Naysayers, by RJ Bond
(My own 1st Ammendment Opinion)
The only serious naysayers or posers (is there such a word?) have single-handedly tried to undermine our project by posting comments on Amazon dot com and other retail web sites as well as articles and they’ve posted on the web for their own amusement. Some cat by the name of Anton Batey decided to take issue by taking a statement that was made in the movie completely out of context. His words:
“Frank Alexander gets a call from Yasmine Fula (Kadafi's mom and Tupac's assistant) on the set of Gridlock'd, and says she told Frank she needs to talk to him about "stuff that's going on between Tupac and Death Row". Alexander admits that "she didn't go into any great detail", so him claiming this was a "sign" that Tupac was leaving Death Row is just an assumption.”
We’ll see Anton- no it’s not just an assumption; it’s a cut from a longer and more robust segment that was cut largely for time but not for lack of clarity. We even took the time to post the longer version of the clip for him, and I spent a lot of time trying to talk a reasonably to that person. It didn’t make me upset that he had an opinion that was different from ours in the movie. What made me upset, was that this person decided to post all of his opinions on retail web sites and was satisfied to try to stop commerce of the movie just because he didn’t agree with it. Self expression is not our concern, but interference with commerce is.
The other person that had trouble with our movie was a person who did not himself step forward to make any negative comments; at least I’ll give that to Anton, he did step up and give his own opinions in his own name whether real or made up. This other guy, whose name is Robert, and has a web site, review the very early copy of our movie, wrote two articles in favor of the movie, wrote several emails slamming Suge Knight, and interviewed Kathy Scott regarding the movie as well. When a co production opportunity arose for him to make any CD soundtrack of the movie along with his business partner, he gathered together about 20 artists to put the soundtrack together. All in all it wasn’t the bed soundtrack; It just has a lot of unknown artists in it. The trouble wasn’t yard is the trouble was that Robert it is business partner couldn’t get the act together –they couldn’t get the clearances signed and could not get a video synchronization rights together either. With a deadline looming and a distributor who was less than interested in selling the CD, (because she had ideas of her own regarding our own soundtrack project, which we ended up getting screwed on any way) it was very difficult to clear the way for their center project to take place. We tried to part ways as friends, but they insisted, or rather Robert insisted on festering in his little house, and mounting a campaign against our movie. The problem with this guy is that he posts everybody else’s comments and doesn’t make his own, yet his agenda is very clear. Yet neither of them for all of the rhetoric, have come up with any better or more logical explanation that would have any type of evidence or witnesses testimony to corroborate it.
In fact that’s the problem with all the naysayers. Everyone’s got a shot they wanna take it the movie for us putting our best foot forward; he had not one of them have come up with any alternative explanation more alternative evidence pattern or alternative witnesses who were willing to make any kind of a statement regarding what they saw or what they know. My father used to say “if you have any better ideas now’s the time” and I think that applies here.
The final comment I wish to make regarding naysayers is about the people who claim that we’re out to make a profit off of Tupac and somehow are messing with his ”legacy”. First off, those would be the same people who would accuse John Walsh, the founder of the TV show America’s Most Wanted of trying to profit off of his son’s murder. By the way what is the legacy of Tupac? A legacy is something you leave behind for others to learn from or in some way benefit from. What does a murder leave behind? A murder leaves behind questions, suspects, motive space and opportunity for the people responsible. Tupac’s legacy is every bit as much about his death as it was about his life. We explore the murder and do the job the police should be doing, because we can, and because for one reason or another, there are people are willing to talk to us that are not willing to talk to the police. This does not stop the police from having the ability and the means to speak to these people themselves. The entire scope of the investigation has been about the police saying that they’re helpless when people are unwilling to talk to them. Yeah I have yet to see Michael Moore being questioned by the police; I have yet to see Tracy Robinson being questioned by the police, and there are others (some of whom we don’t even know yet). I speak only for myself when I say this, but until someone steps into my place and they can seize a work that we’ve begun, someone has to care about the dead.
I think it’s absolutely hypocrisy to talk about Martin Luther king, to talk about Malcolm X, or any other leader or public figure who have been killed and whose death can be spoken of openly, yet act like talking about the death of Tupac is somehow forbidden discussion. There was a reason that Tupac was killed, and whenever the reason was, that life was taken from us. No one deserves that. No mother deserves that. No fan deserves that. And no different from the grieving family members who might seek justice regardless of whether not they think that justice will come to them, we have to ask the questions that no one else is either brave or stupid enough to ask. We seem to have laid out a logical and plausible explanation for what has happened. When someone wants to come to us with hard facts that completely destroy the theory that we put forward, and at the same time use those facts to condemn another, we will be ready to listen. Until that time, we’ll keep ridin for our friend. It matters to us.