I'm Not a Terrorist, But I've Played One on TV Read Online Free

kill Americans?”
    â€œI don’t know! Maybe he’s just angry and wants to take it out on anyone. Or maybe he couldn’t get a ticket to Moscow so he came to Chicago.”
    She shrugged. “Either way, this is the outfit the producers said to wear.”
    â€œBut it doesn’t make sense.”
    â€œAnd your story does?”
    â€œGood point, but I still think he wouldn’t wear the turban.”
    She shrugged again. “I’ll let the producers know.”
    The next day when I showed up at my trailer, I looked in my closet to find a shirt, pants, and . . . a scarf.
    â€œI see you spoke with the producers and they saw it my way. I appreciate that. And I will gladly wear this scarf instead. Thank you.”
    â€œThat’s not a scarf. That’s the turban. You just gotta roll it up on your head.”
    â€œAre you kidding me? Did you even talk to the producers?”
    â€œYep! And they want you to wear the turban.”
    I spent the morning discussing it with anyone who would listen. “My character would want to blend in.” “The turban is so cliché.” “He had a rough childhood.” “He’s just misunderstood, really.” “He’d rather be in Moscow!” Everyone nodded, but they were all in cahoots and certain that the turban was cinematic gold.
    Come to find out, everyone who works on a Chuck Norris film is somehow related to Chuck Norris. The director was Chuck’s kid. The executive producer was Chuck’s brother. All of the Norrises had decided—probably at Norris Sunday supper over giant bowls of meat—that the bad guy would be easier for the audience to recognize at two o’clock on a Tuesday morning if he was wearing a turban.
    Worse than furious, I was humiliated. Why did I think I could bring humanity to this character? It was a Chuck Norris movie, after all. Adding insult to injury, it was a Chuck Norris movie in which Chuck Norris played a college professor. But I was still looking forward to the fight scene between Chuck and me, a moment that I hoped would become iconic in the Norris oeuvre.
    On the day we were set to shoot the fight scene, Norris showedup and had a word with his son. Why this never came up when all the Norrises had gathered around to craft this masterpiece in the first place we’ll never know, but Chuck decided rather than fighting me, it would be much easier just to shoot me. In my head I had choreographed this amazing fight scene where Chuck and I would go blow for blow, then he would eventually pull on my turban and it would unravel, making me spin and get dizzy. Chuck would give my character the final roundhouse kick to the face, and I would be immortalized on film. Instead, he just had me run toward him with a machine gun in my hand and he took out a pistol and shot me. Nice and quick. No time to milk it. Good-bye Emmy!
    By the time the film was ready, September 11 had occurred. I was mortified that they might release it but fairly certain they would not. Then, a couple months after 9/11, I read that Chuck Norris had actually come out and pushed to release the movie, claiming it was a patriotic film because the terrorists got what they deserved. I was worried people would see me in the streets and think I was an actual terrorist: “Hey, ain’t that the sumbitch hassling Chuck Norris the other night on channel eight? Let’s get him!”
    I wrote letters to Chuck and CBS, asking them to not run the movie, but I heard nothing back. Soon I saw it on my TV listings and steeled myself to watch. The good news was that it was so, so bad, I couldn’t get past the first ten minutes. I found reason to hope that very few people would be able to bear watching long enough to get to my scenes. I thought to myself, Someone should shoot me not for being a terrorist, but for agreeing to do this movie.
    Lights, Camera, You Go!
    After that I told my agents no more terrorist