Photo by Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images.
Earlier this week, two award-winning TV producers launched an IndieGoGo campaign to crowdfund a documentary about the Washington football team: Specifically, about man-child owner Dan Snyder’s 2011 libel lawsuit against Washington City Paper writer Dave McKenna. The filmmakers, C-SPAN producer Mark Farkas and Judy Plavnick, who has produced shows for Discovery, ESPN, and NFL Films, have some pretty lofty goals for the project.
Specifically, Farkas and Plavnick are hoping to raise $99,000 by Feb. 25, and they want the film to form “a poignant and pointed look at the embattled reign of a billionaire over a much-loved football franchise in PR free-fall.” And, most quixotic of all, they want to interview Snyder for the movie.
How likely are Farkas and Plavnick to succeed at their goals for Under Our Skins: A Dave and Goliath Story? Let’s settle this sportsball-style—with some odds-making. Place your bets now, and not on the Patriots. Either way you slice this, someone’s getting deflated.
Odds of Under Our Skins making its fundraising goal: 20:1
$99,000 is a lot of money, particularly for a documentary about a regional sports franchise whose biggest confirmed participant is a local freelance journalist. Farkas and Plavnick are targeting a very specific subset of Washingtonians with this documentary: Those educated enough to have familiarity with Snyder’s lawsuit and understand how stupid it was, yet invested enough in the team to pine for their glory days of the 1970s and ’80s (and to have forgiven the name in the past as long as the team was winning). Two days in, they’ve raised less than $6,000—not a promising start.
On the other hand, a $10 donation gets you an “Angry Dan Snyder” button, which is a tempting offer. And $1,500 gets you “lunch with Dave McKenna,” whom the film’s trailer notes makes “$16.99/hour.” Score! Also in the producers’ favor is the fact that IndieGoGo lets you keep your total even if you don’t make your goal, so Farkas and Plavnick can still walk away with enough to finish the project.
Odds of landing Snyder: 1,000:1
Let’s see: Farkas and Plavnick end their trailer with a close-up of Snyder’s doctored devil-face on the City Paper cover, the image that prompted the lawsuit’s charges of “anti-Semitism,” fading out as McKenna jams on “Hail to the [Washington Football Team]” on his guitar. They’re also opening themselves up to another lawsuit by calling Snyder “Goliath,” which, from a literal perspective, is just patently untrue. Look how short he is.
Oh, and this is a man whose approach to bad press is to pay the Washington Times to become “a content and marketing partner of the team”—as McKenna himself reported for Deadspin last year. And this is also the man who, when he filed the lawsuit in question, hadn’t even bothered to read the article first. Simply put, Snyder has proven he doesn’t care about his media image in the slightest.
But maybe they can sway him by demonstrating their fan bonafides. The Post notes Plavnick’s “fall Sundays still involve [Washington football team] hats, shirts, jackets, gloves, and slippers, plus a [Washington football team] chip and dip tray, a [Washington football team] cheese knife and a [Washington football team] cutting board.” That’s a lot of merchandising money going into Snyder’s pocket. Maybe they can at least get a donation out of him.
Odds of this Washington football team-related crowdsourcing project resulting in Snyder destroying IndieGoGo’s servers like that South Park episode: 10,000,000:1
But that would be pretty funny. Share your own wagers in the comments.
