By: Jason Lee (with intro by lodger)

Mark David is one of the most amazing and interesting people I have met since moving to Austin. His film "Sweet Thing" truly impresses. One sees the touches of a remarkable artist in his seminal years in the film. It fills you with a desire to see what the Mark David will do next.

Multi-talented, mixing film, music and promotion into his daily life, Mark is a frenzied powerhouse. Mere words cannot impress upon you what it is to be in his presence. Terms like intense, focused, frenetic and, yes, even crazed come to mind. Here, Jason Lee gives you a pretty good insight into the man that is Mark David...

This past December, Austin filmmaker Mark David found himself in a peculiar situation. He was in Egypt. People were outside his hotel room, banging on his door. He was expected at a nearby television studio in a few minutes, to interview perhaps the most prestigious Muslim cleric in the country. He had reason to believe that he had, perhaps, gotten in way over his head. And it was all because of Karen Black.

To begin the story properly: David directed a movie. The movie, "Sweet Thing," screened at the Austin Heart of Film festival in October. It is there, at a party at the Governor's mansion, that he is introduced to actress/multi-hyphenate Black. After a few minutes of polite conversation, she remarks:

"Are you Indian, by chance?"

"Er . . . no," responds David, "I'm from Texas, actually. My parents are from Egypt."

"Oh. I made a picture with Omar Sharif."

"Oh?"

"He's Egyptian."

"I know."

"Do you have any . . . problems with women?"

"What do you mean?"

"They cut off womens' clitorises in Egypt, don't they? Isn't that, like, their 'thing'?"

"What?! No!"

"Omar was all for it. He's veeeeery sexist."

"As far as I know, that sort of thing is ancient history. I mean, maybe it happens once in a great while in some of the villages way off in the boonies, but that's not Egypt."

"Well, Omar said . . . never mind."

At this point, she scans the room for someone to rescue her from this predicament. He has just one thing left to say:

"Listen, come to the screening of my film tomorrow. I promise your clitoris will remain intact."

He walks off, but the conversation is niggling at him.

According to his birth certificate, his full name is Mark R. D. David. The "R. D." stands for "Rashed Dawoud". His parents just gave him initials, and when he was ten years old, told him he could keep the full name, choose the Western standard single middle name, or Anglicize either one as he pleased. In light of the fact that their original family name, Dawoud, was changed to "David" when his parents moved to Houston in the late 60's – and Mark not being big on redundancy – he kept "Rashed", the only middle name that made it to his passport.

In Cairo, his mother's family owned a prestigious international boarding school, where she herself taught until it was declared state property by the Nassar administration. She resumed her teaching career when she came to the States. His father is a doctor, but as a Coptic Christian, found it difficult to build a practice. When David's sister was just a week old, they moved to Greenwich, England. Less than a year later, they settled in Houston, where Mark was born in 1974.

At home, his parents would often speak to each other in Arabic, but encouraged their children to grow up All-American. They did. The David children were both charismatic and intelligent. Mark played sports, lifted weights and occasionally beat the living daylights out of bigger kids who would call him "camel jockey" or "sand nigger". He played drums in a rock band – punishing his kit, it appeared, for every snide remark ever made to his back. He became that favorite of American stereotypes, the Angry Young Man.

The Cairo International Film Festival accepts "Sweet Thing" shortly after David's conversation with Karen Black. He is invited to attend the festival, slated for early December.

On his way to the airport, he buys a camcorder. Spontaneous by nature, he has just decided to shoot a short video documentary about the Western world's skewed perception of Egypt, and of Arabic culture in general. He's frustrated with films like "The Siege," "Three Kings" and "True Lies" portraying Arabs as bomb-in-the-cornhole, one-way-ticket-to-Allah violent zealots. He's going to do his bit to set the record straight, by God.

Upon arrival, he starts shooting "culture shock" footage:

A Porsche going 110 mph passes a man with a cabbage-laden donkey cart, trekking down the highway…

Rich Egyptian teenyboppers declare their love for Ricky Martin in three different languages…

Tourists heading for the pyramids pick up their camels in front of a strategically located Kentucky Fried Chicken…

His guide suggests that he might want to get the blessing of the chairman of the festival before proceeding to his next step: candid interviews with other Arabic filmmakers, festival staff, and random people on the street. When they meet, the chairman is happy to oblige, and even asks if there's anything that he can do to help. David assures him that it all seems to be taken care of.

As far as he's concerned, it is. Despite some drastic cultural differences – or perhaps because of them -- he feels strangely at home here. The festival has put him up at a luxurious Nile-front hotel. His Arabic is good enough to maneuver through both casual conversations and interviews with local press. The clash of Western opulence and Third World poverty gives the city an atmosphere unlike anyplace else he's ever seen. He finds himself wondering what it would've been like, had his family never moved to America; what it would be like to call Cairo his home town.

Drinking Turkish coffee at his hotel, he overhears a pair of Egyptian festival attendees talking about their chagrin over how Arabs are portrayed in Western cinema. He remarks to his guide that he should be interviewing them; is, in fact, about to run upstairs for his camera when she replies:

"That would not be right."

"Why not?" he asks, "I just want their opinions."

"They might give you the wrong opinions."

"What's a 'wrong' opinion?"

"Trust me. It would not be right."

"Well, who has the right opinion, then?"

"The Mufti. He is like a Christian priest. He is also like a judge. He interprets the Koran and the Hadith and helps people with questions."

"Hell, I've got questions. Can I talk to him?"

"Anyone can talk to the Mufti. Rich or poor, Muslim or Christian."

"Yeah, but can I talk to him on-camera?"

"I'll see what I can do."

The next day, it's set up. David's guide insists that, until he sees the Mufti, he should not interview people for the documentary. He contents himself for the time being, shooting footage of Mosques and Coptic churches; schools and marketplaces; boats on the Nile and lots and lots of traffic.

While all of this is happening, things start to get strange.

It begins innocently enough. Through a contact, the Mufti's people request to see the questions David intends to ask. He responds that he just wants to wing it. His guide informs him that one does not "wing it" with the Mufti. He then asks to push the interview back a few days to do some research so he can get the best interview possible. His guide says this is not possible, the Mufti is a very busy man. From her tone, he gets the idea. This man is like a priest in the same way a space shuttle is like a paper airplane: they perform similar functions, but one is considerably more powerful than the other. This particular man is the foremost authority on Islam in the largest city in the Middle East. Strictly in terms of scale, David had been thinking "parish priest" when he should've been thinking "archbishop".

They spend a few hours deciding what to say and how to say it. Though some of the questions are still a little raw for David's taste, his guide assures him that the finished list cannot possibly offend this man. Satisfied, David hands them over. They come back to him severely softened. "Could you dispel the misconception about the prevalence of clitorectomies in Arabic culture?" is now, "What about the clitoris?" His guide chalks the majority of the changes up to the language barrier. David isn't happy about being censored, but figures a conditional interview is better than none at all. The meeting is scheduled for the following morning.

He meets his guide early to discuss where it will take place. He wants to know if the available light will be good enough to do this with his camera. She informs him that he won't need his camera, as the interview will be broadcast live on Egyptian television. The people who arranged the meeting are concerned that the footage will be taken back to the States and edited to twist his words.

Now, the reality of the situation suddenly dawns on him. The Egyptian government has had several plainclothes police tailing David (and every other foreign national attending the festival) since he arrived. His guide points them out to him in restaurants. The safety of the foreigners at the festival is a high priority to the powers that be; another international incident so close on the heels of the Egypt Air crash will bring heavy heat...

...And here he is, about to interview the most important religious leader in the country.

A director he may be, but he is NOT a journalist. An improper line of questioning or a cultural faux pas live on national television might well trigger some hard feelings twixt Egypt and the US. What he wanted to be a small, intimate piece has spun out of control. His initial uneasiness at this gives way to new tides of real fear. He doesn't know where this is going anymore, and there could be dire consequences no matter which path he takes. Alone in his hotel, he debates the sanity of going ahead as scheduled.

Then comes the knock at his door. A familiar voice -- the contact – asks politely to see the questions again. Mark stalls -- he doesn't know if it will be worse if he gives over the list or if he refuses. He tells the voice that he's decided against doing the interview, thanks, and that he'll keep the questions if it's all the same to them. The voice responds, calmly, politely, that they would still like to see the questions. The tone says that they will not take no for an answer. David, seeing no other option, slips the list under the door and listens to two sets of footsteps fade down the hall.

The folks behind the interview are upset by the cancellation. David tries to quell them, praising their generosity and saying simply that the project got to be too much. On the street, he notices uniformed police (read: "Egyptian Army regulars carrying loaded Soviet AK-47s") tailing him as well as the plainclothesmen. He spends that night at a relative's house, who reassures him that, because he is American, nothing could possibly happen to him. The relative does agree, however, that he was right not to go on TV. Mark spends the next few days paranoid and sleepless, fearing he will return one evening to a hotel room full of black bag men, homicidal religious fanatics or a bedful of scorpions. Every Hollywood cliché comes flooding at him, dim threats from Chuck Norris movies of long ago; and old Chuck is back in Mark's home town of Houston, a long way away to come to the rescue.

The irony that he fell into some gibbering paranoid waking dream about the same myths that he initially set out to dispel was completely lost on him until he was Stateside once again. Shortly after the Mufti fiasco, Americans – including "Sweet Thing's" editor, Jay Duplass – finally started trickling in to the festival. Things began to go the way they were supposed to.

Well, almost:

Outside the theater that was screening Sweet Thing, stood fifteen soldiers. Mark and Jay were elsewhere, this being the third of five screenings for the film. The film festival is one of the few pportunities for average Cairo citizens to see completely uncensored Western films. Inside, people were settling into the film. Some of them had very young children in tow. If you've seen the movie, you'll understand what kind of bad idea this was.

A riot was barely contained after actor Jeremy Fox's full frontal nude scene. The uproar began after that night's moviegoers started to get the idea that David's film isn't for the squeamish. Instead of just leaving, people began shouting at the screen. This apparently evolved into a shoving match. Luckily, no one was hurt and no damage was done to the theater.

In retrospect, David acknowledges that he may have overreacted to the strangeness of the situation. He fully intends to return to Egypt and finish the documentary.

"It's a beautiful country. Downtown Cairo looks a lot like midtown Manhattan. There's a beach on the Red Sea about 40 miles away where the ocean is bluer than the Caribbean. Most of the women I saw could've stepped off the cover of Vogue. Egypt is an amazing place, but . . .

"I guess things just got a little out of control."