‘Ghostbusters’ Director Paul Feig: ‘Geek Culture Is Home to Some of the Biggest A-Holes I’ve Ever Met’
Paul Feig, director of the upcoming Ghostbusters remake, is normally one of the more polite and gentile men you’ll ever meet. But with the intense vitriol he has faced over his latest project, even the politest director would reach his breaking point and that breaking point may have arrived. Feig said in response to the hate directed the his way and the way of his cast, “Geek culture is home to some of the biggest assholes I’ve ever met in my life.”
In a new interview with the New York Daily News, Feig said he’s been “attacked for months” over the Ghostbusters project, specifically for remaking the classic film with four women. Forced to, once again, explain his decision, Feig told the paper:
I don’t care what shape or size or color or anything [the actors] are. I live or die on what things are funny and whether or not people will be entertained by them.
It’s not the first time Feig has had enough with geek culture. Back in September of last year, Feig told a self-professed Ghostbusters fan on Twitter “go f–- yourself” after “ranting at me and my cast for months with misogyny and insults.”
After quieting down, the Ghostbusters hate train has started up again with news that angry fans are teaming up to artificially drive up the YouTube “dislikes” on the film’s official trailer. When we first broke that story last week, the trailer had 507,610 thumbs down votes. Today it has 734,351 thumbs down votes, an increase of 226,741 dislikes in just seven days for an average of 32,391 per day. That means the Ghostbusters trailer has more dislikes in one day than the Captain America: Civil War trailer has total. The trailer is still the most disliked movie trailer on YouTube* and has jumped from the 23rd most disliked all-time to 11th on the all-time list in one week.
As we noted at the time, the thumbs down votes aren’t organic, they’re part of a coordinated attack on the film by people who are opposed to its very existence. There have even been reports across the web that angry fans are using bots to artificially drive up the “dislikes” on the trailer. When you realize what is going on, it’s hard not to agree with Feig.
Ghostbusters opens in theaters on July 15.
*Not an “official” YouTube statistic, say the fine people at YouTube