The McPassion hits the net [news]

(Graphics coming soon. It seems that Blogger isn't taking them at the moment)


First, a big hello to Beth who actually reads this stuff! And now for our regularly scheduled program:

Wow . . . what a crazy last ten days this has been. We launched The McPassion on the Internet and all H-E-double-toothpicks broke loose. Lets see if I can get it all in order without missing the major points.

So, its February 28th. There’s been some buzzing around the site by friends and people intrigued by the countdown clock – maybe a couple hundred at most. As I sit noodling on my laptop while listening to The Sopranos on TV in the background (refreshing my memory of the storylines before the 6th season starts in a few days), I decide I don’t want to stay up until midnight to launch the pages that link to the movie, so I figure, “well, it’ll be March 1st (Ash Wednesday) in New York…” and at 9:00pm (PST) I launch the film live on Ash Wednesday (EST). Meanwhile, Rik is walking around town wondering if this will mark the end of his career!

You see, Rik is a “Religioso.” That’s a term I came up with, to simply define anyone who is more religious than . . . well . . . me. The definition of a Religioso begins with someone who goes to Church on Sunday and is pretty serious about their faith. And more than likely they are involved in some organization that deals with faith (of any flavor). The definition then ranges upward to . . . The Pope I guess. So, if you fall within that broad spectrum, you're a Religioso in my book ("Not that there's anything wrong with that").

Rik is a student of religion. He knows more about Judaism than I do. See, I’m half Jewish and half something that’s not Jewish . . . Lutheran maybe? I mean my family celebrates Christmas, though my sister enjoys putting a Menorah on the mantle too -- I think it’s really just a way for her to put out more candles, honestly.

I do believe in God, I just have some serious questions/issues when it comes to organized religion in general on a variety of topics (but that's a very different blog). I think I was heavily influenced by watching The PTL Club when I was in Junior High School. Why did I watch it, you ask? Well, my Social Studies teacher assigned us to watch the news and report on current events. A convenient time for me to watch was in the morning, before my mom would drop me off at school (hard to imagine a time before driving myself everywhere) So, I liked to watch The Today Show on NBC. Back then Jane Pauley and Tom Brokaw were the hosts. Anyway, at the crack of dawn, I’d tune in. And before The Today Show started...yep, you guessed it: The PTL Club was on. Even my 13 year old brain knew something just wasn’t right with Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker with their pleas for donations and their disingenuous tone. . . not to mention her makeup job. Look, I know that they don’t represent all those of faith, but it sure instilled a great deal of cynicism in me. And it sure was no surprise to me when Jim and Tammy ended up in hot water some years later (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Bakker).

Yikes, what a tangent. I was talking about my definition of “Religioso.” I came up with this word not as a negative term, but as shorthand with Rik so I could quickly be up to speed on the people he was meeting and making deals with: some being Religiosos and others not. Usually I’d ask, “Now which investment group that’s interested in your scripts is this one again? Is it the Religiosos?” OK, you get the idea.

So, as I said, Rik is a Religioso; and even though he came up with the idea for The McPassion and wrote the early drafts of the script, he was pretty nervous about the reaction of people in religious circles. Can you blame the guy?

By 9:05pm (PST) on Feb 28th The McPassion was on the Internet....with very little fanfare. But the next day, an interview with Rik was published online by ChristianityToday.com (http://www.christianitytoday.com/movies/interviews/rikswartzwelder.html), and the flood gates opened. At first the majority of visitors were coming from CT.com, and then one by one it started to spread. We watched the visitors arrive by the droves on the statistics page I had set-up. We were amazed. We’d count to five, refresh the page, and there were 5 or 6 new visitors. Basically this represents a good portion of the day, watching more and more visitors arrive, seeing that they came from this site and that . . . going to the site or blog to see what had been written about the film . . . Wash. Rinse. Repeat. . . . Poof, a day had gone by!

By the end of Day #1 we had almost 6,000 visitors. We couldn’t believe it. Day #2 was a copy of Day #1, except we did our best not to get sucked into the time-wasting-black-hole of watching the stats and get some other work done.

Late on day #3 I set about uploading more files to help with the demand, and hopefully help visitors to be able to view the film faster. So, on Day #4 we were ready. And the visitors made good use of those extra files. They were also making good use of the feedback form I had provided. The comments were coming in, and so were contest entries. We’ll post the contest entries after April 15th and also announce the winner(s).

We’ve been posting all the comments we receive, both positive and negative. It has been bolstering to see that the vast majority of responses have been positive. And the cool thing is that many of the positive responses are from Pastors and other Religiosos. We started looking at all the blog entries. A good portion were Religioso blogs, and there were discussions going at many of them. And these were more than just the average teenager critiquing the film with a “LMAO” or “Meh.” These were actual debates: some seeing the point of the film and laughing, others declaring blasphemy. Either way it was great; this little four minute film was forcing dialogue.

Things continued along well for several days with the number of visitors increasing. I saw that someone had ripped the film and uploaded it to a site called MilkAndCookies.com. I was familiar with the site already. I’d visited there myself in the past to see if I could find some old Ambiguously Gay Duo short cartoons from SNL (did you know that Steven Colbert was one of the voices? I didn’t either until I saw them again and recognized his voice from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report). So, I sent a friendly email to MilkAndCookies.com explaining why we’d like to keep the film from being on another site. Jaxon was immediately cool and said not only would he remove the film, but he’d redirect visitors from his site to ours. Little did I realize how many visitors he’d funnel our way!

All was good. Overnight, a site in the Netherlands had linked to ours and visitors were arriving like crazy. Later, while I was at work, I got an email from our web host saying that since we were streaming the film, rather than offering it for download, visitors to our site were using up all the ports to the server we are on and making it impossible for people to get to the other sites on that same server. So . . . they had to put a clamp on us. Ahhh, now what?! We didn’t want to have the film be downloaded to try and make sure that visitors had the opportunity to read the press release and the Discussion page at the site. In addition, I still have hopes that with a limited Internet run, we’ll still be eligible for inclusion in film festivals after the film is off the net (we’ve been selected by 3 so far).

Who did I think of first for help? Jaxon. Maybe he’ll keep us on the web until we can get a more permanent solution set-up. Long-story-short, Jaxon was a stand-up guy and provided the film for a few days, so we just instructed visitors to see the film at his site.

In the meantime, I posted an S.O.S. saying that we were looking for bandwidth. The first person to respond was Pastor Tim Thompson of The Church Works, a Theology and Culture think tank (that means really smart Religiosos). He said he’d help us. I asked, “Have you seen the film?!” While I waited for his email response, I was contacted by Mike at Ebaums-World-dot-com saying they might be able to help, but he needed to see a copy of the film to review it. I agreed, letting him know that the film was generating a good deal of controversy and possibly they wouldn’t be comfortable with hosting the film. I made it clear that if they were OK with the content that we’d discuss the arangement further and strike some type of agreement.

I don’t hear back from him. The next day, later in the day, I get an email from a visitor to TheMcPassion.com asking if we allowed Ebaums-World-dot-com to put their brand name on our film and put it on their site. Whoops . . . possible misunderstanding. I contact Mike and apologize if there was a misunderstanding, but that until we had come to an agreement I wanted the film taken down. He assured me it would be. This went back and forth for a couple days, each time with him saying, “No problem, we’ll take care of it soon…within the next 24 hours.” I even sent Mike and their legal department a more formal email, stating clearly I wanted it taken down and citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act….and I Cc’d my attorney.

I had given him the benefit of the doubt (my mistake). I thought, maybe they needed to take care of it overnight when they were doing server maintenance or something. Now, that brings us up to today (3/14/06).

I woke up this morning and the first thing I did was check EBW.com. Nope . . . The McPassion was still posted there. I had stuff to do so I programmed Mike’s number into my cell phone and took off. I kept calling throughout the morning. I guess they don’t open the office there at EBW.com until noon. At 9:10am (PST) I finally had Mike on the phone and I told him I was upset that my film was still on his site. Again he assured me he would have it dealt with that day. Flash-forward: a couple hours go by and I’m back home. It’s 11:15am . . . and the film’s still up there. My head explodes. I call and speak with the receptionist and ask for the legal department. She asks, “What for?” And I tell her I’m pretty angry, and tired of Mike and his runaround, and I want the film down immediately. She said everyone was in a staff meeting, but she’d poke her head in and see what she could do. She’d have someone call me. Then I decided to eat some lunch before I fell over. At noon I check EBW.com and lo-and-behold the film was off their site. They need 24 hours my ass. So now, because of them, and the fact that they purposefully made the film downloadable, there are low-grade versions of the film floating around with their crappy EBW.com logo stuck on them. Oh, and they haven't called me . . .

I found a site (too late) called http://www.ebaumsworldsucks.com. It would appear that EBW.com has a history of ripping people off and ignoring requests to have content removed, even by the copyright holder. The flash animation there is pretty funny. Check it out.

In the end, everything worked out great with Tim at The Church Works. He really gets what the film is saying, in addition to finding it funny. He hooked us up big-time with bandwidth. What a great guy. And we’re back on the net, even better than before.

Also in the mix: we got a call from the Bravo Network, saying they saw the film and thought it was, “Frikkin’ hilarious,” and wanted to see if we’d be interested in having it air as part of their show that features viral/Internet videos. We’ll see what that’s all about in due time . . .

Ok, this is waaaay long enough for a catch-up entry. I’m off to get some rest. Tomorrow is another McDay.

~~~