Ray Carney, Mark Rappaport: It's all over

It's all over. Ray Carney has responded to the attacks from Jon Jost and Mark Rappaport. And what he says makes sense, more sense than Rappaport's claims. He posted on his website several years ago that the items he received from Rappaport were his. Rappaport knew at the time that Carney said this and didn't object. There's just the fact that Carney had been holding the stuff for eight years---as I said before, can you imagine storing someone's stuff in your home for eight years? Can you imagine asking someone to store your stuff in his home for eight years? What if Rappaport had wanted the stuff back after fifteen or twenty years?

Rappaport needs the digital masters he gave to Carney so his movies can be made available on streaming video. I wish Carney would send them. But Rappaport's demanding everything back and Carney wants to be partially reimbursed for the money he spent having the films cleaned and restored and the space he had built to store the films properly. He's asking for $27,000. Jost and Rappaport quibble over the cost. Has either one ever hired a contractor? Rappaport's from New York and presumably an apartment dweller. The one time I saw Jon Jost in the 1980s, he mentioned that he once lived in a friend's sauna because he didn't want to get a job.

Jost posted Carney's email response on his blog. I wonder if he actually read it this time. He says he posted another email Carney wrote without reading it.

On Jost's blog, in the comments, there are some half-hearted attacks on Carney, generalized attacks ridiculing him without mentioning or refuting anything he said.

Jost does pretty much the same thing when he responds to comments that take Carney's side or that suggest Carney has a point.

I mentioned the suggestion Arthur Vibert made, that an account on kickstarter.com be set up and money be raised to pay Carney so Rappaport could have his stuff back.

Jost ignored the suggestion and replied in part:

...In his published item on this, he says a handful of false things about me, which I see as an indication that he is more than happy – as he was when I printed his diatribe against BU on my blog, colluding with him to make it appear I’d printed this on my own, when he asked me to do so, re-wrote his ever-so-long piece numerous times before giving the go-ahead to print it – to deal in falsehoods and lies when he thinks it, in his mind, serves his purposes....

Vibert replied to Jost's reply:

You are obviously determined to vilify the man. I’m confident a solution can be sorted out if people are willing to discuss it rationally. Surely the time for pointing fingers is over now. What does it gain anyone? Are you so determined to bring the man down that you are unwilling to consider solutions? It only makes you look petty and small. Let’s stop hurling accusations and fix this.

Yeah. It's all over. I hope Jost and Rappaport have the good sense to stop.

If someone wants to start the kickstarter thing, I'll pitch in a hundred bucks. I do want Rappaport to have the stuff back, the digital masters if nothing else.

I wish Carney had responded sooner. I would have been defending him all this time. I can't remember all the stuff I wrote on this blog about this situation, but when I go back and look, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be terribly embarrassed.