More about "Love & Suicide"

Dear Dakatzpajamas,

Thank you for coming to my blog and posting your comment. I wish to correct you on a few things though. First this blog is a distinct and different blog than BabaluBlog, the archives of which you mention in your comment as if they were comments posted here.

This blog is my personal work and that of my blog partner. While I also contribute to Babalublog I am not the editor there. I agree with Val Prieto, that blog's editor, on almost everything to do with Cuba but I don't tell him how to run his blog.

As for my reasons for linking to posts about Luis Moro (posts at Babalu), that's my prerogative. I posted those links because I think the reader deserves to know what the criticisms were in order to interpret my take on the situation.

Something you have to keep in mind is the way blogs work. We often react to stories in the mainstream media and that's exactly how we became aware of Luis Moro: A newspaper story about an anti-embargo filmmaker that went down to Cuba to film a movie. For those of us that oppose lowering the embargo that doesn't look too good. And then when someone claims that they were in Cuba at the same time and that they witnessed terrible behavior by the film crew it's easy to believe.

As for how hard it is to make a film, you don't have to tell me. I work in the ad business so I know how laborious and expensive it is to film and edit a project. But if the trailer wasn't a good representation of the film then it should not have been released. A trailer is supposed to put a film in the best light not the worst, particularly a film that as you mentioned (and I emphasized in my post) is not political.

Mr. Moro has chosen to promote the film by using the embargo, something which I think is completely unnecessary. The film has nothing to do with the embargo and the embargo has nothing to do with the film. It's an angle as my colleagues in the public relations field might call it. And it will work to generate some coverage but it won't endear the vast majority of the exile community that would normally be interested in a film like this.

But Mr. Moro chose to promote his film the way he saw fit and I wrote what I thought was a fair report about the film and his encounters with my fellow bloggers.

It's also worth noting that when the whole thing went down last year that Mr. Moro never came out and personally disputed the "facts" that his detractors had posted. Only through surrogates did we hear any defense. Again Mr. Moro is not obligated to address any criticisms just as I wasn't obligated to write this response but I'm only trying to make my position clear and he could have benefitted from attempting to do the same.

Regards,

Henry