Iran official: U.S. artists must apologize for offensive films

The artistic adviser to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Sunday that a team of visiting Hollywood actors and members of the movie industry should apologize for films deemed insulting to many in Iran.

Javad Shamaqdari, the art and cinema adviser Ahmadinejad, said members of the Iranian cinema community should not meet with representatives from the nine-member team until they apologize.

"In my viewpoint, it is a failure to have an official meeting with one who is insulting," Shamaqdari said.

The group includes the President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Sid Ganis; actors Bening, and Alfre Woodard; producer William Horberg; AMPAS Special Events Programmer and Exhibitions Curator Ellen Harrington; and Tom Pollock, the former Universal Pictures chairman.

According to the Web site of Iran's Cinema Association, the group arrived Friday in Iran. They met a group of Iranian artists on Saturday, and will be holding educational seminars in directing, screenwriting, acting, producing, marketing and film distribution.

The film '300,' which portrays the battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C., in which a force of 300 Spartans held off a massive Persian army at a mountain pass in Greece for three days, angered many Iranians for the way Persians are depicted as decadent, sexually flamboyant and evil in contrast to the noble Greeks.

Iranians also criticized 'The Wrestler' starring Mickey Rourke as a rundown professional wrestler who is preparing for a rematch with his old nemesis, The Ayatollah. During a fight scene, The Ayatollah tries to choke Rourke with an Iranian flag before Rourke pulls the flagpole away, breaks it and throws it into the cheering crowd.

Neither movie was ever shown in Iran.