Photos courtesy of Dave Rodriguez
“Just saying, ‘Stop it! You know, you’re being a jerk!’–walk away, get away from this person can make a huge amount of difference.” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at The U.S. Department of Education’s Third Annual Federal Partners in Bullying Prevention Summit.
Representatives from the The Ad Council and the Free to Be Foundation are launching a new PSA campaign help to parents talk to their kids about bullying. Actress and activist Marlo Thomas of the Free to Be Foundation said schools should enact a “zero tolerance policy” where students who bully others would be expelled.
We received a note from director Dave Rodriguez today (whom we had interviewed a while back when American Bully was Anytown) in reaction to the latest mayhem at the Sikkh Temple.
“When I first completed American Bully f.k.a. Anytown, I remember giving it to a literary agent that I met with who was considering representing me.
A few days later he screened the film with several of his colleagues and about three quarters of the way through, they were unable to finish.
He called me shortly thereafter as I was cutting into there lunch hours, yes hours and said this to me; “Dave, we watched the film and the problem is, it just didn’t seem realistic to us.”
As you can imagine, I was floored by such an uninformed and ignorant response. Luckily, I’m not concerned about getting an agent to represent me any longer but, the stupidity that resonated in that agents’ comment was something I never forgot.
American Bully was recently released on Redbox and as any filmmaker would, I’ve been trying to gauge the response. Some people love the film, while others think it’s awful, boring and “Liberal Hollywood” propaganda. The fact is, the film speaks the truth about some of our fellow American’s ignorance, prejudice and hatred.
American Bully was about educating; it was about bullying by misinterpretation. Bullying a group of people or a religion one is supposed to hate.
I get the whole idea of American patriotism and, that there is still an underlying anger and hatred towards Islamic extremists but come on, a Sikh temple.
Read about the Sikh culture and their pursuit of truthful living, equality, freedom and justice. The crime perpetuated by Wade Michael Page against the Sikh temple and the people of Wisconsin is also a crime against humanity, and all that we are taught as Americans and as human beings. My heart bleeds for all of the families affected by this great American tragedy.”
Recently, we also interviewed Lee Hirsch about his moive Bully.
Clearly there is a problem out there waiting to be resolved.
