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© Copyright 1999, Jim Loy
I don't appreciate being lied to. I just saw the movie The Blair Witch Project. The poster on the outside of the theater said that these three young film makers disappeared in the woods, and that a year later their film was discovered. All a lie. There were no three young film makers. The movie is fiction.
I wish I had known that it was fiction. I was fooled until the end credits. Although I'm upset about the movie, it was well done, in my opinion, interesting approach, good acting. I'm sure that most audiences already know that the movie is fiction. But for me, the movie was like a cruel April Fool's joke. Surprise, it's not real. Just another trick to play on the customer, to steal his/her money.
Am I really complaining about hoaxes? Perhaps I am just upset about being the victim of a hoax? Do I disapprove of Orson Welles' War of the Worlds radio broadcast? That one had the potential to do physical harm, maybe deaths. This one, The Blair Witch Project, was not dangerous. It was a good movie, when I thought that it was real. I was puzzled by some of the things that happened in the movie. I remember being very puzzled that these people, who were supposedly were looking for a graveyard in the woods, found those little piles of stones, not my idea of a graveyard, didn't look ancient at all, impossible to find in those woods even with a map. I remember being very puzzled that each of the three characters took turns being the calm, reasonable one, while the others lose it one way or another, like it was their turn. But, these problems were not bad enough to convince me that the movie was fake. I suspect that I would have thought that it was a bad, unconvincing movie, had I known that it was fiction. But, I wouldn't have gone to see it, had I known.