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The real deal about the Tampa indie film industry by Tampa film expert C. A. Passinault

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Saturday, January 10, 2009 - 9:00 AM - Tampa Indie Film Log for Filmmaker C. A. Passinault

The Damage Caused By Misunderstandings

I’ve heard back from some of my people who have been gathering information for me, and have a new perspective about some things.
It seems that I may not always be right, and there are some things that I need to work on. For example, I do tend to make assumptions, and then to act upon those assumptions like they were facts. This tends to do far more harm than good.
One of my New Years resolutions is to talk to people and get to know them before judging them, and even then, try to understand where they are coming from so that I am not judgmental with them. Only God knows all the facts behind what people do, and I am hardly God.
This said, there are a lot of instances where my gut instincts have been dead on, and they have served me well. In the case of the Tampa Indie Film Clique and this Tampa indie film war that has been going on for over a year now, I know for a fact that I did not start it. I didn’t do anything to anyone. A few people decided to slander me and to spread rumors about me, why, I do not know, but they did. The trigger came when I engaged another filmmaker in a debate, they flat-out stated that I had no right to comment about Tampa indie film, and they threw the rumor in my face. It was my guess that they thought that I would give up and go away after being slandered, but I was in possession of substantial resources that enabled me to address these baseless allegations and to legally fight back. This set off a cycle of second guessing and misunderstandings, triggering an all-out war in December of 2007.
This war has been costly for my opposition. It did a lot of damage. In other industries, where I manage campaigns of industry disruption by identifying weaknesses and then introducing countermeasures to disrupt what they do, I’ve cost a lot of people a lot of money. In the modeling industry alone, I have cost businesses millions of dollars through the efforts of my modeling web sites and my modeling scam-fighting resources.
Are these victories, however? I’m beginning to wonder. I’m beginning to think that there may be more productive, and less disruptive, or destructive, ways to cause change and to make business better.
For better or for worse, my campaigns of disruption are over. I can change things and make industries work better, but there are more effective, and more tactful ways of going about it. I need to quit fighting fights that don’t really need to be fought, and quit those while I am ahead.
I have better things to do.
Will this mean that I will quit fighting scams and introducing scam-fighting tools to combat scams? No, I’ll still do that. I’ll just keep it behavior-pattern based so people can learn what to look for, instead of calling people out and pissing them off.
The thing is, I am actually a very likable person. I am a knowledgeable professional who knows what I am doing. I have a lot of good ideas, and have done a lot of good things. Just about every top professional who I get to know want to work with me, and the proof of that is that many of my best friends are professional models, actors, and entertainers who are the best in their fields. I attract the top professionals in their fields.
Well, I know one thing. I know about tact, but I need to start using it, and apply it to my career. I need to stop assuming the worst about people who I don’t know and get to know them before I take any action. Some people out there are already intimidated by me, and when they don’t understand my motivations because I never allow them the chance to get to know me, it can cause a nightmare situation where I can be perceived as some unstoppable, sociopathic monster. Well, I now believe that my scorched earth tactics may have been too much, and a lot of people who did not deserve it got burned in the process. This has caused widespread damage, and some of that damage, while it can be minimized, can never be repaired.
As some of my people recently stressed, in the area of public relations, I damn-well score an “F”.
There are good people out there who believe that I am the Antichrist of industries, and although many of these people are the ones who didn’t bother to get to know me, I can’t say that I can blame them for being stand-offish. Growing up, we were taught that we should treat people the way that we want to be treated. There is also a saying that we shouldn’t say anything if we don’t have anything nice to say.
I must say that, while it is nice to be opinionated and outspoken, that I’ve voiced inflammatory opinions and harsh criticisms about people which really had no point. Yes, I stated the obvious, or what was perceived. Did I really change anything, however, other than piss of the target and their friends? There is no point to this.
Fighting scams and doing the right thing is fine, but it’s not fine when innocent people get caught in the crossfire. I have an armada of very powerful web site, and many of these sites are built around technology and tactics designed to fight scams. I also have a lot of readers. This is a lot of responsibility.
With all that figurative virtual firepower at my disposal, do you suppose that sometimes I fight just to fight? There have been a lot of individuals, and industries, who have been at the receiving end of my crossfire operations against them. The destruction has bene massive. Businesses have lost a lot of money, jobs have been lost, and careers have been undermined. Granted, some of these people have been wrong, but others have not, and I fought them over misunderstandings. For that, I’ve been wrong.
It’s been a long, nasty game of chess.
This, of course, does not really make up for my mistakes that I have made in the past, but going forward, I intend to pick and choose my fights carefully, and will fight only when I am sure that there is no other way to resolve our differences. I have already ordered all fifty of my sites into a defensive status, and while I will be upgrading my scam fighting tools on many of these sites, those new tools will be used primarily for deterrence instead of actively engaging and disrupting perceived scams.
This will free up a lot of my time, too, as a side-benefit.
Instead of writing about what is wrong and overly-criticizing others, I will simply compete against them while making sure that I am going about things ethically and fairly. Sure, I will take business from them, but it won’t piss them off nearly as much as what I’ve been doing.
Alright, so what does this have to do with Tampa indie film and the Tampa indie film war?
Well, the war is over. I look over the Tampa indie film scene and see nothing but a barren wasteland full of wreckage, with my assets built up and stronger than ever. It’s almost Draconian, and I feel like I have built this evil empire. Someone recently told me that one of the fiercest ongoing debates in the Tampa indie film scene was over how evil some people thought that I was. Out of all the perceived villains, I often topped the list. I suppose having a fleet of top web sites kicking the crap out of people day in and day out, with the best people working with me, has done little to help my PR image. I’ve bee told that some see me as dangerously intelligent, aggressive, and malicious. Well, I agree with the first two descriptions, but the last one is inaccurate. I really don’t hate anyone, and don’t actually have an axe to grind with anyone.
This said, I may have made some mistakes.
Seeing businesses fold up and close because of things that I have done is bittersweet. I don’t want people to get discourage dand quit. I only want them to fix what is wrong for the integrity of the industry that they work in. I no longer believe that it is my place to openly blast and discourage these people. It would be more constructive to lead by example.
My days of war are over, as these efforts have too much collateral damage and are too destructive. Waging industry wars is not a cost-effective way to cause change. I think that they first thing that I should change is my ways, and then work toward changing industries by inspiring. The use of that massive virtual firepower should only be used as a last resort, and even then should be a result of failure, the failure of inspiring change by leading.
People of the Tampa indie film scene, here’s the deal. I’ll back off. I expect you to do the same. Perhaps we can communicate, and resolve our differences constructive. At the very least, we can agree to disagree, and be civil with each other.
People will slander me. People will steal from me. People will attempt to discredit me and what I do. This has happened before, and it will all happen again. This is their problem, however, and I don’t have to make it mine. If someone damages my earnings, assaults me, or disrupts my life, I will take the appropriate action and address it legally. If not, I will simply try my best to ignore it, and concentrate on more productive things instead of attacking them.
So much damage. So much smoldering, smoking debris. Where do I begin? I realize that a few bridges are incinerated, and that some things cannot be fixed. That’s fine. You can continue to hate me if you wish. I only ask that you have an open mind and hear me out. At the least, we could be civil.
Alrighty. Here we go with specific names.

Paul - Well, I honestly believe that we’ll never get along, and that’s fine. Our fight should have never happened, though, and it all started with a misunderstanding. You were wrong, but so was I.
Oh, and Paul, although you won’t believe this, I did not cybersquat your company domain name. That is a rumor which is untrue. I did dot com a domain name which is close to your event name, but that was only because it had the key words that I needed for my film industry reviews, and I even have disclaimers on there so no one is confused. Just because it looked like I was ripping off one of your titles does not mean that I am cybersquatting other things.

Joe - Your situation has been most perplexing. First off, I do not have anything against you and am not trying to destroy your career. We were cool at the Ladies Of The Night Double Feature, and as far as I was concerned, we were cool afterwards. The next thing that I knew is that you were angry about something, and were telling people that you wanted to assault me. Then, because you were still mad, you bad mouthed me to Dan after Dan asked who I was. Why you are angry, I still don’t know, but please, do us both a favor- Don’t listen to here-say. If you have a problem over a misunderstanding, talk to me- directly to me. If we communicate over these misunderstandings, we can resolve our differences and can be peaceful with one another.
I was wrong, too. I heard all of these rumors about you bad mouthing me, and started making snide remarks about you. I will switch the picture of you with the evil glowing eyes on Tampa Bay Film back to the normal alternate image. I will also remove the gay sailor thumbnail on Tampa Bay Film ASAP. Additionally, I will work on removing the snide remarks about you on the online film festival.
I’m sorry.

Lisa - It turns out that I may have been wrong about you. If the information that I have now has convinced me that I made a mistake. Alright, allow me to explain what happened on my end, and perhaps we can be peaceful again.
At the Ladies Of The Night film festival, we were cool. I introduced you to one of my models, took pictures, and everything was fine. A few weird things afterwards is what caused hostilities to start up again, at least on my end.
From what I hear, I took a picture of you with my model at the film festival, posted the picture on one of my sites, and made some snide remark about you with the picture, “holding it over you head”. I really have no idea where this idea came from. I looked over my sites, and cannot find the picture in question posted or any remarks (maybe it is somewhere in the Ladies Of The Night film festival review; I will have to look into that when I have the time to read the review and edit it).
Now, there were some parody pictures that I posted here on the Tampa Film Blog which represented you and made fun of you, but those were posted after the following incident, and not because I betrayed you in any way, or “returned to my old ways”.
In August 2008, roughly eight weeks after we were civil to each other at the film festival, I was doing routine SEO checks on search engines and came across my name, which was dot commed. I did not register my full name, so I traced it back to you. I assumed that you were restarting hostilities at that time, and that set me off. I had no idea why you did it, but assumed the worst.
I did not know then what I know now.
Now, I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt here, because I have no proof, but I learned that you found out that someone was planning to dot com my name and did what you did to protect it. That’s fine, but I still wonder why you simply couldn’t have send me an email to warn me about their plans, instead. It doesn’t matter. I was wrong to jump to conclusions, and am sorry for making fun of you. I’ll stop. I am truly sorry.
I’ll also look into removing those pictures and that one negative blog post about you.

Well, I am tired now. I will now work on what I have been transitioning to the past month, which is blogging about Tampa filmmaking and not attacking people.
Hopefully, all of the hurt feelings will heal, and this will blow over in a few months. Hopefully. It should, now that I am making a sincere effort to stop. I also hope that we can all work together to keep the lines of communication open, instead of allowing misunderstandings and assumptions to inspire our actions. Communication is the key, and if anyone has an issue with what I am doing, or has any questions, feel free to contact me. We can talk, and at least try to understand each other and get along.

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UPDATED 01/11/09

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