We have to admit, we hardly batted an eye when the Kickstarter went up for The Great American 1921 Gentleman’s Box Company. So a Greenpoint-based “activist/craftsman/humanist/disrupter” with a handlebar mustache wants to manufacture “a Super Premium, unisex cardboard box made with only the finest of materials”? And he’s offering perks like organic jar lids, pulped fruit, and a “Guide to Being Ungentrified” (“a handy digital hipster’s guide to remaining near authentic un-gentrified neighborhoods”)?
All that seemed par for the course until we noticed something totally fishy: despite the Kickstarter location being given as Greenpoint, the address that appears on the door of Donovan McAfferey’s studio, in the promo video, is 49 South 2nd Street. So unless this box-crafting gent doesn’t think a Williamsburg address exudes enough authenticity these days (which is totally possible), the Greenpoint American 1921 Gentleman’s Box Company is probably about as fake as the breastfeeders bar. And with just 49 days to go, it probably isn’t going to make the $10 million it’s going for — even if Donovan does make a compelling pitch in the video: “In a world where we can have artisanal food, where we can have fair-trade coffee, why is the box the only thing that’s dragging behind?”
The giveaway that this is an ad for David Cross’s new film Hits is the link to the website for Donovan’s fake Greenpoint-based non-profit, which features a clip from the movie. But if there was any doubt, yesterday the Kickstarter was updated with a link to some free clips and behind-the-scenes footage from the flick, which will be screening at Nitehawk on Feb. 12 and available on BitTorrent the next day.