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Conservative Filmmaker Evan Coyne Maloney Explains Controversial Occupy Wall Street Video

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by James Crugnale | 1:18 pm, November 11th, 2011

» 19 comments

Conservative filmmaker Evan Coyne Maloney made waves a few weeks ago when a video of him allegedly passing out a bong and drug paraphernalia to Occupy Wall Street protesters went viral on the Internet. This week, Maloney released the full-length video and spoke with Mediaite about the message he was trying to send in his short film.

News of Maloney’s presence at the protest first came to light in late October when Howard Stern regular Joey Boots spotted him passing out the items. “From past experience, I wanted to see if he was asking baited questions to make the protesters look bad,” Boots said. “I thought it was a cheap stunt because I’m sure it would have been used in a mocking and disparaging way to make the OWS Movement look bad.” Maloney says that was not the intent of his video, and wanted to set the record straight that he was only trying to expose the hypocrisy of Democratic politicians championing the Occupy Wall Street movement while still receiving thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the banks.

“What inspired me to do the video was seeing Democratic politicians embracing the Occupy Wall Street protests,” explained Mahoney. “Democrats from Barack Obama on down have expressed support for Occupy Wall Street. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent out fundraising letters citing the Occupy protests as a reason to donate to Democrats. I kept waiting to read news reports pointing out the hypocrisy: that Democrats were the top beneficiaries of political contributions from the very financial firms that the protesters were citing as the reason for their anger. But it seemed like a story the news media wasn’t touching. If I were a cynic, I might even conclude that the media was trying to shield Democrats from the political impact of the movement.”

Maloney said that the media “propagates this perception that Republicans are in bed with big business, and that Democrats are for “the little guy,” when in fact the establishment of both parties are corporatists.”

Interestingly, Maloney revealed that he shared the same anti-corporatist sentiment as protesters, and felt it would be a “failure if the effect of the movement was simply to drive votes to Democrats.”

Maloney also addressed the controversial “prizes” (the bongs) he passed out to the crowd during his video shoot and acknowledged they were meant to be provocative.

“I chose the prizes based on two factors: entertainment value, and the likelihood that the recipients would be enthusiastic about the prizes. Every person was given an option among several prizes, and every person winning a prize seemed pretty excited about what they received. So, apparently, I chose well: the quiz contestants loved the prizes I gave them,” Maloney said. “And let’s be honest: the controversy over the prizes led to a lot of attention for the video. Would Mediaite have picked up the video if not for that? Would my video have gotten the same coverage if I were handing out mittens and blankets as prizes?”

As far as Occupy Wall Street is concerned, Maloney doesn’t see the protest ending anytime soon and thinks the movement will remain a a major driving factor come next year.

“Personally, I think it continues in some form until the elections, because you now see public sector unions attempting to co-opt the movement for political gain,” he opined. “Public sector unions don’t care about corporatism the way the Occupy Wall Street protesters and Tea Party activists do. They have one goal: to elect Democrats, since that’s how they expand their power and money. So what I think you’ll see is the movement morphing from whatever it was in the beginning into another outlet for unions to influence the next election.”

Watch Maloney’s video below via Brain-Terminal.com:

Evan Coyne Maloney, hypocrisy, Marijuana, Occupy Wall Street

Kid Dynamite

What a thoughtful gift. Marijuana has medicinal properties. Maloney could have given out Oxycontin, and tried to turn the protesters into delusional hillbilly heroin addicts like Rush Limbaugh.
Dankenton

“Shay” Guevara? LOL! For as much air time that Teatards give the deceased revolutionary, you’d think they could at least get the pronunciation correct by now.
http://www.davidjkramer.co.cc// DavidKramer

I watched this the other day. Did you see the part where the guy came in and took his questions?

Why doesn’t the OWS movement want anyone filming them? Isn’t that what the OWS wants? Exposure?

I mean THAT is the purpose of the protest right? To get coverage of their movement? Only they want to control the message, where have I heard that before? Controlling the message?

By the way, it is safer to be in Iraq right now than to be an OWS protester.
Anonymous

Really? “Chay” vs “Shay” is your beef?

If that murdering pig Guevara was here to say “Chay” and “Shay” 10 times fast I would have a hard time telling the difference.
http://mediamatters.org/ Leedog

“Boots said. “I thought it was a cheap stunt because I’m sure it would have been used in a mocking and disparaging way to make the OWS Movement look bad.” Maloney says that was not the intent of his video, and wanted to set the record straight that he was only trying to expose the hypocrisy of Democratic politicians championing the Occupy Wall Street movement while still receiving thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the banks.”

How does passing out bongs to people accomplish this goal?? Come on!!
http://twitter.com/grimcity Neal Boyd

“Shay” is the correct pronunciation. What did you think it was?
Itchface

First of all, it is pronounced “Che” not “Shay.” I’m from Argentina, so please believe me. Secondly, what the right wing azzhat interviewer is essentially proving is that Democrats can be just as corrupted by big money as Repulicans. The solution isn’t to vote out Democrats in favor of Republicans, but to outlaw all private campaign contributions and have them all be publicly financed. That would be the best investment in democracy we could possibly make.
http://twitter.com/ukobserver Israel Parper

This doesn’t smell right.
Why did it take weeks for him to come up with his reasons? Because it was just really really crap. He got busted, he knew he got busted, and he knew he had no answer when he got busted. All the rest is just more right wing sophistry. Trying to deflect this to unions won’t work either. Unions are looking to elect democrats who DON’T kowtow to the banks and big business but represent the people like Elizabeth Warren does. He knows this and it scares him because people are wising up to the right wing agenda since the 2010 midterms.
Anonymous

I think that is the essential difference between you and me, a very conservative woman.

You fear the private sector and want even the power to fund elections reserved to the government while I fear the government and want as much power as possible reserved for the private sector.

The difference in how much control over our lives we have cede to government from my youth is staggering and that seriously concerns me.

Whatever the correct pronunciation he is the same contemptible pig, IMO.
Dankenton

Actually Teatard, it’s pronounced CHAY; the CH sounds like CHUMP which I’m quite certain you’re used to hearing regularly. Wander out past your trailer park and embark on a journey to find someone who is familiar with Latin America. Unfortunately, bingo night patrons won’t yield the requisite skill set.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_VK7U6RFTAUIPW2JR2NGPBP2IYA super

the difference between someone smoking Marijuana for medical reasons and someone getting hooked on Oxycontin is very simple. Most people smoking medical pot do it just to get high and not for medical reasons. WHile people getting hooked on OXY actually had a legit medical reason prior to using that drug. Otherwise they never would have used OXY. WHile medical pot users were using POT since childhood.
Anonymous

There’s nothing inherently “free” about allowing whoever has the most cash – whether they’re an individual, group or corporation – to essentially buy a candidate or election. That way of doing things is a good part of what’s gotten us into this mess.

Also: I would be interested to hear your assessment of what freedoms we have ceded to the government. See how it compares to, say, mine.
Anonymous

I’ll try again to answer you later.

Having just gotten to the end of my reply with citations TWICE when Firefox crashed I’m going to try to fix the problem even though I struggle with the technical aspects of computers.
http://twitter.com/grimcity Neal Boyd

Teatard?

Read my past posts, pal. I’m probably more of a lefty than you are. Having said that, I also make a lot of posts making fun of righties trying to start flamewars… and here I am, reading what I guess is some text written by a fellow liberal, but one whose pretentiousness has overwhelmed him.

Not that I take it personally since you’re just a block of text to me, but your southern stereotyping is really in poor taste. If it makes you feel any better, I roll in a Benz and I volunteered a good chunk of my life to some trailer parks… FEMA ones, actually, to try and lend a hand as best I could for fellow Louisianians.

Also, you’re calling my Colombian neighbors wrong by proxy. I’ll be sure to let ‘em know. Thanks homebwaye!
Pablo

You can’t buy an election. If you want people to stop buying politicians, stop giving them so much power. Then they won’t be worth the price. End result: Freedom!
Anonymous

The hell you can’t buy an election. When it costs nearly $600K to get a House seat, almost $3 MILLION to get a Senate seat, and it’s pushing $1 BILLION to run a winning Presidential campaign, something is horribly awry.

The fact that candidates who spend the most on advertising tend to win suggests that you can in fact buy an election.

One problem as far as Congressional campaigns go is that a Congressman/woman represents far too many people – 700,000 constituents per Congresscritter. One effect of that is that Congressmen have to get the attention of far more people to get elected. That equals large ad budgets, which equals lots of money that needs to be raised – a process that will *inevitably* lead to large donors basically buying the attention of their Representative.
http://spacegod.tumblr.com/ spacegod

The private sector left unattended is a recipe for disaster and corruption.
Too much regulation can be stifling.
As usual, the best solution is a combination of BOTH.
Anonymous

I don’t get it. What is it he did that is so reprehensible? He cooked up some questions that point out that Democrats have stronger ties to Wall Street than Republicans, read them to protestors on camera, and passed on bongs and rolling papers, right?

He pointed out that Democrats are in bed with Wall Street and OWSers are stoners. Either the truth is his crime or both of those points are demonstrably false. Which is it?
Alexander

HA, seven years too late, and Rush sought help. Do you have any Ronald Reagan jokes while you’re at it?

Typical.