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Update: Mysterious is right. Skepticism about the actual identity of "Sam Bacile," the producer of the anti-Islam film Muslim Innocence, appears to be justified. The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg contacted a consultant of the film, Steve Klein, who said that Bacile, contrary to previous claims in The Wall Street Journal and Associated Press, is not Israeli nor actually named Sam Bacile. (It's a pseudonym.) Klein tells Goldberg:

"I don't know that much about him. I met him, I spoke to him for an hour. He's not Israeli, no. I can tell you this for sure, the State of Israel is not involved, Terry Jones (the radical Christian Quran-burning pastor) is not involved. His name is a pseudonym. All these Middle Eastern folks I work with have pseudonyms. I doubt he's Jewish. I would suspect this is a disinformation campaign."

So according to Klein, Bacile is a big fat liar. And his nationality isn't the only thing coming under fire. The Hollywood Reporter is pouring cold water on Bacile's claim that he spent $5 million to produce the film. Jordan Zakarin writes:

"Though Bacile claims he spent $5 million on the movie — a figure that would put the film's on par with the Toronto festival entrant Julianne Moore-starrer What Maisie Knew — the 13 minutes of footage available online look unprofessional. Furthermore, Bacile has virtually no footprint in the Hollywood community. The writer-director-producer has no agent listed on IMDBPro and no credits on any film or TV production."

Meanwhile, BuzzFeed's Rosie Gray is skeptical if Muslim Innocence is even a real movie:

As the video above — cut from the YouTube video tied to a global controversy — shows, nearly all of the names in the movie's "trailer" — is a compilation of the most clumsily overdubbed moments from what is in reality an incoherent, haphazardly-edited set of scenes. Among the overdubbed words is "Mohammed," suggesting that the footage was taken from a film about something else entirely. The footage also suggests multiple video sources — there are obvious and jarring discrepancies among actors and locations.

Needless to say, there are a lot of threads to unspool from all of this, and lots more to come about his intentions and identity.

Original article: Few biographical details are known about the Israeli-American filmmaker who enraged Muslims yesterday with his incendiary film about the Prophet Muhammed. But one thing is clear: Director Sam Bacile expected his film to incite violence. On Tuesday, his expectation came true* as an angry mob in Libya murdered U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other embassy staff members in an attack that followed a similar assault on the U.S. Embassy in Egypt, U.S. officials have confirmed. Here's what we know about the 54-year-old writer, director and producer behind the movie Muslim Innocence.