The 'Last Jedi' director says it's not that he had something to hide or he received order from Disney to clean up his account, but he would rather not feed the trolls.
- July 27, 2018
AceShowbiz - Rian Johnson has taken a preventive measure after James Gunn was fired over his old tweets that contained jokes about pedophilia and rape. The "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" director recently deleted approximately 20,000 tweets from his Twitter account.
As people got curious as to why he did it, Johnson replied to an article about his action on the social media, "No official directive at all, and I don't think I've ever tweeted anything that bad. But it's nine years of stuff written largely off the cuff as ephemera, if trolls scrutinizing it for ammunition is the new normal, this seems like a 'why not?' move."
No official directive at all, and I don’t think I’ve ever tweeted anything that bad. But it’s nine years of stuff written largely off the cuff as ephemera, if trolls scrutinizing it for ammunition is the new normal, this seems like a “why not?†move.
— Rian Johnson (@rianjohnson) July 25, 2018
Gunn was fired from directing "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" after his offensive old Twitter jokes were unearthed. The posts were written between 2008 and 2011. He later apologized for his immature past, writing in a series of posts, "Many people who have followed my career know when I started, I viewed myself as a provocateur, making movies and telling jokes that were outrageous and taboo. As I have discussed publicly many times, as I've developed as a person, so has my work and my humor."
"It's not to say I'm better, but I am very, very different than I was a few years ago; today I try to root my work in love and connection and less in anger," Gunn continued. "My days saying something just because it's shocking and trying to get a reaction are over." He added, "In the past, I have apologized for humor of mine that hurt people. I truly felt sorry and meant every word of my apologies," claiming that he was never "living" those jokes out.
Nevertheless, Disney decided to distance itself from the filmmaker. "The offensive attitudes and statements discovered on James' Twitter feed are indefensible and inconsistent with our studio's values," Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn said in a press release, "and we have severed our business relationship with him."
