David Morgan and his Exorcist script - Tragic News

One of these days, one of these fanboys is gonna committ suicide, and we're going to have to muffle our laughter a little more in public.

I'd like to think most people got the joke. I, for one, thought it was sort of funny, at least at first. The thing is, if you told the guy he had to be kidding, he'd get defensive, but apparently once he convinced people he wasn't kidding, he felt no one got his schtick...

That's the inherent lose/lose situation of being a troll; it's a desperate way to get people to pay attention to you, but they only pay attention so long as they think you're serious, which invariably means lots of insults and dumb responses. Those who found this guy's schtick funny (and I hold that there must be at least a few) browsed his page, looked at the posters, chuckled, and moved on. Those who thought it was real berated him with stupid insults.

You can't really be a self-reflexive troll or you become your own promoter and denouncer and at that time; it's masturflamebaiting, which is now a real (and very sad) term. This guy was forced into a position where (to retain the fourth wall) he had to reject all positive feedback, but the negative feedback probably got to be too much.

Anyhow, it wasn't a work of brilliance, but the whole thing had a kind of cute Andy Kauffman-esque absurdity to it, and I'm sorry it ended so badly for this guy. I actually thought his script was vaguely hilarious at times, but then you see his posts all over here, aintitcool, and every other fan site and wonder what the hell he was thinking. Who could be that desperate for attention, particularly what would be invariably negative attention?

Maybe he can write a sequel to my short film. David Morgan, if you're reading this, send me a PM.

In a response so unrelated as to warrant double posting....

There was this guy who came to my school who was a performance artist/filmmaker (and alum, of course; the crazy ones always are).

He invented a fake filmmaker from the 1950s-60s who he claimed was a major influence on Scorsese, Copolla, etc. then he used found footage to make this guy's films and then degraded them to the point where they looked real. He invented a whole story to justify the most ludicrous of films, including a feature that had hard core pornography juxtaposed surprisingly adeptly with Preminger. This was accompanied by a "researched" and "factual" lecture, as well as various cute anecdotes.

It was vaguely brilliant until he got to the feature, which was a magnum opus of his own invented filmmaker's life that really wasn't as interesting to the audience as it clearly was to him. It was a pretty interesting idea, though and very similar to the Exorcist script: deceiving an audience in an attempt to entertain them, but also to poke fun at them or their willingness (and desire) to accept anything presented within a given medium due to that medium's associations. (The lecture as containing fact, or in David Morgan's case, the fan-fic as containing idiocy.)

I think David Morgan just tipped his hand.

Oh we got the joke alright. Is this chump dead or what?