I agree. Two professional athletes got in trouble in the last six months for tweets they send out while in high school. Why is anyone sharing anything remotely personal on social media anymore?

The only thing society loves more than an underdogs is tearing people down.

What he wrote was incredibly disgusting, but it was 10 years ago not last week. I'm not the same person i was 10 years ago and I'd hate to lose my job over something I said back then. Still, I'm blown away by what people put on social media.

hahahaha! good one

It's business more than than entertainment. Shareholder value. So sever the current relationship, maintain the valuable property.

The other problem with this firing, is that it is by a company that released some incredibly racist and inappropriate material in the past, but has now "changed". Yes, it was longer ago, but does that really matter?

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Starting from scratch...

Gunn is a silly goose who didn't realize that the mob always eventually consumes its own and that the internet is (and, by extension, tweets are) forever. What, he never learned or bothered to educate himself about the ultimate fate of Robespierre?

Case in point: the director himself jumped on Twitter recently to cheer Roseanne Barr's defenestration over her comments about Valerie Jarrett. Unfortunately for him, he had those tweets (icky at minimum, gross and disturbing to 'normal' sensibilities, at maximum) laying like skeletons in the closet that is his past.

And so the same mob in which he'd proudly stood as a member came for him, much as the mob came for the leader of France's Terror during that country's revolution. Unfair as such a thing is, it serves as an object lesson about the vagaries of mob justice, I'd say.

Personally, I condemn both episodes. Both Barr and Gunn had the right of free speech on their side and it was only speech, as unpopular as it was in both instances, that led to their downfall at the hands of a crazed mob that would dearly love to silence all 'incorrect' speech of which they disapprove. How dare they.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

While I like Gunn's films he should have kept his mouth shut about Trump and politics in general

Good point!

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who's smarter than you're? i'm!

Why?

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

Basic rule of polite society: You don't talk about politics, religion, or money. Guys like Gunn drop a big, smelly shit in public then are completely surprised to find out others think it stinks.

In this case there was instant justice. Gunn used an old tweet of Shapiro's to attack him. Not the smartest move from someone with a history of tweeting about child rape and bestiality.

Look on the bright side. Maybe he'll get back to making films like Slither instead of Disney's film making by committee.

what Arch said :)

He was a big cheerleader for the Twitter outrage mob, that's for sure. And Disney, as his employer, certainly had a right to sever its relationship with him for his tweets, just as ABC had the right to do the same thing with Roseanne Barr. The First Amendment exists particularly to prevent government from infringing on speech, with certain specific exceptions, but private individuals and employers are free to do as they'd like. It's still not what I'd do to someone under any circumstance, though, but that's just me. And I don't like it that people are losing their livelihoods simply because a few people on Twitter don't like what someone said.

At any rate, even though the roaming outrage mob took down Gunn and Barr, I think that we here in the LR are probably safe. Probably. ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

First, how are we supposed to have national discussion and debate about the important issues that impact a collective democratic society if we're not allowed to talk about politics, religion, or money? Why are you here in the LR? Pretty sure that, to some extent, it's so you can talk with people about politics, religion, and money.

Second, Gunn was not "completely surprised" to find out some people didn't like his tweets. He's openly talked about them in the past, and acknowledged their offensiveness and how he's grown as a person from where he was when he posted them.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

Somehow I think that this conversation, both nationally and in the LR, would be going differently if the director had been, say, Clint Eastwood or Vince Vaughn.

Honest question that I don't know the answer to, may need JSA for the legal opinion. Do they have a right to fire him for actions prior to him being hired, which they knew about prior to hiring him? Can they legally change their mind after the fact?

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Starting from scratch...

Arch Stanton wrote:
slowguy wrote:
Runguy wrote:


I'm guessing he doesn't think his LR posts are big, smelly shits.

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

I don't know the basics of his employment contract with Disney, which would answer a lot of your questions, is my guess. He may have signed a personal services contract, perhaps with a "language and morals clause," or he may have signed an industry standard union-type contract (there are actors unions/guilds and I imagine the same is true for most Hollywood jobs) with some sort of broad clause covering his misstep. Or he could simply be an at will or independent contractor employee of the studio. Or a combination of the three, which is likely. He's probably not a direct employee of the studio, however. Disney may have just decided to sever its relationship with him, with neither side having any obligation to each other, and the media -- lazy as always in its reporting -- is characterizing it as a firing, which in most peoples' minds conjures up a traditionally understood employer-employee relationship.

Hollywood contracts have many clauses and such in them, and the studios can pretty much do what they'd like, I think. And they often do, if Harvey Weinstein and his ilk are any indication.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."