12 Films. 12 Weeks. There are worse ways to spend a summer.

Craigslist Hates Us

May 4, 2009 at 2:59 pm | Posted in Mike Lavoie | 3 Comments

We *finally* got a post up on Craigslist today. It lasted about 10 minutes before it got flagged and removed. Keith called me in a panic: “Did we do something wrong? Are we in trouble? Does Craigslist hate us?” The short answer to all of these questions is yes.

The offending posting ended with:

If we choose to produce your script, we will supply you with a DVD of the finished film, list your name in the credits, and give you 10% of any future profits. Beyond that, it’s all for love and glory!

I asked the Craigslist forum why we had gotten flagged. The forum people were more than happy to furnish us with answers:

• People want burgers and fries, they can’t live on love (no pay gets flagged)
• No tickey No Laundry, people are sick and tired of all the No Pay ads
• You’re an anonymous person wanting someone else to send you their intellectual property. Yeah, right.

Resisting the temptation to write back something like, “If your intellectual property is so incredibly valuable, why are you trolling Craiglist for $35 writing gigs instead of hobnobbing with Clooney and Brad Grey in Beverly Hills?” I reposted it. We got one script before it was removed again. My CL forum nemesis, “passive_male” reared his impish head:

• Keep Posting it. I’ll keep Flagging it

I am not a violent person by nature. I have never been in a fight of any kind, but it’s this type of anonymous infantilism that makes me consider stopping by Ron’s Guns next time I take a trip home to visit my Grandmother. Like the fool I am, I tried to reason with him:

• Just because people are tired of no pay, that doesn’t make it illegal or illegitimate, does it? We’re a small production company volunteering our services to create a film that someone else wrote. Does it not make sense for someone to volunteer their script?

But what 3-year-old listens to common sense?

• Nope perfectly legal. And flaggable.

We simply don’t have much time between now and the beginning of production and snafus like this are incredibly frustrating, especially when they are being perpetrated by spiteful toddlers with computers who are just trying to murder our blastula child. But this child must survive; this child will survive. Like in Willow, we will lay Elora Danan on a bed of swamp hay and she will drift peacefully away from Queen Bavmorda and the savage dogs on the Craiglist forum.

Posted by Mike