The films ARE great, and what’s more they would never have been made had it not been for the heroic personal efforts of Peter Jackson. All LOTR fans owe him a debt of gratitude.
I’ve never thought much of his characters either. I know a hell of a lot of other people disagree with me there, but he’s not my cup of tea.
I have to admit, so far I can’t see very many actual “fuck yous” taking place here. Mostly what I see is “I don’t like the direction this went,” or “somebody didn’t cater to my every whim and I interpreted it as a ‘fuck you.’” These people take it personally, but it ain’t.
I certainly don’t think Peter Jackson’s interpretation of LoTR qualifies. He didn’t create Lord of the Rings, and prior the movies, he didn’t owe a significant portion of his fandom specifically to LoTR readers, so he wasn’t stiffing his fans anyway. So a couple people didn’t like his adaptation… don’t take it personally.
King’s note from the Dark Tower series and perhaps Metallica’s going all corporate seem the closest to me. Might as well rename this the “Things Fans Didn’t Like” thread.
Barbra Streisand just managed to piss off all the fans who bought her latest CD when she went on the Ellen Degeneres show this past Monday. When asked about her new CD, Guilty Pleasures, Streisand claimed that she had only done the project because her record company forced her into it and she couldn’t even remember the songs on it.
Her fans felt it was quite a slap on the face because weeks prior they had gotten an e-mail from Babs asking the fans to help make Guilty Pleasures #1.
The last episode of Big O (an anime on Adult Swim) was delayed a week when Adult Swim accidently showed some random episode in the slot of the final episode.
Sure, it was accidental, but it certainly caused a firestorm on the Adult Swim forums. Big O is pretty chronic and had a lot of loose ends to tie up. (A week later, the final episode tied up none of those loose ends.)
Some people might consider the Seinfeld series finale one. I for one thought it was a great way to include the obligatory set of clips from the series as well as tie together all the various escapades of the series (many of which involved someone else getting screwed over). Then the main characters end up in jail! Just like most episodes didn’t have a fulfilling or happy conclusion, the series ends on a surreal low note.
The episode could be seen as a way for the writers to stick it to the fans who actually liked the characters in the show.
I’d really rather keep it on track; I just wish more people got that we’re talking about intentional “fuck you’s” rather than “things that nerdy fans bitched over.”
Does Neil Young’s Trans count? Any Young fans want to comment on that one?
The episode they accidentally showed was called “stripes”. But the real fuck you came the next week when they were supposed to put on the real last episode, and instead for the first few minutes re-played “stripes”, then had to cut some material from the actual final episode in order to fit in their little jab. Ho ho, very funny. Thanks, guys.
Yeah–b/c we all know how absolutely precious the airtime on that graveyard shift is… Maybe you could find the time by, I don’t know, skipping one or two of the 15-20 adult swim interstitials that get crammed in between the actual shows? I love Adult Swim, but those guys can be real dumbasses.
“Trans” is one of his best albums from that era. If you want to bitch about a Neil Young album, start with “Weld” or “Landing on Water.”
“Tonight’s the Night” was a deliberate attempt to shake off the quasi-fans who just wanted more “Harvest”-type albums. But the hard-core NY fans like myself love it to this day.
Yeah, I see way more “they didn’t do it the way we wanted” than “writer is pissed at the fan base, so intentionally does something mean” here.
The main one I have to agree with, though, is Hannibal. It’s almost like he was saying, "You’ve dared fall in love with a psychotic serial killer who helps other serial killers? And you want to read more about him? You sickos! Okay, here’s what I’m going to do:
“I’m going to take this character that you respect for some reason and give him the power over the strong female hero-to-many-a-girl. He’ll brainwash her into his own private sex-slave, high-class lady to take the place of his sister, and not only that, she’ll like it. And if you can still like this monster I’ve created (based on real people even!), then you truely belong in an asylum.”
Sad thing is, I think he had a point.
I didn’t feel an a big FU from King at the end of The Dark Tower. I thought his warning was completely out of place though… basically saying that that’s the way he’d written it and he made no apologies about it… and only read if you’re not satisfied that completing his quest completed the series.
I got a certain FU feeling from Douglas Adams in Mostly Harmless. It seemed to me that he only wrote the book under pressure from fans (and thus from the publishers). It had a certain “Fine, you want another book? Here it is! I’ll even include a cheesy, completely over-used reference to the King being abducted… and then, I’ll finish it in such a way that no matter how much you scream, rant, and tear your clothes, there could never be another Hitchhiker’s novel.” Ironically, in Salmon of a Doubt, he was apparently considering rewriting his latest Dirk Gently novel as a Hitchhiker’s novel.
Animaniacs kind of had a mini-FU in their “Please, Please, Please, Please Get a Life!” episode. I don’t think it bothered the N.A.R.F. writers too much, though… they seemed to just be happy that they got attention and directly quoted in the episode.
I had totally forgotten about that.
And how about when they rerun it, and cut out the part where they loop back to the first episode at the end I just love it how they completely change the ending that way. :smack:
That South Park one is interesting, because I’m not sure where it falls. It was a tiny “fuck you”, but people took it as a huge one. And looking back, it’s hard to believe it was such a big deal, since it was just one episode.
I don’t think it was a fuck you at all. From an interview on one of the Southpark DVDs (actually, I think it’s a host segment introducing the episode in question) it was just a practical joke on the fans that people took waaay too seriously.
King MAY be a dick. Similarly, J.D. Salinger may be a complete nut case. BUT…
I suspect you and I would be terrified to leave our houses if we got the kind of “fan” mail J.D. Salinger gets. I mean, every homicidal maniac in the world has a copy of “Catcher in the Rye,” and thinks Salinger “understands me.” SO, even if Salinger were the sanest, healthiest man alive, I wouldn’t blame him for hiding in the middle of the woods.
To a lesser extent, Stephen King probably has the same problem. I don’t want to think about the kind of obsessive, psychotic fans he must have. “Misery” MAY be a slap at his millions of fans… or it may represent his own real (and valid) fears of maniacal, potentially dangerous fans out there who think they own him and/or think he owes them more than an entertaining read.
Hey, a Google ad appeared at the bottom for the Barbra Streisand web site. That oughta get a lot of clickthroughs from this thread.
Anyway, fans who really, really like writers like King and Salinger have it in for mystery writers, especially those featuring serial killers.
I’m surprised we’ve gone this far without the biggest f-you of all: Conan Doyle’s response to the many fans who wanted another Sherlock Holmes story.
That was NOT a “fuck you” to Tolkien fans, it was merely a practical decision by a filmmaker who understood that he COULDN’T simply shoot a frame-by-frame, perfectly faithful adaptation of Tolkien’s stories.
Look, I didn’t like everything Peter Jackson did, and there are things I wish he’d included, and things I wish he’d left out… but look at things from his point of view for a second. His movies were already problematically long. Maybe Tolkien die-hards wanted Jackson to be 100% faithful to the books, but the movie-going public at large wouldn’t have sat still for 4 to 5 hour LOTR flicks. So, SOMETHING had to go.
I think Tom Bombadil is a delightful character, but the chapters involving him add nothing to the narrative. Indeed, they delay the action for quite some time. I understand perfectly why Peter Jackson decided to leave him out, just as I understand perfectly why Jackson didn’t have characters singing all of Tolkien’s songs.
In the same way, while I wish the Scouring of the SHire had been in the movie, I understand perfectly why Jackson reasoned that it would only add 15+ minutes to a movie many would ALREADY feel was too long.
A director has to make choices. You don’t have to approve of all his choices, but there’s no reason to take his choices as a personal affront.
I think Neil maintains to this day that Trans was based on his attempts to communicate with his son Ben who is autisitic. That doesn’t make it a great record but it helps to explain where he was coming from.
When you mentioned Weld I was thinking maybe you meant Arc, the feedback disc from the live set. I saw this as a natural extension of where Neil was going at the time. Freedom was a popular record that had a number of rockers on it; then he did Ragged Glory that was even louder–a bunch of 11 minute songs with six minute guitar solos. Weld was the double CD live set that explored the Sonic Youth-like feedback potential of the songs in concert. Each record got louder and louder, so Arc was the ultimate: a whole disc of just the feedback from the concert tour. And what did he do after that? Ratched the whole thing down by putting out Harvest Moon, a soft acoustic set of songs.
Landing on Water wasn’t a fuck you to the fans. It was a fuck you to the record company.
I really wish you hadn’t posted that link. I spent hours reading it last night. 
Interesting look into the workings of comics in general and Marvel in particular.
Taber: Yep. Sometimes [Adult Swim] can be very hip, and very funny. A few years ago I sent them an email about them having pulled Futurama off the air for a while, and a real live person responded to me. I think I fell in love 
But, they can also be total assholes. They love insulting their fans it seems.
I remember a new year’s party, if I remember correctly, which they webcast. During the party, people were holding up signs saying what losers [AS] fans must be to be staying up to watch the shows or the webcast. Whee.