Film Courage: What's your experience with piracy and IMDB ratings?
Michael J. Epstein, Filmmaker, Writer, Musician, and Scientist: Piracy is inevitable as soon as
your movie comes out, it will be pirated. What's interesting about the piracy in relation to the
ratings is that it's the most somehow the people who don't pay for your movie who feel kind of most
entitled to go out, watch one minute of it that they torrented and then go on IMDb and write a
review. “I’ve only watched one minute of this I'm going to give it one star. It's the worst
movie I've ever seen!” Part of it is that they just are expecting that they think every movie
is basically 100 million dollar movie. They don't understand what an independent movie is
because from their perspective they're going on the torrent site and Oh, here's a list of
new things. I'll just grab the all these things and they turn it on for a minute and it doesn't
look what they expect they don't know that they're seeing an independent film and so you get waves
and waves it's it's really as soon as that piracy happens you start getting waves and waves waves
of negative comments and negative ratings in IMDb and one of the ways you can tell this
is that for example we had a movie that was only released in the US only available on limited
Platforms in the US and the the day it goes up on on Pirate Bay you start getting all these comments
from other countries the only way they could have watched it is basically through piracy and once
in a while I've gone in and commented back or confronted them in places where I say clearly
you you pirated this movie because you're you live in Brazil and it's not available there so
how did you see it and they'll get defensive sometimes and weird about I don't really do
that too much but I thought it was amusing for a minute but but yeah it's it's really the most
somehow the most entitled people I guess it's not surprising because they feel entitled to just
steal the movie then they also feel entitled they're they're they've been wronged if it's
not a a masterpiece and they feel entitled to go out and kind of pull the rating down
and how long ago was this that this happened the last one was with a movie that came out in 2019
so it's happened to you and Sophia [Cacciola] more than once we've definitely had where where as soon
as it's that was the worst the worst case but we've definitely had other cases in IMDb where
as soon as it's you start seeing as soon as it goes up on the torrent sites you start seeing all
those low ratings what was your reaction to the experience aside from attempting to maybe try to
poke back but then realized it was a waste of time yeah I mean it's a frustrating experience because
people do rely on it for deciding whether to watch the movie or not and I did at one point years ago
I did email IMDb and I said look the movie's not out in these countries why are you allowing
ratings in countries where the movie has not been released these people clearly have not seen it
and they just say oh it balances out they have some stock answer anytime you complain
about ratings there they have some stock answer that they're it'll all bounce out don't worry
we wait everything it's all it's all fine has this happened with all of your movies
I think all the ones that have gotten wide released pretty much this has happened with
the ratings have have a number of different types of issues it's not just the piracy issue there are
what I suspect I mean I can't prove this but what I suspect are bots basically people pay
I know I know for a fact that many people pay for bots to get a certain number of ratings in their
movies and that's kind of a a secret standard practice for a lot of a lot of films including
studio films and what happens with the bots is that they will go and rate let's say I hire them
to rate my movie in nine and ten they go and do that but those bots in order to not look
suspicious they go and read other random movies random ratings including low ratings so that it
looks they're giving a wide range of reading so we've had movies before they're even out that
have not even come out or they're on the festival circuit that get a thousand one star ratings and
I'm who who is who are these thousand people it's certainly not people a thousand people haven't
even seen it at a festival and suddenly there's a thousand ratings on this that are one star so
there's not really accountability in the system and we can see patterns of
it based on we know the movie's not out yet it shouldn't be shouldn't be ratings for it
what do you think about independent filmmakers being judged solely based on their IMDb rating
I mean I think any kind of rating that is unfortunate because it's not it's not a
a scale of whether you or I might the movie it's who who are these random people who are deciding
to make this rating and I think it's more important to understand that certain movies
are for certain people so not every movie is for every person and we see a lot of trolling on on
IMDb where it's a movie's made for young girls and you see there's a wave of negative responses
from young men or older men who are basically just trying to pull that movie down it's this
movie is not for you you're not really supposed to it doesn't matter if you this that's not that
shouldn't be a way of assessing whether the movie is successful or meaningful so it's a little bit
frustrating because I would love to see a system where it's more associated with how how would we
predict you would feel about the movie if you watched it and I do use Letterboxd quite a lot
I don't really I don't rate movies on it but I do Letterboxd because I can see specifically how do
my friends rate them I don't care about strangers but I can see oh my friend really this movie or my
friend really disliked this movie and I know based on my relationship with that person if
they liked it maybe it's something that I might or if they disliked it maybe it's something I
would dislike and I wouldn't necessarily not watch it solely based on that but it's a much
better sense of what is your peer group and how to how does that look than just a generic number
and with these bots are they actually leaving long comments or they're just basically giving
it one star it's usually just just a rating but there are you can pay for reviews I've seen people
I've known people who paid for reviews and with the paying for reviews they're I think there are
somewhere you can write the reviews and send them to them and they will they just post them
but there are some that kind of generate pretty generic reviews and if you go and browse on IMDb
you can start if you start seeing kind of weird reviews you're why is this written so strangely
and generically you can find and I don't want IMDb to to say I'm slandering them but I think
all this is pretty visible on the on the on the outside I think you can see where where there
are fake things happening there I think they know about it and they tolerated to a certain degree
or they don't have the resources to deal with it I mean it's a complex problem to solve to eliminate
all these bots how do you identify what a bot is versus what a person is yeah very true yeah and
if you said they're going to other account if they're leaving it's be very hard to decipher
if you're seeing a trail of them on the Internet leaving various reviews and it happens on other
platforms as well In fairness to IMDb right yeah and it is it is difficult to handle if a movie is
rated 5 out of 10 on IMDb will you still watch it yeah I don't really judge the scores very much I
mean some of my favorite movies I I kind of always when we're picking movies out I always think about
what is my favorite movie what is the movie I love the most and then I go look at the IMDb score and
it's a 4.7 or or the reviews are mostly negative or Rotten Tomatoes score of 60 or something that
I realize the things that connect with me most in movies aren't necessarily what is gonna play
well in a general audience score and movies that are nine movies that are nine or 9.5 or
best picture winners I think are terrible movies I think they're awful so I might look at it to
get a sense of it gives me some information it says okay what is it kind of a general audience
think about this but that doesn't necessarily speak so much to what my my interest will be
and again Letterboxd is a little bit more targeted because I can see what specific people say about
it I can I can have a breakdown of who is saying what rather than IMDb where it's just a number
can you think of what some of the highest rated Independent films are Independent films I don't
pay that it's hard because I don't pay that much attention to the scores but I think some of the
highest rated ones often are ones where they just have a a niche audience and that niche audience
is really passionate about it but they haven't if they haven't fallen prey to the the bots or
other things that I'm trying to think of a really good example and I nothing comes to mind Rotten
Tomatoes I mean lots lots of movies have high Rotten Tomatoes scores because partly because they
don't have that many reviews or sometimes they're good good Independent films have high scores
there's been a trend I think in Rotten Tomatoes where reviewers are a lot nicer now because the
reviewers are a lot more there's a broader base of reviewers who are now included in Rotten Tomatoes
and I think those reviewers are a lot more friendly and they feel they owe something to the
movies that are beat they're being sent screeners and all kinds of things whereas if you go back
and you look at a movie that came out 30 years ago or 40 years ago and you look at the Rotten
Tomatoes rating I think it's it's often much much lower than it would be if it had come out now
so yeah I can't think of any specific Independence that I again I don't pay very close attention but
I think you have to take it in the context of the time who's rating it what what do the ratings look
and Rotten Tomatoes also a high rating doesn't mean everybody loved the movie it means everybody
thought the movie was at least okay so sometimes there are movies that that nobody really loves
but everybody is kind of yeah it's fine and those have very high Tomato scores because
nobody really said that it's a terrible movie and on Letterboxd do movies also get downloaded
they they people definitely write negative things or give low scores on Letterboxd
but again same way I don't take the score too seriously and I'm more interested in what do my
friends say about it if I'm curious about a movie what did my friends review say and I'll read the
strangers reviews as well and you can get a sense of whether a person's this is the worst movie ever
it's terrible I hate it and those kind of reviews are I wish they would just kind of expunge all the
I would give it no stars if I could or it's it's not a meaningful assessment of a movie
sure I think back to Roger from Siskel and Ebert and just especially he's one book I Hated, Hated,
Hated This Movie and if you read just I mean it's entertaining it doesn't mean it's going to stop me
from wanting to see the film I actually sometimes want to see it more when I hear people complain
about a film because I want to know I do the same with Amazon reviews on books or whatever really
they thought this now it makes me actually want to read it even more so sometimes it can actually
work in your favor but yeah I mean I think uber is I mean is it brilliant sure viewer no doubt
but he had a really interesting bias especially in his early career against horror movies so I so I'm
really interested in horror films and so I love reading the Roger Ebert reviews of horror films
because they're all even the most beloved horror films that I I think are great that generally now
people have come to think are great he's this is just trash it has no ideas it's awful I mean he
writes the most scathing scathing reviews of all these movies zero Stars all thumbs down everything
and I think as he got older he started to reassess if he he changed his way of assessing
some of those films and I think people who are critics at that time felt they had to conform
with some of the norms of the time and horror movies were were inherently kind of trashy they
were inherently believed to be trashy so people were very reluctant to give them positive reviews
because it kind of almost reflected badly on the critic whereas now horror movies are much more
respected I mean still there are many people who don't respect horror movies at all but they're
much more respected and they're much more they're considered a more acceptable kind of mainstream
idea and so you see a really different approach to criticism than what was done in the past that's an
interesting take because I think did he apologize to some actress was it Tippi Hedren or somebody oh
I don't know which but there was somebody that he said what any review or negative thing that
I put about her I apologize or whatever yeah he's definitely a retracted stuff or rethought
reviews and I think that's that's a that's something nothing wrong with that that's not
that doesn't mean you're a bad person or you did something wrong I think it's totally it's
totally respectable to change your mind about something or have new context or to understand
something differently so yeah I mean I think that's that's the times have changed I'd say.