By MCN Editor editor@moviecitynews.com

Why You Can’t Rent The New Harmony Korine DVD from Netflix

Posted Thursday, October 21st, 2010 - Comments Off on Why You Can’t Rent The New Harmony Korine DVD from Netflix
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Drag City is seriously considering going into the movie rental business!

Why not? We’ve just about done everything else in the entertainment business, putting out music for twenty-plus (and a few minus) years on whichever format the people fancied, and eventually branching into booking live entertainment (music and comedy so far), radio (wherever they’ll let us broadcast – thanks WMBR, WNUR and anyone else we may be forgetting), the book world (hardback and paperback books, as well as magazines of various kinds and even a comic book), television (not ready for prime time yet), and finally, the holy grail of the entertainment industries, motion pictures. This summer, we handled the successful and compelling theatrical distribution of Harmony Korine’s successful and compelling Trash Humpers across these United States, booking and promoting the film in fifty-plus (and no minus) markets, all told. This was followed with the release of the Trash Humpers DVD on September 21st. So far, we’ve sold several thousand copies in North America.

We haven’t sold any to Netflix, though.

America’s video rental service of choice has all the previous Korine films – Mister Lonely, Julien Donkey-Boy and Gummo. They offer the film he wrote the script for, Kids. They’re also making available the following films: Antichrist, Irreversible, Emmanuel in America, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and all the Jackass films. What do all these films have in common? They all feature more full-frontal nudity, on-screen sex, violence, rape and/or murder than is featured in Trash Humpers. Some of them are in as “poor taste” as Trash Humpers. Or at least they wish they were!

Yet Netflix has deemed the content of Trash Humpers to be too inappropriate for their subscribers to make it available to them. From their perspective, they may be right: they certainly know their subscribers and their tastes, and might have a better awareness of their breaking point (we thought that might have been fuckin’ Avatar). So it’s hard to fault them. But we do love a challenge! We don’t expect Netflix to carry anything they don’t want to, for whatever reason, but it reminds us that this is the price paid when we allow one entity to control the lion’s-share of content distribution. For a list of actual-factual mom-and-pop DVD sales-and/or-rental stores still fighting the good fight and carrying Trash Humpers for sale and/or rent, click here:

http://trashhumpers.dragcity.com/trashvendors.html

Or get a group of 5 “buddies” to each kick in $4 (still leaves you plenty of cash for meth and Sparks) and OWN the motherfucker for repeated beatings:

http://www.dragcity.com/products/trash-humpers-dvd

And if you are a DVD store that prides itself on carrying that which Netflix will not, contact us and we will find a way to get the DVD to you. If not inside you!

So why not pause for a minute, reflect a bit, accept that on many levels this matter is of consequence and then join the cause right here!:

Drag City is seriously considering going into the movie rental business!

Why not? We’ve just about done everything else in the entertainment business, putting out music for twenty-plus (and a few minus) years on whichever format the people fancied, and eventually branching into booking live entertainment (music and comedy so far), radio (wherever they’ll let us broadcast – thanks WMBR, WNUR and anyone else we may be forgetting), the book world (hardback and paperback books, as well as magazines of various kinds and even a comic book), television (not ready for prime time yet), and finally, the holy grail of the entertainment industries, motion pictures. This summer, we handled the successful and compelling theatrical distribution of Harmony Korine’s successful and compelling Trash Humpers across these United States, booking and promoting the film in fifty-plus (and no minus) markets, all told. This was followed with the release of the Trash Humpers DVD on September 21st. So far, we’ve sold several thousand copies in North America.

We haven’t sold any to Netflix, though.

America’s video rental service of choice has all the previous Korine films – Mister Lonely, Julien Donkey-Boy and Gummo. They offer the film he wrote the script for, Kids. They’re also making available the following films: Antichrist, Irreversible, Emmanuel in America, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and all the Jackass films. What do all these films have in common? They all feature more full-frontal nudity, on-screen sex, violence, rape and/or murder than is featured in Trash Humpers. Some of them are in as “poor taste” as Trash Humpers. Or at least they wish they were!

Yet Netflix has deemed the content of Trash Humpers to be too inappropriate for their subscribers to make it available to them. From their perspective, they may be right: they certainly know their subscribers and their tastes, and might have a better awareness of their breaking point (we thought that might have been fuckin’ Avatar). So it’s hard to fault them. But we do love a challenge! We don’t expect Netflix to carry anything they don’t want to, for whatever reason, but it reminds us that this is the price paid when we allow one entity to control the lion’s-share of content distribution. For a list of actual-factual mom-and-pop DVD sales-and/or-rental stores still fighting the good fight and carrying Trash Humpers for sale and/or rent, click here:

http://trashhumpers.dragcity.com/trashvendors.html

Or get a group of 5 “buddies” to each kick in $4 (still leaves you plenty of cash for meth and Sparks) and OWN the motherfucker for repeated beatings:

http://www.dragcity.com/products/trash-humpers-dvd

And if you are a DVD store that prides itself on carrying that which Netflix will not, contact us and we will find a way to get the DVD to you. If not inside you!

So why not pause for a minute, reflect a bit, accept that on many levels this matter is of consequence and then join the cause right here!:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/1000000-Weirdos-Who-Want-To-Rent-Trash-Humpers-From-Netflix/123107424411951

“Boo Fucking Hoo” — Ian MacKaye

PLEASE FORWARD! And add Trash Humpers to your Netflix queue.

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Posted in Movie City News, Press Releases | Comments Off on Why You Can’t Rent The New Harmony Korine DVD from Netflix

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon