Small Town Shuts Down Pro Ice-Maga Film Mocking Queer Shooting By Ice
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| Renee Good in body cam footage before she was shot and killed | Screenshot CNN |
The town commissioners of Livingston, Montana voted last Saturday to “immediately temporarily suspend” a filming permit for a movie tentatively titled Pawn Shop, a pro-ICE feature film produced by the anti-LGBTQ+, right-wing media outlet The Daily Wire.
The pro-ICE film reportedly depicts ICE-shooting victim Renee Good — a queer, blonde-hair mother of three — as “a fat blue-hair” woman named Melanie who is shot by ICE agents while driving and listening to NPR. Right-wingers have long vilified NPR as being a biased, liberal, and leftist media outlet, even though studies have shown that the outlet is generally unbiased, independent of government propaganda, and provides key benefits to US democracy.
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Local residents protested the filming while online critics blasted The Daily Wire for distorting Good’s character to justify her death.
“I am absolutely infuriated with the either malfeasance or lack of competence by the people that are operating a movie production event in our town,” said town commissioner and vice chair James Willich.
The commission, however, unanimously reinstated the permit on Monday night, after Daily Wire producers threatened to sue the town for allegedly violating their First Amendment rights. The outlet’s lawyers said the production faced threats against its filming crew.
The film reportedly has a $1.5 million budget and will finish filming in the town by October 10.
Daniel Villarreal is a longtime, award-winning journalist and editor who has written for NBC News, Newsweek, Vox, Slate, Vice News, The Seattle Stranger, The Dallas Voice and numerous other LGBTQ+ publications. He has spoken at SXSW, Creating Change, Netroots Nation, GaymerX, and is a graduate of GLAAD's Voices of Color program and of the Poynter Institute's 2024 Power of Diverse Voices seminar. He is also the founder of QueerBomb Dallas, an annual non-corporate Pride event; CinéWilde, the nation's longest running monthly LGBTQ film series. He is available for interviews and educational talks.
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