men (just ask the marathon runners Uday had beaten for lagging on the track). Uday's men finally found a copy, and Izzi's boss gave him an afternoon to translate, dub, and print ''Gladiator'' in Arabic.

Errors of haste were unavoidable: Ten seconds of a speech by Oliver Reed's gladiator-herdsman, rallying his posse before battle, were cut incorrectly, so the character's lips moved without making a noise.

Izzi thought he'd be thanked for his quick work. Instead, two of Uday's men came to his office the next day to beat him for the error.

Izzi's boss lied that he was out, promising to punish him later.

''OK,'' one of the men said, according to Izzi. ''Take off your shoes. We'll beat you just to be sure that you beat him.'' And they whacked the boss's feet with a sharp wooden reed until they were bloodied.

Perhaps Uday Hussein and his father were simply Patrick Bateman-like characters out of ''American Psycho,'' slaughtering for the swagger and sake of it. But if there's something to the theory that violent movies spawn violent behavior in their viewers, then Hollywood shoulders some blame for the legacy of bloodshed left by the Hussein men.

According to Izzi, they were fixated on American-made movies, directing their representative at the United Nations, Tariq Aziz, to bring back dozens of videos each time he left New York. And ''Pollyanna'' these were not: ''Silence of the Lambs,'' ''Casino,'' and ''Rob Roy'' for Saddam and ''From Dusk Till Dawn,'' ''The Mummy,'' and ''Bride of Chucky'' for Uday.

Saddam's all-time favorite movie was ''Braveheart,'' the Mel Gibson Oscar winner, Izzi said. ''If I had such a worthy opponent like that man,'' Saddam was said to have commented, ''I could not bring myself to kill him.''

Uday's obsession was ''Gladiator,'' but he also screened the 2000 indie picture ''Deterrence'' over and over again. In that futuristic film, a US president confronts an Iraq apparently armed with nuclear weapons, with an Uday character running Baghdad, threatening to blow away Western capitals.

''Uday loved it -- finally in charge!'' said Izzi, 28, who now works as a translator for the Globe staff in Iraq.

As a college intern at Baghdad's Al-Shabab TV, or Youth TV, Izzi himself fell in love with American entertainment. He drew on his English-language studies to translate what he described as some of the station's most elite fare -- ''operas, Michael Bolton, musical concerts, `Baywatch.' '' After graduation day in 1998, he was facing his mandatory military service when a job offer came to lead the TV station's new translation department.

''They said the magic words -- we'll get you out of the Army,'' Izzi said.

His first movie translation was ''Titanic,'' requested by Uday, whose usual translator at Iraq TV was away. But it was Izzi's work on his ninth translation, of ''Little Women,'' starring Susan Sarandon, that earned him Saddam's praise. Iraq TV had mangled its own translation -- the Arabic version was in black and white instead of color, Izzi said, and the audio and translation were both horrendous. Saddam Hussein told his people to try Izzi, who sought to retain some of Louisa May Alcott's poetry and turn Claire Danes's deathbed speeches into riveting theater. Saddam was, apparently, impressed.

''I was told he said that all translations must now be done by Shabab,'' Izzi said. ''From then it was my full-time job.'' He was paid 20,000 dinars ($13) per movie.

The pressures quickly became enormous. His boss resented Izzi's exclusive role as translator to the stars. He juggled movies with translations for news interviews. The dubbing equipment failed practically on cue. And he worked from 10 a.m. to 3 a.m. to heed his patrons' unpredictable calls.

Saddam's men once insisted that the Robert Redford version of ''The Great Gatsby,'' a mediocre translation to begin with, be turned in at the time of 6:10 p.m. -- and not a minute later. Uday's office sent over a 3-CD set of ''The Mummy'' at 7 p.m. and demanded it back by 7 a.m., Izzi's boss said. Impossible, Izzi said, but he muddled through anyway.

''I doubted Uday even gave such an order. I think it was just my jerk boss who wanted to look good in front of Uday,'' Izzi said.

Both Husseins were partial to Oscar winners and box-office blockbusters, and their tastes were eclectic, ranging from period dramas such as ''Howards End'' and ''Out of Africa'' to eyebrow-raising favorites of both men, ''Where Angels Fear to Tread'' and ''Rasputin.'' Most of the movies were later broadcast in Iraq, though a few were not, for political reasons; ''Ben-Hur,'' for instance, was translated for Uday while he was taking a class in military studies, but its Jewish hero was enough to keep it off the average Iraqi's TV.

Action and horror movies are widely popular here. At Dheaa's Center, a video store along busy Karrada Street, owner Dheaa Nimnim said that ''Spider-Man'' and the ''Superman'' and ''Batman'' series were the hottest rentals, which go for 500 dinars (33 cents) a night.

''XXX movies are liked too, but the government made us edit too many nude scenes,'' Nimnim said.

As for Izzi, he stayed in his post for more than two years, until the ''Gladiator'' fiasco. He had never been beaten by Uday's men, and had no intention of it happening now. Knowing that resignations were not accepted lightly, he fled to a friend's apartment near the airport and ''became `The Fugitive' '' for a week.

''My mother finally made me swear on my father's soul to go back and try to solve things,'' he said.

His Shabab boss, perhaps happy not to be dealing with the Husseins on a daily basis, said Izzi could move on as long as he paid a fine of 500,000 dinars ($330). He arranged to pay it in installments and left the station for good.

''Now I can watch what I want,'' said Izzi, whose favorite movie is ''Legends of the Fall.'' ''I don't miss the movie business.''

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