“Your Mommy Kills Animals” Director Battles To Release DVD
Last week The Lobby heard from Curt Johnson, director of one of the most skillfully produced documentaries of 2007 – who told us how lobbyists almost squashed the film’s DVD release. Your Mommy Kills Animals, a remarkably thorough chronicle of animal rights activism, wasn’t exactly the major food corporations’ favorite movie.
So they sued Johnson (read our interview) to prevent you from seeing the DVD. Officially, the shameful plaintiff was “The Center for Consumer Freedom,” another improperly named bullshit machine. They claimed Johnson and distributor Halo 8 didn’t have the complete rights to release the DVD.
Curt Johnson: I gotta say at one point in August I was seriously thinking that films just weren’t worth being put through all the shit they put me through. Nothing weirder than being on the stand defending your film to a jury of 7 people in Federal Court!
The courts ruled in favor of Johnson. But that didn’t stop a threatening Cease & Desist strategy to distributors — and of course, in some instances, it’s worked. Bastards.
Johnson: They even tried to make it sound like doing test screenings in 2006 was actually my way of supporting domestic terrorism since several animal groups [supported domestic terrorism].
LOBBY TAKE: You don’t have to like or appreciate Your Mommy Kills Animals. But you must support the right for the movie to be made — and seen. If the film were inciteful or legitimately dangerous, why didn’t the soulless lobbyists make only that argument? Because it’s not true.
After pulling the DVD from their inventory, sounds like Amazon’s gonna change their tune:
Johnson: Amazon has gotten so many press calls they called [my distributor] to let him know they’re moving forward to rectify it.
Here’s our original preview of Your Mommy Kills Animals.
And Halo 8 will sell you the DVD directly.
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Other Posts of Interest
- Filmmaker Interview: Your Mommy Kills Animals
- Documentary Preview: As Controversial As “Sicko”?
- Trailer Tuesday: MAMMA MIA!
- MOVIE POSTER MONDAY: Richard Kelly’s “Southland Tales”
- Two “Killer” Endings Now on DVD
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Curt Johnson lost the lawsuit. He was ordered to pay $360,000 in damages to Richard Berman and the Center for Consumer Freedom. The court ruled that producer Maura Flynn was a co-creator and copyright holder of the film as well. The suit had nothing to do with anyone trying to stop the film from being release. Johnson had removed Berman and Flynn’s names from the film, even though they provided the money and treatment for the film. He sold the film without telling Halo 8 that he did not own it. Johnson is lying when he says that he won the suit. He has defrauded several filmmakers and writers. This is a con-artist who has finally been caught. There is a major publication writing a story about him as we speak.
Curt Johnson has a lot of nerve pretending to be a First Amendment crusader or a friend to animals. Here’s the deal: Mr. Johnson willingly took blood money from the Center for Consumer Freedom to make an anti-animal rights and anti-PETA propaganda film. When some remaining shreds of conscience caused the film to be less than what Mr. Johnson had promised to deliver, he was sued. But make no mistake: the film is no plea for animal rights– one of the loudest voices in it comes from the Center for Consumer Freedom itself! Curt Johnson is no more a victim here than Leni Riefenstahl was in her day.