Film 'exposes biggest criminals on the planet'
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No Comments [ Add Comment ]By Charles Trentelman
Standard-Examiner Staff
PDF: Fake New York Times
OGDEN -- People attending the film "The Yes Men Fix the World" at the Sundance Film Festival will get a bonus: A free copy of the New York Times with the headline proclaiming "Iraq War Ends."
The paper is a fake, of course, unrelated to the real New York Times.
The July 4, 2009 date on the fake "Times" is one tip-off.
Other tip-offs are stories in which President George Bush takes full blame for the Iraq war and is indicted for war crimes, Condoleeza Rice says she never thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and headlines such as "Nation sets its sights on building sane economy."
Even the ads are fake.
General Motors promises to bring back the electric car, the De Beers company promises to use diamond profits for medical care of diamond miners and ExxonMobil promises to help clean up the environment by reducing oil production.
The fake newspaper was produced last year and distributed Nov. 12 in New York City, Washington, D.C., and several other major cities around the nation. One of its creators, Andy Bichlbaum, also wrote and directed "The Yes Men Fix the World."
A description of the movie on the Sundance Film Festival Web site says "If you don't know them, they're Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, a pair of notorious troublemakers who sneak into corporate events disguised as captains of industry.
"Then they use their momentary authority to expose the biggest criminals on the planet. In 'The Yes Men Fix the World,' they've set their sights on a plethora of manmade disasters, from profiteering after Hurricane Katrina to the environmental disaster in Bhopal."
The film opens Sunday in Park City and also has screenings in Kimball Junction and Salt Lake City.
Bichlbaum said the point of the newspaper, like the film, is to keep pressure on to change the way the country is run.
"The key is the article on the lower half of the front page about pressure," he said, referring to one headlined "Popular pressure ushers recent progressive tilt."
The paper is "intended to be a kind of wake-up call," he said. "To say, 'It's great to have elected Obama, but it's not going to bring change unless we really ramp it up and make sure it happens.' "
Another creator of the fake Times, Mike Lambert, works as a research fellow at the Eyebeam Art & Technology Center in Manhattan.
He said he and Bichlbaum conceived the idea of the fake Times about a year ago over drinks in a local bar.
Originally they just wanted to find some way to "celebrate the end of the war. It was an idea Andy and I were talking about, then it turned into the newspaper."
They collected thousands of donations from $20 to $100 to pay for it, he said, and an estimated 100 people wrote it.
Reaction from the real New York Times, he said, has been completely positive.
"They loved it. All the people I talked to loved it."
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