NOTHING SO STRANGE: Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FEBUARY 10, 2003
CONTACT: Brian Flemming, (213) 384-5666, vagrant@slumdance.com

BILL GATES ASSASSINATION FILM GOES "OPEN SOURCE," RELEASES "EVIDENCE" DVD

The makers of the award-winning independent hit "Nothing So Strange," a documentary-style drama about the assassination of Bill Gates, have announced that their film will be released on an "open source" basis, the first time any feature film has been released under a license of this kind.

"Open source" is a term usually used to describe software that allows its users to have access to the "source code" of the program, to tinker with it, and to make and sell their own modifications to it. In contrast, proprietary software, such as that released by Adobe or Microsoft, obscures its source code and comes with extreme copyright restrictions. While the open-source license is increasingly a factor in the software world, and is one of the most hotly debated topics in the technology industry, no filmmaker has applied this sort of license to a film until now.

"We're entering a new digital world where it will be as easy for the average consumer to play around with the media he or she buys as it is for any of us to play around with text," said Brian Flemming, director of "Nothing So Strange." "The big media companies are clearly scared of this future because they're spending millions fighting it. But we have chosen to embrace it. I think there is huge potential here."

"Nothing So Strange" will be released under a license that allows all of the "source" footage of the movie to be used without restriction, in personal or commercial projects, but keeps the actual film as created by the filmmaker under copyright. "You have free access to all the parts of the movie," said Flemming. "But you can't just copy our version of it--you have to make your own original work with the various parts."

The first release of "source" footage is a DVD of Gates-assassination "evidence" that pretends to have been released by Citizens for Truth, the grass-roots citizens group that investigates the Gates assassination in "Nothing So Strange." The "Citizens for Truth Gates Assassination Evidence DVD" contains all angles of the Gates killing itself (reminiscent of the Zapruder film of the John F. Kennedy assassination), footage of a mysterious "Running Man" figure caught near the assassination, audio recordings of a chilling LAPD interrogation of a witness who changed her story to fit the official version of the crime, and dozens of pictures related to the Gates assassination. The DVD will be sold through the Citizens for Truth website at http://www.citizensfortruth.org.

Flemming said "Nothing So Strange" is uniquely suited to this sort of "open source" release. "The film was improvised, so we shot a lot of these things at the full length they would have been in real life. The police interrogation is scary as hell, but I could only fit five minutes out of sixty into the movie. The one-hour public-access show, in which two opposing views on the Gates assassination battle it out, is very compelling, but I also could only fit a few minutes into the film."

"Like a real documentary," Flemming continued, "this movie has footage that could have been interpreted in many different ways. Now the consumer will have a chance to make his or her own version of the movie. And, unlike George Lucas, I won't try to sue the pants off you for doing it." (George Lucas became upset when a fan distributed his own, shorter "Phantom Edit" of Star Wars: Episode One on the Internet. That "Phantom Edit" largely excised the Jar-Jar Binks character, to the great relief of those who watched it.)

The "Evidence" DVD will also fit well into the Web "universe" that already exists for "Nothing So Strange." In collaboration with Haxan Films, the makers of "The Blair Witch Project," GMD Studios in Florida created several websites that take the Bill Gates assassination as real, including an advocacy site for Citizens for Truth, a Gates Memorial Web Ring and a "community hub" called Bill Gates is Dead (URLs below). Over the past year, that Web universe has expanded as fans of the movie post their own conflicting theories about conspiracies and build their own websites about the Gates assassination. The original websites have received over 7 million hits since they debuted.

The makers of "Nothing So Strange" feel that a looser approach to copyright is a viable economic strategy for independent films. "The copyright is ours to spend," said executive producer Brian Clark. "Why not spend it this way? If other people make and distribute derivative works of 'Nothing So Strange,' that can only increase awareness for this movie. And that's the toughest job for an independent film, especially one without a major distributor."

While "Nothing So Strange" has been a popular and critical hit on the U.S. festival circuit, called a "crackling good movie" that "may be the ideal prototype film for the digital age" by film-industry bible Variety and winning the prestigious New York Times Claiborne Pell Award for Original Vision at the Newport Film Festival, it has not secured a commercial distributor. The film's controversial premise has figured negatively in some negotiations with distributors.

"Nothing So Strange" is the first feature film to embrace the open-source ethic, but there are precedents in other creative fields. Recording artist Bjork already allows her fans to remix many of her works and even provides a website where the remixes can be uploaded. It is a proven strategy for bands to release MP3s of their songs on peer-to-peer networks, giving fans their music for free but gaining attention for their work in the bargain.

"Nothing So Strange" continues its highly successful run on the U.S. festival circuit. It will appear February 12-14 at the San Francisco IndieFest (http://www.sfindie.com/film_detail.php?film=nothing) and February 25 at the Sidewalk Cinematheque in Birmingham, Alabama (http://www.sidewalkfest.com/cinematheque.htm). The film debuted at the Slamdance Film Festival and went on to festivals including South by Southwest, Taos Talking Picture, Florida Film Festival and the Newport Film Festival, where it won the New York Times Claiborne Pell Award for Original Vision.

URLS
official site: http://www.nothingsostrange.com

Web universe (partial):
http://www.citizensfortruth.org
http://www.billgatesisdead.com