I meant to write this at Christmas, but due to this and that, didn’t get around to it. But here it is, and it is an astonishing fact:
In the month between Nov. 19 — Dec. 20, I got 20 orders for Wet Goddess!
I haven’t had that level of holiday sales since 2010 or 2011, when the book was new, or still relatively new, and David Farrier did his now-notorious interview with me.
What’s even more impressive is that three of those orders were multiples, one for 3 copies, and two for 2. What does that mean? It means they don’t just want to find out about dolphins for themselves, they want someone else to read it. Total sold: 24 copies.
When you consider that the narrator (me, aw shucks) is a zoophile, this is remarkable. What message does it send, giving Wet Goddess for a holiday present? That you are a zoophile? That you are interested in communicating with dolphins and willing to invest $18.95 + S/H? That you have a streak of perverse sexuality in you?
Yes. Perhaps all these things, perhaps other reasons that haven’t imagined. “The Universe is,” as Exeter the alien from Metaluna said in the 1956 special-effects spectacle This Island Earth, “vast, and full of wonders.” I hope it always remains that way.
I don’t get around much anymore, but I do get on line, reading, writing and watching videos. In some ways, this telepresence is wonderful: saves gas (trips to the library) and gives me access to the whole universe of human information, fake news and all. In other ways, it’s a pain in the ass, which is why I got off Facebook, plus Zuckerberg’s politics are Fascist. But what was I getting at? I can’t remember, so herewith some more reviews.
Witness of Another World, a film by Alan Stivelman
Most documentaries assume a point of view, then show you a bunch of images to convince you they’re right. A good example would be Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s 2013 film Blackfish. I studied documentary film in college and kept an interest in it all my life; it is infinitely more interesting to film a documentary, where you never quite know what will happen next, versus a feature, where you are shooting, piece by piece, a structure, following a script, and trying to get everything right (i.e. no jets overhead, no telephone poles projecting from the actors’ heads, etc.).
Blackfish is the most influential documentary I’ve ever seen; I am convinced that film alone “ruined” a visit to SeaWorld for hundreds of thousands of people, cost $ millions at the box office and brought about the organization’s newfound commitment to quit breeding and exhibiting orcas when their current stock dies off.
Like I said, a very successful documentary.
Witness of Another World is equally moving and convincing, but in a different way. For here we have a boy, Juan Perez, who was by his own story taken aboard an unidentified flying object 40 years ago, and has never felt at ease with himself since. He has grown into a man not so much shunned by others as shunning them, because they mock and humiliate him and his experience, because they do not understand that he has seen something supernatural, something metaphysical, something genuinely mysterious.
In a video flashback, as the 12-year-old Juan is being questioned on live TV as to what he saw, he suddenly freezes, then presses his hands over his eyes and breaks into tears. He cannot put the experience into words, and if he could, who would believe him?
Sound familiar?
Finding a UFO encounter with that depth of time and footage behind it is extraordinary, but what makes Argentinian director Alan Stivelman’s film even more remarkable is the entrance of Franco-American UFO researcher Dr. Jacques Vallee, who interviewed Perez way back when, and now re-emerges offering some hope.
Stivelman isn’t one to stand aloof from is subjects, like a nature documentarian filming a hunting lion. From the first frame he admits his involvement, saying he stumbled across Juan’s case and wondered what became of him. Now, he determines (somehow, it’s not made clear) that Juan is from the Guarani tribe, ancestrally. Perhaps the tribe has some wisdom to help him?
Indeed they do, and the film features the gnarled faces and sage advice of two tribal elders. The Guarani culture has recognized the spirit world for generations, and Juan’s bizarre experience fits right in.
Other documentaries try to persuade you of the reality of UFOs with fuzzy photos or jumpy films. Witness of Another World presents a human being, changed and remolded as new interpretations of his experience reveal themselves. It is, in its own way, much more moving and effective.
This is what the UFO does: it alienates us from our own debunking, scientific, materialistic world. It is perhaps, as Vallee suggests, the breakthrough of the irrational, like some uber-quantum particle, into the rational world; or rather, the temporary dissolution of the rational world in something like a dream-state, where the laws of reality allow you to meet your grandfather again, these many years dead.
Do I need to say that Witness of Another World is one of most remarkable documentaries I’ve ever seen? It needs to become the new touchstone of the supernatural film, bringing compassion and humanity to a subject has long been argued on a digital, yes/no basis. I urge you to to view it, buy it, and share it with other like-minded people. Do it today!
Reality Denied: Firsthand Experiences with Things that Can’t Happen — But Did. Non-fiction by John B. Alexander, Colonel U.S. Army (Ret.)
I remember, before my teens, my father would from time to time take us out to The Viking Smorgasbord in Ardmore, a suburb of Philadelphia near Radnor, where we lived. It featured a vast, rotating table, covered with all kinds of Scandinavian delights, but what I remember most clearly (and oddly) are the spiced, pickled plums. I’ve never tasted anything like them.
Of course, the most important part of visiting a smorgasbord is to remember not to eat too much of any one item. This leaves room for more variety. On the other hand, only having a taste or sample of an item — variety itself — sometimes becomes boring, and you want to eat something (think ice cream or chocolate cake) in depth. Unfortunately, you are stuck at the smorgasbord.
Such is the fate of the reader of Reality Denied, a lack of any depth. Author Col. John B. Alexander devotes at most a chapter to each subject and a brief synopsis of what was obviously a complex event. This is simply insufficient, but my criticism of this book doesn’t end there.
I bought Reality Denied for one reason, to read Chapter 3, “Speak To Me,” where the colonel finds that his (now ex-) wife is conveniently telepathic while in the Bahamas to research dolphins. What does he do with the remarkable link to an alien, literally extra-terrestrial intelligence? Why, he orders a pod of dolphins to swim hither and yon, like a platoon of soldiers on a parade field. Having thus proved the utility of human-dolphin telepathy in the wild, he carries it backward to a captive dolphin whose most perceptive comment about his living arrangements is that he can’t jump twice like they wanted, the ceiling is too low. (“Look up!” is the exact transmission.) So he agrees to bob twice. Problem solved!
Do I need to say that I AM ASHAMED BY THE LACK OF IMAGINATION SHOWN BY THIS HUMAN BEING?
I mean, Alexander had the brightest minds in the ocean at his beck and call, and he never asked them about their lives? How bio-echolocation works? How they breathe while sleeping? How they fend off sharks? Do they dream? Can they make things up, i.e., lie, tell stories, invent religion… What are those big brains so preoccupied with?
If Alexander did any of this, he doesn’t write about it here. He makes communicating with another species sound about as exciting as reading a train schedule. He goes on to chronicle other unbelievable adventures, such as “spoon-bending parties” where telekinesis is exhibited, and… that’s all I can think of now. There’s plenty more here, I’m only halfway through the book, I’ll probably finish it someday, I might as well get my $9.99 Kindle fee out of it. But there’s no real impetus to do so.
AM I THE ONLY HUMAN BEING WHO HAS USED HUMAN-DOLPHIN TELEPATHY TO TRY TO ENTER (be it ever-so-hesitantly) THE DOLPHINS’ WORLD?
Apparently so. Why, or why not? Is it even of interest to anybody else, what dolphins on the high seas think and feel as they go about their extraordinary lives?
In answer, all I can say is it became very important to me 48 years ago, and it has never stopped being important since. Colonel Alexander, you should be ashamed for writing such a dull book about such exciting subjects!
I may have been mostly sitting on my butt lately (it’s the vertigo), but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been mentally active (I hate double negatives, don’t you?)! I’ve been reading books and watching movies, and here are my brief opinions of a bunch two of them.
The Current War
This larger-than-life story pits two 19th Century titans of industry against each other AND the forces of nature! It has the added feature of being mostly true.
On the one hand, all-American inventor Thomas Edison, whose sweatshop-cum-laboratory has given the world the wonders of the victrola and many other inventions, with direct current (DC), which usually won’t kill you but can’t be transmitted very far. Edison’s solution: what do people living in the country need electricity for, anyway?
George Westinghouse, having invented the air brake for railroads and thus made his million, sees the potential in this mysterious stuff, electricity. When his senior researcher is killed in a predictably avoidable accident, Westinghouse recruits the weird Serbian Nikola Tesla, who has been digging ditches since being fired by Edison’s lab for advocating an alternative to DC, the vastly more transmittable but also more dangerous alternating current (AC). There’s also the little matter of the $50,000 bonus Edison promised Tesla and then welched on, saying “You don’t understand the American sense of humor.”
Thus is engaged the The Current War,which lasted from about 1890-1904. Edison demonstrates the dangers of AC by electrocuting an incredible number of stray and unwanted animals, only the first of which is shown, fortunately, and off-screen. Tesla responds by letting millions of volts of AC cacade over his body at the 1893 Chicago Exposition with no ill results.
Overall, the film is gorgeously filmed and very, very believably acted by all those involved. Female characters, mostly in the form of the two inventors’ wives, are represented. It was reportedly a troubled production, with portions re-shot after a test screening at a film festival, but if so, the result doesn’t show on the screen. (Thanks, Martin Scorsese, who as a co-producer insisted on the right of the final cut!)
We take electricity and the light, warmth and power it gives us for granted. This film reminds us that we shouldn’t, that it was the work of hard-nosed businessmen that brought those wonders to us. I wish all historical films were this good!
Peter Fisher’s Odyssey: Marine Mammal Warfare
a novel by Michael Greenwood
In 1978, when I briefly worked for newspaper heiress Margaret Scripps Buzzelli, she flew me to Moorhead, Minnesota, where I interviewed a very withdrawn and forlorn Michael Greenwood. He was a civilian scientist who’d just served as a source for the influential 1977 PENTHOUSE article “The Pentagon’s Deadly Pets,”which pretty much blew the whistle on the U.S. Navy’s use of dolphins at Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam. (Note: I can’t find the original article on the Web. It should be. I think I have a copy in my files, I’ll OCR it and put it up here.)
Of course Greenwood, who shows remorse for his dolphin deeds similar to Flipper trainer Ric O’Barry, says the dolphins at Cam Ranh were weaponized with syringes that injected enemy swimmers trying to mine the U.S. warships with compressed air, causing an instant and fatal embolism. The U.S. Navy has said it never weaponized dolphins, finding them to be to unreliable in targeting as a weapons platform, and anyway a live enemy swimmer is more valuable than a dead one, because he can give you intelligence.
I spent a couple of days interviewing Greenwood, smoking dope to control the weirdness of what I was hearing while he consumed an inhuman amount of cheap beer. He talked about dolphins and more, about distant communication with submerged submarines using ultra-low frequencies and about being able to send them a self-destruct signal should they fall into enemy hands. And about a tell-all book he hoped to write on the subject, then tentatively titled The Dolphin Machine.
It was a very heavy interview. I still have the tapes, and I have tried to listen to them to edit them into something I can put on line. But Greenwood’s elliptical, looping, self-reflexive way of speaking defeats me every time. He is incomprehensible and hypnotic, and that’s a bad combination. I went home feeling depressed.
So now we have the promised novel, only it’s titled Peter Fisher’s Odyssey: Marine Mammal Warfare.I think it may take the cake for longest gestation time for a literary work, even beating my own Wet Goddess, which took 37 years to finish, or 24, if you don’t count the 13 years I put it aside because I was emotionally too close to the story. For the record, I think the earlier title, and probably the earlier draft, were better.
Greenwood has written a novel just like he talks — elliptical, looping, self-referential — and very confusing to read. I have gotten 81 pages into it, and I can’t bring myself to pick it up again. It’s sad, because THIS IS THE ONLY NOVEL, AND PROBABLY THE ONLY WORK OF ANY KIND, ON THE OBSCURE SUBJECT OF MARINE MAMMAL WARFARE!
But here’s what I’ve been able to glean so far: The title character is leader of a Navy S.E.A.L. team, The Hounds of Hell, doing a dirty mission in Vietnam. Then he comes home, goes to college, and asks his professor a bunch of obvious, didactic questions like “What is a scientist, Max?” Cut to Peter, now a novice professor of psychology, lecturing his first class… and he flashes back to the time years ago when he, several human collaborators, a bunch of dolphins and a couple of pilot whales, infiltrated a Chinese harbor and fucked-up a bunch of Chinese whales.
At least, that’s what I think is going to happen. Peter Fisher finishes teaching the class before he finishes the flashback, and then… he dies. This is revealed on page 84. I’m sure that his story continues somehow, because the book goes on for a total of 666 pages. All of them as self-referential as an actor speaking to the camera.
There’s an old dictum in writing fiction, or non-fiction for that matter: Don’t tell the reader what you want them to know, show them. Greenwood never seems to get this, and thus we are subjected to a novel that reads somewhat like a corporate board meeting: Greenwood clues us in on what he’s going to tell us; then he tells us; the he explains what he just told us. It’s insane and boring as shit to read, but I really want to finish the book because I know Greenwood personally (albeit superficially), I can tell he went through something traumatic with dolphins, and I admire what he was able to do and learn about them. He’s also responsible for the release of one, a female Tursiops named Dolly Phynne, from the Navy’s Key West facility, without orders to do so. For which, I gather, he got in trouble. But Dolly Phynne is a another story.
(Greenwood also tells an incredibly funny and poignant story about a dolphin’s blunt response to open-ocean work, but that too is another story.)
Well, this book has a bunch of 5 star ratings on Amazon, so I guess somebody must like it. But now that I’ve put it down, I can’t pick it up again. You try.
Mr. Hamell, apparently what I need to have to file an appeal is 1) a New Zealand address, which I have not; 2) $540, which I don’t have either.
So I respectfully withdraw my request for an appeal to case 029 — BUT UNDER PROTEST!
Let it be added to the record (if any is kept of this case) that I think the BSA’s decision is weak, to be polite! It does nothing to modify MediaWorks’ vile behavior, to guarantee minority points of view, to enforce existing New Zealand fairness laws or to respect my humanity, worst of all.
Now I feel like I’ve been screwed twice, once by Dom, Meg and Randell and once by Judge Bill Hastings, Paula Rose, Wendy Palmer and Susie Staley. Such a lenient attitude strongly suggests an unwholesome influence between a regulatory body and the industry it regulates.
Sorry if anyone feels offended, but frankly I’ve been abused. This does not give me a positive feeling about New Zealand’s BSA, your broadcast media or your national character. I don’t think I’ll be doing any interviews there again soon, and BTW, someone needs to give Meg Annear a psychological examination. I understand she thinks it’s horrible if you pee in the shower, and I wonder what difference it makes? It all goes to the same place anyhow.
Thank you for letting me express myself honestly. Goodbye. — Malcolm J. Brenner
Thank you for your email providing your feedback on the Authority’s decision. It will be provided to the Authority for their information.
As per my previous email, once the Authority has formally determined a complaint, parties can lodge an appeal in the New Zealand High Court. You have one month from the date you were notified of the decision to lodge an appeal in the High Court.
If you would like further information or advice on the appeal process and what this involves, you can contact one of the following:
A New Zealand lawyer
The Registrar at the Auckland High Court.
With respect to your proposed press release: The Authority does not intend to comment on it, other than to say you need to ensure it is fair and accurate in all respects.
WARNING: This email contains information which is CONFIDENTIAL and may be subject to LEGAL PRIVILEGE. If you are not the intended recipient, you must not peruse, use, disseminate, distribute or copy this email or attachments. If you have received this in error, please notify us immediately by email or telephone and delete this email. Thank you.
The Broadcasting Standards Authority accepts no responsibility for changes made to this email or to any attachments after transmission from the Broadcasting Standards Authority.
From: MALCOLM BRENNER <malcolmb2@centurylink.net> Sent: Tuesday, 19 November 2019 7:09 AM To: Jordan Hamel <JordanH@bsa.govt.nz> Subject: press release
Dear Mr. Hamel,
This is a copy of the press release which I am going to be sending out to news outlets in New Zealand, Australia, the United States, England, and all over the English-speaking world at 12:01 a.m. tomorrow. If there are any fallacies or untruths in it, please let me know, and I will do my best to correct them before then. — M. Brenner
———————————————————————————————–
Press Release: For Immediate Release, 11/19/2019
Eyes Open Media, 3212 Easy St., Port Charlotte, FL 33952
Zoophile American Author Wins Case Against New Zealand Radio Station, Gets Nothing
PORT CHARLOTTE, FL – Writer, publisher and self-described zoophile Malcolm J. Brenner has won a case against MediaWorks, Inc., a New Zealand broadcaster, for airing a distorted interview with him – where one member of the trio insulted him, cursed him, and then left the studio.
“The interview lasted about 20 minutes, but that four-minute segment was all they used,” Brenner said, “and they lied to me about that.”
However, he’ll get nothing for his troubles, not even an on-air apology.
The ruling came from the Broadcast Standards Authority, New Zealand’s equivalent of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, which found that a program on the station The Edge had deliberately edited an interview with Brenner to present an unfair picture of him.
“That’s disgusting! You’re sick! Dolphins cannot give consent,” said Meg Annear during a March 30 interview with the author of the controversial novel Wet Goddess: Recollections of a Dolphin Lover. She then got up from her microphone on The Dom, Meg and Randell Show, removed her headphones and, over the protests of her partners Clint Randell and Dom Harvey, walked out of the studio.
“I’ve had this happen before,” Brenner said. “Some people, particularly certain women, are ‘triggered’ when I begin to describe the dolphin’s uninhibited courtship behavior toward me, and they react as if I was describing my own behavior.” When this happened at a radio station in Australia, several years ago, the station opted not to air the interview.
The Dom, Meg and Randell Show,however, took a different course – one that involved the station’s lawyers, management, deception and eventually brought in the BSA itself.
“I went ahead and finished the interview with just the two guys, Dom and Randell, and it was okay and about 20 minutes long,” Brenner explained. “Then Dom and I exchanged some mail about when the clip was going to air. Finally, several days later, he emailed me a 10-minute edit of the interview and told me it would air in a few days.”
Brenner tuned in the podcast, but heard nothing. By now suspicious, he went back into the show’s archives and discovered, to his horror, that not only had Dom sent him a decoy audio file,the material that they did air was the most inflammatory part of the interview, where Meg curses at Brenner on her way out the door.
“Once I realized what the station had done to me, I was astonished and outraged,” Brenner recalled. “Nobody has acted with such contempt for me since junior high school, where I was an unpopular student. It was like getting mugged in the hallway, and they didn’t have to do it. It was malicious, it was intentional, and they thought they could get away with it because I’m a foreigner and an admitted zoophile.”
Bestiality has been illegal in New Zealand since the adoption of the constitution in 1963, by nation-wide law. Brenner’s interlude with the dolphin, named Dolly (Ruby in the novel), occurred over six months in 1971, but bestiality wasn’t made illegal in Florida until 2011.
“I did nothing illegal, not in Florida and certainly not in New Zealand, and yet Dom saw fit to deceive me, lie to me, lie about me and defame me,” Brenner said. “He did this solely based on the idea that I had the experience with Dolly 48 years ago and therefore I must be a non-person with no rights under New Zealand law.”
Worse yet, Brenner suspects the station’s attorney, Tom Turton, conspired with the rogue DJ’s plans.
“A couple of days after we wrapped the interview I inquired about when it would air, and Dom said it was being considered by the station’s lawyers, for content, because zoophilia is illegal in New Zealand,” Brenner said. “By that time the edited, four-minute clip of Meg leaving the studio had already aired!”
Was Dom advised by Turton to deceive Brenner?
“If so, I’d find a new attorney,” the writer half-joked. “When Dom told me he had to run it by the lawyers I had a bad feeling, but I decided to say nothing so as not to ‘bad vibe’ the situation.
“I learned it doesn’t matter if you voice your suspicions or not, by the time you’re aware of them the bird has flown,” Brenner said. He asked the BSA to order the station to apologize to him on-air, place the full interview in its archive, and to pay him whatever amount the BSA thought would prevent the station from running similar slanderous stories in the future. The Administration can impose up to a $5,000 NZ ($3,600 US) fine.
However, the BSA decided not to place any orders on the station, thus giving it only an symbolic “slap on the wrist,” Brenner said.
“MediaWorks advise that its processes have been reviewed with respect to how it responds to audience feedback on challenging topics. Taking into account the above factors and the action taken by MediaWorks, the Authority considers that the publication of this decision is sufficient to censure MediaWorks conduct and clarify our expectations of broadcasters under the fairness standard. Accordingly, we do not make any orders,” the BSA’s decision, signed by its chair Judge Bill Hastings, reads.
“I’m appalled at the lack accountability,” Brenner said. “This decision leaves MediaWorks free to practice this kind of slander on anyone who comes along, anyone they feel is ‘different’ or vulnerable.
“I don’t even get a formal apology from the people who lied to me, lied about me, defamed me, sent me a false file and tried to bury the truth afterward. MediaWorks said they had no problem making an apology and archiving the show, but the BSA doesn’t require it, so they won’t do it. It’s absolutely disgusting.”
Brenner is filing an appeal of the decision, citing the lack of any orders. He is also the author of a memoir, Growing Up in the Orgone Box: Secrets of a Reichian Childhood,and a science-fiction novel, Mel-Khyor: An Interstellar Affair.
For a copy of the complete decision by the BSA (15 pgs.), please contact Brenner at
Zoophile American Author Wins Case Against New Zealand Radio Station, Gets Nothing In Return
PORT CHARLOTTE, FL – Writer, publisher and self-described zoophile Malcolm J. Brenner has won a case against MediaWorks, Inc., a New Zealand broadcaster, for airing a distorted interview with him – where one member of the trio of interviewers insulted him, cursed him, and then left the studio.
“The interview lasted about 20 minutes, but that four-minute segment was all they used,” Brenner said, “and they lied to me about that.”
However, he’ll get nothing for his troubles, not even an on-air apology.
The ruling came from the Broadcast Standards Authority, New Zealand’s equivalent of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, which found that a program on the station The Edge had deliberately edited an interview with Brenner to present an unflattering portrait of him.
“That’s disgusting! You’re sick! Dolphins cannot give consent,” said Meg Annear during a March 30 interview with the author of the controversial novel Wet Goddess: Recollections of a Dolphin Lover.She then got up from her microphone on The Dom, Meg and Randell Show, removed her headphones and, over the protests of her partners Clint Randell and Dom Harvey, walked out of the studio.
“I’ve had this happen before,” Brenner said. “Some people, particularly certain women, are ‘triggered’ when I begin to describe the dolphin’s uninhibited courtship behavior toward me, and they react as if I was describing my own behavior.” When this happened at a radio station in Australia several years ago, the station opted not to air the interview.
The Dom, Meg and Randell Show, however, took a different course – one that involved the station’s lawyers, management, deception and eventually brought in the BSA itself.
“I went ahead and finished the interview with just the two guys, Dom and Randell, and it was okay and about 20 minutes long,” Brenner explained. “Then Dom and I exchanged some mail about when the clip was going to air. Finally, several days later, he emailed me a 10-minute edit of the interview and told me it would air in a few days.”
Brenner tuned in the podcast, but heard nothing. By now suspicious, he went back into the show’s archives and discovered, to his horror, that not only had Dom sent him a decoy audio file, the material that they did air was the most inflammatory part of the interview, where Meg curses at Brenner on her way out the door.
“Once I realized what the station had done to me, I was astonished and outraged,” Brenner recalled. “Nobody has acted with such contempt for me since junior high school, where I was an unpopular student. It was like getting mugged in the hallway, and they didn’t have to do it. It was malicious, it was intentional, and they thought they could get away with it because I’m a foreigner and an admitted zoophile.”
Bestiality has been illegal in New Zealand since the adoption of the constitution in 1963, by nation-wide law. Brenner’s interlude with the dolphin, named Dolly (Ruby in the novel), occurred over six months in 1971, but bestiality wasn’t made illegal in Florida until 2011.
“I did nothing illegal, not in Florida and certainly not in New Zealand, and yet Dom saw fit to deceive me, lie to me, lie about me and defame me,” Brenner said. “He did this solely based on the idea that I had the experience with Dolly 48 years ago and therefore I must be a non-person with no rights under New Zealand law.”
Worse yet, Brenner suspects the station’s attorney, Tom Turton, conspired with the rogue DJ’s plans.
“A couple of days after we wrapped the interview I inquired about when it would air, and Dom said it was being considered by the station’s lawyers, for content, because zoophilia is illegal in New Zealand,” Brenner said. “By that time the edited, four-minute clip of Meg leaving the studio had already aired!”
Was Dom advised by Turton to deceive Brenner?
“If so, I’d find a new attorney,” the writer half-joked. “When Dom told me he had to run it by the lawyers I had a bad feeling, but I decided to say nothing so as not to ‘bad vibe’ the situation. If Turton collaborated, he should be reported to the New Zealand Bar Association for misconduct.
“I learned it doesn’t matter if you voice your suspicions or not, by the time you’re aware of them the bird has flown,” Brenner said. He asked the BSA to order the station to apologize to him on-air, place the full interview in its archive, and to pay him whatever amount the BSA thought would prevent the station from running similar slanderous stories in the future. The Administration can impose up to a $5,000 NZ ($3,600 US) fine.
However, the BSA decided not to place any orders on the station, thus giving it only an symbolic “slap on the wrist,” Brenner said.
“MediaWorks advise that its processes have been reviewed with respect to how it responds to audience feedback on challenging topics. Taking into account the above factors and the action taken by MediaWorks, the Authority considers that the publication of this decision is sufficient to censure MediaWorks conduct and clarify our expectations of broadcasters under the fairness standard. Accordingly, we do not make any orders,”the BSA’s decision, signed by its chair Judge Bill Hastings, reads.
“I’m appalled at the lack accountability,” Brenner said. “This decision leaves MediaWorks free to practice this kind of slander on anyone who comes along, anyone they feel is ‘different’ or vulnerable.
“I don’t even get a formal apology from the people who lied to me, lied about me, defamed me, sent me a false file and tried to bury the truth afterward. MediaWorks said they had no problem making an apology and archiving the show, but the BSA doesn’t require it, so they won’t do it. It’s absolutely disgusting.”
Brenner is filing an appeal of the decision, citing the lack of any orders. He is also the author of a memoir, Growing Up in the Orgone Box: Secrets of a Reichian Childhood,and a science-fiction novel, Mel-Khyor: An Interstellar Affair.
For a copy of the complete decision by the BSA (15 pgs.), please contact Brenner at
What is your story? Do you have an interesting life story, event that happened to you, or anything in-between? I will pay you for an interview to learn about your story and your interview will be put in a podcast. Please email for more info.The above advertisement appeared in the Sarasota Craigslist on Oct. 16, but I didn’t notice it until Oct. 26. I don’t know why I was looking at “Gigs, Creative” — well, yes I do, I desperately needed money, but why in Sarasota, my old stomping grounds about 45 minutes north of here? I don’t know, but I read the above and immediately sent them the following message:Yeah, I have an interesting story that ought to make a good podcast. In 1971, while attending New College, I fell in love with a female dolphin who worked at an amusement park in Nokomis, Floridaland. And we made love. And then I lost her. And I wrote and published a book about it, “Wet Goddess: Recollections of a Dolphin Lover,” which got made into a award-winning short film, “Dolphin Lover.” If you’ve gotten this far, we might talk. Call me, (415) 640-****. I live in Port Charlotte.The response was very rapid, a couple of hours:
Malcolm,
I have heard about your story and would love to interview you for the cast. The show is called Road Soda and has been running a few years. We are small and have a small but loyal listener base. The show has a wide variety of topics and always aims to entertain. We do our interviews over the phone using skype or whatsapp and usually run about an hour. When the interview is all done we will send you 35 dollars through venmo, paypal, zelle, what ever is best for you, as a thank you for your time. Interview times are M-F evenings 7pm-9pm If weekends are your only free time, we can work something out. Let me know what day you are free this following week and we will schedule ASAP.
looking forward to your response!
Thank you for reaching out.
I still didn’t have a name, but I had an interview!The interviewer was Isaiah Cooper, who turned out to be a welcome change from the interviewers of the past. He wasn’t out to question my morality, he didn’t try to defame me or insult me, he’d actually watched Dolphin Lover like I suggested and he let me tell my tale my own way, asking questions that illuminated things. (His regular sidekick, Peter Something-or-other, wasn’t there for the interview.) Our talk lasted an hour, which is plenty long enough to discuss things, and I ended up want to meet him in person (although I haven’t). Altogether, a nice, straight-up kind of guy!That’s the good news.What’s the bad news? Well, here’s the interview: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/road-soda/id1028616849?ign-mpt=uo%3D4I come on about 54 minutes in.I defy you to listen to it and UNDERSTAND MORE THAN HALF OF WHAT I’M SAYING.In other words, the audio is shit. I had a pair of earbuds with a built-in microphone, which I bought for $9.99 when my Apple earbuds crapped out, and I was using them for sound, never suspecting that it sounded like I was talking on a tin can and a string. I wish to hell Isaiah had enough technical expertise to tell me I didn’t sound good and ask if I had another microphone (I do, the Radio Shack shotgun mic I used to record Mel-Khyor with, but it’s a little trouble to set up… how much? Oh, about 45 seconds), but no, he just let me ramble on, so the interview is very difficult to listen to.Well, I was expressing this problem to my daughter, who is knowledgeable about such things, and she said “I’ve got a Yeti mic here I bought for an interview and don’t use anymore, would you like it?” So she’s going to bring it out here next time she comes. And until then, I will use the Radio Shack shotgun mic, as it’s impedance almost exactly matches that of the computer, for any other interviews I may do.Problem solved, I guess… except that you have to listen to this utterly crappy-sounding interview. If you want to. (BTW, Isaiah has paid me my $35, so we are cool there. I bought a cup of coffee at Starbuck’s and left the change for the baristas to fight over.)
(Buffalo Springfield, “For What It’s Worth”, 1967)
It seems very unlikely to me, but apparently I am part — perhaps even a major part — of a vast, undefined, poorly-documented conspiracy of gays, homos, perverts, queers, lesbos, zoophiles, dog-fuckers, chicken-rapers, donkey-humpers, child molesters and people who fuck dead people.
What, you ask, is this mysterious, shadowy organization about?
Beats me, but that is the opinion of many of the people who write on the Dolphin Lover YouTube page. So it must be true!
These people, it seems — two of their first names are Dante and Laura — want to condemn me not for what I say, but just for speaking out, admitting I’m a zoophile and telling the story of me and Dolly, the dolphin.
Mind you, it’s OK for them to call me disgusting, sub-human, perverted, sick, degenerate, and saying I (not my story, ME) make them puke. But let me tell them they are mean-spirited and hypocritical (well, a little stronger than that), and I am apparently defending this VAST, SHADOWY CONSPIRACY to undermine the American Way of Life, promote illegitimate values AND TRYING TO SPREAD ZOOPHILIA ACROSS THE LAND!
(Because we all know that everyone — yes, even YOU – harbors a dark, secret desire to fuck, or be fucked by, a goat, and one must RESIST this toxic impulse with every fiber of one’s being and will every hour of the day and night or be sucked into the quivering morass of despair and self-hatred that is BESTIALITY!)
Wow… who knew?
A lot of the comments on the site are simply infantile. To the latest person who wrote “You make puke,” I responded “Great, send me a picture of you puking to add to my collection.” I’ve gotten so many, I could wallpaper my new house with them!
The people who fear my voice so much they want to muzzle me are something else, however. They represent a dark strain of American culture now on the ascendancy in this country that doesn’t want ANY voices of protest or defiance of authority to be heard. Funny, I thought that’s what the United States was all about, a constitutional republic where the people rule themselves and we can speak out freely on ANY SUBJECT without fear of prosecution by the government.
Guess not!
What people like Dante and Laura think is that I am operating with the objective of subverting American morals of decency and righteousness. Gee, it’s nice to be finally recognized for what I do, folks! And I’ve done it ever since the late 1970, when a Georgia cop radicalized me by knocking me off a stool and saying “Let’s let the nigger upstairs take care of him.”
Well, I don’t know your name, Georgia pig, they told me you were FBI but I have reason to doubt them, you were too fat to make the government payroll. But I do want to thank you for the experience because, for a few moments, I, a hippie college student, was a “nigger” with no rights in that situation, and I knew if I didn’t play my cards right I was going to end up in a shallow grave in a pecan grove somewhere, or maybe in a pig stye.
And NOBODY knew about Dolly, then, except me, and her, and her dolphin lover, Jimbo.
That experience gave me a newfound respect and admiration for my black brothers and sisters. (Latino, Asian, Native American, Irish, Italian, Vietnamese, Guatamalan… there’s no end to the victims of hate.)
LET’S GET THIS STRAIGHT, this is the country that A) murdered 95% of the Native Americans, B) massacred their food source, the buffalo, almost to the point of extinction for their hides, C) captured Africans to work as slaves, D) fomented Jim Crow laws and the KKK to control the “slaves” when they were freed, E) to this day denies WOMEN, who compose slightly more than 50% of the population, equal rights with MEN, because, you know, bathrooms might be compromised, F) denies trans-gender people the right to pee where they feel comfortable because they only want to get into the bathrooms in women’s clothes so they can watch little girls go pee and then molest them… and on and on, ad infinitum, a catalogue of tragedies, travesties and slaughter that, taken all together, makes everyone in Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America (they stole our name!) blush with shame every time they hear it recited.
We have, in the highest office in the land, President Bonespurs, a man so righteous and selfless he says thing like “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters,” and, of women, “You can grab them by the pussy,” meaning, I should point out, by the labia, not by a feline.
And these people, Dante and Laura among them, are worried about me being a source of unAmerican values? Jesus Christ, the dead elephant in your living room stinks, has shit all over and is attracting flies, and all you can worry about is ME?
I ought to be proud of that, because it means my voice, and my message (WHICH CONCERNS DOLPHINS, not zoophilia) is getting out and being heard. And once in a while, some open-minded person with an open heart too sneaks in there and writes a message supporting me, or acknowledging the great love Dolly and I felt for each other.
To those few who have supported me, or at least wanted to hear impartially and without preconception what I have to say, I thank you. You are what this country is all about, the right to criticize the leader without losing your head. There’s a reason that’s the First Amendment, folks, and it wasn’t because the Founding Fathers couldn’t think of anything else to go first.
So when these pathological haters criticize me for speaking out about my experience, for being a zoophile or denying their pathetic, outdated “facts,” what they are really trying to do is silence me, shut me up, stick their fingers in their ears and go “NYAH, NYAH, CAN’T HEAR YOU,” and make me go away.
But I won’t go away. I will continue to tell our story, which is the story of an admittedly rocky interspecies relationship that turned great, then tragic, until they shut me up, one way or another. And I don’t think they have the courage or the will to do that. They are just so much hot air. Bullies are always cowards underneath their bluff and bluster, that’s what six years in public school playgrounds taught me. If you stand up to them, they melt away like shit in the sun.
And if they do manage to shut me up, watch out, because they’re coming for you next. Arm yourselves, and resist because you’ll be fighting (once again) for what the United States is really all about, freedom. Not freedom to make a buck, not freedom to make love with who you want, but just the freedom to speak freely, a right which has been and still is denied to most of the world’s population. And it’s worse than a pity, it’s a crime against humanity, and one of the reasons we remain stuck in vicious nationalism, racism, ethno-centrism and sexism, all the other -isms.
I am the canary in the coal mine.
If the definition of a liberal is a person who can’t sleep because someone out there isn’t getting what they deserve, the definition of a conservative is someone who can’t sleep because someone out there might be getting something they haven’t earned. Apparently in the USA, this includes health insurance, equal rights, shoes, housing, food and clothes. You are, after all, only promised a right to the persuit of happiness, not happiness itself.
It’s a heavy burden, practicing Satanism, raping 400-lb. dolphins, spreading inequity and throwing banana peels in the path of Mitch “Moscow” McConnell, but somebody’s got to do it!
I am that man, and I admit it. All who are with me, raise their hands. You are the true citizens of the USA, and I thank you. I ask my accusers, repeatedly, to show me where in the Dolphin Lover video I actually endorse, promote or advocate for zoophilia as a life style, and they can’t, of course, because you see, I never do. Never. Not once.
Zoophilia has been a source of so much stress, fear and worry in my past life, because of the perceived threat of haters like Dante and Laura, that I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. (Okay, maybe I would on Tim Clarke and Duncan Seidel, two guys who used to try to bully me in grade school, but only them.) But that doesn’t matter to the professional haters, because they mistake my explanations of my behavior for excuses,my telling my story as promoting bestiality as a lifestyle and my very existence as an affront to human decency.
As if they knew anything about that.
They will be sad to learn that I am at peace with myself, that I have forgiven myself for letting Dolly die and her for committing suicide, that dolphins are the non-human people of the sea whether they (and SeaWorld) like it or not, and that dolphins, bless them, will go on being the wonderful, dreadful, perverse, loving creatures that they are, for as long as they can exist in the seas of this planet.
That’s what it’s all about, folks. That’s why I do what I do.
1) Because God condemns it. All gods, everywhere, all the time. And if they don’t, they aren’t real gods, they’re just false idols so they don’t count. Real gods condemn zoophilia!
2) Because even if 1) only applies to followers of that religion’s moral code, zoophilia is still wrong because it hurts animals. All animals, everywhere, all the time, even if it’s a 150 lb. man having sex with a 1,200 lb. mare or a 400 lb. dolphin that could kill him without thinking about it.
3) Well, it can’t be proven that all zoophilia hurts all animals, but zoophilia must still be wrong because even if the animals aren’t being physically hurt they can’t give consent, just like children, and therefore zoophilia is the moral equivalent of rape.
4) Well, OK, maybe SOME animals can APPEAR to give consent SOME of the time, but that’s just because when animals are driven by their inescapable biological drives they CAN’T NOT GIVE CONSENT. So it’s not really “consent,” it’s just their hormones making them appear to give consent, because as we all know real consent is what only adult humans can do.
5) Well, all right, even if we do acknowledge that animals are not machines completely driven by their inescapable drives and instincts, STILL they cannot be aware of the consequences of their acts down the road, so they’re just like human children, they can’t give INFORMED CONSENT. So zoophilia is still wrong.
6) Even if we admit that the concept of “informed consent” doesn’t apply to other species, zoophilia is still wrong because if it isn’t wrong, then what else isn’t wrong? Pedophiles will demand access to our children and necrophiliacs will demand access to our dearly departed, AND WE WONT BE ABLE TO STOP THEM!
7) OK, even if we admit that there’s no logical, rational, statistical or scientific connection between zoophilia and pedophilia/necrophilia, the distinction between “human” and “animal” is so basic and fundamental to ALL HUMAN SOCIETIES that if we let this distinction erode, the very concepts upon which our society and world-view is based will be threatened. Zoophilia is wrong, then, because it undermines the cosmic order that enables us to give meaning to this complex and confusing world.
8) Even if we acknowledge that our concept of the world is not absolute and explicit, but simply the implicit bi-product of our human senses and societal conditioning, ZOOPHILIA IS WRONG BECAUSE IT MAKES ME WANT TO HURL, DUDE! Gross!
9) Zoophilia is wrong because if it’s not wrong then our animal rights organization is going to lose a significant percentage of its income stream, which comes from people who support our fight against zoophilia. Why do we fight zoophilia? Because it’s wrong, and IT MAKES US MONEY!
10) It’s JUST WRONG, OK? I don’t need a fucking reason, it’s just WRONG!
I was startled, while searching Google for articles on “dolphin telepathy,” to find the following, which I extracted from an interview with Dr. John C. Lilly by Alan Steinfeld published by New Realities magazine in 1997. Here, I direct your attention to the last paragraph of the selection, where Dr. Lilly tells the story of the dolphin who was spear-gunned to the interviewer himself. He also did this for David J. Brown in his book Mavericks of the Mind. I think writer/dolphin trainer Ricou Browning has some things to explain…
LSD and Dolphins
AS: Do you think it is ever really going to be possible to communicate with whales and dolphins.
J: Oh yes. I was taking LSD for years when it was still legally to do so. Then I got a letter from Sandoz saying I was to return what I had left. So before I sent back 150 milligrams of what I had left, I took a sailing trip in the British Virgin islands. The captain on board suddenly said, “whale” and so we went along side these fin back. She was 60feet long and our boat was only 40 feet. She had a baby with her and she turned and fixed me with her eye and so much information passed it was incredible.
AS: What kind of information?
J: Beyond words.
AS: How else does your work with dolphins relate to your experiences with hallucinogenic drugs?
J: You mean psychedelic chemicals.
AS: Yes, psychedelic chemicals.
J: In one of my books it says ECCO, the Earth Coincident Control Office, said two things to me. One, we should try to communicate with dolphins and two, they gave us LSD.
AS: What did they give us LSD for?
J: To increase our consciousness of the universe.
All my LSD [research] work, was in St. Thomas, in an isolation tank above the dolphin pool and had some far out experiences there. Then in California, at the Marineland,{ Africa-USA}. I had an isolation and beside the dolphin pool and I took Ketamine and they took me in to the dolphin group mind. I said, “hey, wait a minute, I can’t even experience one dolphin much less the group mind.” So they went back to one.
AS: What did you experience.
J: I can’t say, its beyond words.
AS: Did you ever give dolphins LSD ?
J: Oh yes. Six of them. They all had wonderful trips.
AS: How do you know that?
J: Well, they would swim along the surface, then they suddenly turn their beaks down and turn on their sonar. Then I remembered my first trip on LSD, the floor disappeared and bang I fell to the floor because I saw stars through the earth. So what they were doing with their sonar it seems [to me] was like they were apparently seeing right through the earth the way I did.
AS: Any thing else happened?
J: Well Pam, the dolphin, had been traumatized, because she was spear gunned three times in a Flipper movies. She was given to us by Ivan Tors and she always stayed away from humans. When we gave her LSD , she climbed all over us. So LSD is effective.
To spare (spear?) you the trouble of paging back, I’m going to reproduce my first letter to Mr. Browning here. He has not responded to my last letter, and I do not anticipate hearing any more from him.
Did he spear gun “Flipper”? You read the mail, consider the state of movie special effects in 1963 and be the judge.
Mr. Ricou Browning
Browning, Ricou & Fran
5221 SW 196th Ln
Southwest Ranches, FL 33332-1111
Feb. 20, 2019
Dear Mr. Browning,
I briefly met you once in 1971, I think, at the Miami Seaquarium. You were very busy fixing something that had sprung a leak, as I remember, and didn’t have much time to talk. I did remark upon your having played The Creature from the Black Lagoon,of course, which makes you immortal in the eyes of monster-lovers everywhere.
Another issue has cropped up, repeatedly, over the years regarding statements by Dr. John C. Lilly about how a dolphin named Pam was treated during the filming of “Flipper!”, the original 1963 movie. According to Lilly, the scenes where the dolphin is shot with a spear gun, and beaches itself, were actually filmed that way, with the dolphin impaled by a spear.
Lilly told me (not hearsay) that Pam was shot a total of 3 times in the peduncle to get the take. The first time, she swam back and allowed the spear to be removed. The second time, she couldn’t make up her mind what to do. The third time she headed for the high seas, had to be netted with the spear in her and returned to the beach to do the scenes with Luke Halpin and Katherine Maguire. Then, apparently, the spear was removed and the wound(s) treated.
Reportedly Pam was so traumatized by this she would not approach humans again. She was sold to Dr. Lilly who reportedly used her for LSD experiments, but that’s another story.
Lilly said “you” did this, but did it actually happen, and if so, what were the circumstances? Why couldn’t the effect have been done by an optical, or some other process? Were you directing the scene, or was somebody else? What really went on? And why was the dolphin left screaming on the beach during Halpin and Maguire’s scene? I just want to know the truth, and would like to get it from your lips. Lilly also told this story to David J. Brown, who included it in an interview with Lilly in his book Mavericks of the Mind,so the story is getting around.
I would like to know the truth, not only because I’m dedicated to it in my profession as a writer, but I would hate to see your reputation sullied because of it. It’s a nasty story, and I’m sure there must be some explanation for it; the film footage is there, unfortunately, to show that it happened, and I don’t think you had any animatronics that could do a scene like that in 1963.
Sincerely, Malcolm J. Brenner
Mr. Ricou Browning
Browning, Ricou & Fran
5221 SW 196th Ln
Southwest Ranches, FL 33332-1111
March 6, 2019
Dear Mr. Browning,
Thank you for responding to my letter of Feb. 20 with your information. Since the story has already been made public by David Jay Brown’s interview with Lilly in his book Mavericks of the Mind, do you mind if publish it, together with my letter inquiring about the incident? Putting them both together will allow me to rebut Lilly’s story.
However, I do mean to question you a little further, if you will indulge me. Please assume I am somewhat familiar with professional movie special effects. How exactly were the shots done of the beached dolphin with the spear sticking out of its side done? It’s thrashing around a lot, as I remember. Was this an early animatronic, a dummy, something like that? Do you remember who made it? I would appreciate knowing.
Finally, I think “a writer of any integrity” would check out the sources of all stories he/she heard and verify them before going public with them. Very often, he will have to explain things to an editor. Although I met Dr. Lilly and his wife Antoinette, attended a couple of his workshops (they mistook me for staff at one!) and interviewed him regarding his work with dolphins, I have no knowledge of where he got the story. However, in the spirit of open inquiry, I thought I’d ask as you are the last person who was there. I hope my boldness hasn’t offended you.
Sincerely yours, Malcolm J. Brenner
Dear Mr. Browning,
Thank you for your letter of March 20. Nothing you could tell me about Dr. Lilly (and very little about Ivan Tors) would surprise me. Lilly was widely known for both his abuse of dolphins and drugs.
What surprises me more is that you did not answer my question. You have responded satisfactorily about the scene where the dolphin was shot with a spear gun, but as to my question about the dolphin on the beach thrashing around with a spear in it while Luke Halpin and Kathleen Maguire are delivering their lines, no answer. You said, rather vaguely, that the scene was rendered by “special effects,” an all-inclusive term so vague as to be meaningless.
The IMDb data base does not list a special effects person in the crew of “Flipper,” and there is no credit given for special effects. (However, Dr. Lilly is listed as a consultant; TCM lists him as a “scientific advisor.”) It would be uncommon not to list such a credit, wouldn’t it?
Mr. Browning, it’s really a very simple question: If, as you say, a dummy, model or animatronic dolphin was used in the beach scenes, who built it? What person or shop in Hollywood? There were only so many people at the time who could do this and pull it off. The dolphin on the beach looks amazingly realistic to me, so whoever it was must have been good!
Over the years, you’ve made a lot of money off dolphins. I don’t begrudge you that, but I’d like to know the truth of what happened during the making of “Flipper.” I think you owe it to the dolphins. We now know they are creatures who name themselves, who recognize themselves in a mirror, who are arguably non-human persons. The truth is very simple to recognize, there’s no hiding it. You are being evasive and trying to divert me by bringing up Lilly. Please answer the question, and truthfully. Thank you.
Malcolm J. Brenner
August 8, 2019
Mr. Browning,
I apologize for not concluding this business sooner, but I have had an illness and also moved. Please note the new address, above, if you choose to reply.
This will be my last letter to you on the making of “Flipper” and whether the stunt dolphin was shot with a spear gun or not. Since you did not respond to my previous letter questioning the veracity of your claim that the shots on the rocks were done with undefined “special effects,” I presume you refuse to speak any further on the subject. Am I right?
Just let me finish by telling you that I bought “Flipper” from Amazon and watched it. And I thought that, at the time, it was very sympathetic to Florida families, what with the red tide, the hurricane and all. I guess it made Ivan Tors, or somebody, a lot of money.
However, regarding the subject of this letter: In the scene where the dolphin is spear gunned, the dolphin is hit on the left side of the peduncle with the spear, and immediately flexes sideways in that direction reflexively, it appears. Then, in the next scene, it changes direction, heading back where it came from and dragging the spear gun behind it. The spear gun lodges in some rocks.
(I regret I can’t capture some frames here for you to view, but I’ve had difficulty with Amazon letting me find the right frames.)
If, as you say, the spear’s pronged head had been replaced with a hypodermic needle, it seems to me it would have bent, broken off or been dislodged from the force of that flexion, not to mention the spear gun getting stuck in the rocks.
I will give you that you probably used a model for the distant scenes of the dolphin on the rocks. They were taken from such a distance I couldn’t tell.
However, when we come to the closeups of Luke Halpin with the dolphin on the rocks, with only apparently seaweed for padding, what I see looks like a very drugged dolphin. It isn’t flopping around, it isn’t trying to get off the rocks, and it sure as hell isn’t a motorized model or the primitive sort animatronics they had in 1963. It breathes most convincingly, just like a real dolphin.
As you know, drugging dolphins is very dangerous, because they have no breathing reflex, something our friend Dr. Lilly discovered at Marineland in the mid-50’s, much to the disgust of veterinarian Forrest Wood.
The titles for the movie, both opening and closing, bear no mention of who might have done the “special effects” you claim were used, or who might have built the prop dolphin.
I can only conclude that not only did you shoot a real dolphin with a spear gun (you have admitted as much yourself, except you say you used a hypodermic needle instead of the pronged head) but that you drugged that dolphin afterward to enable it to withstand the pain while you filmed on the rocks with Halpin. I’d contact Halpin, but I hear he has Alzheimer’s.
As I said, Mr. Browning, this is my last letter. I intend to post all our correspondence to my blog, malcolmbrenner.com/news, to make it available to anybody who wants to read it. I will, of course, include whatever answer you decide to make to this letter.
Not only have you admitted to spear-gunning the dolphin (and I doubt your explanation), but I now also accuse you of drugging that dolphin and failing to remove the spear from it in a timely manner. In short, you knowingly abused and tortured it to get the shots you wanted because you didn’t have the budget to do anything else (hire a special effects man, build a dummy).
Kind of subverts the whole premise of “Flipper,” doesn’t it? When you torture an animal to make a movie about a kid who has fun with animals, what does that say about you as a person? I think it’s hypocritical and debased and sadistic. You objectified a creature that is much like a human being, pretending it didn’t have feelings so you could get your shot and make your movie. And if you did it to them, you can do it to me, or anyone.
Care to convince me otherwise? – Malcolm J. Brenner
(Addendum: I can find no mention in Google’s database of “Eva Rinseya,” the French actress mentioned in Browning’s second letter. If anybody knows anything about her, please contact me.)
Malcolm J. Brenner 