Alan Benyak, an unknown actor who appeared in an ad for Tom Wolf, a Democrat running for governor of Pennsylvania, is being held up for public ridicule by BuzzFeed. His sin, according to BuzzFeed, is appearing in a direct-to-video film distributed by Troma, a well-known and established distributor of low-budget horror movies.
The write-up, by BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski, is probably more sensationalized than “Breeding Farm,” the film in question.
Kaczynski describes “Breeding Farm” as “a twisted porn film,” but there’s no evidence of that. IMDB usually uses the keyword “adult” to signify porn. “Breeding Farm” is only listed as “horror.”
If Troma distributes porn, that would be news to me.
Moreover, the film’s director, Cody Knotts, identifies himself as a “horror director, and via Twitter told me, “[I]t is not porn…it’s a bad horror film.”
Regardless, here’s how Buzzfeed describes the film:
The film features Benyak torturing a half-naked woman, selling a woman, force-feeding a woman, engaging in cannibalism, and inspecting a woman as if she is livestock.
Other parts of the film include rape, miking [sic] a woman and making them act like farm animals, kidnapping, treating women as livestock, riding a woman, physical abuse, and torture.
This is disgraceful reporting. It’s bad enough when BuzzFeed launches their cheap gotchas at politicians. At least, politicians are public figures; it goes with the job. To defame an actor, who did absolutely nothing wrong, for clicks, is way out of bounds.
Alan Benyak landed a part in a low-budget gross-out horror film, but because he also landed a part in a campaign ad, he’s having words like “porn,” “rape,” “physical abuse” and “torture” attached to his name at one of the biggest websites in the world.
Not only is “Breeding Farm” not a porn film, it’s a production employing consenting adults in a genre that’s been around and accepted for decades. And no, I’m not defending a favorite genre. I wouldn’t watch “Breeding Farm” or “The Human Centipede” or anything like them for love or money.
Good for BuzzFeed, though, the website can claim a scalp! The Wolf campaign apparently freaked out over the BuzzFeed report and released a statement saying, “We were unaware of Mr. Benyak’s involvement in the film, and we are making changes to the ad now.”
If this is a new media standard for actors who appear in campaign ads, I guess Kevin Spacey is out of luck. He once appeared in a horror film where he cut off an innocent woman’s head and had it UPS’d to her unsuspecting husband.
The elite media’s appalling practice of vetting, exploiting and exposing the backgrounds of innocent Americans, all in an effort to gotcha politicians, is usually aimed at the GOP. Politico has been especially shameless at this, going back to Joe the Plumber. The fact that the politician in question here is a Democrat doesn’t make it any better.
Benyak has done nothing wrong or even unusual for an actor. Low-budget, gross-out horror films are loaded with actors who later became famous, and even went on to win Academy Awards. Furthermore, the Wolf campaign did nothing wrong when they hired Benyak.
But for cheap click-bait, BuzzFeed has effectively stuck Benyak’s name on a blacklist. No politician will hire him again.
What is BuzzFeed now, anyway, the Morality Police? I thought we got over this kind of Church Lady Puritanism with the fall of Hollywood’s Production Code in the 1960s. Apparently there’s a new Blacklist: If you appear in a low-budget horror film, BuzzFeed doesn’t want you employed in campaign commercials.
The media couldn’t be bothered to vet Obama or ObamaCare. The media has zero interest in digging into an IRS agency currently destroying evidence with impunity. But the media sure has the time and resources to vet, report on, and exploit everyday Americans just trying to make a living.
P.S. If BuzzFeed got this from an oppo-researcher in the GOP, shame on all of them.
UPDATE: This post has been updated. BuzzFeed claims to have seen the film. I’ve removed my assumption they didn’t.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.