Gilliam Comes Out In Favor Of Piracy

Well imagine this if you will...

There is this dude, who employs you from time to time, and he is very rich, money just falling out of his pockets.

now this rich dude,your sometime employer, he is constantly kicking you in the nuts, as soon as you look the other way BAM!!, right in the nuts.

Now one day some of this dudes money falls out of his pocket, by no means a large ammount, but still, its his money. So a pirate is walking by and see's this money,snags it and runs off into the night.

Now this rich dude suddenly transforms into a wussy litle girl and starts crying about how someone stole a very tiny portion of his money, how sorry would you feel for that guy?

Not very one would assume, especially when said rich dude starts blaming every single problem in his life on that tiny little portion of money that is missing. When most of his money in the first place is made by legally ripping people off. And by "legally" I mean he is doing nothing "illegal", but come on, this DVD Double Dipping is atrocious and obvious, and we all smile like suckers and take it.

So no, Im not surprised at his lack of empathy for the studios, espeially Gilliam, what surprises me is anyones sympathy for studios, they rip people off everyday as a business, why should anyone care when they get ripped off, and its so menial of a loss as well, Piracy is not the problem, it NEVER has been.

When will people realize that the advancements in Home Theater and the lack of original quality product is what has Hollywood suffering? will I watch Big Mommas House 2? probably, at home, on DVD for 4.99 rental and no punk ass kid kicking the back of my seat the whole time.

I got lost there somehow, but yeah, you tell'em Terry!

Nord

Motion picture studios ripped off every person who has seen a movie starring Ben Stiller, Owen or Luke Willson, Will Smith or any number of so called stars in the last 10 years. They are Spanish merchant ships, consider the savvy film buff to be a privateer.

Arrg, just remember they hide their dubloons in the bellies of the lepers. (A cookie if you understood that joke).

I went to a Q&A with Terry Gilliam here at the BKKIFF earlier this week and he said exactly the same thing - he feels so ripped off by the studios that he really doesn't care about people ripping them off... he said what he cares about most is people seeing his films, however they go about that - and then added if you're going to pirate at least do it well!!

Hooray for pirates!

Great movies are still being made. No worries, yet.

It seems to be a matter of what Chesterton called "common sense" (C.S. Lewis referenced this also) that those who hold the power are more, not lequally, accountable for how they use it.

In other words if our leaders in the motion picture industry are clearly greedy by any rational definition of the term how can millions upon millions of people expect to care what happens to their ill gotten bottom line. They do not responsibly distribute the wealth they accumulate.

Unlike Chesterton I am not a distributionist per se but dear Lord how do these people sleep at night?

You go Gilliam!

I agree with Terry, but filmmakers like him have to walk away, or at least stay cool like David Lynch... I prefer his occasional remarks about insects to Terry's decades of steady harping.

In Roger Corman's autobiography, he talks about trying to make the transition from financing on his own, watching every dime, to working for studios, where he had no control. He says that a Hollywood accounting sheet is literally incomprehensible. They cheat, end of story.

If you have ever worked on a professional film set, you can see the myriad ways that they waste money - it's institutional. Somehow the profligacy is part of their business plan, like the Pentagon. (hum Battle Hymn of Republic here)

I have always wondered what Byzantine games Jack Valenti plays to keep upper-crust LA well lubricated. Out of my league.