Pawn Shop, whose jingoistically incompetent script was recently obtained by The Bulwark, fictionally recasts the ICE killing of activist Renée Good in January as the justified accidental whoopsie of heroic federal immigration agents forced to run down some unwashed and un-American protesters while they pursue a cartoonishly villainous Mexican MS-13 gangster. The film began shooting in the small Montana city of Livingston (population 8,000) last month, prompting locals to immediately complain about the production’s failure to warn residents about blank gunshots and car crash pyrotechnics. (Not to mention leaked details about the film’s ICE-fluffing, victim-blaming plot.) And since it’s The Daily Wire, the production has also been accused of disrupting a local food bank, whose in-need clients have been hampered from accessing aid.
But even deep-red Montana has its breaking point, as Deadline reports that the local Livingston City Commission has temporarily shut down Pawn Shop‘s allegedly unsafe and disruptive production while they seek advice from the city attorney over kicking the movie out of town for good.The film is a joint production between Shapiro’s Daily Wire and producer Dallas Sonnier’s Bonfire Films, which already faced protests from entertainment unions for labor and safety issues on the Run Hide Fight: Infidels set. Sonnier addressed those protests by stating, “We are too busy being bad asses, blowing shit up, flying helicopters, and killing movie terrorists to concern ourselves with four assholes with signs on the sidewalk and their illegitimate ‘strike.'” That attitude does seem to lend some credence to Livingston locals’ concerns that Pawn Shop‘s production may not have their community’s best interests at heart.
According to Deadline, the call sheet for Shapiro and Sonnier’s latest propaganda effort includes actors Henry Thomas, Danny Trejo and Harvey Keitel, who should expect some bad press of their own in the days ahead.
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