I was at the theater the other day and just before the trailers started rolling, I was treated to a three minute dont bootleg speech from the MPAA. Some set painter sits down in front of a camera and claims I (remember, I paid for my ticket) am stealing from him. I just want to paint, the guy tells me. You know what, Mr. Painter, you live in sunny California. You can paint anywhere you please and besides, youre contracted by the studio which means you get paid either way. Movies will always be made. Your job is secure so shut up for the moment and let me watch my Matrix Revolutions trailer.

Bootlegging will never hurt the movie industry. No matter how much money studios lose, they will always churn out films. All these studio honchos complain that bootlegging hurts business. No it doesnt. Most people who download guy with cam movies only go to see one or two movies a year anyway. Now they see the ones they thought about going to, but didnt and wouldnt, even if bootlegging didnt exist. If a movies worth it, people will go.

Look at Lord of the Rings. This film is the granddaddy of bootlegged movies yet The Two Towers still hauled in over $330 million at the box office in the U.S alone. I dont understand why the studios are putting up such a huge fuss over all these bootleg shenanigans anyway. If people want to go out and buy a $15 guy with cam VCD of School of Rock instead of paying $7 to see it in theaters, well, thats their loss.  

            I recently mentioned the annoying tracking dots in my Kill Bill review. These dots, forming a small L shaped object for fifteen seconds in the center of the screen, irritate me. The dots ruin the cinematic experience by taking you out of the movie. I urge anyone who sees the dots to go to the theater manager and request your money back so word gets out that the movie going audience wont stand for tracking dots. Its not fair that we, the loyal paying customers, should have to sit through a tainted movie just because studios want to catch a handful of bootleggers. They might as well make those little dots out of Coke cans and advertise while theyre at it.

To see how bootleggers dealt with these dots, I downloaded a movie I knew to have tracking dots. What did I find? Well, those clever little bootleggers have already worked around it, simply cutting the 15 seconds the dots are displayed (they display in the same place every time). I see that the tracking dots are working out just great. Ironically, by cutting the dots, the bootleggers have created a more pure movie going experience than the studios have.

            Another method recently proposed, but ultimately denied by the MPAA, allowed a film to be shown dot free. To elaborate, a video camera can capture a movie without having frame issues (horizontal black bars that run up and down the screen distorting the image) because video cameras capture images at 29 frames a second while film displays an image at 24 frames a second. If the two matched (29 frames and 29 frames), youd get the black bars all over. One electronic hardware company created a device that runs under the projector, displaying a clear, unnoticeable image displaying at 29 frames a second under the film causing a video camera to pick up black bars, thus stopping bootlegging. Do we catch the bootleggers? No, but we hurt them where it counts. 

            The final nail in the coffin came a few weeks ago when the MPAA issued a notice stating that DVD screeners of potential Oscar candidates would not be allowed, thus killing any chance an independent film has from getting nominated for anything. So, without further ado, Im proud to be the first to announce this years Academy Award Nominations based on this DVD ban. They are: Master and Commander, The Last Samurai, Return of the King, The Matrix Revolutions and Pirates of the Caribbean. Now, not all of these films are bad, but there are a lot of smaller, independent films that will be overlooked come Oscar time mainly because big movies will be the only films that most of the Academy will go see.

            This ban doesnt affect bootleggers. Theyll just do more guy with cam bootlegs. This ban will affect the little guys however. So, it isnt the bootleggers, or the loyal moviegoers, its the MPAA, who has hurt the set painter from the above mentioned advert. If he works for an independent studio, a studio relying on the Oscar to keep business afloat, then he may be greatly affected. So, our set painter has fallen prey to, as Jack Black would say, the man. Its not those pesky bootleggers that are hurting him, its the very same company that funded the advert he volunteered to speak in. Now thats what I call irony.