November 8, 2019

Reanimated James Dean “Not a Marketing Gimmick”

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As you may have heard, an upcoming film set in the Vietnam era will star James Dean, brought back to life through the magic of CGI. Not everyone was thrilled by this news, and today the filmmaker begged for sympathy:

“We don’t really understand it. We never intended for this to be a marketing gimmick,” director Anton Ernst tells The Hollywood Reporter in response to negative criticism on Dean’s posthumous casting.

If there is a God, Ernst should be struck down where he stands. Is there a single person on the planet who thinks this was anything other than a marketing gimmick?

I dunno. Maybe this is the Trump influence at work. In the past, you had to make your lies at least superficially plausible, but Trump has taught us that this isn’t necessary. In fact, the dumber the lie the better.

Still, this is not as bad as it could be. In another decade or so, the big marketing gimmick will be to use an actual human being to play a small role in a movie. Probably a Kardashian or something.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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