Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/America: A Call to Greatness

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. WP:SNOW The Bushranger _{One ping only} 07:46, 13 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

America: A Call to Greatness[edit]

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Fails WP:FILMNOT for lack of independent reliable coverage. As written, the article has dubious promotional text with circular or self-published sourcing which places it on the border of a WP:HOAX. (For example, the article quotes from the website a 2010 review in Screen Times Magazine, for which I find no existence, by a writer named Winston J. Aaronson, whose only hit on google is uploading Warren Chaney books to Open Library.) The article appears to be part of a longterm agenda by SPA editors to create a hagiography and walled garden for Warren Chaney. Although some production appears to exist in some form, so much of the article may be fraudulent, that I recommend it can only be corrected (if ever) from scratch. — CactusWriter ^(talk) 18:41, 9 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Television-related deletion discussions. — CactusWriter ^(talk) 18:53, 9 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Film-related deletion discussions. — CactusWriter ^(talk) 18:53, 9 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per WP:HOAX due to lack of verifiability of this topic from reliable sources. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 18:59, 9 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per WP:HOAX. also agree with the nom about the hagiography aspect of the article. MarnetteD|Talk 19:25, 9 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. I can't find any details on this film in reliable sources. I checked the American Film Institute, British Film Institute, Variety, Allmovie, The New York Times, and pretty much every other reliable film database that I could think of. Yes, it's possible for a film to escape notice, but even a low budget exploitation like Ninja Apocalypse leaves behind a trail of evidence that it existed. The one hit that I did find, this article in what looks like a local newspaper or newsletter, is a mere trivial mention. If this film does exist, then it's going to need to demonstrate notability and verifiability much better than the current article does. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 21:56, 9 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I hit the same dead ends as NinjaRobotPirate in trying to find a reliable source to verify the existence of this film and I'd like to note that while small, low budget films might fall through the cracks, there's absolutely no way that a movie would go unnoticed if it had the cast that this movie claims: Charlton Heston, Mickey Rooney, Buzz Aldrin, Gene Autry, Rita Moreno, etc. Permstrump (talk) 00:33, 10 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: If there are a mass of SPAs editing on Chaney related articles I'd highly, highly recommend that you open an SPI to see if there's any socking or meating going on. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 21:59, 9 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@CactusWriter: Have you looked at the other pages for this guy? If this article is like this then it's extremely likely that the other articles will have the same issue, including Chaney's page itself. He may be notable, but at this point I think that it needs to be seriously investigated. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 22:01, 9 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Tokyogirl79, join the discussion here. :) Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 22:19, 9 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You're awesome, Eric. On a side note, I'm about to nominate the guy's book series for deletion - none of the sources seem to check out as usable. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 22:43, 9 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for jumping in, Tokyogirl79. Erik pointed you to the linked discussion, so you can see that this AFD is just the start of the clean up. An SPI will be in progress soon. — CactusWriter ^(talk) 22:57, 9 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - Looks like we've got a weird one here. Just for fun I started looking up some other things in Chaney's "Superb Speakers" profile.
First thing checked: Using Neuroplasticity to Achieve Cognitive Change, Warren H. Chaney, Ph.D., Journal of Applied Cognitive-Behavioral Science, Volume 5, 1st Quarter, 2009, pp. 132-145.
Google doesn't know anything about the title or the journal

Second thing checked: The Right Stuff - What is It? Warren H. Chaney, Ph.D., Your New Mind, (On Line Journal), 1st Quarter, 2008.
"Your New Mind" took some searching, but I found it! Behold a .blogspot blog with two posts, one of which is Chaney's -- basically an ad for Mind Dynamics’ Workshops.

Yikes — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 22:40, 9 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. No evidence from a reliable source to suggest this even exists; none of the sources check out as reliable (the movie's website is registered to Carrie Sheldon of the Mind Technologies Institute in TX, at which Chaney was supposedly CEO until 2012) I think we're about to find that almost every word written about Chaney and his supposed films is one of the knottiest hoaxes we've ever encountered (another fun fact: Chaney's 'publisher' Remington-Collier London (which doesn't have an entry at Companies House) has a website registered to Steven Deyo, supposed Director of Public Relations at Adjei Productions, which links back to Chaney himself. This is going to take some time to unravel). Steve ^T • C 22:55, 9 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I recognize the name Adjei from another active AfD for the book Dynamic Mind by Warren Chaney. Someone with the last name Adjei wrote an article for a school newspaper that was cited on the page for Dynamic Mind. I did find the actual article online and it did have something to do with Chaney and his theories, but of course it didn't once mention Dynamic Mind. I imagine he named the production company after a relative or something. That also explains the mystery as to why the heck someone wrote an article about him for a school newspaper. Permstrump (talk) 23:15, 9 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per above. I found little to back up the claims and I also have to note that some of the sources weren't even what they claimed to be. One of the sources claims to be Box Office Mojo, but links to IMDb. There seems to be some pretty clear deception going on here, so unless we can verify any and all sources 100% I have to assume that anything we cannot see and research has to be false. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 23:02, 9 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

On a side note, I've opened an AfD for his book series here. That article has many, MANY issues similar to this one, including some blatant misrepresentation of sources and several publications that do not seem to exist when you search for their titles, giving off the impression that they either don't exist or they wouldn't be usable as a source even if they were legit. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 23:02, 9 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per everything above. Wow. Dbrodbeck (talk) 00:06, 10 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Dbrodbeck, how many more years do you think it would have been before this was discovered if you hadn't made the AfD for Dynamic Mind? Permstrump (talk) 00:24, 10 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: I've opened up an AfD for another Chaney related article here, for Magic Mansion and the related list article. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 00:08, 10 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: WP:HOAX and violates WP:BLP. This article claims to be about a “docudrama” with an ensemble cast of well-known celebrities. Celebrities listed in the cast include: Charlton Heston, Mickey Rooney, Buzz Aldrin, Gene Autry, Rita Moreno, and a plethora of other living or recently deceased persons. However, I haven’t been able to find a single reliable source that independently corroborates that any of the celebrities listed in the cast were ever in a film by this name. There are currently 28 [mostly] legitimate BLPs that backlink to this one in references to major actors’ supposed role in this film. When the page was first created in 2011, concerns were raised on its talk page about the lack of neutrality and lack of reliable sources, but those comments were deleted several months later by an SPA dedicated to editing articles related to Warren Chaney. Permstrump (talk) 00:21, 10 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Alts:

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Delete for failing WP:NF. While I cannot really doubt the participation of certain senior notables after seeing them in the film trailer with my own eyes, their taking part was likely encouraged by their being personally quite patriotic. So what? A collection of to-camera sound-bytes, interspersed with stock footage film clips, images, music and patriotic rhetoric is not inherently notable, though a mention in other articles of someone being in a non-notable film project is fine enough IF they can be seen in that project. One can only speculate why their participation caught no media, but in lacking coverage notability is failed. I laughed when i saw the same actor playing both Benjamin Franklin and John Adams. And while it "may" actually exist, it has made no lasting mark. Wikipedia is not for promotion. Schmidt, ^{Michael Q.} 03:43, 10 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Delete I went at this from the other direction - the claim about Gene Autry and a new recording of America the Beautiful being released circa 1995 - the music folks are pretty thorough, and I found no such new recording at all. Result - delete. And suggest deletion of all connections made in other Wikipedia articles. The film qua film fails notability. Collect (talk) 15:35, 10 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

DELETE I checked 8 refs and deleted them all. Two were IMDB (not reliable), and the other six all failed Verification. I did significant internet searching and I found squat. Everything about this article raises WP:REDFLAG. The article is almost entirely unsourced, it claims an EXTRAORDINARY range of starring roles which have somehow attracted zero mention in independent sources, and the article-creator has been blocked. The trailer with Charlton Heston and others seems to indicate *something* exists, but this article requires application of WP:DYNAMITE. If a well established and responsible editor finds proper independent sourcing, I endorse giving them access to the deleted copy to mine for anything usable. Alsee (talk) 16:17, 12 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I remember running into Chaney/Magic Mansion/etc on Wikipedia a couple of years ago (just looked it up and it seems to have been in 2011) and thinking that the whole thing didn't quite pass the smell test but couldn't put my finger on exactly *why*... (Btw, Chaney is married to Deborah Winters, an actress of somewhat dubious notability.) The "documentary" (or whatever it is) seems to have been broadcast only once (if at all) - not every TV show or special or commercial that aired on American television is notable.

Now, this is where it gets interesting...I think that this "film" is probably a promo piece for a book by John W Chalfant, a book that was apparently originally published in 1996. If you go to Page ii at America-A Call to Greatness Google Book link you can see the various copyright dates. The website 'www.greatness.com" now belongs to a different entity but Chalfant now has a website of "greatness.us" where you can see all his views. Xulon Press, the publisher of "American: A Call..." is a Christian/on-demand self-publishing company.Shearonink (talk) 18:13, 12 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Shearonink: I had found the book but couldn't make any connection other than the title. All my searches for the publisher and author and figures involved with the film (Charlton Heston, Warren Chaney, Mickey Rooney, Paige-Brace, Millennial Entertainment, etc.) turned up nothing. Have you seen anything else other than the timing? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 18:39, 12 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Well, to be crass it would behoove the 'producers' to make the promo piece/infomercial appear to be more significant than it actually was. I have seen nothing specifically sourced but to me this is similar to "likely a [whatever] based on evidence" edit summary I see on Wikipedia from time to time. For instance: 1)The book is under copyright. 2) The book seems to have the same content & POV as the film. 3) Both works appear to have been created around the same time. 4) But this is the clincher - Trademark registration(abandoned) AND Trademark protection - for phrase? - originally filed 1992, registered in 1996. So during the early 1990s, during the time the "documentary" was filmed, the exact phrase was under trademark protection. Shearonink (talk) 18:57, 12 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Shearonink: My brain is getting tired from researching the Chaneyverse and I think I need a little help connecting those dots. Do most movies/books trademark their names? It looks like the trademark is associated with the nonprofit/religious organization (EIN 20-1423183) called America-A Call to Greatness, which is also under the name John Chalfant (same as the book's author). Apparently they were incorporated in 2003, but haven't filed taxes because they've been reporting $0 income. It makes sense that they'd be connected, but I wish some names overlapped. Permstrump (talk) 06:38, 13 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)@Permstrump:In 1995, during the time that this two-hour promotional-film was created, the phrase "America: A Call to Greatness" was under trademark protection, as a service-mark or trademark of "America: A Call to Greatness Inc", the papers being filed on behalf of John W. Chalfant and his company. Most book titles aren't able to be trademarked, because they aren't unique enough. However, if a book series becomes successful and, for example, another writer and/or publisher tried to publish a new "Harry Potter and the [whatever]" that would not be allowed under law because Harry Potter is a recognizable brand (much in the same way as Chanel or Ford Cars or McDonald's is). Now, since Chalfant had the phrase under trademark protection at the time this "movie" was produced, the "Movie" has the same types of material - the Christian religion influencing the founding of the United States - it is an informed supposition that the movie/the book are one and the same. Warren Chaney's company, "Dynamic Media", bought the rights to the film in 2001 (per [1]), however, nowhere in the movie is the book or its author mentioned, nowhere in the book is this movie mentioned. We can suppose all we want and I can deduce that something is true but that doesn't mean there is a verifiable source that states this truth. So, as far as I can tell, the movie did not receive a theatrical release, it seems to have been mostly exhibited privately - in churches, at conventions (it received its premiere at an annual convention of "The Council for National Policy" a conservative group). The movie does exist (not a HOAX) but I does not seem notable to me. Shearonink (talk) 08:01, 13 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.