Thursday, May 20, 2010

MACHETE controversy? I call Troublemaker Studios to straighten this all out.

The story thus far:
A few years ago Robert Rodriguez did a fake trailer for a fictional Mexploitation film called MACHETE. This fake trailer proved to be so popular that a real MACHETE movie was given the green light and will be coming out later this year. In the meantime, the director couldn't resist making a second fake trailer for the now-real movie to tweak the public over the real-life Arizona immigration law controversy. The second fake trailer, beginning with the title character growling at the camera that this is "a special Cinco De Mayo message FOR ARIZONA!", mixed elements of the real movie and the original fake trailer to create something that was clearly meant to be taken as pure farce. Of course, like anything intended for grown-ups, it's been misinterpreted.
And now the continuation:
The new gag trailer for MACHETE released by Troublemaker Studios on Cinco De Mayo has stirred up a lot of heat with the right-wing conspiracy theorists on YouTube. It seems that they don't find the obviously satirical race-baiting premise of the admittedly fake trailer at all amusing and are predicting the end of (North) Western civilization via race war upon the film's September 3rd release date. Colorful character Alex Jones posted himself doing a dramatic reading of script excerpts (Without spoiler warnings. Bad form Alex!) on his Youtube channel along with the mailing address and phone number of Troublemaker Studios where he encouraged true believers to register their outrage.
I called Troublemaker Studios to find out how many had, in fact, called to complain. The gentleman who answered the phone didn't know of any offhand but thought about it for a moment and offered a non-committal "Maybe one?" He asked me about the blogger who was calling for action. When I told him about Mr. Jones, he chuckled and said "oh yeah, that guy." Just for the heck of it, I asked him how high up I could get at the studio to tell everyone there that I thought that they were doing a good job. He told me "not very far", clearly implying that I was already there. With that I asked him to relay the message, thanked him again and hung up.
To finally clear everything up, here's a link to an interview that Rodriguez just did for Aintitcoolnews.com.

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