It was, however, oddly satisfying to read that one result of the film's popularity in Pakistan was that the actor playing 'Rushdie' became so hated by the film-going public that he had to go into hiding.Īt a certain point in the film one of the international gorillay was captured by the Israeli Army and tied to a tree in the garden of the palace in the Philippines so that 'Rushdie' could have his evil way with him.

So the safari suits got a lot of screen time, and when he saw a videotape of the film the fashion insult wounded him deeply. 'Rushdie' was dressed exclusively in a series of hideously coloured safari suits - vermilion safari suits, aubergine safari suits, cerise safari suits - and the camera, whenever it fell upon the figure of this vile personage, invariably started at his feet and then panned with slow menace up to his face. He lived in what looked very like a palace on what looked very like an island in the Philippines (clearly all novelists had second homes of this kind), being protected by what looked very like the Israeli Army (this presumably being a service offered by Israel to all novelists), and he was plotting the overthrow of Pakistan by the fiendish means of opening chains of discotheques and gambling dens across that pure and virtuous land, a perfidious notion for which, as the British Muslim 'leader' Iqbal Sacranie might have said, death was too light a punishment. 'Rushdie' himself was depicted as a drunk, constantly swigging from a bottle, and a sadist. The quest for 'Rushdie' formed the main action of the film and 'his' death was the film's version of happy ending. “The Pakistani film International Gorillay (International guerillas), produced by Sajjad Gul, told the story of a group of local heroes - of the type that would, in the language of a later age, come to be known as jihadis, or terrorists - who vowed to find and kill an author called 'Salman Rushdie'.

Joseph Anton by Salman Rushdie