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Tim League of Alamo Drafthouse extends mercy to noted blogger/molester
- Thread starter Count Dookkake
- Start date
Bobby Roberts
Banned
"Well can't he do something else" isn't laughable at all. Why would it be so. He probably should do something else for a couple reasons off the top of my head:
1) doing this only enabled him to be the piece of shit he ended up being
2) the audience is likely not going to let him do what he wants to do anyway
besides which, people seem to keep confusing the notion of "second chance" with "reloading the last save from the first chance and just running it again." It's like people are convinced "second chance" is irrevocably bound to the concept of doing exactly what it was you used to do, but now you're just sorrier about it. That's not how second chances have to work, and honestly, I don't know how valid it is to believe that's how they should work in every circumstance, either. It's kinda naive to think contrition (real contrition, not the sort of dishonest enabling his friends abetted) entitles a person to their prior position in life just because they'd like it.
That he's middle-aged doesn't really mean anything. He's not fucking dead or invalid or anything. He's got skills beyond "bullshit on twitter and write really long reviews of movies," he's not a helpless infant. He's a grown-ass bearded white man and considering he's never even been charged with anything he can submit a resume to any office in the greater Austin area and probably grab himself a nice full-time desk job pretty easily. And he can write and speak about films all he wants, but maybe for awhile he gets to do it like the large multitude of film fans - on a blog, or on social media, or on letterbox'd, whatever. His avenue to express himself isn't gone, but he's also not obligated to a paid platform just waiting for him again, and it's not unfair to say so.
No cellphones, no talking, no groping.
This is really sad. I'm an actor/producer and my film was in Fantastic Fest last year. It was my first time in Austin and it felt like I was family. Todd Brown gave me the start of my career 10 years ago.
Tim League seems like a good man in principle, last year they had this amazing multi course meal and special screening of a movie called "Dog Eat Dog" for filmmakers in the fest, it was hosted in a community that League started for people that needed supported living. The Homeless, some disenfranchised vets. It was a very heartfelt and humanitarian project.
But it seems real shitty he didn't let any of the staff know he was hiring Devin Faraci back. If he wanted to help somebody like that get back on his feet, why didn't he employ him on a project like the housing community instead of forcing him back into a community of people who feel completely unsafe and betrayed around him?
Todd's statement is right, it feels like a nepotistic old boys club. And it's like the Pewdiepie situation, Tim League is not the one who decides who forgives Devin Faraci, it's his victims.
It's just sad to think the effect this will have on a wonderful community. So many influential and awesome people have left, and it's a righteous statement. A dude like Devin Faraci doesn't belong.
Tim League seems like a good man in principle, last year they had this amazing multi course meal and special screening of a movie called "Dog Eat Dog" for filmmakers in the fest, it was hosted in a community that League started for people that needed supported living. The Homeless, some disenfranchised vets. It was a very heartfelt and humanitarian project.
But it seems real shitty he didn't let any of the staff know he was hiring Devin Faraci back. If he wanted to help somebody like that get back on his feet, why didn't he employ him on a project like the housing community instead of forcing him back into a community of people who feel completely unsafe and betrayed around him?
Todd's statement is right, it feels like a nepotistic old boys club. And it's like the Pewdiepie situation, Tim League is not the one who decides who forgives Devin Faraci, it's his victims.
It's just sad to think the effect this will have on a wonderful community. So many influential and awesome people have left, and it's a righteous statement. A dude like Devin Faraci doesn't belong.
AuthenticM
Member
Can you elaborate on that inside baseball there, Bobby? What exactly has this guy done over the years? I only know of last year's incident (that actually happened ten years ago, if I understand correctly).
Bobby Roberts
Banned
There was that gamergate dirtsheet that got linked above that spelled out a lot of the guy's general negatives (that it's a gg dirtsheet means its basically one golgothan telling on another so there's no way your hands don't get shitty while you're holding it)
But basically, dude left the world of non-profits when his posts on a movie blog messageboard (Chud.com) got enough attention that its owner promoted him to writing articles/features/reviews for the main site. From there he got a lot of attention, so much so that he wound up being gifted the keys to Drafthouse's own movie blog, Badass Digest (which became Birth.Movies.Death) and during that ascension, he was generally, as someone in the thread put it, a real mean-spirited, ugly, awful piece of shit who occasionally offset his repugnant behavior with a cogent insight or two.
Which seems like that shouldn't have carried as much weight as it did, and it probably shouldn't, but those early wild west days of the internet were not as inclusive or well-populated as they are now, and so the sorts of voices who might have stood against that shit weren't nearly as loud, and even if they were, people were just a lot more permissive about that sort of shit. Not that they still aren't now (you can hit gaming side on any given day and see people making those same cases for equally-if-not-moreso repugnant YouTubers), but it was much more pronounced. Hell, you can take a trip back through this boards archives and get a general sense of how even the most well-meaning people from 2009 would sound sketch/out-of-bounds in their day to day talk where they thought nobody was looking because everyone had shitty screennames and it was "just the internet."
Besides all that basic run of the mill assholery, he was also apparently a blackout drunk who on the DL sexually harassed a fair amount of women, none of whom really started to step forward until last year's public flameout on twitter, some because they didn't want anyone to know, some because they thought it wasn't anyone else's business, and some because they figured it wouldn't matter if they came forward anyway because the aforementioned little boys' club atmosphere of the online film community would mean their shit would be disbelieved or brushed off no matter what.
So: Devin Faraci was a bullying, aggressive, corrosive, toxic presence in the online film community for something like 10 years and people just sorta put up with it in that time because he wrote good pieces every now and again and that's just how the internet was.
Until it wasn't.
AuthenticM
Member
Thank you for this detailed response.
Man. Sometimes, I wish I could be a time-and-space travelling ghost who could insert himself incognito in places just to observe stuff that I can't. It's crazy the amount of shit that happens to women without other people's knowledge, or to the knowledge of those-who-don't-care. Maybe I should be surprised at the film-critic community's toxicity, but I'm not. Being a community full of nerds and guys-who-couldn't-date-girls-in-school, I guess it was bound to be this way. It shouldn't be.
It's all so enraging and depressing.
I hope your wife didn't have to go through this bullshit, man.
Man. Sometimes, I wish I could be a time-and-space travelling ghost who could insert himself incognito in places just to observe stuff that I can't. It's crazy the amount of shit that happens to women without other people's knowledge, or to the knowledge of those-who-don't-care. Maybe I should be surprised at the film-critic community's toxicity, but I'm not. Being a community full of nerds and guys-who-couldn't-date-girls-in-school, I guess it was bound to be this way. It shouldn't be.
It's all so enraging and depressing.
I hope your wife didn't have to go through this bullshit, man.
Fucking thank you .
I have fucked up in the past, and not nearly on the scale of sexually assaulting someone and harassing multiple women. And I still, in a way, pay for those fuck ups. And because of that, I ensure that shit never happens again. I live with the consequences. I and others don't view me as a horrible person, but my fuck ups are still there and will -always- be there. I don't get to go back and have a do-over. And I honestly shouldn't.
Edit: And even if this dude didn't get back to work in a shady manner, a year isn't exactly long. Not nearly as long as the social, emotionality, and potentially economic repercussions assault victims go through. But fuck them, right? Man's gotta eat!
SENPAIatLARGE
Banned
I sure wish I was white. The sheer amount of crap I could get away with unscathed is astounding.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
She did, but with her it was the music community, which did a lot of the same shit, just in different flavors.
I've got my own bullshit I've had to own and apologize for over the years regarding not being welcoming to women in online spaces from those wild west days, too, and often for exactly the reasons you stated: A whole bunch of us were reveling in the (percieved but not really present) power of being paid attention to for thinking our (percieved but not really present) deep-ass thoughts about pop culture, and a whole lot of that shit was tied up in the same sort of awful "nice guy" toxicity that gets rightly called out now.
A lot of our favorite fictions often overtly reinforced the notion that women were prizes for us, first and foremost, and so when they appeared in our circles they were objectified and treated as such, and when women, who were being brave as fuck even entering our little boys club in the first place, showed themselves to be human beings with their own fucking agency many of us reacted poorly and dismissively. They were breaking the rules of the scripts we all had in our heads where we were all the heroes of our personal Kevin Smith romantic comedies.
(This essay, which I've linked many times before, describes very well the mindset a lot of us had in that regard. The essay's subtitle mentions the "Toxic Nerd Masculinity of the '90s" and a whole lot of the resultant "Geek Culture" that sprang up in the wake of that was built on that foundation in a lot of ways. I wrote my own essay about the rise and fall of that renaissance back in 2014 )
It was a shitshow. Hell, it's still a shitshow. And a lot of those same casually accepted modes of thought and behavior from those days are still here. It takes work to dismantle the bullshit idea that the legitimacy of an entire gender starts with their position as a reward or a gift that you are given for being "good" at this. If you've diminished all the other things a person can be by placing their utility as your reward at the top of the list, it's a lot easier to mistreat them for whatever percieved slights you've (often wildly) overreacted to.
Seems like Alamo's headaches may just be starting, company removing their movie from Fantastic Fest
http://variety.com/2017/film/festiv...oards-fantastic-fest-devin-faraci-1202560632/
http://variety.com/2017/film/festiv...oards-fantastic-fest-devin-faraci-1202560632/
Count Dookkake
Member
Oh, shit.
A good blog post to read about Alamo:
http://wherethelongtailends.com/the-hypocrisy-of-alamo-drafthouse/
EDIT: BEATEN
http://wherethelongtailends.com/the-hypocrisy-of-alamo-drafthouse/
EDIT: BEATEN
Discotheque
Banned
Fox searchlight and that movie is a big one. What if other studios follow suit. God damn, what was that company thinking
Giving people second chances, amirite?
Bobby Roberts
Banned
UltimaPooh
Member
From League's facebook just now.
Tim League said:
I AM SO SORRY I WAS CAUGHT BUT ONLY NOW DO I WANT TO FIX IT BECAUSE OTHERWISE ALAMO/FF/BND ARE TOAST. How about you step down and quit Tim?
UltimaPooh
Member
Step down from what? All of the things he's involved with?
Random Human
They were trying to grab your prize. They work for the mercenary. The masked man.
I think Bobby Roberts said this earlier, but as someone who used to lurk around the Chud forums it totally blows my mind that you might see the collapse of Drafthouse over freaking' DF. What a bizarre hill to die on.
Like you couldn't find another geeky dude to write editorials for you in a strident tone that would get clicks?!
Like you couldn't find another geeky dude to write editorials for you in a strident tone that would get clicks?!
Bobby Roberts
Banned
I think that's basically what he's saying, yeah. Take the money he's made with Drafthouse/Mondo so far, and walk.
I don't think he's going to do that, but I'm pretty sure that's what Vector is suggesting he consider.
Cross-Section
Member
Dude needs to say what exactly he did wrong (as to convince us that he truly learned from this garbage fire) and not just this "I made a bad, here's what the crisis management people said I need to do" BS.
I mean, who the fuck uses problematic in a statement like this
Gentleman Jack
Member
In my experience, the people who offer this kind of apology are only seeking acceptance from the people they haven't actually tresspassed against.
Random Human
They were trying to grab your prize. They work for the mercenary. The masked man.
Problematic and "listen and learn" feels like standard issue progressive-dude-got-busted-and-wants-to-win-back-progressives speak.
UltimaPooh
Member
I used to work for Alamo. Tim is more involved than just Drafthouse and Mondo. He has his new movie studio. He personally owns a few of the Alamos and just isn't CEO.
I just want to be clear on what you guys think he should give up because hes pretty ingrained into the fabric of Alamo at this point.
Now I'm torn on whether or not I personally want to see him step down. I think if he continues to be transparent about this issue and shows us how he has learned from this and how he plans to fix this community then I think he should be given that opportunity.
EDIT: Just to be clear it seems like nothing Tim says at this point is good enough for anyone unless he steps down. It seems like there is nothing else on the table.
Problematic is a "softener" word. Its a good one to have (because sometimes for the sake of polite discussion you really don't want to go into the exact specifics) but used like this it's just a straight-up weasel word.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
Problematic isn't the word that jumped out at me.
It was "may."
Without that word, the sentence reads like this:
But with the word, it makes sure to insert a level of doubt. "Are you sure you heard what you think you heard?"
That shit is subtle, but it's there for a reason.
It was "may."
Without that word, the sentence reads like this:
But with the word, it makes sure to insert a level of doubt. "Are you sure you heard what you think you heard?"
That shit is subtle, but it's there for a reason.
I mean the guy still can't even put in a public apology towards the victims in the second statement. Perhaps he's already doing that in private but Pandora's box has been opened since he made this decision to announce that Devin was working for them again and may have been for some time. And because of this decision, a long time programmer of FF has left already, and studios are pulling movies out of the fest. That's like starting to get toward really bad levels where the 'brand' is being hurt. He's pretty screwed in this day and age where this kind of stuff isn't tolerated anymore. I'm not saying this because I'm personally hating the dude, but realistically, his decision is really hurting the poor folks that work under him.
ElBoxyBrown
Banned
Just say you fucked up before you do more damage to the Alamo brand.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
This isn't necessarily true, it's just that the missed opportunities keep stacking up for dude.
He's a man not known for half-measures. He's made a name for himself by going big.
He needs to do that here. I think if he tackles this problem with the same sort of passion as he's tackled most every other aspect of his expansion into mini-moguldom, then people will start to come around and believe.
But facebook posts like those are not that.
He should own it, first and foremost. He's doing what pewdiepie was doing this week of jumping around what he's apologizing about and giving a weak as hell apology under the guise of him acting like he's affected. He's only coming across like he's sad that he got caught.
He needs to clearly state what he did and why it was the poor mistake and clearly apologize for it. Apologies to the woman that was assaulted and who he lied to, apologize for playing this like a two faced person and apologize to the patrons of his theater chain and businesses who for a lot of them felt included in the community. He dashed all that away with one decision and won't admit to what he did. That's the most galling thing of it all. He won't admit his mistake.
Gentleman Jack
Member
This is exactly the kind of sentiment Tim's ""apology"" is designed to elicit, btw. He (sort of, vaguely) apologized guys! Isn't that enough?
UltimaPooh
Member
I agree. But I would like to see what he does with his tour around the country to all of the locations before going that far for him to step down. Lets see what he does with the rest of the information he gathers.
If he does another half measure I would be inclined to agree with you to have him step down.
EDIT: Lots of you seem to have blue prints as to what you expect out of an apology. He literally used the word sorry and the fact that he let us all down. Like I said above. I would like to see what he does after his tour and whether or not he remains as transparent as he has been.
I mean, shit, this is his second sentence:
Basically saying he's REALLY worried about this affecting his image when he should be offering an apology to victims first and foremost.
What will the poor CEO do.
UltimaPooh
Member
Seems like you would have him do nothing after stepping down.
Yeah, I mean, if his apologies and explanations keep looking like it was perfectly crafted by a paid crisis management team, it'll never be good enough.
I don't think it's too late, but it will be for lots of people soon, if it isn't already.
UltimaPooh
Member
Will the apology need to have improper grammar and typos for you guys to believe its not from PR?
Or will having those make you think that PR is just putting them in there to throw you off the trail?
Just want to know what you think is genuine.
Or will having those make you think that PR is just putting them in there to throw you off the trail?
Just want to know what you think is genuine.
UltimaPooh
Member
Yea it was a super idiotic decision by League. Sometimes it feels like he runs the company like back when he only had a few locations in Austin.
I think it's perfectly reasonable to expect well-off business execs to take accountability for poor action/lack of action in the form of resignation. It's as fair an expectation for people to hold as is his right to continue to not really own up to keeping Faraci employed on the low. He said sorry, but words aren't enough for everyone and the results of this tour probably aren't going to be easily verifiable from the outside looking in - League is talking about changing himself, not Drafthouse as a business.
So no, I'm not personally hell bent on him resigning, but I think it's perfectly fair to hold that expectation of him. He'd survive.
You need to appreciate that no one owes League anything whatsoever.
It's not that hard to see when an apology is heartfelt versus when it exists merely to clear the air.
The fact that he still hasn't publicly apologized to the victims here is frankly galling. This comes off as an apology to his Facebook friends for disappointing them.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
I didn't say he should step down, and I never actually agreed with that sentiment. I just clarified the question you were asking.
The thing is that "let's just see, you guys - but I don't think you guys will be satisfied until he falls on the sword" is kinda setting up a situation where you're basically in this thread specifically to vouch for Tim League, which you don't really need to do because I think a lot of people here are already familiar with him to some level. Granted, they probably never worked for him directly/indirectly like you did, I know I never have—but the level of disappointment you're seeing wouldn't be what it is if he was just a CEO.
But the continued mistakes & missed opportunities on his part, made in response to his misguidedly, and with the best possible intentions, enabling a sexual offender and serial asshole is going to naturally lead to a scenario where people aren't going to be super generous with that benefit of the doubt, yunno? It's making him into "just a CEO". It's making him a guy who values Devin Faraci's friendship over his business. Which is fucking weird. Nobody's saying he needs to utterly devalue Faraci's friendship first. Just that when its placed on the scales, it doesn't need to be anywhere near as equal as it appears to be, and has appeared for the last what, 10 months? 9?
And I don't know if the same defensiveness that Tim is speaking to in that (not great) apology is the best path in a defense of him.
Like - I'm skeptical that something's going to come of this tour that isnt' already evident, yunno? So the prospect of waiting for the tour to end doesn't seem super-necessary.
But who knows! We're gonna have to wait for it to play out regardless, so I guess we'll find out.
Gentleman Jack
Member
Maybe it's time to stop acting like everyone who isn't convinced by his FB feed is calling for blood. Like you mentioned, actions speak louder than words, but nobody owes him forgiveness for hiding the fact that he's employing a known shitbag while projecting an image of inclusive progressivism. Nobody gives a shit what his previous actions 'may' say about him, because they've actually said plenty. Personally he gets a chance to make it better. This FB groveling isn't it.
I just don't know how any employee can ever enter a trust relationship with a boss who had gone behind said employees back to ensure that the direct source of harassment remains on the payroll in secret with the hopes that one day he'll be able to slide right back in.
That is an inherent violation of trust that I can't see people overcoming. Why would anyone want to work for someone who has now proven they will stoop to that kind of thing? Shit, when a coworker at my job had her butt grabbed by another that dude was an instant memory. If he was allowed back secretly it would be the most heinous shit.
That is an inherent violation of trust that I can't see people overcoming. Why would anyone want to work for someone who has now proven they will stoop to that kind of thing? Shit, when a coworker at my job had her butt grabbed by another that dude was an instant memory. If he was allowed back secretly it would be the most heinous shit.
UltimaPooh
Member
Ultimately if nothing comes of it then yeah I'd want Tim out just as bad because it shows he has no clear course for the company or its values anymore and thus someone else needs to be brought in to take over who can make Alamo even better than it has been.
It's not to vouch for Tim. Tho I have met him a few times and been in meetings with him I feel like its fine to discuss our thoughts on the matter here as whats the point in a thread where there isn't at least a little difference of opinions on a certain matter or subject.
The hurt is deep because Tim did build a really good company and has done a lot of things that show he is capable of the opposite and I am willing to give him the ability to write the ship. It has only been a week since this has occurred and I think everyone expects this ship righting to just happen as quick as a tweet... and that's my thoughts on the matter not that any of you are wrong for your feelings. I was just interested in what it would take for you guys to give League a chance.
I think you're right... but it hasn't even been a week yet since this story broke. He got caught red handed and it's unfortunate because this probably means this is the first time he has been caught doing something like this... not the first time he actually has done something with this. I hope League does turn around and really improve himself and through that the company.
Moral relativism has no point here... If no one owes anyone anything then whats the point in doing anything.
Just to be fair to the actual story... the victim was never an Alamo employee. Still Devin should have never been rehired.