That’s an excellent essay by her, it definitely brings up many things we don’t usually consider in stories like this. For those who don’t want to scroll through a Twitter thread, here’s the complete essay.
Thanks TroutMan. That’s a better link. I agree, it’s a very good read and gives one a lot to consider.
That is, truly, an excellent essay. I doubt I would have been enticed to watch this film but now I will advocate opposition.
I was under the impression that Matt Damon has a reputation as a pretty decent guy; I wonder what his reaction to her essay is!
That is a great essay. Definitely not seeing Stillwater now either. Though I’ll happily see her Damien Matthews movie.
Especially if they correctly portray his gay relationship with his “friend” Ken Afflac*. And show the details of the guy he killed on the set of Good Kill Hunter.
* not that there’s anything wrong with that - AFLAC!
I sense that Amanda Knox has invoked the Streisand Effect.
I agree. I saw this movie over the weekend and the only similarity to Amanda Knox is that a character in the movie is a pretty, young college student in a foreign country who is serving prison time for murdering her roommate. Like Amanda Knox, she claims she’s innocent. The movie itself though is about her Dad and the relationships he’s making in France while trying to help his daughter prove her innocence.
I agree with what Amanda is saying about having control of her story, but she can’t own every story that references a young girl accused of crimes in foreign countries.
From her article:
This new film by director Tom McCarthy, starring Matt Damon, is “loosely based” or “directly inspired by” the “Amanda Knox saga,” as Vanity Fair put it in a for-profit article promoting a for-profit film, neither of which I am affiliated with.
In other words, her real complaint is that she’s not making any money from it. Nor is there any reason she should.
As I’ve posted elsewhere on the board, I believe that Knox is undoubtedly guilty of murder, and I do not have any positive feelings towards her whatsoever.
I recommend this BBC documentary:
And that is clear in your analysis. She said nothing about wanting money from it. Not in the slightest. The article is about how various groups keep using her name, making it about her. The article in question specifically names her. Why? Because they’re using the fame of her name to sell their movie. If the movie is not based on her story, then that’s deceptive. If it is based on her story, then they’re lying when they say it isn’t.
The only thing she suggest that many people mentioning her could have done is actually interview her or any of the other people involved. Not a word about money.
The article contains a lot of thought provoking ideas about how we deal with crimes, even if you don’t think about her case specifically. We still often wind up naming the crime after someone who was later declared innocent, and not the victim.
And it discusses issues with fame in general, and how it can thrust upon someone who didn’t intend for it to, who can’t get their private life back.
It’s one thing to think she’s guilty. But that assumption seems to have led you to being unable to read what the article actually says. Even if she’s guilty, the actual point she made still stands.
To further her point, it doesn’t even matter, because people will believe “the story”. Idiots all over the world STILL think she had a hand in klilling her roommate, and people who watch the movie will believe that she had a lesbian relationship with her roommate, and that she probably had something to do with killing her.
The trouble with our world is that we can’t trust people to be smart enough to know when they are being lied to.
And no one calls the case the Meredith Kercher Story, or the Rudy Guede Murder, or even the Botched Italian Police Investigation, no, it is now and forever to be known as the Amanda Knox Murder Case, even though she was neither the killer nor the victim. And I agree with her complaint about this.
Knox has been milking her whiny story for cash for years.
That’s most definitely the issue, along with the movie not showing how innocent she is.
But, all this I mostly forgive. I get it. There’s money to be made, and you have no obligation to approach me.
Passive-aggressive crap. 
I’m sure this isn’t the first time someone loosely based a movie or TV show script on a real-life story. And I’m sure this isn’t the first time articles on that movie or TV show mentioned the real-life story that inspired it. So I don’t see what she thinks she’s entitled to.
Well, reading what she actually wrote, it seems to come down to this: if they did base it on her as their own marketing implies (albeit in a very loose way), they should have at least interviewed her or other people involved. And if it’s not based on her, they shouldn’t be using her name under false pretenses to drum up business.
That seems like a pretty reasonable stance, to be honest.
If they interviewed her, would she now be saying, why didn’t they pay her? I suspect this is a no-win situation.
Who knows?
As far as I’m concerned, that’s a bit of projection.
Note that she didn’t bring up getting paid - only that the producers had a profit motive so had little interest in the truth.
The notion that she’s demanding money or would demand money has, so far, been an invention of this thread. And passing judgment on somebody based on what doesn’t even amount to hearsay - more or less a conspiracy theory “I bet this is what’s really going on” - is bizarre.
One person is indisputably guilty of the murder of Meredith Kercher. His name is Rudy Guede. He had a prior record of burglary and an established m.o. of brandishing a knife when confronted. He was only barely known to Kercher and Knox and had no reason to be in their apartment. However, his bloody palm print was found on Meredith’s pillow. He left the country right after the crime.
In order to believe that Amanda Knox is also guilty of the murder, you would have to believe that someone with no motive and no prior record would collaborate with a virtual stranger to rape her own roommate. Remember that Knox, unlike Guede, could not simply flee the scene of the crime - she lived there.
I was pretty agnostic about the whole case until reading the link posted by @GreenWyvern, which supposedly points to Knox’s guilt. GreenWyvern, I’m baffled how you could be convinced this was anything other than Guede’s crime.
Not a reasonable expectation to me. The story outline (leaving aside guilt or innocence) is public domain through news reports. If the movie is not about her or what actually happened, then what is in the public domain is plenty of background for a story inspired by those events and that situation.
Also, what good would such interviewing do? The results would not have affected the story, since it is not her/their story that is being filmed. It would only have been more of the he said/she said back and forth conflicting accounts that we got through the news, and that came out in the trial (okay, I have only fairly vague memories of this whole set of events, and this is what I took away from it: conflicting accounts and insufficient evidence to convict).
I do think it is shabby of the movie publicity to be mentioning her name and that case, as if the story they have couldn’t stand on its own. That is about increasing viewership and therefore about money, and they don’t seem to care about what it might cost Ms Knox. They simply should not have done that, and there is really no way to make that right.
Of course the producers had a profit motive, they are making a movie. Historic fiction/movies based on real events have been a thing since the dawn of art. And ‘the truth’? According to who? The appeal of these stories is the mystery surrounding the actual events.
I agree that the whole, “Oh my God, they’re profiting off of this!” is more than a bit ridiculous.