The Official Nonsense Thread

[Minty]

Someone mention "Milo & Otis"? Dudley Moore's finest hour since "10" Is this the "20 kittens killed in filming" story doing the rounds again? This urban legend is a textbook example of "special interest groups" putting their own self interest ahead of their ideals.

The major torch bearer of the legend was the Queensland Animal Liberation peddling "slant eyed little yella monkeys torturing cute kittens and pups" to the worst of Australian tabloids back in the 1990s whose readers of course lapped it up. The fact the "film" was really cobbled from four years worth of footage shot around the famous Mutsugoru Animal Kingdom (it contains the world's biggest cat refuge where stray cats from all over Japan are sent to be terminally ruined!) and the "story" created around the footage was kept rather quiet by its detractors.

Ever since that time the story has done the rounds, the main plank of "proof" usually being that the film does not contain the phrase "No animals were harmed in the making of this movie" in the end credits. That however is only half the story.

The American Humane Society (the equivalent to Britain's Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) approved of the film publicly when first released in 1989. But in 2000 they copyrighted use of the phrases "No Animal Was Harmed" and "No Animals Were Harmed" in movies or TV shows as a way of making lots of money, as anyone making a film or TV show with animals in it now would have to pay them royalties if they wanted to tag those phrases at the end of their production credits. If they didn't pay up of course, they risked having the animal rights extremists making claims about animal cruelty they couldn't prove but didn't need to: all they had to do was say "so why doesn't the movie say "No animals were harmed"?".

They could hardly refute it with "because we object to paying a fee to the AHS for four words": you don't slag off cuddly animal rescue charities if you want to keep the public sweet. Nor could they use a different phrase that got round the copyright, as that would leave them open to animal rights groups accusing "so why is this movie not approved by the American Humane Society?" (the same animal rights groups accusing the AHS of "being in the back pocket of businesses cruel to animals" one breath later).

Media producers see what the AHS does as little more than a shakedown (to use animals in a film you have to use an industry licenced trainer anyway). Most grumble & pay up, but some of those who paid fees to the AHS to have their "advisors" on set pre-2000 object to being effectively asked to pay up twice, & these are the films that always come up in the "were cruel to animals" stories. Some of the film does look slightly WTF, but most of the stories surrounding Milo & Otis are outrageous fibs. My favourite was one cat being bitten by a "poisonous snake", the snake in question being clearly a grass snake that was being tormented by several cats at the time.