Sunday, November 05, 2006

One Shamefully Deceptive YouTube Video

A video currently posted on YouTube titled 'Why Walk 1000 Miles' has stirred up an enormous amount of controversy. The summary posted by the director says this:

After his brother Brian is killed in Iraq, Ray takes postive action in the form of a peace walk across the United Kingdom.He explains to Jean that he was inspired by a woman named Peace Pilgrim, who spent 28 years walking for peace. This is the first clip in an upcoming series from the film.Additional clips can be found on my channel. ... (more)

Those who didn't follow the link to the production company's web site, Door Number Three Films, believed the man identified as 'Ray' was the real deal and many viewers commented both positively and negatively about his apparent effort to find peace in the way of the original Peace Pilgrim, Mildred Norman Ryder. 'Ray' was variously criticized by some as seeming to be stoned, coming across as a hippie or as 'inspiring' and 'amazing'.

The only problem is: 'Ray' is not real.

The video, viewed by over 175,000 people and depicted as a YouTube Featured clip is actually a part of a film called Peace Walker. From Door Number Three's site:

Peace Walker is the story of a creative journey to the United Kingdom to make a film about world peace. Originally inspired by Peace Pilgrim, a woman who walked for peace for 28 years, director Tara Golden concieved of the idea of a film that would combine a narrative story line and a documentary journey. The idea was an attempt to create a new genre in filmmaking by mixing the powerful story of a man who does a peace walk with the real life adventure of walking every step of way through Scotland and England. The plan was to meet interesting local charactors [sic] along the 1100 mile hike and to integrate them into the story, and it worked, up until a point.

Chase Korte, an actor from LA was cast as Ray, a man who loses his brother in the Iraq war and who is spiritually moved to make a peace pilgrimage. Chosen from over 500 actors who applied, Chase left a life of auditions and commericals in California and took a giant leap of faith by agreeing to jump into the journey.

The posting of this clip on YouTube's site is deceiving and is an insult to all who believed it was actually based on one man's true story. This film company has fooled tens of thousands of people into thinking that 'Ray' represents a real life struggle by one brother who lost another to the horrors of war.

Shame on them.

You can contact Door Number Three Films via e-mail to let them know what you think about this situation: doornumberthreefilms@yahoo.com

And let this be a cautionary tale: don't trust everything you see on YouTube. I find this particularly disturbing and will stop short of calling it a fraud, lest I be sued for saying so. But this type of deception, preying on people's sympathies with fakery, is one of the lowest forms of behaviour there is.

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