{"id":61,"date":"2006-04-28T20:10:16","date_gmt":"2006-04-29T04:10:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/godammit.com\/archives\/2006\/04\/what-a-fucking-bastard"},"modified":"2014-05-07T02:15:51","modified_gmt":"2014-05-07T10:15:51","slug":"what-a-fucking-bastard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/what-a-fucking-bastard\/","title":{"rendered":"What a Fucking Bastard"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today in the Los Angeles Times, I read about a New York “producer” named Eric Steel, whose documentary “The Bridge” will screen this weekend at a film fetival in San Francisco. Steel and his “crew” used concealed cameras to film suicides on the Golden Gate Bridge over the last two years, by obtaining a permit from the city to make a documentary about the visual majesty of the bridge. Steel says he was motivated by an article he read in 2003, recounting the bridge’s fatal attraction for the depressed.<\/p>\n

The documentary includes vivid footage of nearly two dozen suicides. As he recorded the suicides, Steel sought information about the identities, and then filmed interviews with grieving family members. He never told them that he had filmed the suicides they were discussing. They are not happy about this.<\/p>\n

Steel says that his crew intervened in 5 suicide attempts. I guess the others were just…..too cinematic to pass up? “It’s hard to watch anyone die” Steel notes. “No one on the crew went unscathed.”<\/p>\n

WHAT?!<\/strong>\u00a0 I don’t know about the crew, but it looks like Steel is unscathed to the tune of a few million bucks plus a shitload of publicity. His intent, he pontificates in the LA Times, is “to illuminate the darkest corner of the human mind.” HUH?!<\/strong>\u00a0 Doesn’t he mean, to pander to the basest instinct of the jaded moviegoer? Can we get Joseph Conrad to step in and\u00a0\u00a0clear things up, like Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Suicide Prevention groups are calling Steel’s movie an irresponsible, reprehensible snuff film, and\u00a0\u00a0worry about the well-known phenomenon of copy-cat suicide.<\/p>\n

I think I believe in freedom of speech. I’m really being tested here, know what I mean? The story includes a nice photo of Mr. Steel’s fat face, which seems to be begging to be smashed in with a baseball bat.<\/p>\n

Anyone who misunderstood “Mothers who Kill” and thinks I might whack my kids, can stop worrying about it. I need to kill this stupid fucking bastard before I do anything else, and that includes the dishes and the whippings with the hickory sticks behind the barn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"