WHEN Liev Schreiber was preparing to make his directing debut, “Everything Is Illuminated,” in the Czech Republic, he saw an MTV segment about an aspiring Iraqi filmmaker named Muthana Mohmed.
Being a Hollywood liberal, Schreiber hired Muthana to work as a production assistant on his film – and hired Nina Davenport to shoot a documentary on his own good deed.
“Everything Is Illuminated” was pretty much dead on arrival, but Davenport’s film “Operation Filmmaker” – which she continued on her own dime, long after Schreiber had a falling out with Muthana – is a ruefully funny cautionary tale about cross-cultural tone-deafness.
For one thing, Schreiber and company didn’t expect that Muthana was a vocal supporter of President Bush – or that he had no idea what was expected of him in his new job, nor much interest in learning.
Muthana resented being a gofer. And when he was finally given the actual responsibility of assembling a blooper reel for a wrap party, his work habits were so poor that somebody else had to finish the job.
One of the few people he didn’t alienate got Muthana a job on “Doom,” another bad movie, shot in Vancouver. He somehow persuaded that film’s star, Dwayne (the Rock) Johnson, to underwrite a scholarship for him at a film school in London.
“Operation Filmmaker” is eventually about Muthana blackmailing Davenport by withholding access to him as she fruitlessly seeks a happy ending for her film. “Now, I’m just looking for an exit strategy,” she finally concludes.
OPERATION FILMMAKER
Comedy of errors.Running time: 90 minutes. Not rated (profanity). At the IFC Center, Sixth Avenue and West Third Street.