It appears as if #gamergate's feature documentary film has encountered another amusing setback. The Sarkeesian Effect's Jordan Owen has apparently pushed his co-creator Davis Aurini out the post-production process.
Now both would-be filmmakers are accusing each other of being the reason the project has stalled, and pointing fingers about just where the $8,000 or so per month they raised on Patreon to create The Sarkeesian Effect actually went. Owen claims Aurini issued an ultimatum demanding he continue to be paid despite being fired from the project, and Aurini claims Owen made off with funds from The Sarkeesian Effect Paypal account (which Owen apparently controls.)
Fortunately, we can expect duelling versions of The Sarkeesian Effect from each of them to be released sometime in the indeterminate future.
It's a damned shame if you ask me. Aurini and Owen's unintentionally terrible videos make for amusing watching; they are two terrible filmmakers whose views were fundamentally incompatible from the start. Unless one has the misfortune of being a Sarkeesian Effect backer, their incompetent joint videos about The Sarkeesian Effect were absolutely hilarious.
This morning, a dissheveled-looking Jordan Owen said on Youtube:
I have decided it is best for me, and best for the project that I terminate my working relationship with Davis Aurini. I feel that as producer it is my right and my responsibility to terminate a director if I feel they are not right for the project...
[Aurini's] response was to give me an ultimatum. I could either pay him the regular amount of money, that he receives every month for production, and we would continue as though nothing had happened, or I could pay him half the budget, he would go away altogether, or, if I paid [Aurini] no money, he would go public and claim I was absconding with all the money. This is absolutely not the case.
Aurini claimed in a rebuttal that Owen was a layabout director, jealous of his and
admitted rapist Roosh V's facility with women, who left the heavy lifting to Aurini.
Jordan’s role as Producer, by this point, had mainly devolved to signing the cheques while I did the editing, and others did the animation.
The only logical reason to split the project at this point was because he’d just received the final month’s funding…
…at least, I wish that were the reason. That would make sense. After the past two months of communiques with Jordan, I strongly suspect that he undermined this project because of an irrational jealously of Roosh, and any man who’s able to relate to women easily.
He’d been asking me for advice about women since the get go – which led me to recommending my colleague Roosh who has done much to support us – but every time I spoke about him, it seemed to fill Jordan with rage. Eventually leading to a panic attack that got him kicked off of an airplane – the last time I saw him in person.
A major feature of this project was that it would be apolitical, and yet over the past few months Jordan has made a point of attacking anybody on the right whom he could get away with criticizing, culminating with his attack on Roosh. These attacks serve no practical purpose. These attacks have been counterproductive, as has been his ‘firing’ of me – the only man who knows how to edit all this footage into something useful.
So I ask you for forgiveness because I trusted too easily; Jordan has decided to break this up at the 11th hour for his own schedule of reasons, but this film still needs to be done. I ask that you continue to support me as I pull the last strands together, and cancel your financial support to Mister Owen. He does not have the technical capacity to put this film together the way it needs to be done.
H/T to glitch_g and all the nice folks on Reddit for linking to Owen's video about the breakup and other social media drama between #gamergate's original Odd Couple.