By James Robert Shaw (The Wind up Geek)
Director of the latest Ghostbusters film, Paul Feig, has faced a lot of hate since the announcement over a year ago that an all-female reboot of the franchise was to make its way to the silver screen.
The venom spewed at Feig has been of the scale reserved for only the most heinous of criminals yet Feig continues to fight his detractors, telling one who printed abuse for months over Twitter to “go **** yourself.”
Two weeks ago the Ghostbusters debut trailer became number 21 in the “Most Disliked YouTube Videos” as compiled by the YouTube channel MyTop100Videos (it is currently in the number 12 spot as of May 8, 2016). Now the New York Daily News has amended an interview it published on May 2, 2016 when it was found quotes used by the author of Feig defending Ghostbusters were in fact from an old interview two years previous. Feig’s prepared response of this incident was distributed via his official Twitter account earlier today (edited for coarse language):
The quotes from me in a New York Daily News article on Monday, May 2nd, 2016, were not from a recent interview but from an interview I did for a book on geek culture a year and a half ago that the author then sold to the Daily News, misrepresenting them as being my response to recent Ghostbusters reporting. The Daily News ran a correction yesterday, May 7th, for which I am grateful. To clarify, the interview actually took place on February 9th, 2015, one and a half weeks after I had first announced my Ghostbusters cast via Twitter, a week and a half that saw my actors and I inundated with some of the most hateful tweets, posts and comments I had ever seen. My quote was in answer to the question, “Has the paradigm shifted to a point where (because geek culture is currently so popular) the geek is the ***hole now?” I very much regret saying in my answer that I had actually “met” any “assholes” from the geek community. I have never met anyone from the geek world face-to-face who wasn’t a warm, kind person. The “***holes” of which I speak are the ones who live online, who write those hateful tweets and posts and comments. I’m not talking about the people who have true concerns and worries about the rebooting of a franchise they love, nor am I talking about people who have watched the trailer for our movie and didn’t like it. Those are all valid opinions and I respect them all. I am talking about those that write misogyny and hate and threats. Those are the “***holes” of which I spoke. As a lifelong geek and proud member of the geek community (as well as the creator of the TV series Freaks and Geeks), I abhor bullies. Every community has bullies who make up a very small minority of the community as a whole. Bullies scream the loudest and seem to get the most attention. But they are simply bullies who in no way represent the vast majority of wonderful, thoughtful people who make up our geek community. The geek world has been a haven for so many of us and we should all refuse to let these bullies hijack the conversations and debates we all love to engage in, nor should we let them represent our community and culture to the rest of the world. The bullies are not the norm and I would dare say they are not even true geeks. They are the micro minority. God bless the true geeks of the world and here’s to taking our community back from the bullies.
Source(s): Paul Feig‘s official Twitter, MyTop100Videos YouTube channel, and MovieWeb.
Video Source(s): Sony Pictures Releasing UK.
