Plushies and Furries
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Plushies and Furries is a short documentary film by Rick Castro, which aired as an episode of Sex2K on MTV, and on Channel 5 UK. It "has screened at the American Cinemathéque, Outfest Los Angeles, Frameline San Francisco, the MIX Festival--NYC, the Milan Film Festival, the Montreal Gay Film Festival, the Seattle Gay Film Festival, and the Mardi Gras Film Festival in Sydney".[1] Plushies and Furries was in the 2001 the Montreal International Queer Film and Video Festival; an article in The Gazette mentions it as "Rick Castro's doc about people who love the static of rubbing against other people in adorable fuzzy animal costumes."[2]
Plushies and Furries followed one furry adventurer through Midwest Furfest. The episode was a sex-based portrayal of the furry subculture that some argue is unfavorable, following quickly on the heels of Vanity Fair's article earlier in the year.
According to Yote, the entire thing was faked and his mother already knew about his interest in fursuiting and furry fandom. The scenes were shot a couple years before the Vanity Fair article came out. "It was all faked and made up by pyewacket [Rick Castro] so that he could have drama and a story," Yote wrote on a fursuit mailing list in 2002.
It should also be noted that the many of furs that participated in the side interviews were told their interviews would be used for a much different type of show, and the artists were similarly lied to by Rick Castro, the producer. For example, Michael Higgs was told his art was going to be used in a special about up-and-coming comic artists.
Rick Castro attended several furry conventions in the two or three years prior to the first airing of this episode, and professed to be "a furry working on a personal project." In fact, Rick Castro is a professional filmmaker, producer of documentaries involving the porn industry, and a professional fetish photographer as evidenced by his adults-only website at RickCastro.com.
[edit] Trademark
In the episode Plushies and Furries, a title screen between scenes was added to Rick Castro's original footage that said, "Yote attends his first confurence." This used the registered service mark "ConFurence" in the context of a generic term for a furry-themed convention (in this case, referring to Midwest Fur Fest), and was not referring to the convention hosted annually by The ConFurence Group for which the service mark was registered. Darrel Exline, owner of The ConFurence Group traded multiple letters with MTV Networks' legal department over their improper use of the registered service mark but was unable to resolve the issue without starting expensive litigation.
[edit] References
- ↑ Plushies and Furries on RickCastro.com. Retrieved October 27, 2007.
- ↑ Griffin, John. "Beyond closet door: Gay film fest comes in from the fringe" in The Gazette. September 20, 2001. p. D.10. Retrieved October 27, 2007 through ProQuest online database Canadian Newsstand.
[edit] External links
- Plushies and Furries on Rick Castro's website
- Transcript of Plushies and Furries at Pressed Fur
- MTV's Sex2K Fursuit Video
