Jonathan Mitchell from Public Radio International tells BoingBoing,
Regarding the Mike Figgis LAX story, it’s not true.
We were thinking of reporting this story on a radio show I work on, so we did a little fact checking. We contacted Figgis’ publicist, and got this email from Mike Figgis himself:
the story is a complete exageration of something I said in an interview, namely…I was being questioned in toronto airport by the US immigration officer who said “purpose of your visit?” and I was about to reply “I’m here to shoot a pilot” when I thought better of it and said
“I’m here to film the 1st episode of a potential series for Fox/Sony”
This was exactly as I said it to the journalist and the next I knew of it was phone calls wishing me deepest sympathies etc and the venue had moved to LAX and I had been arrested etc etc.
I’ve had distortion before in interviews but never fiction. If it had been true it would have been a good story – sorry to dissappoint
All the best – mike figgis
The fake news broke on either Moviefone / AOL or Cinematical, I’m not sure. But someone has some ‘splainin’ to do.
Previously:
Update: Dear christ, must everything be LOLcatted now? Link.
Karina Longworth, the founding editor of Cinematical (she is no longer associated with the site), says:
I saw your post this morning in follow-up to the Mike Figgis non-story. Just wanted to note two things. You wrote, “The fake news broke on either Moviefone / AOL or Cinematical, I’m not sure. But someone has some ‘splainin’ to do.”
First, Cinematical is now owned by AOL and is operated essentially as a subsidiary of Moviefone, so it’s all the same gang. Second, the Cinematical blog post linked to an AOL/Moviefone news story which in turn based its information on this Guardian blurb.
Aha. If the timeline is what it appears to be, then one Jason Solomons of the Guardian/Observer UK is he who has the ‘splainin’ to do.