Cougar Town's Busy Philipps and Adam Braun of Pencils of Promise joined What's Trending live this week for our real-time conversation and talked about the Trayvon Martin tragedy, how The Hunger Games is more offensive than Bully, and social networking for the deceased. Plus, we talked to Charlotte Hill from Change.org who described how the Martin petition grew and became the biggest protest in the history of the site.
At 3:56, when asked if she's ever going to do a movie with her best friend Michelle Williams, Busy said...
"My husband is a screenwriter, so we've been bugging him and his writing partner to write a movie for the two of us to star in and Harvey Weinstein already said he was going to produce it, so we just got to get it going."
The conversation then shifted to how social media has helped the tragic shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin gain national attention.
Both Adam and Busy agreed that social media definitely contributed to the support. Martin's death seemed to be overlooked on February 26th (night of the Oscars). While the petition, which now has 2.2 million signatures, was launched on March 8th by his mother, the story starting gaining momentum once the 911 calls were released online on March 17th.
"People catch a glimpse of what actually occurred and just kinda put a stamp on it," Adam said. While the incident is beyond complex, that stamp has come from every major celebrity and notable figure from Russell Simmons to Chaka Khan and President Obama. Even Illinois Democrat Bobby L. Rush made a statement Wednesday a.m. wearing a hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses in congress where he was promptly ousted.
The next story we took on was the new Harvey Weinstein documentary Bully, which has made headlines after a public war with the MPAA which wanted to give it an R rating. #BullyMovie and #StopBullying has been taking over social streams as celebrities have jumped on board to support the film. "I think that The Hunger Games about kids having to kill for food is more questionable in content than a movie about an epidemic that is plaguing our nation's kids," said Philips, who believes parents should be taking their children to the film to create a dialogue around this issue.
Our segment ends with a new site launched at SXSW, deadsoci.al, which can program social media updates for the deceased. "I think it's very creepy, personally," said Braun. "Because of the baby boomers, there's going to be more people who die in the next 20 years than ever before. So, there's a whole industry around that now."
Watch What's Trending live every Wednesday at 10 a.m. pt/ 1 p.m. est on youtube.com/whatstrending