I'll just say this here

[drwex]

Rather than pollute all my friends' LJs and Google+ entries:

I do not understand why people are so jazzed about Ender's Game being made into a movie. I will not see it so long as it deposits even one more penny in the pocket of that homophobic, misogynistic loudmouth.

I do understand that some people are able mentally to separate an author from that author's works and certainly there have been some great works produced in the past by authors who were seriously problematic. However, when faced with a modern author who is right now today using the fame and money of his books to promote an anti-woman, anti-gay agenda I simply cannot fathom continuing to support him in any way. This is not just a guy who has private beliefs I don't like. This is a man who writes columns and gives speeches advocating his views. The more money he makes the more hate he is able to spread and I'm not able to be a party to that.

(Also, the novel was mediocre. It was a great short story but much weaker at novel length.)

Comments

[dcltdw]

This, although I've never read the short story and liked the novel.

[feste-sylvain.livejournal.com]

Several things:

1) OSC has absolutely none of the back end of this movie. He has already been paid every penny he's going to be paid for it.

2) Directly.

3) And by that, I mean that further sales of the book are very likely, and that will pump up his royalty checks. This, however, is not affected by my trip to the cinema.

4) Except that if this movie blows the doors off, Speaker for the Dead will likely be optioned, and that would send more money in his direction.

5) I've got one daughter who has read the novel(s) and is very excited that this movie is coming out. I'll have to have a talk with her about the nuances involved.

[drwex]

Are you sure he's not in for a percentage? That's not usually disclosed.

Even so, whether he gets a fraction of a ticket sale isn't so much the point as it's a question of "do I support this artistic endeavor, no matter how good it may be because it's associated with that person".

[feste-sylvain.livejournal.com]

No, that's sympathetic magic. If the artistic endeavor is good and does not benefit the nasty asshole, there should be no problem with supporting the endeavor.

(As to whether OSC gets any of the gate, I'd heard that he won't from someone with more than one tie to the industry. I'll see whether I can scare up something concrete.)

[drwex]

I dispute that all symbolic acts are sympathetic magic, in the sense that I think you mean it. Even if he's getting the quarter-percent-on-gross that authors often get the amount of difference I make by buying or refraining from buying a single $10 ticket is effectively nil. The important part is not to be seen promoting and supporting his work because I dislike what he uses the proceeds of that work to do.

I seem to recall we've had this argument more than once in the past :)

[whipchick.livejournal.com]

Attending his movie in ignorance is just attending the movie. Knowing that a bigot benefits--if not financially, then by the ticket-buyer's contribution to "Hey, this man's books sell tickets, we should make more movies from his books"--is benefitting a bigot on purpose. Saying that the bigot has already been paid, so your money isn't paying him directly, is like saying, "Well, Disneyworld has already been built, and people would go anyway, so my ticket isn't doing them any good."

If your (feste_sylvain)'s position is, "I don't care that this guy's a bigot, I want to see the movie", then own it.

[mizarchivist]

Word.

[chienne-folle.livejournal.com]

Speaker for the Dead is one of my favorite books ever, and I think it's one of the most humane and understanding books I've ever read. I saw OSC at a couple of cons in the early 90's, and he wasn't like that then; he was genial and kind, and there was no soapboxing. I'm at a loss to understand his position now; it's as if the man who wrote Speaker for the Dead has died and been replaced with a nasty-minded guy who looks like him. He has dementia? The Mormon Church threatened to kill his daughters? He has Dissociative Identity Disorder, and the one who wrote SFTD isn't the one who's in control of the body now? The change in him is so profound that it leads to bizarre, over-the-top theories to try to explain the change.

I can't read SFTD now, because it's tainted by who the author has become, and that hurts my heart. I also really, really hope that Brandon Sanderson -- whose Mistborne trilogy was a lot of fun, though not the kind of wise and humane story that SFTD was -- doesn't go down that route and become Crazy Evil Mormon SF Writer.

[quietann.livejournal.com]

I have heard (and can't recall from where) that at a certain point the Mormon church put him and his family under a LOT of pressure to change his public stances on things such as homosexuality. As in, threatened with excommunication if they didn't.

Obviously, he chose the Mormons over fandom.

But that's just one theory among many.

[vibrantabyss.livejournal.com]

yeah, this.

I have several books inscribed by him from that era - given the paragraphic scrawlings, I cant' simply call them signed. And they are (and he was, when talking with him) none of the here-and-now OSC.

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

(Also, the novel was mediocre. It was a great short story but much weaker at novel length.)

This.

Anyway, if ever there was a movie that I would bittorrent on principle. this one is it.

[whipchick.livejournal.com]

Agreed. There's a big difference between enjoying dead Wagner who held views that were not diametrically opposed with the people around him, and a living guy who has plenty of chances to hear that he's wrong.