SURREY — Ten years ago this week, “Crackass: The Surrey Movie†caused quite a stir in this city.
Filmmaker Marko Perkovic revealed that he and an old friend cooked up a scheme designed to boost sales of the movie, a “Jackassâ€-style romp through Surrey’s more seedy side.
The friend, later revealed as someone named Bill, posed as Jim Eaton, a fictitious Guildford resident engaged in a one-man campaign to rid his neighbourhood of explicit posters advertising “Crackass.â€
For months, “Jim†was interviewed in the mainstream media and either slammed the movie itself or the posters promoting it as offensive for their images of nudity and drug use.
The “angry resident†thing was all fabricated.
“I only wanted to promote my movie and I only had $200 to do that,†Perkovic told the Now in an interview for a story published on Aug. 21, 2004.
The two-hour movie was posted to Youtube in October of 2012 and has been viewed more than 21,000 times.
(Scroll down to view the movie).
Back in 2004, Perkovic described “Crackass†as a serious expose of the seamy side of Surrey inhabited by druggies, dealers and prostitutes.
When interviewed by the Now, Perkovic apologized for hoaxing the media and said he never expected his scam to create such a stir.