Life Abroad

Shooting for a Canadian National Exhibition doc in Sperlonga, Italy; at a political rally in Beirut for a legacy video and on the set of Jeopardy! in Culver City, Cal. for a birthday video--these are just a few of the unusual places we've visited outside Canada and which we'll report on in Life Abroad.

A Jew in Beirut

Anniversary Video led to friendship and adventure of a lifetime

By Bob Pomerantz

It began with the strangest phone call from the unlikeliest client, and culminated in the adventure of a lifetime in war-torn Beirut.

It was May, 2000. Our classified ad in the back of the Robb Report, an American leisure magazine, had only been running for about 10 days when the phone rang.

The soft-spoken man said his name was Rami and he was calling from London, England. He said his parents were celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary with a big party, and could Your Life Productions do a surprise tribute video?

When and where, I asked?

For Valentine's Day, 2001 in Beirut, he replied.

I suspected a prank phone call. But I was wrong.

Seems Rami Makhzoumi couldn't find a tribute-video company in London or Beirut or Dubai--the three places he lived.

His parents, Fouad and May, had been married in Beirut 25 years earlier during Lebanon's Civil War, and it wasn't much of a party--they could barely get the Imam to the ceremony what with all the gunfire. Fouad studied engineering in Michigan, built a ceramic pipeline business and his fortune and vowed that he would give his bride the grand wedding party she never had--a quarter century later.

Enter their son, Rami, who decided that a tribute video would be the icing on the cake.

It was a large job, and shooting took place mostly in London and across the Middle East --but we never left Toronto. Two-dozen photo albums were shipped across the Atlantic. We wrote the script, shot opening and closing sequences with an actor in a romantic restaurant on Jarvis St., and supervised the international shooting remotely. Streaming was still in its infancy, so PAL videotapes were couriered to Canada and transferred to NTSC. The footage was in English, French and Arabic so we engaged the necessary translators.

Result? The party and the video were a hit.

Things felt a little weird after 9-11, but Rami and I maintained contact. About four years later he asked for another, much smaller video--a mockumentary on his first-cousin, Karim, who was being married in Beirut. We called it: "Karim Farra: Mister Right or Mister Wrong?" and, once again, it was produced without ever leaving Toronto. Rami reported that the video got lots of laughs and was a hit.

Fast-forward to American Thanksgiving, 2008, when I flew down to Washington in a snowstorm to meet Rami in person for the first time. He treated me to the Thanksgiving buffet in the main dining room of the Four Seasons in Georgetown. I remember Rami was wearing gym shorts and a funny t-shirt, because the airline had lost his luggage en route from Gulfport, Mississippi. I also recall that neither of us ate any pork.

Rami talked to me about doing a series of family documentaries, with the main focus being on the ancient history. I learned that it is a great honour for an Arabic Muslim family to trace its lineage back to the Prophet Mohammed, and that the Makhzoumis could claim several very illustrious ancestors. There would also be a video on the Makhzoumi Foundation, Lebanon's largest NGO which provided thousands with job training; and a profile on Fouad, the family patriarch who built the Future Group of companies, had entered Lebanese politics by starting his own, non-religious political party and was running for Prime Minister.

It was decided we would shoot three of the interviews in Toronto with York University professors on the history of Islam and the Makhzoumi clan. Most of the shooting would be done in Kent, England, outside London, where the family was set to stay in the summer of 2009. The balance would be shot without me, in Beirut.

A month before leaving for England, I got a phone call. Politics would be keeping the family in Lebanon for July-August and we would need to do all the non-Toronto shooting in Beirut. Barely a year before, Hezbollah had staged a brief coup, taking over the TV stations and shutting down the airport. A few years before that, Prime Minister Hariri had been assassinated in Beirut. It was still dangerous there.

I phoned the Lebanese embassy in Ottawa and asked whether anyone with a Jewish name like 'Pomerantz' would have any trouble getting through Lebanese customs. The official said I would "probably" be fine, so I applied for a Lebanese visa.

I only told two of my family members I was going--both of whom discouraged me: "You want to be kidnapped!? Want to leave your daughter without a father!?"

Me? I was worried about NOT getting into Lebanon.

I booked a Beirut crew (with the obligatory "fixer"), organized the shooting and arranged my flights. I’d be met at the plane by a security official who worked for the Makhzoumis. I was worried I'd be turned away after coming all that way. But my worry was for naught. "Give me your passport," the family rep said. "Why? What about customs?" Turned out I never went through customs--he did it for me.

The next 10 days were surreal. Huge banners of martyrs and political candidates (including Mr. Makhzoumi) lined the route from the airport to downtown. My first night there I heard gunfire (the hotel concierge said it must have been wedding firecrackers). The video crew was a mixture of pro-Westerners and xenophobic conspiracy theorists. On one meal break, the sound technician asked me if I saw the movie "You Don't Mess With The Zohan" starring Adam Sandler as an Israeli counter-terrorist commando-turned-hair-stylist ("It's banned in Lebanon so I downloaded it illegally," he said). During another lunch, two crew members talked about how they hated Syria, Israel and the United States, and explained the "faked" World Trade Centre bombings and "faked" 1969 moon landing.

In the cafe section of Beirut you see Western-dressed women in skimpy clothes alongside fully veiled women from the Gulf states.

On the night I was invited out for dinner with the Makzoumi family, their armed bodyguards did an advance inspection of the restaurant before we entered. I was also shown a family member's extensive gun collection, including an AK-47 assault rifle taken from an Israeli soldier during the 2006 war.

As far as my religion was concerned it was: "Don't ask, don't tell." On the last day of shooting, while we were all getting ice cream, a crew member asked if I was Jewish (I said yes). And the gracious Mrs. May Makhzoumi asked if I'd like to visit Beirut's "Old Jewish Quarter" (I declined).

I returned home with a more open mind, secure in the knowledge that there are good people everywhere, and confident I would visit Rami and his family again.

About a year after the project was done, my friend Rami died of a ruptured brain aneurysm, at age 33.

 I said Kaddish for him.

Here are short clips from the Makhzoumi anniversary and legacy videos:

(Bob Pomerantz is a former Toronto Star staff writer-editor and contributor to National Lampoon magazine. He founded Your Life Productions in 1986 to make tribute and legacy videos and to produce corporate comedy videos.)