Less than a week after the end of the Park Interspecial Film Festival (PIFF), Stan the Spitman is speaking out about the unlawful use of his product at PIFF events.
In an op-ed piece published today in The Burro Beacon, Estanislao “Stan” Gonzalo de Llama condemned in no uncertain terms what some Animals did with his product at the film festival. And he let it be known that he intends to put a stop to it.
“I am proud of what I make and I don’t make it to be used to attack others, particularly others whose species or politics differ from my own,” he wrote in the newspaper.
The second generation SpitMeister (master of the art of spitmaking) was referring to the repeated use of spitballs at the screening of WINK, which opened the festival on October 1. Police charged twenty-one Animals with crimes of a specist nature after they threw spitballs at the director and other attendees as they entered the Park Cinema.
Although Stan has never condoned that sort of behaviour, he expressed a different view about it in Searching for the Spitman: A Journey Through Foam, Froth, and Fun, a film about his life that premiered at PIFF 2015.
In that film, he estimated that ninety per cent of his products go toward humiliating other Animals.
“It’s a fact of life in the profession,” he said. “But it doesn’t keep me up at night.”
In today’s o-ed piece, however, he said he’d changed his mind after witnessing events at this year’s festival.
“I can’t stand by and watch Animals use my product that way anymore,” he wrote. “It needs to stop.”