Recently I removed my film “Who Shot the President” from YouTube and the other on-line video sites where I had it posted. It is still available for those who would like to see it, but they will have to buy it from my website. (See: http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/who_shot_the_president.htm )
I had been getting some nasty comments about the film since I first posted it. A while back, I wrote an article about the criticism I got about this film: Why Do People Hate My Film.
( See: http://www.webupon.com/Video/Why-Do-People-Hate-My-Film.534095 )
These comments didn’t bother me and I never considered removing my film from view. Then I got a very disturbing comment on YouTube where the poster threatened to “beat me down”.
My first thought was to report the comment to YouTube, since I didn’t think they would approve of people making threats to the people who post videos on their site. Instead, I decided to remove the film from the web. After I had done it, I thought I should have reported it to YouTube anyway, but it was too late.
I know some people will disagree with my decision, because it looks like I am giving I giving in to people who want to suppress my views. This disturbs me as well. I don’t like my work being censored, even if I do the censoring.
What I kept in mind, though, is that I want to communicate my philosophy in my films. The question for me then, does the controversy over my film help or hurt my ultimate goal?
While I would like more people to see “Who Shot the President”, I felt that keeping it widely available was a diversion of my energies away from my real goal. What the anger people were expressing told me was that I would need to become more subtle in my films.
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