Talk:F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre

FGM IMDb reviewer?

Someone using this name has reviewed 1000+ movies on IMDb[1] (I think I've seen a second account there using the name too). A number of the reviews are of movies widely believed to be lost. The claims were met with suspicion on the usenet group alt.movies.silent[2] I don't know what to make of it all myself. Шизомби 04:36, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Recently posted on alt.movies.silent (not by me) : "If you Google a lengthy discussion about Mr. McIntyre's claims that occurred on this newsgroup a couple of years ago, the consensus is that his tales of being squired around the world (Moviola in tow) to acquire prints for this "elusive collector" is the work of a fantasist (to use a nice word) with plenty of time on his hands. Which doesn't mean that he has never seen an an actual movie. It just means that everything he writes as reportage is suspect." Saxophobia 16:58, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

hmm also this:

http://lmwnow.blogspot.com/2007/04/intriguing-biographies-on-wikipedia.html

I've stubed the article untill we have the time to get to the bottem of this.Geni 19:40, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, this will have to be an anonymous edit - but I am the man behind the blog-article... Is it me or is the delightful mr Macintyre now using this page to pimp his wares on Amazon? Go Gwyn, go! - Edwin

I've done some cleaning up. Amazon links violate WP:EL and really aren't that helpful, Also the Tom Swift link was to a mirror of the Wikipedia entry which is circular and doesn't help prove anything. Instead I have updated a lot of links to point at the ISFDB or other better sources. I also started a bibliography section (as ISBNs are ugly dropped into the main body and with too much detial, "and, and, and" the main body gets too "listy"). There are also facts that need checking. (Emperor 14:24, 28 July 2007 (UTC))

It is universally felt by silent movie folks that MacIntyre's IMDB output is a load of hogwash-- nobody knows a collector with so many lost films who happily unspools them for you just so you can write IMDB pieces. I realize that that's not enough to back up an opinion on Wikipedia, though, so I have linked a mention of this widely-held suspicion to a post by Lokke Heiss, a professor and author on silent films, at the silent film discussion site NitrateVille where he discusses why he finds them unlikely to be true reviews. Hopefully this is enough to verify what is a verifiable fact, that the suspicions are extremely widely-held in the field.Mgmax (talk) 13:50, 5 April 2011 (UTC)Mgmax

Ah, glad to see that in the name of protecting the quality of the information at Wikipedia, vigilant editors (Tvoz) are removing cautionary information to restore the page to the form it had when Macintyre himself made up most of this BS and put it here. If you don't think the discussion board cite is serious enough, what do you think is going to turn up that would? Do you think someone's going to write an article for a major journal exposing Macintyre's obvious hogwash? People in the silent film world have to deal with queries about Macintyre's lies every day; they are in little doubt what the truth is. It would be nice if Wikipedia could find some way to allow the statement that the experts in the field are in agreement that he made stuff up right and left, and thus at the very least, help steer people toward the truth instead of consistently taking a stand in favor of perpetuating and enshrining Macintyre's falsehoods.Mgmax (talk) 21:02, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

One step forward, two steps back... the last version of this section that I saw was actually pretty good, making it clear that suspicions of Macintyre's phony IMDB reviews (I use that descriptor without hesitation) were widespread and solidly held. Now someone has muddied the waters again with this: "Some silent film critics and fans believe the reviews to be elaborate jokes, others have accused MacIntyre of muddying the historical record by publishing fake reviews, although they have no actual evidence of this." I cannot imagine the actual evidence one could possibly produce to prove that Macintyre didn't see movies he makes errors about and writes reviews of which closely track contemporary reviews readily available in the New York Public Library, any more than one could prove he didn't fly to Mars or have a long love affair with Princess Diana. If Macintyre did view all these films in the collection of a hidden collector in his Moviola-equipped lair at the center of the earth or wherever, he did a piss-poor job of taking notes, that's all I can say. I'm sure in Tvoz's gentle hands, Macintyre's reviews will eventually be the only and definitive sources on these movies in Wikipedia-land.Mgmax (talk) 21:17, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Why are you perpetuating F. Gwynplaine Macintyre's falsehoods?

(moved from User talk: Tvoz)

As the manager of Nitrateville, an international discussion site for silent and early sound film, I think I can say with confidence that there is NO ONE in the archivist, teaching, scholarly, or collector world who believes the late F., Gwynplaine Macintyre's claims of having seen so many lost silent and early sound films in the hands of some mysterious collector. It is quite obvious that he worked from contemporary accounts... not least because he occasionally repeated their errors. I understand that the foregoing is not, in itself, evidence, though as usual Wikipedia's sense of what IS evidence is curious (when Lokke Heiss, a prominent figure in the field, says it on Nitrateville it's not good enough for you, but when Thomas Gladysz, another prominent figure in the field who has also posted on Nitrateville, says it on his own blog, it is, somehow). But okay, we accept that Wikipedia has its own eccentric standards.

But the Macintyre page was at a reasonable point that gave the casual reader a fair sense of what reality is. It read:

"Many silent film critics and fans believe the reviews to be elaborate jokes, others have accused MacIntyre of muddying the historical record by publishing fake reviews."

This is indisputably true. If you won't accept the thread with Lokke Heiss in it as evidence of the claim that his reviews were bogus, at the very least it is prima facie evidence that PEOPLE IN THE FIELD believe them to be bogus.

But that wasn't good enough for you. You changed it to:

"Some silent film critics and fans believe the reviews to be elaborate jokes, others have accused MacIntyre of muddying the historical record by publishing fake reviews, although they have no actual evidence of this."

First of all, this is wrong. People have cited examples of Macintyre getting details wrong in the same way as contemporary reviews: http://www.nitrateville.com/viewtopic.php?p=39461#39461 (read the next two as well)

But more than that, it's an absurd standard of proof that injects your own bias into the equation. "Some have accused Barack Obama of being a secret socialist, although they have no actual evidence of this." Well, they might and they might not, but in any case, it doesn't affect the truth of the first statement, which is that some HAVE accused him of that, rightly or wrongly. You're taking a fact (lots of people think Macintyre's reviews are crap) and inserting your own view (you can't prove he didn't see films no one else can see under circumstances that sound more like a cheap mystery thriller than reality!)

The question is, why are you so determined to cover for Macintyre's fraud? I'm not saying Wikipedia has to make a judgement that his reviews were fraudulent, can't it simply reflect, accurately, the universal belief in knowledgable circles that they were?Mgmax (talk) 00:45, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

My bias? The "universal belief in knowledgable circles"? Really, your out of control comments suggest that you are not an objective editor on this topic. Unlike you, I have no dog in this fight - I am merely looking at the sources and trying to keep the POV commentary out of there. With all due respect, your site, Nitrateville, is a discussion board, not what we consider to be a reliable source. The Louise Brooks Society blog, provided by some other editor as a source, is only marginally better, but also a weak source. The whole matter of whether or not he wrote the film reviews - which you added to the article - is speculative and probably none of that speculation should be in there, but since the veracity of the reviews has been raised, I was willing to say that some critics have raised questions, but I now am inclined to remove the whole comment. I actually don't see reliable sourcing to support "many", or "universal" or any evidence to support your belief that his reviews were fraudulent. I don't claim to know one way or the other, but I am not the one with a POV on this - I'm afraid you are. And I am not the only editor who has reverted your POV additions. So please stop accusing me of "covering for his fraud" and commenting disparagingly about my editing - if you are interested in improving the encyclopedia, try doing it with less attitude and more civility. Your way is not going to work. Tvoz/talk 04:15, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't see how that answers any of my substantive points (and in fact you don't seem to grasp the issue). No one denies Macintyre wrote the reviews-- he plainly did. The issue is, his collection of reviews of otherwise un-viewable films are widely considered to be fraudulent whenever they come up. Again, it doesn't matter whether you believe NitrateVille or anything else is a GOOD source, the very fact of discussion in such places is evidence of discussion on this point-- all those people could be wrong and the fact that they hold this view remains. But instead you bend over backwards for this with "although they have no evidence of this." Well, whether you consider the sources good or not, this is simply not true because they present evidence of the only form that could realistically verify their point-- textual and factual disparities between the films and Macintyre's descriptions. (What other evidence do you think could exist? How precisely do you want this negative proved?)

What there's really no evidence for in this article are claims such as his supposed employment in English TV in the 60s, his supposed work on a Jerzy Koszinski novel, and other whole cloth inventions of the late Mr. Macintyre or whatever his name really was— yet these go out with Wikipedia's imprimatur, apparently because he got them in early enough that they now seem holy writ. Only suspicion raises your suspicions. As for my commenting disparagingly about your editing, nothing I've said in my exasperation on this subject is nearly so damaging as your admission that you feel inclined to completely restore Macintyre's inventions and deceptions simply out of pique at me. I have improved this entry with facts and Wikipedia steadily undoes them... returning it, I should point out, closer to the original largely spurious article most likely crafted by Macintyre himself. Which of us is doing the piece and Wikipedia a disservice, I leave to you to decide.Mgmax (talk) 04:46, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

References

Not "self-written", interview genuine

This is replying to the person above who accuses FGMacIntyre of "self-hagiography" and a "shameless" inaccuracy. MacIntyre did not write his own Wikipedia entry: _I_ did. I attended his writing course at 2Kon (Glasgow, 2000). MacIntyre gave me some solid info on how to break into professional publishing, and soon afterward I made my first pro sale. I asked FGMacIntyre for a list of his publication credits, and I used that as the basis for his Wikipedia entry without his knowledge. When I met MacIntyre again later at the NASFiC, I showed him a printout of his Wikipedia bio. He asked me to delete about half the information, but didn't say why.

The NYTimes _did_ interview MacIntyre, referring to a letter he wrote in their July 24, 2005 issue. (I had to look up that date.) Did anybody here ever write a letter to the New York Times? They have a fact-checking department that's so thorough it even verifies letters to the editor. You have to include a phone number with your letter, or they won't consider publishing it. FGMacIntyre wrote a letter to the NYTimes that they wanted to publish, but first they wanted more information. Someone from their Editorial department phoned him and asked him questions for 27 minutes so they could verify what was in his letter. MacIntyre showed me his phone logs, which he saves -- I verified the following: (1) in early July 2005 he received a lengthy phone call from the New York Times, (2) the phone call came from their Editorial department, not the Circulation department (so they weren't phoning him to sell him a subscription). Now if the New York Times phones somebody and asks him questions for 27 minutes I would definitely describe that as an "interview". But if you think there's something "shameless" here please take notice that I wrote FGMacIntyre's Wikipedia entry without his knowledge until afterward. Any misstatement is my error, not his decision. My name is Steven Davies and I will always be thankful to Mr. MacIntyre for helping me get published.Evensteven99 (talk) 08:53, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Suicide?

There are reports circulating among fandom -- see, for instance, http://file770.com/?p=4037 -- that a recent suicide in Brooklyn was F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre. In particular, there's concern among the SF community based on several posts that "Froggy" (MacIntyre's nickname) made on the online SFF.net discussion boards recently. (I'm not going to copy/paste the rather lengthy threads here, but anyone with an SFF.net account can find the two threads in the sff.discuss.community-news forum.) SeattleSparks (talk) 16:36, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

The police have confirmed that it was him. Should have known, after his last post on SFF.net. --Orange Mike | Talk 00:23, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Not exactly - the body has not yet been positively ID'd.Tvoz/talk 04:41, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Sexual Paraphilias

Why has the information about the extremely unusual materials removed from the crime scene been redacted?? The New York Times is "The Paper of Record" and does not casually go around slandering the recently deceased with false accusations. What was found in this individual's apartment was apparently unusual enough to warrant the graphic description highlighted in the article. Apart from certain small science fiction fan circles this man is now known by the general public primarily as a result of the manner of his suicide/attempted murder and by the extremely odd circumstances of his life and the sexual devices apparently found in his apartment. Surely that is most relevant to this article? 66.65.49.220 (talk) 04:01, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Not redacted, just removed because it is cherrypicking the most sensational detail out of many, many details in that article, and that is not the way we write articles. There is no demonstration of why anyone thinks this is more notable than anything else mentioned in the source. And it is only your opinion that the "general public" has in any way focused on the alleged paraphernalia. The news reports actually focused on the fire and suicide. And by the way, where does "attempted murder" come from? Tvoz/talk 02:31, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

It will be back....not that important to me but the NYT's article and subsequent public revelations about the case will definitely shape general public perception of this man more than his writing ever did. The entire article was about the extremely eccentric nature of this man and the strange life he led behind closed doors. It was most notable for the NYT to highlight such sexual matters and that should tell you that what was found was well beyond the pale. But no matter. As for attempted murder - THE MAN COMMITTED SUICIDE BY SETTING HIS APARTMENT ON FIRE IN A BUILDING INHABITED BY MANY OTHER PEOPLE. Many others would have died were it not for the NYC Fire Department. Enjoy the hagiography.....lol 66.65.49.220 (talk) 13:44, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

You seem to be editing this article with a bias regarding the subject. If indeed other reliable sources surface that highlight this particular matter it might be more appropriate to add to the article. Right now only one source for this has been offered, and we're talking about 13 words out of a 2500+ word newspaper article, mentioned in passing without comment or analysis by the writer of the article. We've included some of the things from that article, but you're pushing this matter of "devices" as more notable than its lack of prominence in the article would suggest and which you haven't justified beyond your own opinion of it. As for murder, you are jumping to a legal conclusion that may or may not have been made by the police had the person who set the fire survived or been discovered. I might even agree with that assessment, but right now it's an inflammatory word, pardon the pun, and use of it demonstrates a POV that is noticed. So I think we wait for more objective, reliable sources before going ahead with this. Tvoz/talk 19:27, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

MacIntyre's Self-Invention, or: Wikipedia's Been Had

It is admitted elsewhere on this page that the Wikipedia entry on the late Mr. MacIntyre is largely written by an acolyte of his based on information supplied by Mr. MacIntyre, or more likely, Mr. MacIntyre himself.

It is a matter of public record that MacIntyre's life was marked by significant degrees of self-invention and by internet hoaxing. No silent film expert takes at all seriously his claims of having seen hundreds of lost films no other film historian has seen, for instance. (See discussion on Nitrateville or the recent piece by Thomas Gladysz at Salon.) It's obvious that he was writing pastiches from surviving reviews and publicity. It is very likely, for that matter, that even his claims of being Scottish, abandoned by his family, a twin, etc. are wholly invented; in a NY Times piece (http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/15/remembrances-of-the-enigmatic-froggy/) there is at least one person who remembers him speaking with a plain New York accent before affecting the Scottish one. Likewise, it is quite probable that the second paragraph, about working on British TV, is completely invented, and so is the reference to him working on Kosinski's Pinball. It's an open question whether there's more in this entry that's false than is true.

And yet Wikipedia allows this almost certainly fraudulent account of his life to go unchallenged; a single sentence of "caveat emptor" I added today was promptly removed by someone. ("But because of his long career as an internet hoaxer (notably his many "reviews" of lost films on the Internet Movie Database), almost no facts about his life other than his known publications can be considered certain, including his country of birth and real name.")

In short, Wikipedia has been had by a self-aggrandizing fabulist, and is an active participant in continuing his deceptions. Someone ought to rigorously rewrite this piece drawing only on what can be authoritatively verified by means outside the control of the late Mr. MacIntyre. Then someone needs to make sure that falsehood doesn't immediately correct the truth back to falsehood.Mgmax (talk) 22:45, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes - quite agree.....should be pared down to documentable facts regarding the arson/attempted murder, the bizarre sexual materials, and the man's Munchausen-like fabrications. There appears to be a sci-fi internet fan cabal at work here. 66.65.49.220 (talk) 23:20, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I can certainly confirm the fake IMDb reviews: at least six or seven times when I have seen a 'rare' film, I have discovered that a review has already been posted under the name of F.Gwynplaine MacIntyre containing factual errors that make it clear he had never actually seen the picture in question.Igenlode (talk) 01:25, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Reviews

I have removed the line claiming there is no evidence that his reviews are fake. There is in fact substantial evidence that he wrote fake reviews. Many of his reviews contain details that are known to be 100% in accurate. I think it is also very very clear that he wrote much of this article himself. Since all of the crazy edits that were performed in the past have died with him. 71.52.31.6 (talk) 05:10, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Clean Up

I made some massive edits removing dubious and unreferenced content. Also reworded parts to make it clear these are all claims made by a known hoaxer. I removed the short story sections since it is of dubious origin and I can not validate any of it. From now on when information is added to this article it needs to be meticulously referenced. 71.52.31.6 (talk) 05:46, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Really? Perhaps in your zeal to remove material from this article you missed the reference section which includes the ISFDB listing of MacIntyre's stories, and some of his interior art. From now on, when you remove material, please be sure you are not editing with bias. Tvoz/talk 06:42, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

The ISFDB reference was broken when I checked. I would recommend that you be very careful about ownership of articles. I have found numerous fakes references used by this author over the years. Click on the reference and it leads to an article that has nothing to with subject or leads to a broken page. Considering the dubious nature of this person and the fact that the original article and parts that are still present were obviously written by him, an extra level of scrutiny is required here. 71.52.31.6 (talk) 09:26, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

I have no ownership of this (or any) article - my record on Wikipedia speaks for itself. You, however, are an anonymous editor as is your right, but there is no way to determine if you have bias here other than by reading your comments and noting the kinds of edits you're doing here. For all we know, you have a personal grudge about the subject.

I'm surprised to hear that ISFDB was broken - you did not indicate that in your edits to the article as far as I recall, and I reinstated it an hour after you commented above that you couldn't verify the stories, yet I had no trouble going to ISFDB to do so. But in any case if a link is broken, we mark it as such, we don't just remove an entire corresponding section wholesale. There are multiple references about his short story output - your wholesale removal of it smacks of bias. Also, if a link is broken we look for another link to replace the broken one - I did this, for example, for the Contento reference which apparently had changed locations, but you had just removed.

Further, I saw the NY Press link that you removed along with its text, and I didn't reinstate it as I didn't see the connection either, but perhaps at the time it was added there was more there.

As far as who wrote the article, I don't know beyond what I've read on the talk page and edit summaries, but at this point it is quite obviously moot as the article now is fairly well referenced, and the subject is dead so won't be writing anything more here. WP:COI is a specific guideline which does not preclude people who know something about a subject from writing about it - indeed, I would hope that we encourage people who actually know something about the subject to write and edit our articles. What it does discourage is editing by someone who stands to profit or otherwise have his or her own interests promoted by the way an article is edited, if it is interfering with a neutral presentation, which it is not here. I think your COI warning is out of line and inappropriate here.

This article now is a rather bland and neutral presentation of this writer's life and career and is fairly well referenced, by the standards of the encyclopedia. References can always be improved, and I for one have tried to do so here and will continue to. But the material here is sourced or acknowledged to be what MacIntyre claimed - we don't say these things are necessarily true, we say that they are the story he told about himself. To understand MacIntyre you need to include this material.

But you have gone way beyond verifying sources and are editing here with your own POV, regarding what you consider to be dubious - your edit summary "Works: Don't buy I've seen way to many totally faked references for this author" about the sourced William Safire paragraph is a case in point. You don't buy it? Why didn't you go to Google Books or search at nytimes.com to see if indeed Safire had quoted MacIntyre? You'd quickly see he did, more than once, and this is a notable point deserving of inclusion here. Instead you doubted it and removed it. That's not the way it works here, and you are just adding to the work rather than actually improving the article by getting a more specific citation to the original references which were correct but poorly formed - that's what I did, and it would serve you well and make life easier around here if you'd try to do that yourself rather than slash and burn. Cheers. Tvoz/talk 20:30, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Golden Age celebrities

I corresponded with Fergus for a number of years. I thought he was seeing his rare films at screenings in Europe.
He claimed to be or to have been personal friends with the sort of older screen stars that film buffs would be interested in. I won't name any names.
So, that was all nonsense? He was certainly very good at telling a tale.
99.238.74.216 (talk) 02:41, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

He told me as well that "Gwynplaine" came from the Victor Hugo character.

It's because I'm watching the recent French film of the Hugo book that I happened to have discovered this article.

He also claimed to be living in Wales for all the time I knew him.

99.238.74.216 (talk) 03:01, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

For all I know he could have known older screen stars, he's exactly the sort of person who did (not many left though). But the "screenings" he reviewed of films thought to be lost were just too numerous and error-riddled to be credible; if they were being shown in Europe, others would surely have seen them, and his mistakes tended to match up with known errors in widely available primary sources.Mgmax (talk) 02:25, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

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Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

I came across this entry by accident (I was looking at Bernard Wolfe's, and followed a link), and am struck by its great length (relative to the author's prominence) and solemn tone. I also noticed a claim -- that the subject had once been interviewed by the New York Times -- that seemed so implausible that I took a moment to check it. Biographical information on MacIntyre did indeed appear in the NYT, but not in an interview -- he wrote them a letter. I have no particular problem with verbose self-hagiography -- hey, if someone does want information on MacIntyre, they will not find this much anywhere else -- and am not about to change even the false claim about having been interviewed by the NY Times. But Jeez, this is pretty shameless.

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