Brett Ratner on Our Culture of Surveillance
Brett Ratner
October 06, 2009
In Being There, Chauncey Gardner (played by Peter Sellers) says, “I like to watch.” Nowadays, everybody is watching. Everybody is surveilling. I used to think surveillance was cool until I started being watched myself -- not by the CIA or the feds, like John Gotti was in those FBI videos I used to love as a kid -- but by anyone and everyone with a BlackBerry and a Twitter account.
I flew to New York the other day. I had taken a car service to the airport, and before my plane was even ready to take off, I noticed that the driver had tweeted about his gratuity: “Wow! Brett Ratner is really generous. He took care of me.” While at the airport, two girls sitting next to me—self-described “performance artists”—invited me to see their strip show. They then posted on Facebook and tweeted that I was coming to their show in New York. My girlfriend didn’t really like that.
While I was on the plane, the young woman sitting next to me spent the entire flight tweeting about my syncopated snoring. When I was finally in a car heading into New York City, I received a friendly call from an employee of the airline who said that I had mistakenly taken the bag of another passenger. When I explained that I was in the tunnel going into Manhattan, she very nicely promised to call the police if I didn’t return the bag right away. When she got home she must have told her son what an asshole I was for stealing someone’s bag, mentioning me by name. I guess the kid wasn’t a fan of Rush Hour, because within moments he’d told the entire world I was a thief.
Maybe I should look at the positive side of constant surveillance. Maybe it’s a sign that when one of my films comes out, and it’s really good, all of those secret spies will tell everyone about it, and get more people into the theater for opening weekend. But then again, they might not like what they’ve seen and tell everyone that the movie isn’t worth their dollars.
I don’t think anything will ever stop people from watching movies in a theater and sharing the emotion of the moment with an audience, whether the film is tweeted as good or bad—but I won’t be surprised when every face in the audience is illuminated by the light of a BlackBerry screen. I won’t even mind, so long as what they’re surveilling is my movie, on the big screen.
Comments (21)
Posted by court k on Wed Oct 7, 2009 at 05.56 am
So what your saying is now that you can see how people behave around celebrity, because it’s documented your still surprised?
You must realize that all tweets you mention, if not for twitter would be relayed as stories to friends, friends of friends, and they would spread as rumors anyway. It’s just now they are documented in written word, so it’s much easier to see.
Posted by Irritated_Prof on Wed Oct 7, 2009 at 06.26 am
Who did you say you were, again?
Posted by dr. fill on Wed Oct 7, 2009 at 11.31 am
I think this is Bobby Brady all grow’d up. Aaaaw. Maybe Kitty Carryall or George Glass also twittered about him.
Posted by Michael on Wed Oct 7, 2009 at 11.56 am
Silvio Dante and Irritated_Prof, don’t be rude. This is Brett Ratner!!! The lead singer of Poison?!? Maybe you’ve heard of him?!? Oh, wait...that’s Bret Michaels. Yeah, dude, who are you?
Posted by Ks on Wed Oct 7, 2009 at 12.34 pm
I don’t know what’s worse--how you destroyed the X-Men trilogy or how into yourself you are. If it freaks you out that people are tweeting about you, get off Twitter. And there’s no way those strippers knew who you were unless you told them in detail, so you clearly have an ego problem. Instead of trawling the Internet to find out if someone saw you do something today, why not try making a movie that doesn’t suck?
Posted by Kevin Nestrick on Wed Oct 7, 2009 at 12.35 pm
I too was confused as to who this guy was so I looked him up. Given his odious, trite and sophomoric “contributions” to popular culture, he should be more concerned with securing a jumbo shame-cave than crowing about how a limo driver got excited over a $13 tip from a “celebrity.”
Posted by Shelley on Thu Oct 8, 2009 at 04.10 pm
Never heard of this guy.
Posted by JH on Fri Oct 9, 2009 at 04.37 pm
This is a ridiculous article, by a ridiculous filmmaker. Girls aren’t posting on Facebook about Brett Ratner. Neither is a driving tweeting how generous he is.
If anyone is saying anything about Brett Ratner online, it’s how his movies suck and and general, he’s a douche.
Posted by Jennifer on Sat Oct 10, 2009 at 09.38 am
Oh. My. God.
It’s unbelievable how into himself this guy is. I guess he pleasures himself looking at his own photo.
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Posted by Silvio Dante on Wed Oct 7, 2009 at 01.57 am
I’m sorry.... who are you?