Are Streamers Muzzling Controversial Documentaries?
Are Streamers Muzzling
Controversial Documentaries?
On May 25,
YouTube pulled the Michael Moore-produced environmental documentary Planet of the Humans,
a few weeks after the provocateur launched the film for free on his highly
trafficked YouTube channel. The tech giant cited a copyright infringement claim
made by photographer Toby Smith over a four-second clip used in the
controversial doc, which takes on some of the environmental movement's most
beloved figures, including Al Gore and Bill McKibben, and explores big money's
influence on sustainability efforts. Smith said in an interview with The
Guardian that he made the claim because he disagreed with the
film's thesis, and YouTube acquiesced.
Moore was
not pleased. "The fact that some so-called leaders of our beloved
environmental movement resorted to slandering and suppressing a movie that
called them out for their failures, that warned the public that we were losing
the battle against climate change because these 'leaders' believed capitalism
and billionaires would save planet Earth, has set the movement back so many
years," the producer tells THR.
Director
Jeff Gibbs says he and Moore later won the right to use the footage, and after
a maelstrom of bad PR for the platform, YouTube restored the doc to Moore's
channel.
The removal
of Planet
of the Humans wasn't an isolated event. Over the past year, a
number of docs that seem to challenge the business interests of multinational
conglomerates have been muzzled, buried or simply neglected — including ones
from Oscar winners and nominees like Moore. In nearly every case, the
distributor was a Silicon Valley tech giant.
Take Citizen
K from Oscar winner Alex Gibney. Days ahead of its August
world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, Amazon quietly dropped the doc that
paints a harsh portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Multiple sources
say Citizen
K, which traces the rise of Putin and the fall of titular oligarch
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was on Amazon's fall 2019 theatrical release calendar and
was pulled without explanation. One source says the film was seen as too
incendiary and risky for a multinational corporation to distribute. Instead,
boutique Greenwich Entertainment released the film to little fanfare. (An
Amazon rep denies the company ever had theatrical rights to the film, though it
paid the travel costs for the Venice premiere.)
Citizen K isn't
the only hot-button doc to receive the cold shoulder from Amazon. The Mike
Cernovich-produced film Hoaxed, a right-wing take on
corporate malfeasance and media bias, was pulled from Amazon April 9. No
explanation was given to the distributor Random Media. Even stranger, Cernovich
began hearing from viewers who had purchased Hoaxed via the Amazon store
and later found it had disappeared from their libraries. "The distributors
were shocked. They had never seen this happen before," Cernovich tells THR.
"Amazon told them, 'It's not a technical issue. We don't have to tell you
why we removed Hoaxed.'"
Cernovich
has a theory. "I believe the film was banned from Amazon because there is
a sequence discussing Jeff Bezos and Amazon's $600 million contract with the
CIA," he says. "Bezos does not want the public reminded of
that." Amazon wouldn't comment on Hoaxed.
“These
platforms are so big that not being able to get your viewpoint on one of them
effectively means that people probably don’t know the film exists,” says
Patricia Aufderheide, founder of the Center for Media & Social Impact at
American University and an expert on censorship.
Even in
other genres, Hollywood is increasingly hesitant to antagonize foreign
governments or corporate interests. Studios will avoid offending China at all
costs thanks to its box office prowess. (Consider Disney staying out of the
fray as its Mulan star Liu Yifei threw her support behind
police using force to quash pro-democracy demonstrations last year.) But the
chilling effect is more pronounced in the documentary community, which had
previously relied on niche distributors. Now doc distribution is far more
susceptible to the whims of the streaming giants because, in recent years,
Netflix, Amazon and their rivals have become the most voracious buyers.
Another
Russia-critical doc — David France's Welcome to Chechnya, which
documented the life-and-death plight of gay people in the republic — was nearly
acquired by Netflix. But a knowledgeable source says the streamer dropped out
at the eleventh hour without explanation (the film found another home and will
debut June 30 on HBO Max). Similarly, Netflix stayed far away from the Jamal
Khashoggi doc The Dissident, a yet-to-be-picked-up film that is
critical of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his alleged order of the
columnist's 2018 murder. Sean Penn, who championed the Bryan Fogel-helmed film,
took a dig at Netflix’s lack of interest during a February Dissident screening
at UTA, saying the streamer was "too busy" paying off sexual
misconduct settlements — an apparent reference to former House
of Cards star Kevin Spacey — to back The
Dissident, adding, “There's a lot of stress on such a gentleman as
Ted Sarandos.”
In the case
of Planet
of the Humans, a fellow director, Gasland's Josh Fox, embarked on a
campaign to keep Gibbs' film from being seen — a highly unusual move in the
collegial doc community that champions freedom of expression. Fox successfully
lobbied Films for Action, which had posted Planet of the Humans on its
site via an embed from the official YouTube, to remove the it (Films for Action
later reversed course). Fox says his actions were justified because "the
film attacks incredibly important [environmental] movement leaders and is
factually incorrect." He adds, "It has nothing to do with censorship.
I never tried to censor Michael Moore."
Moore took
a swing at Fox without naming him. "The fact that anyone calling themself
a filmmaker could take part in a censorship campaign, and then participate in
such a dishonest and unhinged attack, is appalling and pathetic.”
Still,
suppression may have its benefits. In the case of Planet of the Humans, the film now
has more than 10.6 million views, including 8.6 million on YouTube, perhaps
buoyed by the censorship outcry. Notes Gibbs, who also was a producer on
Moore's Fahrenheit
9/11: "People do not like to be told they cannot see a
film."
But in one
final bizarre twist, YouTube algorithms appear to have at least temporarily
buried Planet
of the Humans for viewers looking to locate it via the
platform's main search engine. For at least a week in late June, the top hits
by title search included content that purports to debunk the film but not the
doc itself on Moore's channel. The filmmakers alerted YouTube of the problem.
Says a publicist for the film, "They replied and said they would look into
it. There has been no other update." But the night before this story was
being readied for publication, the issue appears to have been resolved.
A version of this story first appeared in the June 24 issue of The
Hollywood Reporter magazine.
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