So, something weird and possibly interesting – you be the judge of that – that happened to me many years ago was when film producer Don Murphy called me a Welsh c***. Now, he’s right about the Welsh part, but I’m kind of hoping he was wrong about the other part.
You might be thinking, firstly, why did film producer Don Murphy call me a Welsh c***, and secondly, how the hell did I even get into that situation in the first place? Maybe you’re also thinking who the hell is Don Murphy?
Don Murphy, for those who don’t know, is a rather successful film producer, although a slightly obnoxious fellow as it turns out. He’s the producer of films such as Natural Born Killers, he produced all of the Transformers movies and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen – I am probably the only person on the planet who actually likes that film, rather annoyingly, because he was the producer of it.
But the story goes back to the early 2000s. Back then I owned a domain name (and I still do actually) and because I was very into Transformers and I was very into websites, as I am now, I bought a load of domain names such as TheTransformers.net, theTF.net and TransformersTheMovie.com, and then I made a load of websites about Transformers.
So, I had several different Transformers websites and I made a bit of affiliate income off them as well selling Transformers toys, DVDs and that sort of thing. People would go to the websites, click on the links and they’d buy stuff from Amazon or other toy shops, and then and I’d get free stuff. I’d get free toys sent to me by some toy companies as well.
But what happened was when the Transformers movie was being made by Paramount back in 2007, I think it was, I had an email from a solicitor. Now, it wasn’t like the usual communication I get from a solicitor where I’m being threatened or told I’m doing something wrong and they’re going to sue me. This was actually quite a friendly email from a solicitor saying something along the lines of “we’re acting on behalf of our client, and we would like to know if you would be up for selling the domain name TransformersTheMovie.com”.
I thought “that’s interesting, I wonder who their client is?” so I did a little bit of digging into the solicitor, and it turns out their client was Paramount Pictures, the company that was associated with producing the film Transformers, and they wanted the domain name for the movie. I thought “well, I’ve had this domain a long time – probably six or seven years back in 2007 – but the problem was that back then, Transformers hadn’t existed in some kind of physical real environment, and it was all animated, all cartoons, so people were very excited to know what the Transformers were going to look like in a live action film. As a consequence, the search volumes – and because what I do is digital marketing, it’s all about the search volumes – for “Transformers live action movie” and “Transformers movie” were particularly high, and TransformersTheMovie.com, which was my domain name, was ranking rather well on Google – number one in fact. I also had something called Google AdSense on that website, so it was earning money from people clicking through to the website and then clicking on ads going off somewhere else. At one point during 2007, I think it was earning over $4,000 a month just on ad clicks and at the time that was £200-300 more than I was earning from my job. So, you know, I thought this digital marketing thing – piece of p**s, this affiliate thing – piece of p***, I’m going to be earning this money for the rest of my life!
Obviously, it didn’t quite transpire that way. The demand for Transformers the Movie images sort of disappeared and nobody was really bothered what they looked like anymore because the films weren’t very good, but at the time it was making a lot of money. So, I had this email from basically a lawyer representing Paramount Pictures asking “do you want to sell this domain name?” and I essentially thought “well, I’ll let them have it, sure” because I don’t own Transformers. So I replied to them and said “oh, I’m willing to sell the domain name to you, but it’s worth quite a bit to me at the moment”, so I made them an offer on what they could buy it for and I genuinely can’t remember what that was – I think it probably was about three or four months’ worth of revenue.
I got a reply back from then again and it was very, very polite, but it was along the lines of “well, unfortunately that’s more than we’re willing to pay for it, so we’re going to go another way this time” and they ended up buying the domain name TransformersMovie.com, which they still have now and it’s still the domain name for the Transformers movies. I had TransformersTHEmovie.com, which at the time was based on the original 1986 Transformers: The Movie animated film – you know, the best Transformers movie and the only decent Transformers movie with the exception of Bumblebee, which is quite good, but the others got progressively worse as they went on. Anyway, they ended up buying that domain name, they didn’t go with TransformersTheMovie.com, So I’ve still got the domain name.
Now, I thought that would be the end of it. However, Don Murphy, the producer, didn’t think that would be the end of it. Don Murphy, the producer, got into a little bit of a tizzy about it for some reason. He got involved, and he found out who I was. On his own website, where he’s got his own his own forum with all of the people who crawl up his a**e, who he calls his “stooges” and they all pander to everything he says – proper sycophants, you know, it doesn’t matter what he says they’ll just go “oh, brilliantly well said, Don, please give me your love juice I want it Don”. I’m getting a bit disgusting now because I am getting a bit annoyed by this, but they’re all sycophants to Don and he posts whatever he wants on this website, and he posted on there and mentioned me by name, and he linked to my website, and he essentially accused me of trying to steal money from the film to capitalise on the film. There was also a leak of a trailer for the film or some sort of footage that he accused me of somehow stealing from, I presume, the studio in California where they were actually editing it, even though I lived in Cwmbran, South Wales at the time, as you can tell from my accent.
On his website, Don Murphy was saying “this guy’s a thief, this guy’s stolen the trailer, this guy’s stealing money from the film” and he said to his “stooges”, and I quote, he is a “thieving Welsh c***, go and send him some pork!” To translate, when Don Murphy says “send him some pork”, what it basically means is “go to this guy’s website and troll him”. I ended up getting messages on the forum, I ended up getting emails, I actually started getting phone calls to my home because you can quite easily trace the domain name and find contact details for the person who owns it. I was subjected to what I would call a hate smear campaign for a period of several weeks thanks to this utter p***k who just happens to be a hugely successful film producer deciding that I was a thieving Welsh c**t and I deserved to be trolled.
Now it’s quite ironic that before I did this podcast, I checked out Don Murphy’s film credits and one of the films he was making just about two years before then was called “Bully”. That’s right, Don, “Bully”, which is what you are. You were kind of a pioneer in online trolling and online bullying. You picked somebody out who had done nothing to you, had done nothing wrong and had not interacted with you in any way, and you had subjected them to an online bullying campaign where you sent all of your “stooges”, as you call them, to their website to harass them.
And that is Don Murphy. I can say this without any fear of being sued by Don or without any fear of any sort of repercussions by Don, because what I’m saying is all true and it is all very easy to prove. All of this stuff exists on the Internet Archive; for example, on the Wayback Machine, you can see examples of what Don Murphy has said, there are screenshots of what Don Murphy said to his “stooges” and what he told them to do. It’s even referenced on The TF Wiki – the Transformers wiki.
The TF Wiki doesn’t mention him accusing me of stealing the trailer, it just mentions him accusing me of stealing profits from the film, as though I was somehow capitalising on the film that he had coming out, but I remind you this was 2007, I bought that domain name TransformersTheMovie.com back in either 2000 or 2001 – a long time before he decided they were going to make a film. I bought that domain name because of my love of Transformers: The Movie the 1986 animated film, not some not particularly good film that came out in 2007.
That is Don Murphy, that is why Don Murphy called me a thieving Welsh c**t, and that is why I don’t particularly have much time for the man.
So, Don Murphy, if you are reading this and you do like to check out your own press and your own publicity, then hello, how are you doing? I didn’t steal anything from you, I didn’t steal anything from the film, and I had that domain name years before you had even heard of Transformers. So, the next time you try to create an online bullying or an online smear campaign against somebody, maybe think twice about it because, it’s not cool, it’s not okay, and it really makes you come across as a bit of a d***head.
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