It’s a really powerful article, and it’s hard to argue with any of it. What a nightmare it must be to have what happened to Amanda Knox happen to you. A totally innocent person, who was not only imprisoned for years for a crime she had nothing to do with, but also had her name dragged in the mud by the global press for years. To such an extent that most casual observers still think she had something to do with the crime.
It’s clear that the filmmakers have no legal obligation to Knox (and she acknowledges as much in the article), but I think it is equally clear that they have a moral obligation to not slander her using a thinly veiled fictional character.
It’s a shame too, because the real “Amanda Knox saga” would make for a much more interesting movie: what is it like to have your roomate murdered, your life destroyed, and your identity robbed from you by the global tabloid press? That’s the real Amanda Knox story.
>It’s clear that the filmmakers have no legal obligation to Knox (and she acknowledges as much in the article)
I think you and she are being generous. Amanda 'jokingly' floats the idea of defaming and slandering Matt Damon under the guise of fictionalization. She makes an excellent point-- Matt wouldn't put up with that. The only plausible distinction he can make is that his movie is not a gross distortion of the moral character of a living person, which seems like the sort of thing courts can and do sort between litigants who cannot agree.
>floats the idea of defaming and slandering Matt Damon under the guise of fictionalization. She makes an excellent point-- Matt wouldn't put up with that.
But it seems like Matt Damon would have to put up with it. What could Matt realistically do? Filing a lawsuit would probably go nowhere. See the informal "small penis" rule by fiction writers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_penis_rule
The 2010 film "The Social Network" didn't even bother with fictionalized names and made Mark Zuckerberg look bad but he didn't sue. One legal opinion thinks MZ didn't have an easy case of defamation which would make the lawsuit a waste of time: https://www.litigationandtrial.com/2010/07/articles/the-law/...
"The social network" does not make Mark Zuckerberg look bad. He looks like a poor socially inept nerd who got scammed by Parker, it makes one want to pity him.
I'm currently reading a book called "Facebook The Inside Story" and while it's definitely an anti-Facebook perspective it illustrates a number of ways the movie was unfair to Mark.
The biggest problem, to me, was suggesting that Mark basically stole the concept from the Winklevoss twins. The book traces the origins of the idea and clarifies the context. Things like: there are many other similar social networks, a boy at Mark's previous school had created and shared a "Facebook" project, the Harvard school newspaper was explicitly calling for the creation of a school wide Facebook (and that call inspired Mark to try and create one first), etc. It's less like he stole the idea from the Winklevoss twins and more like the idea was out there in many ways. What he did to the Winklevoss twins was tell them he was working on their project while working on his own intentionally trying to derail them.
> The biggest problem, to me, was suggesting that Mark basically stole the concept from the Winklevoss twins.
I don't think the film suggests that at all. It says the Winklevoss think this, of course. But it doesn't agree with them.
> What he did to the Winklevoss twins was tell them he was working on their project while working on his own intentionally trying to derail them.
That's also exactly what the movie says. The film is on the Winklevoss's side at all - it makes them look ridiculous for thinking their "innovative" idea is that a harvard.edu address is exclusive. They're douchebags who want to make a website to put on the internet what is already happening at the Finals clubs (buses bringing in hot women to party with harvard legacies).
The part of the film that I thought was the biggest problem was that it framed the whole Facebook project as Mark's way to deal with loneliness. The film starts with him being dumped by Erica. The film ends with him refreshing (pathetically) the pending friend request to her on Facebook.
In reality he had a long term girlfriend when he started developing Facebook and she is now his wife.
Mark maybe a socially awkward human who doesn't quite understand that Facebook has become a weird perversion of actual social interaction, but he is not alone the way the film constantly repeats (Eduardo: "I was your only friend")
I agree with you that the film also slights Zuckerberg by suggesting he has few or no friends and was creating Facebook over a girl. There are a number of things I think the film "gets wrong". The removal of Saverin made a lot more sense to me in reading the Facebook book I referenced above compared to when I saw the movie - where it felt much more like betraying a friend.
When I saw the film I did get the impression that it supported the "Mark stole the idea from Winklevoss twins" narrative. Granted, I saw it years ago and I may be remembering things incorrectly, but that's what I (remember that I) took away from it.
A big concept that I think the movie "gets wrong" (scare quotes because the movie successfully tells an entertaining story and isn't trying to be a faithful history, so the movie isn't exactly wrong, just not reflective of reality) is the focus on the drama with the twins, Saverin, and Mark. The book spends much more time with Facebook design decisions and a broader cast.
The movie's narrower focus on a few main characters and their drama makes it seem like the consequential moments of Facebook's history are things like getting the idea from the Winklevoss twins. The movie thinks more about a spark of an idea - Facebook, whereas the book thinks more about taking a prototype and turning it into a big business. I think the latter is more of what is important about Facebook.
>"The social network" does not make Mark Zuckerberg look bad
It depicts that he did steal the idea from the Winklevoss brothers. It also painted a picture that he directly conspired with his investors to screw Eduardo Saverin.
I suspect that's all at least partially true, but perhaps not as clear cut as the film shows.
Maybe something was lost in translation, I watched the movie dubbed to Spanish, but what I remember is that the Winklevoss tried to exploit Zuckerberg and Saverin was slacking after the first few months, so Zuckerberg only responded in a crude but not totally unreasonable fashion.
Movies tend to make us identify with the main character, maybe that's why I saw his actions as adequate to the throat-cutting environment.
I meant the sort of timeline that unrolled...you see things like this excerpt, supposedly an email between Zuck and the Winklevosses:
"I read over all the stuff you sent me re: Harvard Connection and it seems like it shouldn't take too long to implement, so we can talk about it after I get all the
basic functionality up tomorrow night."
Where that's happening, in the movie, well before Zuck starts working on "The Facebook". Without any other context that perhaps it wasn't Zuck's first exposure to that kind of idea.
> but what I remember is that the Winklevoss tried to exploit Zuckerberg and Saverin was slacking after the first few months, so Zuckerberg only responded in a crude but not totally unreasonable fashion.
I don't know what Saverin was actually up to in those days (reality vs the fiction of the movie), however the movie clarified that Saverin was taking the subway in New York "12 hours a day" trying to generate advertising sales for Facebook. It notes that he had taken an internship and quit the first day to direct his time in pursuit of trying to garner ad sales for Facebook. Parker insults Saverin about this in the confrontation scene at the Palo Alto house they're renting ("you're just one step away from bagging Snookies Cookies"), and then Saverin clarifies to Zuckerberg in the hallway what he's up to.
The movie makes it appear as if they decided to cut Saverin out of the company because he froze the company accounts out of spite, after Zuckerberg tells Saverin that he needs to move out to California, that he's at risk of being left behind. There's a phone call between Zuckerberg and Saverin (during which Saverin's girlfriend lights something on fire), where an upset Zuckerberg confronts Saverin about freezing the company accounts, where he rants about the risk that it posed to Facebook and its uptime.
Did Saverin actually do that, and did that play a role in why they tried to cut him out of the company? Maybe somebody else here that knows a lot more can chime in.
This story with quoted personal instant messages & emails indicates Saverin began running unauthorized ads on Facebook to promote his own thing and that there was a more elaborate decay in the relationship between the founders:
Really? I won't say everyone in The West Wing is a saint. But most everyone on both sides of the aisle comes across as a lot more idealistic and principled than you're likely to find in the real Washington DC.
Money and connections open other options for applying pressure. For instance, see the alleged behavior of Harvey Weinstein towards Rose McGowan involving spooks for hire.
(I'm not talking about Damon at all here, I don't know much of anything about him. Just pointing out that lawsuits are far from the only tools available to those with means.)
I have a theory that you can measure someone's power by how many people can hate them without them having to care.
Why should Zuck care if the movie paints him in a poor light? He is an near-infinitely powerful megabillionaire before the movie, and he is one afterwards. The movie could show him eating babies for an hour and a half and it likely wouldn't budge Facebook's stock price.
If I were to name this theory, I'd call it "The Law of Larry Ellison". Because no matter what you do, you'll never be as hated as Ellison and look how much that has affected him. I don't think he's sailing is megayacht to his giant private Hawaiian island and crying himself to sleep because the world doesn't like him.
Zuckerberg is, and was, especially after the movie came out, much more famous than Weinstein, and the portrayals in question are different. One is unflattering, the other is attempting to cover a felony.
When there's an unflattering depiction out there of you, bringing more attention to it might be counterproductive, depending on how bad it is.
If you're worried about going to prison, all of a sudden how unflattering you're seen likely becomes secondary to that.
>IANAL, but I think she absolutely has a legal case.
If she does, it seems like a bunch of greedy lawyers looking for a big pay day would be willing to take her libel case on contingency which would cost her nothing. If a lawyer is willing to risk a ton of their own firm's money because they're confident of a winning big multi-million dollar judgement from the filmmaker, that would a good signal that Amanda has an excellent case.
Maybe her phone is ringing off the hook with calls from such lawyers but I doubt it because such defamations lawsuits against works of fiction have been historically hard to win.
Another aspect that's made more confusing by the various replies in this thread is that the film's official marketing (trailer, official website, posters) do not mention "Amanda Knox" or even have a tagline of "inspired by a true story". Instead, it's the various news media (such as Vanity Fair magazine article she cited) making the parallels to Amanda Knox.
Yes, the filmmakers may be sly about avoiding the mention of "Amanda Knox" while being fully aware that the media outlets will make that connection in the minds of the public for them.
>The small penis thing doesn't seem relevant here,
To clarify in case the sequence of ideas got lost in the replies... I mentioned the "small penis" informal rule was a strategy for Amanda Knox to hypothetically write a fiction story about someone named "Mack Dorkin not being well-endowed" and the real Matt Damon not pursuing a lawsuit to silence her. It wasn't about "Stillwater"'s filmmakers using that strategy to protect themselves from Amanda Knox.
>"small penis" was Chrichton making a mean joke, not a legal theory.
I had already used the adjective "informal" to describe the so-called "rule" so there was no need to nitpick that it wasn't "legal theory".
In any case, it seems like you didn't carefully read the wikipedia article so your attempted correction is not accurate. You've got your timeline mixed up.
The "small penis rule" was mentioned by journalist Dinitia Smith in 1998 (6 years before Michael Chrichton used it in his 2004 book) in a New York Times article. She was relaying a legal strategy told to her by attorney Leon Friedman.
Excerpt from the NY Times 1998 article:
>Leon Friedman, who was Sir Stephen's American lawyer in his dispute with Mr. Leavitt and who moderated the Authors Guild panel, observed that ''under New York State law, you cannot use a person's name, portrait or picture for purposes of trade without their permission.'' You can, however, use a person's identity if you don't use his name, he added.
>That is, unless you libel them. ''Still, for a fictional portrait to be actionable, it must be so accurate that a reader of the book would have no problem linking the two,'' said Mr. Friedman. Thus, he continued, libel lawyers have what is known as ''the small penis rule.'' One way authors can protect themselves from libel suits is to say that a character has a small penis, Mr. Friedman said. ''Now no male is going to come forward and say, 'That character with a very small penis, 'That's me!' ''
Matt Damon is good friends with Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and the only reason they made him like that is because the doll maker messed up on Damon's doll and he looked like a dunce.
Making a movie "based on the Amanda Knox story" and then implying she was involved in the murder is not clearly satirical. Comment higher up says she doesn't have a case, but I honestly don't understand how this wouldn't be libel/slander.
Jimmy Dell : I think you'll find that if what you've done for them is as valuable as you say it is, if they are indebted to you morally but not legally, my experience is they will give you nothing, and they will begin to act cruelly toward you.
They really would have done her service if they would have just left her name out entirely and just said "the movie stands on its own merit". They could have handled this so much better if they would have just talked to her from the start rather than near completion/release of the movie. Particularly in promoting it.
They could if it was an indie movie. If Matt Damon's starring, that's an 8-figure sum that's got to be made back somehow. Marketing costs for movies today are as much as the film budget itself.
> That responsibility is to conduct the business in accordance with their desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to the basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom.
Emphasis mine. Surely it's against ethical custom to "bend the truth", to destroy someone's reputation, framing them as somehow involved in a murder.
Companies are given a charter to operate and limited liability by the government, in return for performing a public good. At least that was how the idea of corporations came into being.
Capitalism is an economic system, not a system of government. Theoretically we can change the any of the rules corporations operate under through our government, if people cared enough and/or weren't so distracted with other things. Other governments hold companies in their jurisdictions to different standards, like the Chinese, various European countries, Cambodia, etc. All different.
The fact that our culture values money more than many other things, and that we allow corporations and their rich owners to fund politicians has got us to where we are now. The establishment is always resistant to change.
There are plenty of ways to make money that don't involve screwing over innocent people. Maybe I'm a bleeding heart socialist, but I think the moral imperative to blue ruin someone's life trumps the one to make a few more dollars.
they're not mututally exclusive, they're orthogonal. If people want moral goods, capitalism will (imperfectly) skew towards providing them. If the people want trash, capitalism will (imperfectly) skew towards providing trash.
You are correct. They can definitely have an intersection. Some companies actually do some good in the world AND make profits. They don't have to be "mutually exclusive"
The primary good of capitalism is having such huge efficiencies of resources and manufacturing.
That we have to keep redefining poor people such that they can have air conditioning, car, housing, fridge, be fat as hell, and still be defined as poor.
Not all of us buy into the claims capitalism can do no wrong and should be turned upon the world with no limits that some libertarians seem to have. You will never hear me say capitalism is in essence a bad thing, but like most concepts it has to have limits. Otherwise you get fascism, J.P. Morgan, Epstein, etc.
I disagree that the concept that "Capitalism and moral obligation are mutually exclusive" is a valid concept to even consider. They are certainly orthogonal, but do not exclude each other.
Capitalism isn't a philosophy for living life, or if it can be considered as such, it's definitely not a complete one. In contrast, Communism is a philosophy for life, as it extends beyond the economic sphere and into the political and social.
How you organize work and trade is not the complete picture. The continued assertions that "Capitalism is immoral" as a valid viewpoint, versus just being ammoral, are part of why both corporations have been allowed to run amock and why dangerous philsophies like Communism have been on the rise again.
I was referring to the "moral obligation" not to take someone's story and make it a different story for the sake of a profit, which the original poster was referring to as a "moral obligation". An alternative perspective is the "moral obligation" to ones employees and shareholders. What is a "moral obligation" is a matter of perspective.
I try to avoid a lot of documentaries and "historical" films because of these conflicting sentiments. Going into seeing a film, you know that profit, in most cases, is the end goal.
I agree that they're mutually exclusive. It's not necessarily a good thing. I think pretty much all capitalists, as people, have some sense of moral obligation. That's not to say that the two concepts necessarily overlap, or that the world wouldn't be a better place if they were somehow forced to. I think it isn't controversial, as a matter of philosophy, to say that capitalism (as distinct from its observed consequences) is not connected to morality one way or another, any more than bubblesort has a moral value.
your statement is contradictory. Two things cannot be "mutually exclusive" and "not connected". If they are mutually exclusive, then there must be communication between the concepts to coordinate the exclusion, the connection suggested by the word "mutually".
Aye, perhaps using the word "capitalism" set people off. In capitalist terms the demand for the product by consumers justifies the corporation creating the product for them. It might not be "right" or "wrong", but in this case, it does seem like people are on the side of it being morally unjustified despite the profit incentive.
I guess our capitalist "vote" is simply not paying to see this film.
What's the alternative? Giving the responsibility of resource allocation to the state? Aren't they the ones who locked her up, which is the overwhelmingly huge original problem?
The state locked someone up who it knew was innocent, and years later a business badly misrepresented that person's story. Damn it, capitalism!
You're blaming freedom to do things without the state interfering, when the real criminal in the story is the state. Do you work for the Italian criminal justice system?
Given that capitalism is underpinned by the right to own property, it would seem the more accurate argument is that this particular immorality stems from an imperfect capitalism, that is: one with incomplete property rights. It is not at all obvious to me that capitalism and morality are in someway orthogonal let alone mutually exclusive.
> the real “Amanda Knox saga” would make for a much more interesting movie: what is it like to have your roomate murdered, your life destroyed, and your identity robbed from you by the global tabloid press? That’s the real Amanda Knox story.
I might be confused but isn't that the exact plot of the movie she is referencing?
Fair enough, though the main impression I got from this article was that she does not wish to be associated with these kinds of movies at all, so I'm not sure if (another) movie about "the real Amanda Knox story" is really the right take away from the article.
"On 27 March 2015, Italy's highest court, the Court of Cassation, ruled that Knox and Sollecito were innocent of murder, thereby definitively ending the case. Rather than merely declaring that there were errors in the earlier court cases or that there was insufficient evidence to convict, the court ruled that Knox and Sollecito had not committed the murder and were innocent of those charges..."
No, the Italian Supreme court definitively acquitted them and explicitly ruled that they were innocent. I'm sure that doesn't change your viewpoint on anything though.
> It’s a shame too, because the real “Amanda Knox saga” would make for a much more interesting movie: what is it like to have your roomate murdered, your life destroyed, and your identity robbed from you by the global tabloid press? That’s the real Amanda Knox story.
What are the themes of this new movie, then, if not those?
> What are the themes of this new movie, then, if not those?
It falsely implies that Amanda is partially guilty for one (from the article):
> McCarthy told Vanity Fair that “Stillwater’s ending was inspired not by the outcome of Knox’s case, but by the demands of the script he and his collaborators had created.” Cool, so I wonder, is the character based on me actually innocent?
> Turns out, she asked the killer to help her get rid of her roommate. She didn’t mean for him to kill her, but her request indirectly led to the murder. How do you think that impacts my reputation?
I haven’t seen the movie so I have no idea, but I can’t but quote from the article itself:
“..is the character based on me actually innocent?
Turns out, she asked the killer to help her get rid of her roommate. She didn’t mean for him to kill her, but her request indirectly led to the murder. How do you think that impacts my reputation?
I continue to be accused of “knowing something I’m not revealing,” of “having been involved somehow, even if I didn’t plunge the knife.” So Tom McCarthy’s fictionalized version of me is just the tabloid conspiracy guilter version of me.”
Haven’t read the blog post but in her tweet thread last night, Knox spoils how the movie ends —- and also, based on the trailer, the movie theme seems to be much more about American-dad-out-of-America than the media and justice issues surrounding the real case.
To be fair, spoiling the ending of the movie was necessary to make her case - which also had said side benefit, giving her the most minor of retributions.
It seems like she got judged massively simply because she was/ is a very attractive woman; media who are under instruction to capitalise on attractive females[0] had no qualms about doing so in her case either.
It's all up pretty disgusting and I'm extremely disappointed with Matt Damon for getting involved with this movie _now_ - reopening all those wounds yet again - without even checking in with her.
[0] There's evidence of this in Kevin Rudd's Royal Commission on Murdoch in Australia - https://youtu.be/X68NVLPVzuI
While Amanda Knox is not guilty of Meredith Kercher's murder, she is guilty of accusing a random guy of being the murderer. I think she was sentenced to 2-3 years for this false accusation.
It’s clear that the filmmakers have no legal obligation to Knox (and she acknowledges as much in the article), but I think it is equally clear that they have a moral obligation to not slander her using a thinly veiled fictional character.
It’s a shame too, because the real “Amanda Knox saga” would make for a much more interesting movie: what is it like to have your roomate murdered, your life destroyed, and your identity robbed from you by the global tabloid press? That’s the real Amanda Knox story.