The 1976 movie “The Message” is one of the classics currently playing at Cinescape’s 1954 movie theater. What not a lot of people know is that the star of the film, Anthony Quinn came to Kuwait back then because of the movie. Kuwait, Libya and Morocco had originally promised to support the making of the film financially, but when it was rejected by the Muslim World League in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait still kept its financial support which is why I think the press conference was held here.
Above is a short clip from the conference which starts with Anthony Quinn and then is followed by the director Moustapha Akkad. If someone knows where I can find the full video, let me know.
Sitting two seats down to the left of Anthony Quinn is also Farouq Abdul-Aziz, the creator and host of the Kuwait Television cultural show “Cine Club” which aired from 1977 to 1992. According to a recent interview I found with Farouq, turns out he was later hired to document the making of Anthony Quinn’s movie “Lion of the Desert“. You can watch a short clip from that interview above.
And completely random but related, I just found out while researching the info above that Farouq was also responsible for the Kuwait scenes in Ron Fricke’s award-winning movie documentary “Baraka”. He had researched and produced those scenes which you can view above. If you haven’t watched “Baraka” or the follow up film “Samsara“, then you’re missing out.
8 replies on “Anthony Quinn in Kuwait”
Additional facts: Kuwait’s Mohammad Al-San3ousi is also listed as a producer
Director Mustafa Al-Akkad was killed along with his daughter in the horrific coordinated suicide bomb terror attacks in Amman, Jordan in 2005
oh wow why was he killed?? need to google this
He just happened to be attending a wedding at one of the hotels that was attacked, and was killed along with many others. He was not a target
Akkad is a relative. Who also made the film Halloween 1 & 2 which traumatized me as a child
I had to google that because Halloween 3 also traumatized me when I watched it as a kid. IMDB has him as “executive producer – uncredited” for the first 3 Halloween films.
He was officially credited as “Executive Producer” for all the subsequent sequels until his death.
What’s nice is that his son, Malek Akkad, took over the reins and executive produced the two new Halloween films.
I know he did 1 & 2, didnt think he was involved in 3, i think he did 4 & 5. For me i found 1 & 2 the scariest. 3 was somebody else with a total different theme or story
Sorry, he produced the last three Halloween films (including the one that just came out).
That’s an even bigger achievement since producing requires a lot of work while executive producing doesn’t usually require any work. Sorry.
Fun fact Mark: Malek wrote and directed a yet to be released documentary about The Message and how his dad faced so many hurdles to try and make the movie including crew members being kidnapped…