"LIBERALS DONATE $10K TO PORNO FESTIVAL"
[I wrote this in 2000 when it happened, but now have had to update the links because some are long gone, and the links to the Fringe site, I'm not going to even deal with]
This is for real, and clearly it can be used for promotional purposes.
Doing a check at google groups [it was dejanews back then] to see if anyone is talking about Fringe Festivals in the newsgroups (and sadly, the internet is terribly underused in these matters), I came across a post in tor.general (a Toronto newsgroup) with the subject header "LIBERALS DONATE $10K TO PORNO FESTIVAL". You can see the original post here. It's basically a news article from somewhere, mentioning that the Montreal Fringe Festival had gotten $10,000 from Heritage Canada, and listing some examples of the shows that could be interpreted as "obscene".
I posted a reply to that message, for witness sake, and you can read that message here. You'll have to scroll down to see my reply.
Checking some obvious newspapers, I find no such articles, or mention of "Montreal Fringe Festival". A closer look indicates it must have come from some web site, www.lsn.ca
I go to www.lsn.ca and it appears to be some religious/"family value" type group. The same article is there, you have to scroll down a bit. In case the link is dropped from the main page, go directly to the article
Everyone picks on poor Bob Loblaw. Isn't being that sleazy bad enough? And I guess Susan Jeremy will get another fifteen minutes of fame.
At least they didn't bring up Shakti, with her Swan Lake for Adults, or the fact that one show will be done at a porn theater. I can imagine the fuss if this money had come last year, what with Grae Phillips' show (and didn't Alan have a great time saying the title), or Shakti's Kama Sutra.
What seems to have triggered all this is an announcement [it no longer works] on Heritage Canada's website about the funding, which praises the Fringe and mentions some of the countries that companies are coming from this year.
The morality watchdogs obviously keep track of where government money goes, and went from the announcement to the Fringe website. Seeing the blurbs, which in true Fringe fashion do use sex to grab attention (though someone mentioned after the Fringe-For-All on Monday that the sex angle seems subdued this year), they jump to the conclusion that the festival is a pornagraphic festival. What about the festival, whatever it's called, the one that stole the Beer Tent site in 1994, that featured a live show by Annie Sprinkle? Since every other festival in town seems to have a bigger budget than the Fringe, they probably got even more government money.
This probably won't hit the papers. But done right, one could get it into the newspapers, and the resulting fuss could make for interesting publicity. Let's not forget Jana's Meat Dress a decade or so ago.
Actually, it did hit the papers, sort of. As soon as I saw the original message, I sent the details to Fringe HQ; they gave a figurative shrug. But I told Skidmore about it, she said it made her day, and she turned it into a column in Hour this week (June 8). In case you don't see this week's Hour, complete with Fringe coverage and at least some copies include the Fringe Program, you can read the column online at here. [page is long gone]
And when I bumped into Susan Jeremy putting up posters in the Beer Tent on Friday, I told her and she seemed rather pleased, though wait till she finds out the group who made the fuss doesn't seem able to make waves.