Eating Fish

I just read on PZ Myers blog that the highly intelligently designed people that are responsible for that wonderful movie Zombie Strippers Expelled, have been neglecting copyright left and right. Seems they first lied to several of those they interviewed (PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins to name just two) on what the movie was about, then it was discovered they (illegally) copied cell animation done by Harvard/XVIVO (and then threatened to sue them when XVIVO brought it up). Now it turns out they also used music in the film without permission. Well, if I ever want to make a movie, I’ll go and hire these guys to do it! What professionalism!

Another ‘movie maker’ that has run into serious trouble is our good friend Geert Wilders (yes, Mr. Funny Hair). Immediately after release, two big problems with his shit-flick Fitna were brought up. The first was the fact that when a photograph of Mohammed Bouyeri was shown, it was actually a picture of rapper Salah Edin, who made an album cover where he was made to look like the police photograph of Bouyeri. Edin was not amused. Wilders also used the famous turban bomb cartoon drawn by Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard without permission. Westergaard was also not amused and this became the second slip-up of a 15 minute film. But no, three times is a charm , so Wilders also used parts of an interview of Theo van Gogh by Robbie Mutz without permission. Copyright seems to mean nothing to this man. But Robbie, clever as he is, asked for an exclusive interview (Wilders rarely gives interviews at the moment) as compensation, and got just that.

If you make a film, and you use material that you did not make yourself, the first thing any good film maker should realize is that you require permission from whoever did make that material. It’s basic knowledge and I can image one of the things any documentary maker learns when being schooled for this. Wilders, not a film maker and he really should stick to politics, holds several law degrees and is intelligent enough to know better. I suspect he thought he would get away with it, because he was convinced the people he stole material from would be sympathetic to his message. He was wrong (but that is something he is more often, so he should have gotten used to that by now) and looked like an ass. And rightfully so, in my opinion.

Any filmmaker who does not take copyright into account is an amateur and a hack. Wilders is, and now it seems, so are the people who made Expelled.