A strange twist in the Mark Cuban story tonight, one which pushes it a little bit further into our wheelhouse. New York Times blogger Floyd Norris has published an email allegedly sent on May 05, 2007 to Cuban by Fort Worth SEC lawyer Jeffrey Norris (”no known relation to me”, notes the blogging Norris). In the email, Jeffrey Norris essentially tells on Cuban to SEC Chairman Christopher Cox, who is CCed, regarding Cuban’s involvement with Loose Change, a 9/11 conspiracy theory film which appeared online in three different incarnations over three years, becoming an internet sensation.
Addressing Cox, Norris explains that Cuban “participated in distributing the vicious and absurd documentary” and declares that Cuban’s “support for this project is irresponsible and immoral.” Floyd Norris posits that the email may be evidence that Cuban is “the victim of a political hit job because he helped finance a movie that was scathingly critical of President Bush.”
Only one problem: there’s no solid evidence that Cuban ever did get involved with financing or distributing the movie.
In March of 2007, stories began to circulate that Cuban was paying for a remake of Loose Change, to be narrated by Charlie Sheen. He gave the following quote on the matter to the NY Post, correcting the rumors slightly: “We are having discussions about distributing the existing video with Charlie’s involvement as a narrator, not in making a new feature. We are also looking for productions with an opposing viewpoint. We like controversial subjects, but we are agnostic to which side the controversy comes from.”
Lambasting of both Cuban and Sheen predictably followed, and then in late May––about three weeks after Jeffrey Norris’ alleged email–the Post reported, in a story that did not mention Cuban or his 2929 Entertainment, that Sheen was thinking about backing out of the project. About three and a half months after that, shortly after Redacted premiered to plaudits at the Venice Film Festival, Cuban published an email exchange with a FOX News producer on his blog in which he denied any involvement with Loose Change:
no, I am not involved in Loose Change. No I didnt finance it. No I didnt plan to have it translated to multiple languages as Mr Oreilly claimed on air. His command of the facts is truly abysmal.
As far as I can tell, a DVD of Loose Change was then released a week later, on September 11, and there’s no branding or copy on the film’s website or IMDb page that would indicate that Cuban or one of his companies had a hand in it. Is it possible that Cuban did actually finance the DVD release, but kept his name out of it? I guess it’s possible, but it would be somewhat out of character for him to do such a thing quietly. Could the SEC have gone after him for his percieved Loose Change ties regardless of whether or not those ties actually existed? I guess it’s possible, but it seems like an unfathomably stupid concept.
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SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth