Protesting Reverend Billy

MOVIE #1,500 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 04.01.24 Mark’s confrontational streak can be seen throughout his entire career, in all of his chosen mediums. Be it screaming non sequiturs in public or chaining himself to an arms manufacturer’s office building, he was always questioning authority, social norms and the status quo. Who knows how he really felt about Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping (I've actually seen this documentary on the group), the anti-capitalist performance art gimmick devised by William (Billy) Talen (one would assume that their ethos would more or less align with Mark’s — he explains in the description of the video: “Reverend Billy protests shopping, but then he had a book talk trying to sell his book. That didn't make sense so I went to protest”). So Mark briefly took over a talk by Reverend Billy at a Boston bookstore in early 2008.

Mark crashes the event in a Richard Nixon mask with various handmade posters featuring absurdist statements like “Reverend Billy doesn’t like ice cream” (he rips this one up after Billy accepts a carton of ice cream as a gift). He leaves the stage chanting “Liberals stole my internet!” to mild applause and bemused laughter.

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"Protesting Reverend Billy" (Mark Baumer, 2008)

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CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #1,499 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,501 ⫸

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Mark Baumer (December 19, 1983 – January 21, 2017) was an American writer, adventurer, and environmental activist. I am attempting to form a canon around his work as a filmmaker. This was released on Mar 18, 2008.