The person who annoys me the most in life, i.e., Gizelle Khuri, re-ran an interview she had conducted after the release of his film Alexandria, New York. It was typical of an interview that Khuri conducts: most annoying. And Shahin was irritated with her at several junctures. At one point, he was railing against George W. Bush and about his Christian fundamentalist vision, and about his loyalty to Zionism. She looked at him and asked: how do you know this? He said: I read. That was a great moment for me. Do you know that this Khuri now is promoted as "the Arab journalist who was selected by the New York Times as the top Arab journalist." I kid you not. As if the New York Times runs annual contests of this sort. The New York Times has not gotten that low--not yet anyway. She then asked him about whether he felt indebted to the U.S. because "it gave you an opportunity." He quipped: "It gave me no opportunity. I seized the opportunity." She asked him whether there is somebody he wanted to do a movie on, and he said (after praising Shaykh Zayid and the fact that he offered him free hospitalization): "Shaykh [Muhammad] `Abduh." She did not know what he was saying, and did not understand. She paused and said: what does that mean, who is that? She thought he was kidding. He said rather condescendingly: well, it is Shaykh `Abduh. And when he said that Arab regimes are all puppets of the U.S., she squirmed and changed the subject. She wanted him to speak against Islamic fundamentalism and against the veil, and he insisted on speaking out against ALL versions of fundamentalism in Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. She wanted him to sound like a liberal and he insisted on sounding like a leftist. Having said all that the tributes and articles to Shahin miss an element of his personality: that he was a tyrant on the set, and he used to yell and scream and verbally abuse actors. He has reduced actors to tears on occasions. But the funny element of his career was his "collaboration" with `Asi Rahbani (Mansur Rahbani is as you know a decoration: the myth of the two Brothers Rahbani is a lie, as we all know) on the two Fayruz film: Bint Al-Haris and Bayya` Al-Khawatim. Rahbani and Shahin (both are professional tyrants) clashed non stop. And Shahin told `Asi in the last film that he would never work with him again. What brought this conflict was that `Asi would yell "Action" and "Cut" during filming which would infuriate Shahin. Good night.