If you look at Cassie Jaye’s official bios, you might be forgiven for thinking that the director of the upcoming Red Pill documentary had won an impressive “best documentary” prize at Cannes for her first feature-length film.
On her LinkedIn page, Jaye writes that “Daddy I Do,” her film on the abstinence-only movement, “won the Best Documentary Award at the 2010 Cannes Independent Film Festival.” She makes similar statements on YouTube and on her official site, CassieJaye.com.
Press coverage of the young filmmaker has made much of her Cannes award. In a feature on Jaye, the San Rafael Patch reported breathlessly that “Daddy I Do soon garnered immense acclaim, culminating with the Best Documentary Award at the Cannes International Film Festival.” Feminist website Bust declared that the film “has already won Best Documentary awards in several festivals, including the Cannes Film Festival.” A writer at Rumpus.net started off her interview with Jaye by congratulating her for winning “Best Documentary at Cannes.”
But if you go to the official site of the Cannes Film Festival, and look at its list of winners for 2010, you will find no mention of Daddy I Do.
Hell, you won’t find a Best Documentary winner for that year at all, because Cannes didn’t actually have a Best Documentary award.
So what’s going on? Is Jaye lying? Well, not technically.
She did win an award with the word “Cannes” in it. But it didn’t come from the official Cannes festival.
It came instead from a knockoff event, the Cannes INDEPENDENT Film Festival, that many in the film business consider an outright scam, using the Cannes name in order to profit from entry fees, much as the makers of the Spader-Man action figures above hoped to make money from confused or perhaps overly thrifty fans of the real Spiderman.
A site called CannesGuide warns filmmakers not to submit films to the faux festival, declaring that
the Cannes Independent Film Festival (CIFF) is, in our opinion, a scam. It is not connected to the Festival de Cannes, Marche du Film, or any other official festival organisation. It is a coat-tails event, run from the UK, which likely seeks to capitalise on the prestige associated with the city’s name and famous festival.
Although CIFF is a real event, we have questioned its legitimacy in the past and continue to believe that there is little or no value to filmmakers in submitting a film.
Since that was written, the “festival” seems to have vanished entirely from the world. Take a look at what its official web site looks like now. (Seriously, take a look.)
Jaye’s supporters will presumably point out that she’s never technically lied about her award or claimed that it came from the official Cannes festival. Certainly it’s not her fault that reporters make mistakes!
Except that it kind of is. Here’s a screenshot from the trailer for Daddy I Do.
Most people seeing this flash by on the screen, I suspect, will remember the giant CANNES and won’t even notice the word “independent” underneath it. Or, like the reporter for the San Rafael Patch, they’ll change the “independent” to “international” in their minds.
At the very least’s it’s a graphic seemingly designed to capitalize on the confusion between the Cannes Independent Film Festival and the real Festival de Cannes.
No, Jaye isn’t doing anything illegal here. But trumpeting an award from a phony festival as if it were a real award is not only dishonest; it’s kind of pathetic.
Two things: 1) I have a thing for James Spader & actually scrolled up to see if a Spader-Man doll was what I thought. It wasn’t. Sad. 2) These purity things freak me out so much I couldn’t even watch the trailer for her documentary which is too bad because I can totally understand why she would want to make a film about them.
But doesn’t all that not really, but really subterfuge make her the ideal director for the Red Pill film? It’s the same language those guys use.
Kinda like how Trump said the US Marine Corps gave him their highest civilian honor when in fact it was the Marine Corps Law-Enforcement Foundation, which is not officially affiliated with USMC.
Sort of like that White Ribbon thing, huh? I’m noticing a pattern.
I noticed a couple years ago (the real) Cannes started using a new laurel design, I assume because they could copyright it. The whole double-laurel layout has become way to generic.
Reminds me of Bill O’Reilly claiming he’d won a Peabody award.
I did some googling. All I get is gibberish, and other websites warning film makers of this scam. Ouch.
This is actually pretty hilarious. Oh MRAs. Imitating life again, are we?
Don’t do this. Don’t attack Cassie Jaye preemptively before her documentary comes out. It hurts your credibility more than hers. Anita’s gaming detractors lost all claim to objectivity by going into full attack mode before Anita had shot a frame of her gaming videos.
In my opinion, if there is a festival, and that is the name of the festival, and there is an award, and that’s the award she won, she’s not being especially dishonest, though the same may not be true of the festival organizers. I’d like to see what other winners from the Cannes Independent film festival have done.
Okay, I’m too busy to research this right now, but It seems to me that it’s well known that the Cannes festival coincides with a whole lot of other events, including smaller festivals. People who care about this sort of thing probably know enough to read the fine print, and the organizers of the respective festivals probably have an understanding.
Don’t do this. Don’t attack Cassie Jaye preemptively before her documentary comes out. It hurts your credibility more than hers. Anita’s gaming detractors lost all claim to objectivity by going into full attack mode before Anita had shot a frame of her gaming videos.
I agree. Nobody’s seen the documentary yet, and it’ll stand or fall on its own merits.
>>I did some googling. All I get is gibberish, and other websites warning film makers of this scam. Ouch.
Well maybe I should have done some googling myself, but I still object to preemptive attacks.
So I ran the CannesFest website through Google Translate. It appears to be a sales pitch for a beauty product called ThermaCool.
@Felix Ray
How is it an attack on Cassie Jaye to accurately state that the award she was given is a scam?
@dhag85
I thought about the exact same thing, it was less surprising that a fake feminist with a fraudulent award would fall for the tales of a fake activist with a fraudulent website…
@Felix
Yeah right, that’ exactly what objectivity means.
Actually, what?
Cassie Jaye already exists. Comments on things she’s done are not preemptive. The documentary does not exist yet. Comments on the documentary would be preemptive. See how that works?
So, what angle does “Daddy I Do” take? Pro-purity balls, contra, or some wishy-washy weirdness trying to claim “middle ground”?
>>How is it an attack on Cassie Jaye to accurately state that the award she was given is a scam?
Are you kidding?
And what you mean by “accurately”? What do you mean by scam? Is there a festival? Is the festival in Cannes? Did she win an award? “Accurately”, would imply that some of these details are filled in. Without further research, what I’m reading here is that it’s “pathetic” to list an award that she actually won for reasons that seem to have more to do with the festival organizers. “Pathetic” seems like an attack.
David, great catch on the Cannes thing. Not in a million years would I have caught that, as I am not into film stuff.
If I can revert to my 7th grade self for a sec, Cassie’s Cannes/Cannes thing was lame.
Here’s a review. RH Reality Check.
>>Yeah right, that’s exactly what objectivity means.
>>Actually, what?
I’m saying that if you attack someone for their opinion before they express their opinion, it looks like prejudice… because what else could it be?
Obvs everyone can do what they like, but I’m with Felix on this one — maybe she just fell for a scam or whatever. It does feel preemptive to classify her as an acceptable target when none of us have actually seen any of her movies.
Yeah, stating facts like “Cassie Jaye has an award that says Cannes on it it but it isn’t associated with that Cannes” isn’t an “attack”. It’s correcting misinformation, imo.
Also, David’s article really makes no “attack” on the documentary.
She’s being really dishonest though by not correcting misinformation, or even specifying that the Cannes Independent Film Festival isn’t associated with that Cannes Film Festival, if she knew that they weren’t associated.
And it just looks really shifty that she’s still claiming an award from an organization that not only has vanished off the face of the earth, but the actual Cannes Film Festival has denounced as a scam.
@Felix Ray
She wasn’t “attacked”, and this has nothing to do with “her opinion”. Her award is being called a scam award, because it is. What’s your problem?
I think it’s highly unlikely that she “fell for a scam”. If you’re a film maker and you actually won an award from the actual Cannes Film Festival.. you would know. You wouldn’t go “Well, I guess this is a real award. I’m not gonna google it or ask any questions though.”
There is a festival in Cannes, but the “Cannes festival” that Jaye won her award from is a scam, according to the real Cannes festival.
Jaye may have won an award from that other festival, but Cannes has stepped forward and went “yeah, they’re not associated with us”.
She may have won an award, but it’s pointless to put it up, because the festival she won it from is one, fake according to the real Cannes festival, and two, no longer in business. She seems to be valuing the award more than the reputation of the people behind it, and they were outed as scammers by the group they were stealing the name of.
It’s pointless to have on your resume, and it can only make you look bad.
It’s like White Ribbon all over again.
Except David isn’t “attacking” Jaye for her opinion, he’s pointing out that one of her awards was given by a scam organization, according to a highly respected and legit one that the scam organization bummed their name off of.
David didn’t mention anything about her “opinions” whatsoever. This isn’t about her Red Pill documentary, it’s about an award she got from a fraudulent organization.