He’s Pitting His Pen Against Their Swords

The day is young, but Sean Delon has a weary expression that covers his face like three-day stubble. His intense green eyes are bloodshot. His broad shoulders sag as he slumps behind an old-model Macintosh, pecking away at his keyboard while Palestinian territories burn, while Jerusalem seethes, while another chance for a Middle East peace settlement turns to a handful of dust.

Though he’s half a world removed from the bloodshed and the broken vows, Delon seems to be living in a separate time zone from the rest of Los Angeles. After dozing off at 4 a.m., he’s already back at work on a project that may never come to pass, a screenplay on a subject few people in Hollywood want to touch, or even talk about.

Ask why this 20-something Egyptian-born actor would put a promising TV and film career on hold to pursue such a quixotic quest, and Delon will let loose a torrent of opinion: about the “true” meaning of jihad, the failed leadership of Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon, and the treacherous geopolitical crosswinds of our time.

Then he’ll relate his recurring dream--”obsession” might be a better word--about how his script-in-progress, “No Other Way,” an updating of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” set in the Middle East, could help stem the ongoing slaughter in an agonized corner of the world. After growing up in Egypt, a country that 23 years ago traded the sword for the olive branch in dealing with its Jewish neighbor, Delon is convinced that peace could still be brokered between Israel, the Palestinians and other aggrieved parties now intent on wiping each other off the Earth.

Just how a mere movie might contribute to such a historic outcome, where generations of politicians and diplomats have failed, is a question Delon leaves open-ended. “People don’t like politics. They find it boring,” he says in staccato, slightly unsteady English. “But if you deliver the message of peace, of Israeli and Arab living together, they’re going to believe it. Jews believe in the Promised Land, and they’re not going to give it up. And the Muslims believe in the struggle, and they’re not going to give it up. So the solution is to live in peace.”

Simple, right? In his heart, Delon knows it’s not. But his actions tell a different story.

On any given day, of course, there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people out hustling scripts in Hollywood. Some hunger for money, others for power, a few for a kind of immortality. Delon’s motives skew differently. Time and again, in conversation, his lofty ideas and ambitious talk circle back to a single word: Peace. There must be peace between Arabs and Jews, Delon says to anyone who will listen, anyone who will take his insistent phone calls and incessant faxes--movie studio executives, casting directors, newspaper reporters.

If the politicians can’t see the light, he says, go around them! If the media won’t put out pro-peace messages, make your own counter-propaganda! “I will try to meet Dan Rather or Barbara Walters,” he says. “I’ll send e-mail or something. That’s America! One day you’re nobody, and then.... “ Delon lets the thought trail off. “I always pray to God. God give me a sign, keep going, keep going.”

But Delon, who’s been living in the United States since coming here to study in 1988, isn’t pinning all his hopes on agents. He also has a patron: His best friend, David Degan, the scion of a family of wealthy Iranian Jews, who has pledged half a million dollars to the project. “This guy inspires me a lot,” says Degan, 28, during an interview at his family’s Bel-Air estate. “When this guy puts his mind on something he gets it done, and no one gets it done the way he gets it done.”

For months, Delon has been trying to get an audience with Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, to plead for support for his project--so far without luck. Earlier this year he even fired off a letter to George W. Bush, urging the President to invite young Israelis and Arabs to the White House to show they’re “united here in America.”

And if he can’t get his screenplay made in Hollywood, he’s resolved to film it in Egypt, where his face is recognizable from soap operas and feature films such as Hatim Fareed’s indie comedy “Sweet Guys,” about a group of young Egyptians partying in the shadow of the Pyramids on New Year’s Eve, 1999. “I’m not Tom Cruise,” he says of his stature in Egypt, “but I’m established there.”

To some, Delon’s fantasy of boosting Middle East peace through a big-screen romance may seem daring and idealistic, to others naive or self-serving. Yet for Delon, who was born Hashem Ali in the ancient port city of Alexandria and raised a Muslim, the medium is less important than the message. If he thought holding a carwash in his backyard would make Arafat and Sharon lay down their arms and kiss in the streets of Ramallah, he might be outside in his shorts with the garden hose right now. “Peace is something I believe,” he says, “acting is my career.”

In the five years since he wrote “No Other Way,” Delon has received only a few nibbles from casting agents and a polite “thanks, but no thanks” from one major studio. Despite the delays, Hussein Fahmi, an Egyptian actor, director and former president of the Cairo International Film Festival, believes Delon has the stuff to make good on his plan. “He has the ideas, and he has the dream. He’s a sweet person, and he’s talented.”

Some of his former U.S. teachers concur that Delon’s project is in keeping with the earnest, charismatic, young man they remember. “He always impressed me as somebody who was genuinely genuine, who was the real thing,” says David Grant, former president of Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, which Delon attended in the early ‘90s (and where he was once voted homecoming king).

Robert Scales, dean of the USC School of Theatre, strikes a more cautious note. “I think it [the script] is fascinating--if he can pull it off,” he says. “I don’t question his abilities; I think he is very quick, but I’m not confident of his follow-throughs on the big, long hauls.”

Though “No Other Way” may not be the hottest commercial property since “The Lord of the Rings,” it doesn’t skimp on those elements that sell tickets: romance, comic relief and a stiff shot of violence. Its main characters, Omar Ramsey, a 26-year-old Egyptian student, and Sarah Solomon, daughter of a fictional Israeli prime minister, are ardent utopians pitting themselves against hawkish politicians, cynical journalists and several thousand years’ worth of bloody quid pro quo. It’s easy to imagine the poster art.

With a laugh, Delon concedes a more-than-passing resemblance between him and the headstrong, idealistic Omar. For a female co-star he’d love to get Penelope Cruz, he says offhandedly, but would settle for Jennifer Connelly, who won an Oscar for “A Beautiful Mind.” And maybe Michael Douglas for the Israeli prime minister.

Delon’s ambitious talk might ring hollow without his friend Degan’s personal fortune to back it up. Ironically, if the two men had met in the Middle East, their first encounter might not have been so amicable.

Degan says he met Delon while working out at the gym at USC, where Delon transferred after three years at Orange Coast College. Degan, nee Azadegan, has been living in the United States since the Iranian revolution broke out in November 1979. His family relocated first to New York, then to Los Angeles in 1983. Several of Degan’s relatives were killed during Iran’s violent conversion from the Shah’s pro-Western dictatorship to the Islamic theocracy of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. “All I knew was Muslims were the people who killed my relatives,” Degan says.

Looking beyond their different faiths and backgrounds, Delon and Degan quickly became best friends. Last year, Degan invited Delon to move in with him and his mother (Degan’s father died in 1989), in part so Delon would have space to work on rewriting and shopping around his script. The two men also hope to set up a charity aimed at promoting Arab-Jewish friendship by bringing Israeli and Palestinian children together at summer camps in the United States.

“When I met Sean, I realized he’s just like me,” says Degan, who runs an import-export business. “In fact, the religion isn’t that different either.”

Like his friend, Delon refuses to accept that a deep cultural chasm divides the Islamic world from Israel and the West. He insists that the Koran’s concept of jihad refers to an individual believer’s private spiritual struggle, not to a literal war against “infidels.” He describes fellow Egyptian Mohamed Atta, the accused Sept. 11 lead hijacker, as a brainwashed “loser.”

Since Sept. 11, Delon has revised his script to incorporate references to the Taliban and Al Qaeda, trying to make the action as up-to-the-minute as possible. He’ll sometimes ask Degan to read over his shoulder: Am I taking sides? Am I getting the Jewish perspective across? “I try to be fair,” Delon says. “I know not everyone is going to be pleased.”

He also knows peace prophets aren’t always regarded as heroes. His idol, former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, concluded the Camp David Peace accords with former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1978, ending years of war between the two nations; three years later, he was assassinated by Muslim militants. “If Sadat didn’t come,” Delon says, “maybe David and I would be fighting each other on the border of Sinai and Israel.”

It’s a breezy Friday night in Westwood. Delon and Degan are cooling their heels at Habibi Cafe, where the mixed-ethnic clientele suck on hookah pipes and boogie along with the belly dancers. Delon likes the vibrant montage of Egyptian, Lebanese and Israeli students from UCLA, Armenians and Russians from the Eastside, and everything in between. In colloquial Arabic, “habibi” means “sweetie” or “darling,” and one of the cafe’s brick walls is covered with translations. “I’m always wondering why people are killing each other there, and here everyone is cool,” says Delon, surveying the crowd.

Another month has slipped by. More Palestinians have been killed by Israeli guns; more Israeli civilians have been massacred in suicide bombings. Degan is about to catch a plane for Las Vegas, while Delon remains in town, working his contacts, mentally mapping out his cinematic epic. “Hopefully there won’t be one movie about peace, there’ll be 10 movies,” he says. “And maybe in 10 years we won’t be talking about the movie, we’ll be talking about peace.”

Romantic? Certainly. Improbable? Just turn on CNN. But impossible? Delon has thrown himself in the middle of long odds before.

During the filming of “Sweet Guys,” one scene called for him to jump into the Nile River, fully clothed, at 3 in the morning. “I didn’t know the Nile water is heavy, it’s not salty,” he says. “Plus it comes from Luxor; it has dirt in it. Plus it was like 45 meters deep. I was swimming against the current. I wanted to go back to the boat. I couldn’t go back.”

An assistant could’ve aided him, but, Delon says, his ego wouldn’t allow it. “I said, ‘God, please help!’--all this takes just a few seconds. Suddenly, I feel my hand touching the side of the boat. And everybody was clapping! They didn’t know I was really dying! They thought I was a good actor!”

Delon smiles. “To be an actor, you have to be a little bit crazy, you know?”