Despite controversy, Warner Bros. sticks with Towelhead

When a small movie called Nothing is Private debuted at the Toronto Film Festival last year, it didn't exactly come quietly. For one thing, the man behind it was Alan Ball, the writer of American Beauty and creator of Six Feet Under, who made a name for himself with subversive dramas unafraid of the darker aspects of American life. And its subject, a 13-year-old Lebanese-American girl who must sift through ethnic and sexual tension in early-’90s Houston, left even seasoned festival audiences a little squeamish.

Yet as the movie opened at Sundance the following winter, it made a much more immediate splash, and it wasn't hard to spot what made the difference: the title had been changed to Towelhead.

Now, with a limited release for the film set for Sept. 12, advocacy groups are ready to pounce. The Greater Los Angeles office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations issued a letter last week to Warner Bros., the film’s distributor, asking that the title be changed. “It is unfortunate that a major film studio would choose to exploit an ethnic slur as a sensational promotion for a movie,” Hussam Ayloush, an executive director at CAIR, said of the group's concern. “Mainstreaming a bigoted term in this manner will only serve to legitimize and normalize anti-Muslim prejudice in our society.” 

The group suggested that the title be changed back to Nothing is Private. (The name Towelhead comes from the Alicia Erian novel on which the film is based.)

So far, Warner Bros. has said the title will stay, bowing to the filmmakers’ decision to return to the book's name. Ball, who makes his feature-length directorial debut with the film, said the original title is important because the story “dramatizes the pain inflicted by such language, something many people of non-minority descent never have to face.”

Watch the trailer for Towelhead:

Related links:

Interview: Sundance 2008: Towelhead
Alan Ball on Towelhead - AOL.com
Towelhead on IMDb

Got a news tip for Paste? E-mail news@pastemagazine.com.