Let My Potato Go

If you've got your rose-colored shades on, the Palestinians are now a little closer to having a home, and Yasser Arafat is a little closer to America's heart (or at least the State Department's). But it'll be another 50 years -- and probably more -- before this little-band-of-nomads-that-could gets the p.r. that their Israeli rivals got from Hollywood after winning that bloody sovereignty in 1948.

Director Otto Preminger made sure Exodus (1960) was a good movie, but this political epic ain't exactly impartial. It's three and a half hours of Paul Newman and friends hacking their way through first the Brits, then the Arabs, on their way to statehood.

Then there's Chuck Heston in William Wyler's Ben-Hur (1960). More heroism, more heroes, only it's about two millennia earlier. But again, CP hasn't lost sight of the forest -- once again it's very long, and very good.

But maybe Alan Ruck sang it best in John Hughes' Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986): "When Cameron was in Egypt land, let my Cameron go." We may have a new Middle East story to tell. Is there room in the region for another "ragtag bunch of misfits" (to put it in movie-trailer terms) who want their own country? Let's hope it goes well enough to make a movie about.