Saturday night’s world premiere of the new film, “Coal Country” is looking for a new theater, apparently thanks to rumors that miners planned to picket the event.
Earlier today, executive producer Mari-Lynn Evans received this e-mail message from Rhuel Craddock, chairman of the South Charleston Museum Board of Directors:
Responding to a potential security problem showing the movie “Coal Country” by Mari-Lyn-Evans, which was to have been presented at the Historic La Belle Theater on Saturday, July 11,2009, the South Charleston Museum Foundation Board of Directors has voted unanimously to cancel the presentation of this movie.
Writing for The Huffington Post, Jeff Biggers had reported last week:
After a year-long campaign of threats and intimidation, the Big Coal lobby plans to have its sycophants out in force to picket the premiere of the film on July 11 in Charleston, West Virginia.
And in today’s Gazette, my buddy Doug Imbrogno explained:
Talk that Friends of Coal activists might picket the world premiere of the PBS documentary “Coal Country” on Saturday underscores the emotions over mountaintop-removal mining and the daunting challenge faced by the filmmakers.
A few minutes ago, Evans told me she’s negotiating for the use of another theater, and that the show will absolutely go on, with the details to be announced as soon as they’re available:
“This film is going to be shown in Charleston, West Virginia, on Saturday at 7 p.m.”
West Virginia Public Broadcasting also has a story on this development, here.
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Folks –
Sorry about that. I had shut off comments on this particular post when I left the office last evening. I was not going to be available to moderate the comments last night or early this morning. And frankly, some readers have taught me that they can’t behave themselves and refrain from nasty comments and name-calling.
As a result, I’m going to be more careful in the future about allowing comments when I’m not going to be available to moderate and edit.
Please in the future, do not post comments on unrelated posts to try to sneak your comments in. If I have not enabled comments on a particular post, it’s because we’re not at that time accepting comments on that post.
OK? Please try to live by those rules.
Thanks, Ken.
Also — we had several comments posted last night on unrelated Coal Tattoo entries. This one time, I’m going to repost them here…in the future, do not post comments on unrelated items.
From reader 7th Generation:
I just want to say that, as a resident of South Charleston who was looking forward to seeing this movie, I am furious with the Museum Board members, and I want names. Who are they?
I encourage everyone, but most especially SC residents, to call the mayor’s office about the cancellation of Coal Country. As Nanette has pointed out, if they can’t provide security for a movie, how could they protect us from anything else?
And from Nanette:
My family also wanted to see it. Is the town of South Charleston unable to provide security for the people who want to see this movie? What about the WV State Police, they don’t care to come down here to coal country, why can’t they be at South Charleston? Isn’t that where the main SP headquarters is located?
South Charleston is going to lose a lot of money over this decision. The last movie that we went to down there everyone met and had dinner before the movie started and everyone had a great evening. Like I said this is a bad decision for businesses in South Charleston.
I would imagine that there are a whole lot of people who want answers to this. I dearly hope that businesses do not let this fear mongering get in their way of serving the people.
Thanks, Ken.
I now have a real desire to see the film. Before I was just curious, now I am serious. When a dog barks, there is a reason…….. I like freedom of speech and other rights that we as Americans enjoy.
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