Talk:John McTiernan/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions about John McTiernan. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

McTiernan will be sentenced on July 31, 2006

erm...so what happened then? 86.135.164.200 15:34, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Too much about legal problems, not enough about career

İs it right put this much information about this guy's problems with law and so little about his career as a director? I mean, almost %90 of this article is about lawsuits etc. But real reason why this fella is in the wikipedia is because he is a director; right? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.235.97.148 (talk) 20:30, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Balance

This article has serious balance problems. A relatively minor criminal charge has more than twice as much space devoted to it as the career of one of Hollywood's most successful directors. Bonkers. Hopefully someone who cares more will fix it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BearAllen (talk • contribs) 23:07, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

A fan of the subject has written the section dealing with his criminal problems. There is no balance to the article. Clearly if he was found guilty there are reasons for it. But the fan has cited none. Quoting from the district and appellate courts' decisions might be useful, but then that would demonstrate why he is guilty. I might add the fan does not know much about the law or criminal prosecutions. Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.214.92.34 (talk • contribs) April 4, 2013

I would have agreed with both of you, at first glance. After reading the content, however confusing it may be, it lays out a case that is so ugly in its harassment, that it's hard to cite the events of it without some of that disgust leaking through. As successful as this director has been, the last ten years of his life was been sacrificed to his legal struggle. While it's under half of his career, it's only just. Spawn777 (talk) 08:02, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

I am saddened to think that one would actually think "Clearly if he was found guilty there are reasons for it." First, he was never "found" guilty, he pleaded guilty upon advice of counsel yet was guilty of nothing for which he was charged. Nothing. Secondly, only a fool would believe that people who are found guilty, are actually guilty. I suggest you research the material presented on how many people plead guilty to avoid further needless and unwarranted prosecution simply to get the government out of their lives. You are living in fairy land if you believe the justice system in the United States is, in fact, just. We live in a prison nation. Do the research on that as well. I sign this without hesitation, Gail Sistrunk McTiernan, wife of John. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.22.47.191 (talk) 11:42, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

A mess

The article is a mess, focusing mostly on a rambling and hard to follow description of McTiernan's legal troubles. The worst thing is that no background is given regarding what prompted the legal troubles. Some guy (talk) 13:58, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Does it seem better now? —BarrelProof (talk) 20:45, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

No BarrelProof it does not. It is decidedly written as a legal journal by whom? You have only cited, without proper sources, the prosecutor's log of a case. Where is the opinion of the defense attorneys? Notably absent. Why? This makes it biased and it should be scrapped. The opinions of film success are not supported by sources. I don't think I've seen any mention of the CNN interview. Everything is one sided - against McTiernan. Is this truly what Wiki is? I will contact the McTiernan folks and suggest they contact Wiki for true improvement. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ViolaSam (talk • contribs) 05:04, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

I noticed that you removed some remarks about the mixed and negative reception of several films. Your criticism that those statements were unsourced is valid, so I have started looking for sources to cite about the reception of those films, and adding the citations into the article. So far, the sources seem to confirm what was being said before, but it is certainly desirable to make sure we have reliable sources to cite for such remarks. I don't know what CNN interview you're referring to – if you could provide a link to that, it might be helpful. I notice that you also removed the summary of his conviction and prison sentence from the lead section. Personally, I think that's a big enough part of his life story that it should be mentioned in the lead, and I believe that the paragraph you removed was a correct summary of the facts as detailed later in the article. It may be unfortunate that his legal issues have been such a big factor in his life in recent years, but it is a simple statement of fact that he was convicted of certain things and was imprisoned as a result of that conviction. In your edit summary you said the paragraph was incorrect (and biased). What part of it was incorrect? What the paragraph that you deleted said was "He was convicted of perjury and lying to an FBI investigator after hiring the private investigator Anthony Pellicano in late 2000 to illegally wiretap the phone calls of two people, one of whom was Charles Roven, a co-producer of his dystopian science-fiction action film remake Rollerball (2002). He was incarcerated in federal prison from April 2013 to February 2014. During his imprisonment, he declared bankruptcy amidst foreclosure proceedings for his ranch residence and struggles to pay legal fees and IRS tax debt." What part of that was incorrect or biased? As best I can tell, those are simply facts that seem hard to dispute. If you can provide some reliable sources to cite that show that some information in the article is missing or incorrect, that assistance would be welcome. —BarrelProof (talk) 10:41, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Also, I notice that when you removed unsourced commentary about the reception of his films, you only removed the negative commentary. Positive commentary should also have cited reliable sources as well. So far, I've been looking up sources about the films that you removed information about, but eventually the others also need sources. —BarrelProof (talk) 17:54, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

After checking on the reception of some of those films that ViolaSam deleted negative comments about and adding better-sourced commentary about them into the article, I'm starting to become concerned that the article is becoming too negative in general. The sources do seem to confirm that those films (at least Flight of the Intruder, Medicine Man, Last Action Hero, and The 13th Warrior) did not have very good outcomes. I still have two more of those films to check (Rollerball and Basic), but I don't expect them to come out much better. ViolaSam seems to have deleted only negative information that was ultimately accurate. The material about McTiernan's better outcomes is also in dire need of expansion. Please be assured that I plan to work on that soon (although I may first concentrate on restoring something about the other two that had remarks that ViolaSam deleted). —BarrelProof (talk) 16:54, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

The article now includes a tabulated aggregate critical reception and general reception comments for all listed films. However, I think the material about some of the more well-received films still needs some improvement. —BarrelProof (talk) 21:35, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

The article now has more substantial commentary for the well-received films, and I think the amount of commentary for each film seems roughly balanced (although it is a bit strange that although Nomads received generally negative reviews, almost all of the quoted critic commentary is positive – a phenomenon inherited from the article about that film). —BarrelProof (talk) 06:35, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

It would seem that an article with such detailed information about a particular project (movie) should be on a page specifically for the project. It rambles needlessly here and one can only wonder how a "unbiased" approach can be taken by "BarrelProof" who above writes, and I quote, " I still have two more of those films to check (Rollerball and Basic), but I don't expect them to come out much better." What? What? That comment alone shows bias and you should simply remove yourself from the input on McTiernan. Your legal reporting does not include material from McTiernan's defense team which would be another point of view. Again, one sided. If you are going to take the time to quote press which says in it's contents that the material may not be accurate, don't you think you should try to find out more info? Truth, it seems, is elusive, but you've nailed bias right on the head. VS — Preceding unsigned comment added by ViolaSam (talk • contribs) 05:35, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

This thread started with a complaint that the article did not contain enough information about the films and focused too much on his legal troubles. Now you seem to say it contains too much information about the films. At some point you removed some information about several films from the article, complaining about inadequate sourcing of that information – but you only removed the comments that negatively portrayed the reception of the films, without removing similarly poorly sourced positive comments about films. When working to improve the sourcing and help the article become more neutral, I seemed to find that although the negative commentary that you removed had not been well sourced, it ultimately did accurately reflect the reception of those films. Now are you suggesting that we should reduce the amount of information about the reception of McTiernan's films in this article? Regarding Mr. McTiernan's legal troubles, prison time, and bankruptcy, which you removed from the lead section again, can you please be more specific about what you think is incorrect or missing (that can be reliably sourced with appropriate references)? Your edit summary said "It's disjointed and it contains factual errors", but you have not identified any specific errors. You said "It does not cite accurate filings from PACER", but I do not understand what you mean by that. —BarrelProof (talk) 23:19, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

Bad editing. Biased editing on this page.

Can this be scraped and use examples of other directors as examples? View Spielberg, Ford, Harlin, anyone that's a bona fide director. The information about the films could best be seen in those articles. This ramrod collection of reviews doesn't include box office or revenues created by this director. Again, use others as a template rather than failing at an attempt to reinvent the wheel.

Regarding the legal situation you list new articles as "reliable sources" but you know nothing of their accuracy. If you are going to pretend to be able to report legal matters and you do not know what "Pacer" is, it is further evidence you shouldn't be doing legal edits. Perhaps you can google "pacer" but I will save you a bit of time. Pacer is an acronym for Public Access to Court Electronic Records. It is one of the sickening reasons that Aaron Swartz lost his life. Do your research. When you have accessed Pacer and read the documents presented by both sides....prosecutor and defense....then, and only then, should you write on legal matters of McTiernan. Without that, you are simply writing, or quoting, or citing, one sided information, which violates the wikipedian concept of neutrality.

At this point, the page should be scrapped and left blank. That would be better than the input that is there.ViolaSam (talk) 21:08, 22 November 2015 (UTC)Viola Sam

Some of the changes that you just made to the article are not supported by the source that you cited. One example is that you changed the article to state, as a matter of fact, that a specific person is a "failed actor". The source that you cited did not exactly call him a failed actor – what it said was that "McTiernan and his supporters believe" he is a failed actor. That's a bit different. Even if it is accurate to say he is a "failed actor", that has no clear relevance to an article about John McTiernan, since Mr. McTiernan is not that person and it is not clear that this person's having been an actor (successfully or not, although the article quotes someone saying "He had acted at Princeton, always to good notices, and an objective glance in the mirror revealed leading-man good looks ... For a while, he had some success, ...", and that doesn't sound like abject failure to me), would have any direct effect on that person's attitude toward Mr. McTiernan – and if it did, whether that effect would influence his attitude positively or negatively. Even if the prosecutor had a major grudge against Mr. McTiernan, that doesn't necessarily matter so much – it is not uncommon for prosecutors to dislike the people whom they are accusing of crimes. He was a prosecutor in the case, not a judge. Trying to make Mr. McTiernan look bad was basically his job description.

You also changed the article to say that this person "decided [that some particular set of actions] was deserving of serving federal prison time", but I could not find support for that statement in the source that you cited (although it might be true). The characterization of what those actions were also does not seem to be exactly what the cited source said (and of course, we shouldn't pay attention only to that one source either).

You also inserted a sentence saying "The rest of the inaccurate information that is presented below will be changed when contributors verify court filings." That sentence is also not appropriate, as it is commentary about some desire for the article to be changed, rather than being actual article content. Such commentary about desired changes to the article belongs on Talk pages like this one, not in the article itself. I also suggest that you familiarize yourself with the Wikipedia:Conflict of interest guidelines. Please note that if you are not satisfied with the responses you are seeing here, there are several other ways to raise issues for consideration to reach a consensus about what is appropriate content for this article. —BarrelProof (talk) 18:49, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

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Criticism

Same old story all over again : a great artist ruined by 2 bitches, an ex-wife and a judge with PMS. What on Earth did these 2 females contributed with to the world of art and culture ? Correct answer : absolutely nothing ! Totally incapable of any creative act, they used their maladive energy to crawl from under their rock and try do destroy a genius. Well, they did not succeed, thanks God. And they will be completely forgotten, utterly ignored before next generation. Good ridance !

Otherwise, I absolutely subscribe to the criticism regarding this article, badly written, ill-intended, probably commissioned by the aforementioned bitches. Boilor ! (talk) 09:16, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

— Boilor ! (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.