Josh Forbes – director of ‘Walk The Moon’s video for ‘Shut Up and Dance’ – has taken to crowd funding in order to raise the cash to attend MTV’s Video Music Awards, despite being a nominee.
Forbes has been making music videos for a decade, and was delighted to be nominated for the award. He didn’t hear from MTV, however, and on connecting was told that he had to pay between $450 and $800 just to attend on the day.
While the awards are ‘invite only’ in the sense that tickets are not available to the general public, Forbes has hit out at MTV for charging nominated directors.
On his GoFundMe.com page, Forbes outlines his feelings on the ticket charges:
“It doesn’t make any sense. If the director is nominated for a VMA shouldn’t he get a ticket to the VMAs? Yes he should. But he doesn’t.”
“My guess is that this is a vestige from back in the day when the music industry was overflowing with money. “Madonna’s dancers want to come? Pfft. Charge em $800 bucks!”
“I know that there’s an attitude in Hollywood that everyone’s a cast member of Entourage and takes power meetings in cocaine-powered-hot tubs but most of us are just regular guys and women just working paycheck to paycheck,” Forbes adds.
MTV do offer some complimentary tickets to directors, according to The Daily Beast, but only those nominated individually in the ‘Best Director’ category. Loads of high-profile musicians attend the event annually. Forbes states he had to chase MTV to find out that he even had the option to buy a ticket.
At the time of writing, Forbes had already raised more than $2,500, almost double his original fundraising target of $1,300. He has now purchased his tickets, and hopes to use some of the extra money to bring fellow director Andrew Hines to the event.
Miley Cyrus will host the awards show, which takes place in Los Angeles on August 30.
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