About Benjamin Ligeri (aka, 'Reaction', aka 'Bitchy Benny')
A true tale of Ben Ligeri's life-draining and changing journies through the entertainment industry and how it would eventually lead him to the formation of an honest, artist-centered company called BetterStream Entertainment, which would ultimately lead him in a direction of, not just Better Entertainment, but a "Better" life.
AUGUST 22, 2008
THE YOUTUBE LAWSUIT
After getting over 4 million views on his 100+ videos that were on YouTube, and not receiving a penny, nor even the option to monetize his page or put his own banner on it where there was just BLANK, WASTED SPACE, Ben Ligeri opened BetterStream.com to the creative public--where every video creator is an instant partner.
Ben's experiences on YouTube(i.e., YouTube's complete disregard for his work in building the site, marketing for the site, fixing site problems, and the huge amount of traffic he brought them, along with their refusal to even correspond with him by email, mail, or phone nor communicate with him in any human dialect)--prompted Ben Ligeri to allow other users to upload videos and receive promotion on BetterStream.com, a site which originally just hosted his own videos.
Ben Ligeri is suing YouTube for, among many other things, their false representations to him on their revenue-sharing Partner Program, their contractual breaches, their DMCA violations, and their fraudulent inducement and embezzlement of the proceeds of his traffic. He's asking for over a million dollars in damages for himself and an additional 300 million dollars, not for himself, but for the 9,000 most viewed YouTube users who he suspects may also be in a similar boat of being defrauded by YouTube. If you don't redress these things in Court, they don't get better.
[Read the YouTube Lawsuit ~ warning, it's long, only for the highly interested].
A TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE
Ben Ligeri has been entertaining people since he was a child, in various ways. In high school, Beni delivered an "entertaining" speech for class president which earned him praises from students and parents and expulsion from high school for the crime of expressing himself. Granted, he promised to legalize prostitution at school dances, apparently, the uptight faculty couldn't take a joke (or was it more meaningful?) and threatened to walk.
SCREENPLAYS, MARKETING, AND THE FBI
Ben wrote several short and feature screenplays, including A MAN'S WORLD (a smart coming of age romantic comedy about a college freshman who can't get any until he wakes up in a reversed world where women just want sex) and THE LARK AND THE CANNIBAL (a detective/horror parody about three Silence-Of-the-Lambs-obsessed detectives on a hunt for a sexy femme cannibal).
After writing these screenplays, Ben Ligeri then exhausted almost every avenue to market them (specifically A Man's World) to studios and director's, etc., but his material was usually returned unopened, often with letters all stating the same BS policy: "we do not accept unsolicited material" along with no other suggested avenue for gaining solicitation.
Ben also had script services email the highly commercial one-liner for A Man's World to all the major producers as well as emailed agencies and studios himself, and got the same no soliticting policy as well -- which is kind of a nonsensical policy, because how can any new material be solicited? It's new, who knows about it? Maybe that's why the dictionary defines "mainstream" as old and boring. At BetterStream, we DO accept unsolicited material. That's all we want.
Of course, Ben didn't stop there trying to market his screenwriting...
I tried the avenues that longtime screenwriters were exhausting too. I flew down to LA to attend Creative Screenwriting's screenplay pitch expo--a few-thousand-dollar idea that I didn't have the money for--where I pitched A Man's World to the representatives of about thirty major studios and production companies -- who almost unanimously said they "loved" the story, but never contacted me for the script.
The rep. from Kevin Spacey's company (Trigger Street Productions) said that A Man's World was exactly the type of thing that Mr. Spacey was looking for, but they never requested the script either.
In fact, after emailing Trigger Street numerous times, only to be answered each time like I was a homeless solicitor, and finally telling them something like "I'd bet my life the movie will gross a half a billion dollars," I was finally contacted by phone and told that they routinely have to call the FBI to investigate death threats. And they were calling to make sure I wasn't serious...
Clearly, I wasn't making a death threat but I found it interesting that the industry was consumed by them. I wonder why. Again, my only crime was maybe being entertaining in a world of stodgy entertainment companies run by a robotic staff consisting of exploited people turned monotone zombie exploiters -- yeah, the same people controlling your entertainment choices. Go turn on the TV and take a closser look. If you really pay attention, a whole nother door opens to a whole nother world of BS.
The experience at Trigger Happy Street tempted me to make a t-shirt that would read, "I spent two years writing a highly commercial smart comedy and traveled the country marketing it and received a lot of verbal praise, but all I really got was a lousy FBI threat" but it wouldn't fit on a shirt. I'm still trying though.
SKETCH WRITING vs. SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE
I never intended to create sketches myself or act in them. I wanted to write them. And prior to creating parody videos of my own and uploading them to such video sharing sites as YouTube, Revver, and Metacafe, only to find that their revenue sharing programs were a lot of BS, I had first written about fifty comedy skits years before -- sketches made in the style of tv sketch shows like Saturday Night Live and MAD tv and tried to market them there.
I found it impossible to get through to SNL or MADtv in any way, or anyone else for that matter. This was around 2005/2006 when SNL was already knee deep in [intentional**] content bankruptcy.
The excuse that Lorne Michaels gave--and still gives--on his website for not accepting sketches was that they might be working on the same sketch and then their could be a copyright issue--talk about new content butterfles.I overcame this ridiculous excuse by writing a SPEC sketch for an existing series (Bill Brasky) and offered it to SNL for free to either aire it or simply use it to judge my work on. The sketch was returned unopened. I'm pretty sure the letter itself was never returned.
One comment I received on my "Bill Brasky In A Gay Bar" SPEC sketch was, "I must say, it's funnier than 99% of what's been on SNL in the last 20 years." This was by someone who hated me on a writer's board, and probably didn't realize it was me that wrote the sketch.
[ Read the original Bill Brasky In A Gay Bar ]
SNL's policy (on LorneMichaels.com): "We welcome your comments but our policy does not allow us to accept or consider creative ideas, suggestions, or materials other than those that we have specifically requested." Our policy does not allow us to consider creative ideas?? Talk about "no means no". When did considering creative ideas become such a taboo in the creative industry? Or was it always?
And how do you specifically request a creative idea?? And what the F##K?? And anyway, we consider creative ideas here, we live and sleep and mate with creative ideas here. That's what this planet is for.
DEAR LORNE MICHAELS and YAHOO!
Well, numerous letters to SNL and NBC did not get me any closer to marketing creative ideas, so I personally created a website called DearLorneMichaels.com ] (that's a link to the original relic), which was my digital-smoke-signals attempt to show Lorne Michaels that I was serious about sketch writing, and not just some fly-by-night -- which they made it sound like they were getting a lot of.I emailed the page to Lorne, other NBC representatives, and other sketch comedy communities and organizations, such as Second City and The Groundlings, and also paid for sponsor listings, on the top of Yahoo.com, to market the site to NBC, SNL, Lorne, and others that might serve as conduits to the SNL writing dep't.
After awhile, Yahoo! refused to list the site on the grounds that my Saturday Night Live / Lorne Michaels website wasn't applicable to the search terms "saturday night live" and "lorne michaels", though they had companies advertising "airline flights" and other completely inapplicable products under terms like Saturday Night Live. In other words, I was getting BS-ed as usual.
But Yahoo! is another story that we don't have time for. We don't even have time for the current story. And sorry if it sounds like I'm bitching in my "about me" section, but I am Bitchy Benny, and there is a reason for the bitching, and that reason is just over the horizon.
"WRITING FOR SNL"
Anyway, I discovered a class at the People's Improv Theater called "Writing for SNL", taught by a former writer on SNL. I signed up and drove eight hours roundtrip to New York each Sunday for the class, hoping to find a shoe in to contact the show's exec's: Tina Fey, Lorne or any other person hiring or sub-contracting. I was told that they didn't refer, they just taught -- a highly typical dilemma in the entertainment industry. And any struggling artist reading this right now is probably saying to themselves, "Are you planning on saying anything new today?"
I was told, I think by my teacher at the P.I.T., that Lorne recruits from an improv organization known as Second City. The location in New York wasn't offering any classes, so I flew to Los Angeles and took their Level 1 (of I think 5) sketch writing class, hoping once again to find a "shoe in" to SNL.
I walked each day from my motel off Hollywood BLVD to the BLVD to take the class, wearing a shirt that read front and back (YouTube.com) slash my channel on YouTube, which is now "the channel we do not speak of."
I was just starting on YouTube at this time and my views were suddenly starting to increase a lot during my time in LA, which I could only credit to my shirt being seen by thousands of people each day.
After completion of the Second City program, I was promoted past Level 2 sketch writing to "Level 3" sketch writing, but I think the class was only available in Chicago. Even if it was in LA, I simply didn't have the finances to run around the world taking sketch classes that weren't helping me get that weren't even helping me get that shoe in that I was looking for, and I was starting to learn that Lorne ceased recruiting sketch writers from sketch schools and was instead recruiting them from ivy league's, which I thought kind of flew in the face of the original "working class" humor that made the show from the beginning.
Am I bitter? No. Just explanatory. If possible, I encourage creative actors, writers, and artists to try and get on shows like SNL and bring something to the mainstream to make it Better. I know, why's Ben try to brand the word Better. Because someone needs to brand another unbranded word.
COMEDY CENTRAL
Later, I would create a comedy tv show pilot and attempt to interest Comedy Central into airing it on a late slot somewhere, possibly after Southpark or something. I didn't expect miracles, it was sort of a last ditch effort in my attempts to break through to a living, breathing person in the mainstream. I was still willing to even write for them. Shiit, I'll still write something for the mainstream. And try to make it Better :)
It took me a week to negotiate a phone number for Comedy Central. And once I obtained the number, that didn't mean much in the way of getting through to anyone who could get me through to someone who could get me through to someone who could speak any one of the English dialects. But after days of intense battalion-style scheming to get in touch with a non-operator at Comedy Central, I finally found an alleged conduit for "new programming."
I spoke to a lady from the "Development and Original Programming" department, who sounded like she was dying of Monotone Cancer. After sending in the show and following up with her on the phone, she said that she reviewed my tv show and told me in her best monotone and emotionally-devoid voice that it wasn't the "genre" that Comedy Central was currently looking for (ready for).
I didn't believe much of what she said, particularly, I didn't believe that she even watched the show, and when pressed, she put me on hold and came back with some more details to try and prove that she watched it.
Some people like to respond to my story of woes by saying, "well, ben, whaddya expect, it's a tough business to break into." I never expected it to be easy to "break in", but I expected it to be a lot easier to at least make contact with someone or to have a resume or writing sample reviewed without a front from a legal battalion. If they didn't like my work, no problem, I go back to the drawing boards and work harder. But I just wanted a yes or a no. Or a hello or a goodbye. If I can't get even get a no, what's the point of working on anything. Anyway, here's where I'm going with this story of woes...
MAINSTREAM vs. BETTERSTREAM
After being essentially crapped on from all the major networks and entertainment companies (not because they didn't like my material, because they usually returned it unopened without checking it out), and especially after seeing how coporate greed, robotically-applied policies, arbitrary and contradictory practice, as well as sheer stupidity stifled the mainstream's ability to be creative, unique, or to think outside the box or bun, I realized that anyone with a pulse, common sense, and a serious no-quitter attitude could do it a lot Better :)
Mainstream means old and boring, and so I started BetterStream with the mission: to be "Better than mainstream". Better policies, Better content, Better sponsors, much Better treatment of artists, as opposed to exploitation, and a friggin open-door policy to review content. In fact, a wide open-door policy.
Granted, there's some great material that comes out of what you might call the mainstream, but that's because out of a million great ideas, one snuck in through the cracks due to the law of arbitrary and nonsensical probability.
The fact of the matter is, the mainstream could be a lot more creative, a lot more original, a lot less prefab, and altogether a lot Better. And they could definitely treat artists and entertainers a lot, lot, lot Better.
But people just don't realize how much Better it could be because the major entertainment companies won't let them realize artistic potential. They control your programming, or try their best to, and on top of that, they are unlawfully teaming and "content setting" to make people believe that shows like "A Shot At Love" are the best we can come up with as a species (=humans) that has travelled through space and time.
And they do their best to make you believe it's "reality" tv. The programming might be a reality, but it's not real-ity. It's an exploitative set-up like most of mainstream media.
Oh, and retarded mainstream programming isn't due to a lack of creative people in the world (oh no, there's more creative people out there than you could probably count in your lifetime and we hope to find them all), it's due to a lack of creative entertainment companies -- companies that are [intentionally**] complacent because they have the power to be so. We intend to take that power from them. Yes, we intend to take advantage or capitalize on mainstream complacency.
However, the war against mainstream is best won by infiltrating it with good content and people.
INDUSTRY NEGLECT
Ben Ligeri is highly principled when it comes to business and believes (unlike your average company out there) that honesty, integrity, and fair dealings are much, much higher on the priority list than personal profits or any profits. Ben believes that artists are altogether neglected by the mainstream entertainment industry and one of his missions, in addition to social and political advancements, is to create a company that treats the artist with the highest respect and integrity and gives them the ability to profit from their creative work, all while operating his business union in a legitimate manner.
A business union that promotes creators and helps them become the successes that they want to become, can become, and should become. A business that even promotes entertainers to be discovered in the mainstream media circuits too. And a union that might someday become mainstream. Or become the mainstream. Now put that in your blunt and smoke it.
Ben believes that artists should earn what they're worth and not what a company can force them to take. You could say that he's more socialistic than capitalistic in his business dealings. But those are two loaded words.
Basically, he believes in a higher form of business governing than capitalism or democracy. He believes in simplicity. He believes in truth. He believes in creativity. He believes in freedom. He believes in the elementary school slogan "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Yes, he still believes in that. And he believes in...
'OBVIOUS ANSWERISM'
An answer is a solution to a problem. Most problems have obvious answers. Often when an answer seems unavailable, it's because the problem's intricacies are covered in bullshit**, usually by a corrupt or feeble-spirited power.
Obvious Answerism is Ben's self-founded ideology which essentially means: don't "just do it", look before you do it, look for the obvious answer and apply it. All answers are obvious, unless covered in bullshit. We'd all know exactly who God is right now, there'd be no illness, there'd be no problems in the world if the answers weren't covered in bullshit. Think about that for a second. Ben doesn't blame people for not finding answers, he blames the bullshit.
You might say, "Well, Ben has a lot of bullshit in his videos." No, you mean shit, not bullshit. See, I made fun of myself. You always gotta make fun of yourself after a long cocky "about me" section. It's the social law of the day.
Anyway, back to bullshit. I define bullshit as dishonest exploitation. You won't ever see bullshit in my work. The only "bullshit" in my parody videos is the mainstream element referenced for expose purposes through the satire medium. Highlighted bullshit (meaning, bullshit brought to light) is the opposite of bullshit. Because if it's in the light, it's no longer bullshit. The very essence of bullshit is a deception by the information-holder had upon the one ignorant of that information held by the bullshitter.
For example, one of my parody characters, BiGGa BLD, is a gangster rapper who raps about his penis, his bling, and his hoes, all in an attempt to unveil the bullshit in the bling-ho-penis division of gangster rap that has taken over the collective conscious of much of the youth. Parody is simply "fun education." You get to learn and have fun all at the same time. I love to learn. I love to have fun. That's why I love it so much.
I believe in the adage "Fight bullshit by exposing bullshit by making fun of bullshit." Hence the play on letters in BetterStream. BetterStream stands for anti-BS. Not that everything has to be a friggin learning experience or a quest or . Sometimes I just want to have fun too. Ya know, throw my hands up in the air and stuff. Ya follow me? In fact, throw your hands up in the air right now. See, wasn't that fun?
CAPITALISM & FRIENDS
Simply put, to capitalize means to take advantage of someone or something. Ben Ligeri believes in the latter (capitalizing on something), not the former (capitalizing on someone). In other words, he only believes in capitalism to the extent that the capitalizing is on something positive.
For example, Ben Ligeri wouldn't "take advantage" of an artist at the expense of the artist, he would however take advantage of honest methodologies and modalities that would lead to the symbiotic success of that artist and himself. A true form of capitalism.
As opposed to a Wal-Mart style exploitation capitalism that says, "let's enslave the world so we can net a half a percent on our economy-sized gross revenue."
THE WAL-MART INTERLUDE
By the way, I don't make a habit of shopping at Wal-Mart, but if you catch me in one grabbing a water because the next store was 20 miles across the parking lot, don't say "What a hypocrite Ben is." I wouldn't put it on people to protest shopping at one of the only existent stores left in America, though I would encourage non-shopping there. I would, however, put it on our government to temper the dominance of this company. It's not the job of the people in a Representative Democracy to balance Corporate America.
I'm just waiting for a good attorney general to take Wal-Mart to court on the most obvious of federal violations: Antitrust/Unfair Competition. And not just because people go to "mom and pop" electonic stores and waste an hour of the owner's time asking about the different models, only to go to Wal-Mart to get it for fifty cents less.
Why don't they ask a Wal-Mart associate? Because the answer you'll get is "Honestly, I have no idea." And you know what, that employee being honest. They don't even have an idea of how they ended up working at Wal-Mart in the first place, nevermind an understanding of the goods being dragged in and out of the cinder block vortex.
Actually, my biggest problem with Wal-Mart, while we're on the topic, is their total degradation of the creative life force that drives humankind. First off, their store is ugly. No wonder we have to travel to Europe disguised as tourists to explore everyday life and architecture -- as if it's a vacation to see a normal looking city not enshrouded with warehouses of toilet paper and half-price socks and electronics that don't work.
I contend that the current application of bullshit capitalism by corporate america is not at all the "individual-freedom-to execute-your-will" form of capitalism that was maybe originally philosophized on, but rather, that it's closer to the opposite.
Capitalism, as unlawfully applied in this country, is in fact "Fascism to An Authoritarian Capitalizing Order". In other words, when your capitalism impedes my capitalism, it's not capitalism anymore, it's Fascist Capitalism. That's our government.
In fact, we don't have a government. We have anarchy. Anarchy with corporate control. Or, Corporate Anarchy. The worst form of anarchy, I might add. Because there's no government, yet you're completely controlled.
Goodnight and Good Friggin' Luck,
Ben Ligeri
p.s. I planned to just write a few lines about myself (no joke) and this big manifesto came out of me. Maybe I'll make a t-shirt that reads, "I tried to write a simple "about me" section for my website and discovered that our alleged democratic government is really just Corporate Anarchy in disguise. Now I have a manifesto and a glossary of terms below. I wouldn't call it a glossary, it's just two terms. Yup, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt."
If I get enough requests, I might start printing the shirt. If you think I'm joking, try me.
GLOSSARY OF TERMS
"INTENTIONAL"
the word intentional is referenced above as to entertainment groups like Saturday Night Live who seem to be intentionally sabotaging themselves with their own policies. But is this seeming sabotage really sabotage at all? Meaning, why would anyone intentionally sabotage themselves if they didn't have a reason for it. For example, maybe SNL is trying to bankrupt the show, maybe Lorne is trying to hurt NBC, maybe NBC is trying to hurt him. Maybe both. This thought process got me thinking, maybe egoic responses are what control and propel the entertainment industry, as opposed to a quest for creative content programming, talent, and unique and interesting material. Or, maybe it's more twisted and carefully engineered -- for example, maybe they want to make their material boring and uninventive in order to make the commercials seem more exciting. I'm not 100% sure as of this writing.
"BULLSHIT"
Ben Ligeri's definition of bullshit is essentially this: dishonesty used to achieve an unscrupulous result. Or, simply, dishonest exploitation -- which takes exploitation to the next level of not only exploiting someone or something, but doing so in an obscenely unethical and dishonest manner. For example, McDonalds attempting to proclaim themselves the leader of the health food revolution, even going so far as handing out pamphlets in fitness centers, is some serious bullshit! Another gigantic bullshit artist is YouTube. No, I'm not mad at the world, I love the world, I just don't like the bullshit on top.
IMPORTANT LINKS:
About BetterStream
Our Better Terms of Use
Promotion on BetterStream
Artists Have To Get Paid
Our Declaration of Independence