Filmmaking

25 thoughts
last posted Dec. 19, 2014, 6:45 p.m.
0

In 2007, a friend of mine and I were doing small sketch comedy videos and posting them on youtube. One concept that he had was for a workout video by Libyan dictator Muamar Gaddafi that tought exercises that other despots might find useful for things like dodging laser designators, cruise missles and other threats modern day dictators might face. Shortly after posting it, the Libyan government protested it as being inappropriate and youtube took it down. While Kevin or myself never experienced serious threats from the Libyan government itself, the message from Youtube was loud and strong; never post this again or you'll face having your account shut off and be permanently banned. So I guess you could say that we were victims of state sponsored terrorist censorship before it was cool.

One part of me is admittedly upset to think that what amounts to an unbalanced, petulant child with a couple of nukes could pull off something on the scale of the Sony hack and actually block the release of a movie. Sony should have, at the very least, just posted the movie on youtube or something for free, or had someone "leak it" as a middle finger to Jung-un. Another part of me is thinking that all that really may have happened here is that we were all just spared the release of another really shitty comedy.

24 earlier thoughts