At the risk of sounding self-important, we're bloggers, not fanboys willing to prostitute away their self-respect for a movie ticket (though I see from Technorati that many bloggers are more than willing). I'm not saying that I'm highly principled and not-for-sale at any price, but it'd sure take more than $9.75 for someone to tell me what to write on this blog. Maybe this is standard operating procedure when big media companies give away free stuff, but if it is I want no part of it.
While I already willingly take a *certain* amount of direction as regards what I write, in that blogcritics maintains certain community standards, I'm nobody's paid canary, and I just hate being told what language to use. I'm not being paid to write a press release; I volunteered to write a fair review in exchange for seats to the film in question. But three out of three webloggers interviewed felt that this offer was handled in a cack-handed and insulting fashion. Am I completely off my nut here in feeling so irritated?
Kudos to "[my] Friends at Grace Hill Media" for making what felt like a mildly whorish move, an opportunity to provide release-week press for a film by an auteur whose work I think a great deal of, into something (that feels to me at least) much more bootlickingly whorish.
How about this: "It is confirmed that I have chosen to consider attending the screening of Serenity tomorrow night in Boston, but this confirmation does not guarantee I will show up, or write a follow-up review. Now cram it."
Article comments
1 - LegendaryMonkey
Good post! Now I'm glad I didn't rouse myself to poke a finger at that.
Guess I'll just do what I was gonna do, anyway... pay to see the film and then write whatever I want about it afterward.
Screw all this giving in, say-what-we-want crap.
2 - Chris Beaumont
I liked this part:
"ยท DO NOT bring in a camera or a cellular phone that takes pictures. They WILL be confiscated, and you will NOT be allowed into the screening."
So, if i bring a camera phone, they will take away my phone and not let me see the movie? Huh?
3 - John Owen
That struck me as both shoddy editing and bad policy too... "give us your phone and get lost!" What... like trying to get it in to your screening makes it your phone?
Too bad there's no second amendment protecting your camera-phone. Then again, as we've seen in New Orleans, that's not much help either.
4 - Carny Asada
John, as one of the pathetic Firefly fanpersons who said, "What the hell, I'll wh0re myself, it will only hurt a little" -- and then wound up literally in the cold without a ticket, I can only say, right on. I lowered my standards Because It Was Joss. Lesson learned.
5 - Matt Moore
I'm glad I didn't get that email (I think my spam filter killed it). Instead I just showed up, was on the list, wandered in with my camera phone in my pocket, watched the movie, and wrote about it. I linked their site, but that was by chance.
Like I said, I'm glad I didn't know I was breaking all the rules. I guess I'll have to pay to see the sequel they might not make?