http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsA...OC_0_US-FILM-SYRIANA.xml&pageNumber=0&summit=
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Stephen Gaghan invaded Oman.
The "Syriana" director didn't do it intentionally, of course -- unless he's really an undercover CIA agent. But while making his political thriller in the United Arab Emirates, Gaghan, his crew and an armed camel train strayed into that country's southeastern neighbor and squared off with the Omanian army. Like the characters in his movie, he discovered how easily one can get lost among the invisible borders of the Persian Gulf.
In late 2004, Gaghan's movie filmed in locales ranging from Baltimore and Washington to Geneva and Casablanca, working in five languages over 74 days. Scenes that involved the movie's unnamed oil-rich kingdom, the story line with the impressionable Pakistani teen and the movie's climax were among those shot in and around Dubai, one of the seven city-states that make up the UAE.
Few films have been shot in the UAE, let alone a Western one, and getting permission involved the politics of persuasion and negotiations with the country's royal family. And even when their request was granted, and Gaghan and his crew had arrived in the country, it was taken away.
"They heard that the script was anti-Saudi," says Gaghan, explaining that Saudi Arabia has a multibillion-dollar investor in the country, and the head of the royal family, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, could have found himself in potential choppy political waters by allowing the film.
..........As for the incursion into Oman: For a scene that ultimately was cut from the movie, Gaghan wanted a camel train traveling along pink sand dunes against the backdrop of mountains. He kept going further and further into the desert to shoot "all these guys who looked like Berber smugglers; they had machine guns and pistols and they were on these huge camels."