With media parked at his residence in Cerritos, California, Nakoula called the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Wednesday night to report a disturbance, said spokesman Steve Whitmore. He wanted local police to protect him. When news of his movie first broke, the filmmaker identified himself as Sam Bacile and told the Wall Street Journal that he was a 52-year-old Israeli-American real estate developer from California. He said Jewish donors had financed his film.
But Israel’s Foreign Ministry said there was no record of a Sam Bacile with Israeli citizenship. “This guy is totally anonymous. At this point, no one can confirm he holds Israeli citizenship, and even if he did we are not involved,” ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said. A search by CNN of public records related to Bacile came up empty. A search of entertainment records turned up no previous mention of a Sam Bacile, and the directors and writers guilds had no listing for him. CNN has not been able to speak with the filmmaker.
A production staff member who worked on the film in its initial stages told CNN that an entirely different name was filed on the paperwork for the Screen Actors Guild: Abenob Nakoula Bassely.A public records search showed an Abanob B. Nakoula residing at the same address as Nakoula Basseley Nakoula.
He believed the filmmaker was a Coptic Christian and when the two spoke on the phone during production, the filmmaker said he was in Alexandria, Egypt, raising money for the film. There has been a long history of animosity between Muslims and the minority Copts in Egypt.
Another staffer who worked on the film said he knew the producer as Sam Bassil. That’s how he signed a personal check to pay staff. The staffer said he was “99% positive” that Sam Bassil was not Jewish. He had quite a few religious pieces in his house, including images of the Madonna. He was married with two children — the daughter helped during production and even brought in lunch on a few occasions, the staffer said. Neither staffer wanted to be identified for security reasons.
When CNN inquired about Sam Bassil, the U.S. attorney’s office sent a copy of a 2009 indictment. Those court documents showed the bank fraud conviction for Nakoula Basseley Nakoula. Several other aliases — Mark Basseley Youssef, Yousseff M. Basseley, Nicola Bacily and Malid Ahlawi — were all listed as aliases in the indictment. Other court documents listed Thomas J. Tanas, Ahmad Hamdy and Erwin Salameh also as aliases.
In his interview with the Wall Street Journal, the filmmaker characterized his movie, now called “Innocence of Muslims,” as “a political effort to cal attention to the hypocrisies of Islam.”
“Islam is a cancer,” he said. “The movie is a political movie. It’s not a religious movie.” Cindy Garcia, an actress in the film, told CNN that the original script did not include a Prophet Mohammed character. She said she and other actors complained that their lines had been changed. She said she spoke Wednesday with the producer. “He said he wrote the script because he wants the Muslims to quit killing,” Garcia said. “I had no idea he was doing all this.” Garcia described the movie’s repercussions as a “nightmare,” given the outrage and deaths, and she regretted having a role. She said she was angry and hurt by the lies.
The 79 other cast and crew members said they were “grossly misled” about the film’s intent. “The entire cast and crew are extremely upset and feel taken advantage of by the producer,” they said in a statement. They said they were “shocked by the drastic rewrites of the script and lies that were told to all involved. We are deeply saddened by the tragedies that have occurred.” Garcia said that the character of Mohammed in the movie was named George when it was shot, and that after production wrapped she returned and read other lines that may have been dubbed into the piece. A member of the production staff who worked on the film and has a copy of the original script corroborated the woman’s account. There was no mention of Mohammed or Islam, the crew member said.