Letter Writing Campaign

Our friends over at Mental Health America are asking people to take a few minutes to send letters, telephone calls and emails to stop the obnoxious, inappropriate promotion of a movie. Whether the movie has any value or not remains to be seen, but the proposed promotion of it is inappropriate and makes fun of people who are grappling with suicide.

Psych Central whole-heartedly supports Mental Health America in this effort and I encourage you to consider participating in this effort.

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We need your help. AfterDark Films plans to release a Lionsgate Entertainment movie this summer called Wristcutters: A Love Story. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last year to some acclaim. Mental Health America and its national partners have not yet been able to view the film and cannot yet share any detail on the content.

This month, however, AfterDark will launch an alarming “shock and awe” advertising campaign featuring cutouts of the movie characters in the states in which they kill themselves (e.g., jumping off bridges and electrocuting and hanging themselves). These signs will hang from telephone poles and trees in communities nationwide.

Interestingly enough, recent outrage around the advertising campaign of another one of the companies’ films, Captivity, forced AfterDark to remove billboards that showed graphic images of women, being kidnapped, confined, tortured and killed.

On March 12, Mental Health America and 13 of its national colleagues signed a joint letter to AfterDark and Lionsgate, asking the companies to drop Wristcutters’ marketing campaign. Our letters and calls have gone unanswered by AfterDark. Lionsgate claims they have nothing to do with marketing decisions.

You Can Help stop the Wristcutters suicide marketing campaign.

Send a handwritten or typed letter to Lionsgate and AfterDark demanding they pull the marketing campaign. Use the messages and contact information below.

Send a letter to your mayor alerting him of the film’s marketing campaign and asking that he or she not allow the images in your community.

Reach out to video rental stores who will receive the film and its marketing materials shortly after the movie’s theatrical release asking that they not display the film’s marketing materials.

Send this email to your colleagues, friends and family.
Suggested messages:

The planned marketing campaign for Wristcutters, which features graphic depictions of suicide, is both alarming and dangerous.

Suicide is NOT entertainment. With more than 30,000 suicides and 1.4 million suicide attempts in the United States each year, it is a national crisis and tragedy.

AfterDark must modify the planned marketing campaign for Wristcutters before rolling it out.

Scientific evidence shows that portrayals of suicide pose the very real danger of ‘suicide contagion,’ the clinical term for ‘copy cat’ suicides.

Images of suicide are cruel and offensive to people who have contemplated or attempted suicide or to those who have lost family or friends to suicide.

This is not an issue of “political correctness” this is an issue of public health.

Please direct letters to:

Mr. Jon Feltheimer
CEO & Co-Chairman
Lionsgate Entertainment Corporation
2700 Colorado Ave.
Santa Monica, CA 90404
Office: 310- 449-9200
Fax: 310- 255-3870
Email: general-inquiries@lgf.com

Mr. Courtney Solomon
Partner
AfterDark Films
2161 N. Bronson Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90068
Office: 323-468-9888
Email: info@wristcutters.com

If your email is returned because of the companies’ mailboxes are full, please consider calling, mailing or faxing your letter. It’s important that our voice be heard! And if their mailboxes overflow, that means we are being heard loud and clear.

To read the letter Mental Health America and its national colleagues sent to Lionsgate and AfterDark, visit

http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/g...cutters-letter

If you have any questions, contact Heather Cobb, senior director of media relations, at (703) 797-2588.

Please remember to forward this message to your friends!

Thank you DocJohn for posting this information. I will be writing, calling, emailing and sending info on to all it pertains to.

This situation is appalling at best. I am disgusted that anyone in their right mind would consider this situation as entertainment in any way shape or form.

Those of us who suffer from mental illness and those who work closely with folks to help them in their healing process have worked long and hard to gain acceptance in the medical field and our communities. This kind of thing will only work against us in that daily battle.

Again, thank you for keeping us informed! You are a peach!

Wow, this makes me sick. I'm gonna get this on myspace.

what some consider "entertainment" IS appalling.

I can see my brother seeing this, a man who's fought suicidal tendencies since he's been 12, and be faced with things he can't deal with.

I'm in, in all the ways I can be.

KD

I just farwarded this on to all my friends and family who arent memebers here.. I am in it too. Thank you Doc John for posting this.. The more we can prevent outside infuences the better for all.

I remember parts of the DaVinci Code that bothered me to no end . I was the only one screaming in that theatre. Makes me worry that people have become so conditioned to what they consider being the norm in this world anymore. They dont see the harm or effects , the damage it can do to a person.

Ok I've hand written letters and sent emails. I've also posted this on myspace. Thank you for making us aware of this DocJohn. I hope we stop it.

INCREDIBLE!!!

"I've only just begun!"

Its rare that I jump on a protest like this, but this makes me ill. Grrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!

My emails have not been returned. So their inboxes are not full. Lets jam their inboxes!!!

My first email just got returned!! That's okay. There's more than one way to skin a cat!

Hello I just wanted to add one thing. You should also write your congressman or senators of your state. Since many here are covered under the Americans with Disabilities acts, the Government agencies such as NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) and DBSA (Depression Bipolar Support Alliance) with enough interest can appoint a representative in court, regarding the fact that this film company, is not allowing full protective rights under the Americans with Disabilities Acts. This film is considered coersion, and harmful to people covered under the American with Disabilities Acts. Coersion and harassment or influencing people covered under the American with Disabilities Acts to harm, kill, or not be able to live in a manner which is conducive to freedom or consistent protection, or limiting a person covered under the American with Disabilities acts, to keep these Governmental protective rights consistent is not entertainment it is considered Federal Crime. This film company is controlling someone in a manner that is not conducive of protection under the rights provided under the American with Disabilities Acts, and causing harm to people that have a right to live in a respectful and protected manner without harm, by any one person or company or ouside entity that provokes or provides harmful contented material to people in a protected class. I know this is confusing sorry but in other words this company is limiting the power of the government to protect people Covered under the American with Disabilities Acts, and can be charged with limiting protection of the government for preople under the American with Disabilities Act, negligence, coersion, and Fraud for having a license to provide entertainment ,and just committing crimes against people covered under the American with Disabilities Acts, through deceptive management reasoning, in order to limit the prioritive rights of people which has been established under the constitutional influence and legislative embodyment of the United States. under the American with Disabilities Acts.. Please write your governement representative, NAMI, or DBSA so you can make a difference in what you have to see and tolerate in this country as someone that has a say if you are covered under the American with Disabilities Acts. Take care and good day. Soidhonia

Thats good!! That means their inboxes are getting full!!!!!! Whooooo hooooooo!!!!!!!

OMG! Count me in as well. Sounds to me like a lawsuit waiting to happen... like when some artist was sued over a song about suicide (I thing that was it anyway) and all the times music has been blammed for promoting somebody to do something. I can't believe they can be so stupid and insensitive! Is there anything people won't do in search of the almighty dollar?

For the record, we snail mailed our letters, which I typed up in my own words.

Also, in reading reviews of the movie, it sounds like a dark romantic drama or comedy. Suicide is a part of the story, but it's not the most important part from what I can piece together. It makes putting the focus of the marketing campaign on that aspect of the story all the more puzzling.

It's a shame that no one in the marketing dept. at the distribution company thought twice about this sort of thing. I can't imagine someone in that meeting who hasn't been touched by suicide, as nearly everyone has or knows someone who has.

It's really just sad... I hope they change their minds. Thanks for your efforts!!

John

Oooh that's nasty ... Unfortunately 'shock value' is going to get people's attention, and in a world where people are bombarded with so much stimuli there is a need to find a point of difference and in this case, they're trying to play on the most disturbing aspect of the storyline.

It makes sense from a marketing perspective, but clearly not from a moral perspective.

I am going to state that I am one of those people who finds dark movies incredibly fascinating - and I'll go and see something just because I know it's going to be one of 'those' movies. E.g. Hard Candy, Requiem, Baise Moi, The Piano Teacher, Irreversible, The Secretary all fall into that broad genre.

But shoving the media campaign into people's faces in the way that it sounds like those people plan to do is IMO horrific.

I am fairly anti-censorship but the issue for me here is what people are forced to see (both ATL and BTL) is much different to what people can choose to experience.

(atl / btl = above the line and below the line marketing strategies).

Good luck

I also have this to add:

It's not a very nice commentary on human nature (me saying this) but ...

The choice of campaign for this movie reeks of a fair bit of active viral marketing to me.

In other words, because it's gained so much 'controversy' already, they're getting maximum cutthrough without actually having to spent much more than a bit of PR at this stage.

Cutthrough = awareness of the upcoming movie obviously.

So the more MySpaces it's on, the more news articles they get - like it or not there is a demographic who will immediately engage with the movie and be keen as mustard to go and check it out.

Actually quite clever in it's own twisted way and certainly not the first time this strategy has ever been used.

Not saying to to react at all, but something like this campaign doesn't get announced and the people behind it are sitting on their *** just waiting to execute it. This publicity is probably rockin for them.

Just my two cents :>

have sent letters to NAMI and SAMSHA, hoping they too write letters. Will send e-mails to all Drop - in - Centers, plus National Mental Health Warehouse

remember the Vermont Bear Company that showed the Valentine's Bear in a strait jacket? they got jerked up really short on that little fiasco......letter writing works.....phone calls work also.....

I sent a couple of emails. Hope it helps. They may be trying to "shock" people into getting a response. You know how these corporations love starting controversy so their product becomes more talked about and granted all the more attention from the very ones who are trying to shut it down.

i have posted it on all of the sites I go to.. excetp two as I do not have any permission to post things like this. .

I am also putting it up on all my care2 sites too.

Yes we do make the marketing superme for them, but if enough people send emails, or snail mails they will understand this movie is so wrong..

** the dragon has left the building**

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Jax2923 said:
I sent a couple of emails. Hope it helps. They may be trying to "shock" people into getting a response. You know how these corporations love starting controversy so their product becomes more talked about and granted all the more attention from the very ones who are trying to shut it down.

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Exactly my point above

Of course they expected backlash, but end of the day they're simply warming up their potential market with a few press releases / articles to stir up controversy. You don't wanna launch something to a cold audience.

It is fairly common in lots of project / campaign launches to start with some below the line (like this) and follow up with above the line (tv commercials, larger print media, etc).

I bet the agency behind this is pretty stoked it's getting so much attention. By the time the movie comes out the outrage will have died down and people will probably be more curious than anything (general public).

Plus it's spindoctoring around support and lobby groups like this ... I would predict that a lot of general public will end up going 'oh what's the big deal, why are they so upset, I may as well go and see it anyway'.

I hope some of the letters etc get the campaign modified so as to cause less trauma to people but they're still going to get a positive effect publicity wise I suspect.

Hmmm me a sneaky dragon.. I am a member of IMDB website where all new movies are relased and you can read and write your own review..

Well I just went and wrote a review a very very bad one..

he.. I hope it gets posted soon..

www.imdb.com is the website if you all want to see what others are saying about the movie...

Everything is dramatic today. Why hide what is going on! Extravagance is how we advertise - maybe we should have a chance to show it like it is. Anyway, are you not asking us to judge something guilty before proven otherwise?

Altered State

I don't approve of the marketing campaign. It's offensive and tasteless. The movie itself, I cannot judge without having seen it; no one can. It, too, might be offensive and tasteless, but we have free speech, so it's not my place to tell someone they can't see it.

I looked at the Wristcutters website. I recognize some of the actors in it. While it doesn't appear to be my type of movie, I don't see anything particularly offensive from the description. Even if I did, it's free speech. I don't have to watch it.

For the record, as DocJohn did, snail mail letters have far more effect than emails, in general. The same is true for petitions; online petitions often have little, if any, effect. Your chances are better if you take the time to write an actual letter.

I forget if someone already mentioned it (I think someone did), but they have a MySpace page as well: http://myspace.com/wristcutters

It's not the movie itself which I find offensive - yet. It's the advertising campaign I read about here.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070307/...ristcutters_dc

"The suicide comedy "Wristcutters: A Love Story" will be released in August, with a marketing campaign featuring cardboard cutouts of characters jumping off a bridge, electrocuting and hanging themselves."

Cardboard cutout will be placed in trees and on bldgs in areas where the film will be shown. That is disgusting and will be triggering for many, including me.

em