Jul 30 2009
Brad vs. Pirates
I’m kind of a Twitter and Facebook fanatic. I like to see what people are doing, saying, and thinking out in the world, and both of those applications cater to my need for people knowledge. They are also great for market research, and to that end, I have a saved Twitter search for “Road Trip-Beer Pong,” which updates me when anyone says anything about the movie. On Tuesday, I awoke to discover dozens of tweets offering links to illegal downloads of the film, which apparently was leaked overnight. This is not a unique situation. Nearly every movie made is leaked to the internet, these days. And most pirates don’t bother to think about what they’re doing — it’s free, they want it now, and it’s easy. Those who do think about what they’re doing believe they’re “sticking it to the man” atop the rich, powerful, corporate studios.
While the studios do lose a lot of money because of piracy, it’s artists like me who really take a hit to the pocket book. Each sold DVD generates a very small payment to many of the key creative people who made the movie. These “residual payments” help artists pay the bills between jobs, because contrary to popular belief, the vast majority of writers and directors are not hopping from one seven figure contract to another. Most film artists are middle class folks, living on a budget, doing the best they can in an expensive city to get by week-to-week as they fight for their next gig.
So, for two days, using Twitter, I decided to send a personal message to each pirate who admitted to downloading and watching my movie. My message wasn’t about their opinions, good or bad. It was about their actions. And at first, most were astounded to hear from me. Then they got angry. “How dare you challenge my right to steal?” was the general attitude. Or, “your movie sucks, so who cares if I steal it?” They got really mad when they found out I was reporting their user info to Twitter and the Anti-Piracy folks at Paramount. I was threatened, black-listed (from future robbery, I guess, because they never actually BUY anything), called a tool, a twat, a cry-baby, and told to #$%& off. One guy suggested I was an idiot for relying on residuals — that I should instead ask for more money on the front end. Sheer ignorance. The system doesn’t work that way at all. And that’s my point. People will always steal. My goal was to put a face on who they were stealing from, and they didn’t like that one bit.
A few guys wrote back to apologize. Several people had legitimate questions. And a lot of people were glad to tell me that they liked the movie. But the internet haters can’t stand sequels like the ones I’ve done — though they watch them anyway. They think I somehow sold the studio a sequel to the movie they love. No, the studio approached me with the idea to write a sequel to a popular movie based on their solid marketing numbers. I need to pay a mortgage and buy groceries like everyone else, the folks at the studio are good people whom I like and respect, and so I took the job. And for that, the haters call me a sell-out hack, as they flame me from their mother’s basements.
AFTER they stole the movie and took the time to watch it, the pirates preferred to tell me how bad it is, with choice vocabulary, as opposed to discussing the reasons why they felt obligated to watch it two weeks before its release, thereby stealing from my family. One guy said I should be thanking him for the free marketing. One guy tweeted that he loved the movie, even quoting dialogue, then as soon as he heard from me, he flip-flopped into a total hater “who wouldn’t buy it from the dollar bin.” Hilarious.
These last two days were enlightening and exhausting. Shouldn’t someone speak up when the opportunity is there? So I did. Part of me regrets it, part of me doesn’t. The movie is still out there. People are still tweeting about stealing it. Paramount is doing all they can to fight back, and we’re lobbying Twitter to crack down on piracy, which is expressly against their sign-up rules. But now it’s time for me to get back to work, making more product for them to steal, so I threw up the white flag.
People laugh at those pre-trailer commercials against piracy in movie theaters. And I know this sounds like a sanctimonious Sally Struthers charity commercial to some, but before you click to download, please remember that regular, hard-working people — not just rich celebrities — are paying for your movie experience out of their pockets.
