Reply #16: lol no-thank God! Abramoff the auteur [View All]

[nam78_two]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/25/AR2005112500248_pf.html

Aguy walks into a bar. The guy's a commie commando, a hulking Russian killing machine named Nikolai. The bar's in Africa and it's full of commie soldiers and the kind of loose women who consort with commie soldiers.

Nikolai stands in the doorway of the bar. He swigs from a pint of vodka. He burps. The burp is so loud that all conversation stops.

Nikolai -- who is played by Dolph Lundgren in this movie, which is called "Red Scorpion" -- stumbles around the bar. He sings in Russian. He knocks a guy off a bar stool. He head-butts another guy. He punches the bartender. He grabs a submachine gun out of a cop's hand and sprays the room with bullets.

"Are you out of your mind?" the head cop asks him when he stops shooting.

"No, just out of bullets," he replies. Then he lets out another thunderous burp.

Amazing! Not since Charlie Chaplin belched after eating his shoe in "The Gold Rush" has the lowly burp been used to such artistic effect. It's one of those rare moments of cinematic magic that leave you awed, wondering: Who is the genius behind this? Fellini? Spielberg? Stallone?

No, no and no. The correct answer is: Jack Abramoff.

That's right , the Jack Abramoff.

Before Abramoff was a powerful Washington lobbyist and Republican fundraiser, before he was indicted on fraud charges, before he became the target of a Justice Department investigation of his alleged rip-off of casino-rich Indian tribes, before he was summoned to a Senate hearing where he took the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify, Jack Abramoff was a Hollywood producer, a master of neo-"Rambo" cinema.


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When "Red Scorpion" was released, it was picketed by anti-apartheid protesters angry that Abramoff had shot the movie in territory controlled by South Africa's white supremacist government, using soldiers and military equipment lent by the South Africans. The protesters would have been even angrier if they'd known that the International Freedom Foundation, a right-wing group founded by Abramoff, was secretly bankrolled by the South African army -- but that wasn't known until a South African colonel revealed it in 1995.