And in my continuing adventures in painting a huge bullseye on my back, I must start this week’s article by saying”¦

I just don’t give a shit about Fanboys. In fact, the whole thing’s starting to piss me off, and no, not in the way you think. I can’t seem to go anywhere on this hole of an Internet without tripping over an article by some window-licker with his Admiral Ackbar underoos in a bind because a movie he hasn’t seen has been transformed into ANOTHER movie he hasn’t seen.

For those of you not aware with the situation, a movie has been made called Fanboys. It was shot in 2005, independently, and was sold to Harvey Weinstein and his distributor The Weinstein Company. Fanboys was intended to be a kind of dramatic comedy about five friends, obsessed with Star Wars, who venture to Skywalker Ranch in Marin County in 1998 to break in, in an attempt to be the first people in the world to see Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace.

We all know how THAT would turn out.

The problem here is that the impetus for this big trek to the Bay Area is that one of these five kids has cancer, and won’t live to see the May 19, 1999 release date. Weinstein saw this, edited it out, and had someone other than the director do reshoots that lathered on dick-and-fart jokes.

So now Grandma’s Basement-Dwellers across the country have started flooding The Weinstein Company with protesting emails and have started an eternal boycott of all Weinstein Company products, starting with this weekend’s release of Superhero Movie.

Okay, back up. A boycott of Superhero Movie? So if Fanboys was released as-is, you were gonna go see that awful-looking piece of shit ANYWAY? Wow. You know, I think this is a good idea. Only instead of just boycotting Weinstein Company movies, you should boycott every other kind of movie as well. I’ll bet within a year and a half, the collective I.Q. of the average American moviegoer would skyrocket fifteen points. ANYTHING to put Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer out of a job. And I know they have nothing to do with this, but fuck them with a nail-studded dildo anyway.

Apparently the problem here is that the director’s cut was loving and looked at Star Wars geeks as something other than jokes. This new version needles them a bit. By God, they will not part with their dignity and THE WORLD WILL SHOW THEM SOME RESPECT! But the question foremost on my mind is”¦

Why should I respect you? As the evidence clearly states, you were gonna go see Superhero Movie of your own free will.

The thing that happens when you become so self-important that you can’t take a fucking joke is ironically the same thing that happens when you devote your life to something that, for all intents and purposes, died in 1983: No one likes you and you don’t get laid.

The prissier and more vocal opponents of Weinstein’s version of Fanboys have started calling good ol’ Harv “Darth Weinstein.” You don’t know how true that is. You know that labored cliché about the winner of Best Picture at the Oscars always has the best ad campaign? Harvey Weinstein refined it to an artform. Were you not paying attention in 1998 when vicious, hardline campaigning by Weinstein (when he was head of Miramax, the company he and his brother Bob founded) stole the Oscar for Shakespeare in Love out from under Saving Private Ryan? Were you not paying attention AGAIN in 2002 when THREE OUT OF FIVE Best Picture nominees (Gangs of New York, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, and eventual winner Chicago) had Weinstein’s name on them somewhere?

The point is this: You know the guy who says they can’t be fooled? Harvey Weinstein is the guy who fools them. His capacity for prediction and abstract thought is unrivalled in Hollywood. For good or ill, he’s more savvy about the motion picture business than any of us are.

Need further proof? Then let me ask this question. Would any of you have even HEARD of Fanboys unless Weinstein did what he did? This was just another teen movie with a potential in for the geek-set before this happened and now it’s taking up valuable space in The Hollywood Reporter.

So not only did Weinstein see this pale, virginal, acne-encrusted jihad coming a mile away, HE FUCKING COUNTED ON IT!

Now when I first got wind of this situation, I figured that Weinstein being Weinstein, he’ll either relent at the last minute, or double-dip on the DVD release. As Monday morning’s Hollywood Reporter has shown, he’s done exactly that. Not only has he publicly acknowledged that he is contemplating two separate DVD releases, but that he is also pondering two separate THEATRICAL versions as well. So in one fell swoop, thanks to YOUR bitching and moaning, he has potentially doubled his money.

How can I put this in terms you’ll understand…?

He is Darth Vader. You, John Q. Allergic-To-The-Fucking-Sun, are Porkins. You are gonna be the dumbass who gets locked onto by the Tie-Fighter and shall die screaming in your own incompetence and lard.

I enjoy geekiness, don’t get me wrong. You know how many of you can recall the first time you saw Star Wars? I can’t. I apparently emerged from the womb quoting it verbatim. Remember when I mentioned The Phantom Menace release date a couple of paragraphs back? I didn’t even have to look it up. I just remembered.

But Jesus Christ, there’s a line. I worked at an independently run theater in 2002 when Attack of the Clones was about to come out. We had the standee up in the lobby and everything. But the word came from Twentieth Century Fox that Lucas was taking NINETY PERCENT of the gross and leaving Fox and the Exhibitors to haggle over the remaining ten percent of the ticket money. Being as my theater was independent, we told Fox to go screw and we opted to take the standee down and not show the movie.

The day came, the movie was nowhere to be found and we got death threats. DEATH THREATS! The most amusing of which said “I hope Darth Maul slices all you motherfuckers in half with his lightsaber.”

Yes. Someone, confused on the fact that movies aren’t real hoped that a fictional character would kill us all with his fictional weapon. Isn’t smelly dementia grand?

Six years later, these same geeks are now the new hipsters. Their taste defines which direction the world goes and they are blissfully unaware that their lives are sad and desolate. They are seen not as the ironic paragons of taste and culture they’d like to be seen as, these historians of pulp and the low-road. They’re seen as founts of cash because they can spend all their disposable income on antique dolls and playsets from their favorite obscure movies and TV shows, because they have no girlfriends to spend it on.

Star Wars fans are not a culture. They are not a race. They are not a religion. They have not contributed to the world to make it a better place. They are devoted to a series of motion pictures. This isn’t a bad thing in and of itself. Isn’t that what geekiness is? To believe in something no one else does?

But while some people love it, others are fascinated with it just because it came along at the right time in their childhoods and they’ve been holding on so long that the skin has grown over it. To let go, of course, would be to grow up, to take responsibility for other things, to eventually die as we all must. There’s an unforgivably thick line between love and cowardice, and those who have become so full of themselves that they’d boycott an entire company because of one movie that took a few swipes at their expense have crossed it.

So I hope the Weinstein cut of Fanboys goes to theaters. There are few things I would like more than to laugh in your arrogant little faces, and pay for the privilege.

After all, you’ve worked so hard to deserve it.

The opinions expressed by Dr. Royce Clemens in his Doom Dispatch column do not necessarily reflect the views of Geeks of Doom.