Cancel My Subscription

Cancel My Subscription: Or Job Hunting with Production Charts

This happened last year, and my subscription was finally cancelled one month ago, solely because my credit card expired and they could no longer siphon subscription fees from it.  Production charts are one way to find work, but I do not rely on the listings of this particular publication, which is not called MovieBatch or anything even close.  In fact the publication doesn’t even really exist and I made this all up, so don’t believe anything following this statement.  Except this: Before you buy a subscription, carefully and thoroughly check out those publications that claim they have listings of every film in production and pre-production, along with contact information.

 Hey, You There: Yes, You, Working in MovieBatch’s So-Called “Customer Care Center”:

I am forced to write to your Customer Care Center to cancel my subscription because the rest of your online magazine site is down every single time I try to access it.  I also found that the “film information for professionals” on your Production Follower was spotty and inaccurate, as I am in the business, and I need to know that information for my own job searches.  MovieBatch was of no help at all to me in this regard.  Additionally, I am at a critical point in seeking work on a film, and was not able to get the name of their production office from your site, much less their phone number.  You promised you had this information for job hunting professionals like me.  You promised.  But you lied.

As a result (or lack thereof), I couldn’t get my resume to the right person until late yesterday—and then only because I had a friend on the crew and called in a favor—so your magazine was useless.  This may have cost me the job.  Perhaps you can imagine how frustrated I am; someone else got their resume on the production designer’s desk, probably days before mine even arrived.  Because they were hiring in a hurry—which is standard procedure— I now have no chance to crew on a huge film with paid travel all over the US to vacation spots like Palm Springs and Yosemite at union rates and generous per diem, even on idle days.

I am also, by the way, quitting my subscription to the ShowBiz Statesman.  Neither of your rags even listed this movie on your production charts, in spite of the fact that it’s been mentioned in your very own news articles, and is a big budget, Sean Penn-directed epic with a cast of mega-watt stars.  Why don’t you guys list any of this stuff??

Actually, whoever you are, reading this, you couldn’t care less, could you?  Unless you have a script on the back burner or want to “direct” someday, you probably don’t know or even want to know this business.  So consider this an amusing way to blow some of your slavery time on the company’s clock.  I’m sure someone like you doesn’t own stock in MovieBatch.  You could get hundreds of letters just like this one, all of them writing in to cancel MovieBatch subscriptions, maybe threatening the company’s financial standings so much (all due to the incompetence of  MovieBatch, whoever and whatever they are) that  the stockholders will run like rats from a burning garbage barge, and it wouldn’t bother you in the least.

Of course, you will lose your job, which you no doubt hate, since you’re obviously stuck at the lowest tier of hell there if you’re handling customer complaint emails.  No more job—think of it.  Freedom from this oppressive, pointless, criminal waste of your time here on earth, which is so precious—it’s all we have, really, before we fade to black.   And to have to sell that time to some limping, clueless monster like MovieBatch five days a week, eight hours a day—really sixteen hours, with the freeway commute…  For the love of our dear Lord, how can you awaken every day to the hideous knowledge that you are financially dependent on the “good will” of something as stupidly high on itself as MovieBatch?

But the alternative is worse, isn’t it?  Without a job, you won’t be able to pay the rent or blab on your cell phone.  In two weeks, you’ll be homeless, unless you’re living with your parents…  But that itself is too horrible an existence to contemplate for real adults, who have a good job, not one like yours, which is on the fast track to the dangerously overburdened Santa Monica Bay sewage terminal.

You are smiling to yourself, now.  Surely, MovieBatch will go on existing and you will go on collecting your bi-weekly, tax-eaten living allowance.  Please. Stop lying to yourself, for once.  If you can read (and of course you can!) you are beginning to suspect that all is not well at MovieBatch.  I am probably not the first to complain about the blatant worthlessness of your employer.   Look around you, right now.  Who will be the first one to go when they downsize?  Can you guess?

One paycheck after the hammer falls, you’ll be living on the streets, where you’ll get addicted to crack, and then one day you will find yourself walking Santa Monica Boulevard in burgundy velour unisex hot pants, hoping for a rich “John” to supply you with a wad of dirty “cash” for your next “fix”.   You’ll spend every waking hour “jonesin’ for the pipe”.  All because the meager income you depended upon for your very sanity is gone—all of it gone, gone, gone! Thanks to the bloated incompetence of—that’s right:  MovieBatch.

But don’t let your bitterness toward them—toward The Man, so typified by the condescending attitude of MovieBatch toward the little people like you, living on the bottom, who are supposed to be happy for anything that trickles down— Don’t let your bitterness toward The Man destroy your life!  When they hand you that pink slip and padlock their doors because they’ve run out of shills who are stupid enough to pay for a subscription to a big, fat sack of nothing (MovieBatch), you run out into the smoggy sun-glare of LA and you Thank the Great Spirit that you’ve been given the priceless chance to live your life on your own terms.  Run away as fast as you can.

That’s right.  Run, my lower-echelon friend.  Run toward the sea!  But don’t go in the water, because of the sewage problems I mentioned, plus the hordes of used crack pipes and hypodermic needles floating on the oily waves of the Santa Monica Bay, every one of them carrying unspeakable pestilence.  Instead, stand proudly on the shore, and stare, unblinking, into the bright glory of the burning sun, and sing!  Yes, sing out your profound and grateful joy at finally being free, free FREE! Of MovieBatch.  Sing loud! Because now, now that your life is MovieBatch-free, you can truly begin to live as you were meant to live—as a man, or a woman, or whatever you happen to be.

I know that my life can—and will—begin again for me once I am sure that my subscription has been cancelled, even though I couldn’t do it through the recommended (and functionally non-existent) “Subscription Center”, shut out courtesy of the vainglorious apathetic ignorance of MovieBatch.

I would appreciate a confirmation of my request for a subscription cancellation at the earliest possible convenience.  You have my email address and my MovieBatch “Membership Number” (Membership of what? Of nothing, of no legitimate group or professional association, or gathering of any value).   I will be here, writing on my computer because I won’t be involved with any big rush to get my kit together for a flight to the Grand Canyon, which is the location where I would have started my exciting first day on the shoot of that movie I didn’t get on.

Instead, I’ll be at home, unemployed and living with my parents, racking up more of the credit card debt that was dramatically enhanced by my wastage of purchasing power on the repulsive idiocy of a subscription to MOVIEBATCH.

I suppose asking for a refund is out of the question.

Sincerely,

Renee Prince - Or, as MovieBatch refers to me, Order Number: 3524F2E0-537HC42-712-D5G6B