Jack Thompson Will Be Featured In BBC Film 'Grand Theft Auto' 118
New submitter requerdanos writes: Former attorney and professional troll Jack Thompson is set to become a major motion picture figure, played by Bill Paxton, in the upcoming film Grand Theft Auto. According to Cinema Blend, "Paxton is in line to play Jack Thompson. A Miami lawyer, Thompson came into the public eye by frequently blasting Grand Theft Auto, creator Rockstar Games, and video game violence in general. Before that, he was known for attacking media companies who promoted both hip hop and sex. In 2008, allegations of professional misconduct, including harassment, defamation, intimidation, and false statements led to Thompson being disbarred."
Well... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm pretty sure that they will portray Thompson in a positive light... or maybe just in the headlights of a car trying to run him down
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Who will portray Niko Bellic?
Well, it also stars Daniel Radcliffe (Score:2)
He does have some past experience dealing with trolls.
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I'm picturing him talking with a text box appearing beneath his picture: "Jack Thompson, Lawyer (former), publicity hound (failed), censor (failed), moral crusader (shunned by other moral crusaders), and expert on making (inaccurate) statements about videogames"?
BBC: "Mr. Thompson, you... have opinions on the grand theft auto series, don't you? You can accurately say that much at least, right? Can you tell us what they
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In the movie, he's going to sue the lead characters for being violent.
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they're going to show him for what he was,
a guy trolled into giving the game loads of publicity while failing to sue the game.
I mean, it's well known that the reason why GTA 1 got so much press for it's violence etc even before release was that the game promoter made the "negative" press happen.
(it was a good game for a few weekends too, gta1 that is. I had not read any press about it before playing)
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We lucked out (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:We lucked out (Score:5, Funny)
Having briefly interfaced with the entity known as Jack Thompson, I can absolutely confirm that it was not a man. It is a Crazy Fucker.
Re:We lucked out (Score:4, Informative)
Let's all remember the good old days when people laughed at censors from the radical right.
These days everybody either cowers from the censors from the radical left (developers) or cheers them on (media). It's apparently the progressive thing to do to dress old bullshit in new gowns.
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it's why he failed at linking video games to violence, but Anita was successful in linking video games to sexism without any research to back up their statements.
Re:We lucked out (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand, what about Anita Sarkeesian? Can we really say she's been responded to in any sort of rational way? No, what the public sees is a bunch of juvenile attempts to shout down a critic. We're not even talking about how inappropriate rape or death threats are, we're talking about how counterproductive it is to let the conversation change over to that, rather than pointing out how she's wrong, her criticisms are overblown and uninformed, etc. Hell, I would never have even heard of her if it wasn't for the threats and harassment, because THAT'S the story the media keyed in on.
That's why her accusations stuck, not because anyone was evaluating them on any merits, but because a bunch of trolls turned it into a conversation about her being attacked, which caused people to take her side. I'm sure it helped that she was in the role of "feminist critic under attack" rather than "overly litigious lawyer" and thus much more sympathetic in nature, but the ultimate point is that the Gamergate trolls' behavior isn't just objectionable on its own merits, it's also proved rather counterproductive.
Re: We lucked out (Score:5, Insightful)
You're joking, right? Her videos have been absolutely demolished by anyone who spends more than 3 seconds thinking about them. Some of her examples have been entirely debunked - she simply made up facts to back her argument.
Of course, you probably never heard of any of this because of the incredibly persuasive response to those debunking her bullshit: misogyny!
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The story has ceased to be about her videos, and her arguments, which themselves got no traction at all that I can see. What has put her in the spotlight is the harassment and threats.
Re: We lucked out (Score:4, Insightful)
No, he's absolutely right. It doesn't matter if her examples have been debunked or not, or if they've been completely made up. What people believe is what's important, not objective reality, and people's beliefs are shaped by things like media coverage on the harassment she received. So basically, the harassment made everyone take her side, even though she may be (according to you) wrong. If she hadn't been harassed that way, and the critics focused only on the facts, this probably wouldn't have turned out this way.
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You're joking, right? Her videos have been absolutely demolished by anyone who spends more than 3 seconds thinking about them. Some of her examples have been entirely debunked - she simply made up facts to back her argument.
Of course, you probably never heard of any of this because of the incredibly persuasive response to those debunking her bullshit: misogyny!
You should try reading posts you reply to rather than spewing out a kneejerk "SJW-feminazi" response.
OP was pointing out that if the original response had been to debate and defeat her arguments, that would have been sufficient to put the whole thing to bed. Instead, it was used as an excuse to push out piles of unpleasant misogynistic crap which actually reinforced her argument that a lot of games/gamers are misogynistic.
It's analogous to gamers responding to Jack Thompson's claim that games make peo
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Care to point me towards these debunkings? I've been looking for counter-arguments for FF's videos and found nothing.
This was one of the relatively sane ones: [url=http://metaleater.com/video-games/feature/why-feminist-frequency-almost-made-me-quit-writing-about-video-games-part-2]aaa[/url]
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OK, so ignore the above as I accidentally submitted and have forgotten how to edit anything.
The link I posted [metaleater.com] is the best rebutal I could find, but its still complete nonsense. It misrepresents what FF's videos are saying and attacks these strawmen arguments.
The one good point is that the media theories used were developed for TV and video games are a different medium. This is a solid objection, but is pointing out a weakness and not refuting anything.
As for the strawmen:
- "FF says censor X."
Nope, they'
Re:We lucked out (Score:5, Insightful)
People who at rationally generally get treated rationally. People who foam at the mouth and freak out at everything/everyone that disagrees with them get treated as the nutcases they are.
Anita is not a rational actor, therefore is not treated as such. Anyone who calls up someone's boss to get them fired for daring to disagree on a public forum is not a rational person.
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There's a lot of truth to that. I do have to wonder if Jack Thompson got the same ratio of trolls to intelligent counter arguements that Sarkeesian got. "White older male lawyer getting a lot of grief from gamers" just doesn't move as many clicks as "feminist getting attacked by neckboards". So it's kind of hard to say. I'm sure Thompson got his fair share of death threats, probably not rape threats so much.
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Who cares?
I'm just trying to pick the right night to rape and murder Zoe Q
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I'm not an internet rapist
I'm a real vengeance rapist.
I make irreversible hallway scene look like a spa retreat
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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Bill Paxton was amazing in Independence Day!
Will Smith was in Independence Day, not Bill Paxton...
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Will smith did all those parts?
DAMN, that guy's more talented than I thought. And here I thought Eddie Murphy held the crown for fewest co-stars in a single movie.
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Hey, he's technically correct, and that's the best kind of correct.
Re:Can't wait! (Score:5, Funny)
Bill Paxton was amazing in Independence Day!
Will Smith was in Independence Day, not Bill Paxton...
Aflek was the BOMB in Phantoms!
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Bill Paxton was amazing in Independence Day!
Will Smith was in Independence Day, not Bill Paxton...
Today I learned that if one actor stars in a film then no one else starred in it.
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Well, today you can also learn that Bill Paxton is not credited [imdb.com] with being in Independence Day, because he was not in it.
So, it is a completely true statement to say "Will Smith was in Independence Day, not Bill Paxton..."
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I think you missed my sarcasm.
I was continuing the riff, you know, because Bill Paxton was not in ID4 and Will Smith was, thus proving the point that Will Smith clearly played all the...
Never mind.
I'll put a giant "this is a joke" disclaimer next time.
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Well, that's why we have Poe's Law [wikipedia.org].
Weeding out the funny-stupid from the actual-stupid can be a full time job, so people don't bother. ;-)
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Here's your obligatory: "Whoosh".
I'll explain the joke: people seem to get confused between Bill Pullman and Bill Paxton. (And apparently so did you; Paxton was NOT in Independence Day.)
The OP wrote Bill Paxton, and given the length of the post, I assume the mistake was intentional. The standard response is, of course, that "Bill Pullman was in Independence Day, not Bill Paxton". The poster you quoted then took the standard response and twisted it around by correctly naming an actor other than Pullman w
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Don't feel bad, AC. You didn't ruin the joke. It wasn't funny to begin with.
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Here's your obligatory: "Whoosh".
I'll explain the joke: people seem to get confused between Bill Pullman and Bill Paxton. (And apparently so did you; Paxton was NOT in Independence Day.)
The OP wrote Bill Paxton, and given the length of the post, I assume the mistake was intentional. The standard response is, of course, that "Bill Pullman was in Independence Day, not Bill Paxton". The poster you quoted then took the standard response and twisted it around by correctly naming an actor other than Pullman who was in Independence Day.
It's of course no longer funny since I had to explain it, but it seemed necessary.
I think you missed my continuation of the theme, or was it too subtle?
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Bill Paxton was amazing in Weird Science.
----
How CAN the laboring man find time for self-culture?
Similarly named Ron Howard film from 1977 (Score:2)
Does this film have anything to do with a 1977 film directed by Ron Howard [wikipedia.org]? If not, are we shaping up for a fight between the BBC and Fox (successor to the 1977 film's distributor) over confusion in the market?
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The summary is using the term "film" loosely - the BBC show is a documentary, not a movie.
Feature-length documentaries (Score:2)
That depends in part on the running time they're shooting for. To me, a feature-length (70 to 210 minute) documentary is a movie. This means Fahrenheit 9/11 and Sicko and Capitalism: A Love Story and Super Size Me and The Greatest Movie Ever Sold are movies.
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The BBC makes TV programmes, not movies. "Movies" is a distinctly North Americanism label, no one in the UK uses it.
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Do they not? Who says? I've seen plenty of documentaries that contain reenactments of certain things that happened.
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So any documentary about the Civil War or WW2 or other historical events only use people who lived through that time? They can never reenact the events to visually show what happened? Or do they bring the people back from the dead. Zombies help make documentaries much more interesting though they sacrifice accuracy a bit when Zombie Lincoln tries to eat the cameraman's brains.
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You mean Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter wasn't a documentary!?
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http://www.andsoitbeginsfilms.... [andsoitbeginsfilms.com]
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Are the titles on the page you cite reused under license, or does there actually exist no trademark-like exclusive right in a film's title?
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Sometimes the MPAA/DGA will say a distinction should be made, sometimes not.
Which explains Precious: Based on the novel Push by Sapphire to avoid a similarly titled film directed by Paul McGuigan. (I'm glad we didn't get Precious: Based on the novel The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien.) On the other hand, there are two Nine movies released in 2009: one with Sackboy and the other a musical directed by Rob Marshall.
Two ways this could play out (Score:2)
Either they're going to give him an extremely sympathetic portrayal and the film is going to be some kind of "think of the children" moral crusade against games.
Or else they're going to get sued by him. Assuming there's anywhere left that he's still allowed to file suit.
Both equally plausible, I suspect.
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Game Over man! (Score:1)
Game Over!
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Re:Jack Thompson is a piece of shit (Score:5, Insightful)
He was reincarnated in the form of Anita S.
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Also, Anita doesn't really take after him, otherwise all of the shits who send her rape and death threats would be dealing with pointless and irrelevant lawsuits that had no hope of succeeding.
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And news companies know their audience is a bunch of suckers that will react to "oh no, poor cute princesses are being excluded?!" and be outraged, which makes them quite a bit of readership money.
This is not ro
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Why Paxton? (Score:1)
Wasn't a steaming pile of excrement available to play JT?
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The steaming pile of excrement just passed the bar exam and is trying to take JT's old job tilting at windmills.
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who else has been killed by a
Terminator, a Predator, and an Alien.
Lance Henriksen has also been killed by a Terminator, an Alien and a Predator.
LK
Disbarring (Score:2)
The concept of mandatory bars and disbarring seems, ironically, to be unamerican. I can see having bar membership as an optional accreditation. We have ASE certified mechanic, or CCNA IT guys. Actually disallowing someone from doing a job, though, merely because someone else says they're unqualified seems incongruent with basic capitalism and free market principles.
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Yeah, that's what happens in the majority of states that don't mandate bar membership. Attorneys watch videos and then we force people to hire them.
Good comparison otherwise, though.
Re:Disbarring (Score:4, Interesting)
First off, a majority of states DO mandate membership in the state bar association (32 out of 50). Secondly, even in the states that don't, you can't just hang out your shingle and practice law - you need to be admitted to the bar by passing the state bar exam and being admitted to practice law in that state.
Law is a profession where an incompetent or corrupt practitioner can cause customers tremendous (and not readily correctable) harm. Having a licensing process that ensures that practitioners are at least marginally competent, and a way to prevent the corrupt from robbing others, is by no means unreasonable. We do require licenses for far too many things in this country, but this isn't one of them - if your unlicensed DC tour guide screws up, you end up getting bad info on when the Library of Congress was built, but if your lawyer screws up, you can end up losing your home, or going to jail, etc.
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Law is a profession where an incompetent or corrupt practitioner can cause customers tremendous (and not readily correctable) harm.
So is teaching. So is banking. So is policing. So is being President.
Having a licensing process that ensures that practitioners are at least marginally competent, and a way to prevent the corrupt from robbing others
How does it do that? And how does it do that in ways that the law does not?
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So is teaching. So is banking. So is policing. So is being President.
And we require licenses for all of these, with the exception of the last.
Having a licensing process that ensures that practitioners are at least marginally competent, and a way to prevent the corrupt from robbing others
How does it do that? And how does it do that in ways that the law does not?
Upfront, through the bar exam, it shows that the candidate has at least a decent grasp of the law. On an ongoing basis, it provides a review process for activity that might not be illegal per se, but poorly serves the client.
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What? There's no license to be a teacher, or a banker, or a police officer. At least not where I live. There are job requirements, but not licenses. If you're going to conflate job requirements with licenses, then everything requires a license.
Look, I'm not saying that I would ever hire a lawyer that wasn't certified in some way, I'm just saying that it seems unnecessary to mandate it. If the bar was effective at keeping bad lawyers out, then we wouldn't have bad lawyers (ha), and if we believe in a fr
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"There's no license to be a teacher, or a banker, or a police officer."
Teacher licensing is required in every state that I know of. https://www.teach.org/teaching... [teach.org]
Bankers definitely require licenses, at least those who deal with client money in any significant way (look up FINRA, for example).
For police officers, you have to be vetted and hired by a government agency (which is essentially getting a license) and typically take a an exam, you can't just declare yourself a police officer.
"If the bar was eff
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Do you live in Somalia or something? I'm trying to imagine a place you could live where your statement could be true and that's all I'm coming up with at the moment. That sounds like some sort of libertarian hellscape.
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The key is to remember who makes those rules: politicians, i.e., lawyers themselves. It's the ultimate regulatory capture.
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The concept of mandatory bars and disbarring seems, ironically, to be unamerican. I can see having bar membership as an optional accreditation. We have ASE certified mechanic, or CCNA IT guys. Actually disallowing someone from doing a job, though, merely because someone else says they're unqualified seems incongruent with basic capitalism and free market principles.
Only if you distill the reason down to a very simplistic level. Remember that professional organizations are made up of peers. Yes there are politics involved; politics are always involved with groups. However, if someone's peers says that they are unqualified, that should carry some weight. In the case of Thompson, he wasn't merely disbarred because of his qualifications. He was disbarred for abusing the legal process for petty, vindictive, harassing, and arguably insane actions.
Unlike other professions la
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I don't want to defend Thompson at all. I do think that if people are committing criminal acts, like fraud, or intimidation, or harassment, or contempt, then we already have laws to deal with that, and we should use those laws. We don't need an extrajudicial process -- the judicial system should eat its own dog food.
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I don't want to defend Thompson at all. I do think that if people are committing criminal acts, like fraud, or intimidation, or harassment, or contempt, then we already have laws to deal with that, and we should use those laws. We don't need an extrajudicial process -- the judicial system should eat its own dog food.
And what laws exist for the behaviors that Thompson did? Thompson did not threaten anyone physically so he cannot be arrested. He just falsely accused everyone of crimes because they opposed him in any real or imagined. The law has no course other than defamation. The bar has rules of conduct and he was disbarred.
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I don't want to defend Thompson at all. I do think that if people are committing criminal acts, like fraud, or intimidation, or harassment, or contempt, then we already have laws to deal with that, and we should use those laws. We don't need an extrajudicial process -- the judicial system should eat its own dog food.
So I suppose you would be against schools screening out paedophiles as teachers, since they can always be convicted of rape after the event?
Also, what is the libertarian defence of having a legal system at all? It is the basis for all government which you seem to hate so much.
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The concept of mandatory bars and disbarring seems, ironically, to be unamerican. I can see having bar membership as an optional accreditation. We have ASE certified mechanic, or CCNA IT guys. Actually disallowing someone from doing a job, though, merely because someone else says they're unqualified seems incongruent with basic capitalism and free market principles.
And sending someone to prison for committing murder is an even more serious interference with their right to make money.
I would like to think you were joking, but there is no evidence for that, so I will instead assume you're a fucking idiot.
Wow... (Score:3, Insightful)
Has it really been 7 years since he was disbarred?
I remember celebrating when he got the boot, but I didn't think it had really been that long ago.
This gen's version of "Warning: Parental Advisory" (Score:2)
I look forward to a dramatized reenactment of events I witnessed as they unfolded. Makes for entertaining history.
I'd love to see similar movies about Hillary Rosen (RIAA attack dog) and Jack Valenti (MPAA attack dog) from an earlier era of internet culture.
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Unsavory, villainous, disreputable roles (e.g. Richard III, Lady Macbeth, Iago) are highly coveted by serious actors and the results are often gripping, fascinating, illuminating and entertaining. Heroes are boring.