Stan Lee: The Final Chapter filmmaker Jon Bolerjack has responded to the backlash and controversy surrounding the project. Bolerjack is in the final stages of putting together a documentary detailing the alleged elder abuse that Marvel Comics icon Stan Lee endured during his final years. As a member of Lee’s traveling entourage, Bolerjack shot several hours of footage, showing how Lee was exploited and mistreated. Recently, Bolerjack launched a Kickstarter campaign in an effort to raise the necessary funding to complete the film. Since the Kickstarter was posted, the general public has questioned several aspects of the campaign and Bolerjack’s intentions. In particular, one of the Kickstarter rewards is a tour of locations featured in the documentary, which some argue undermines the film’s message.
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“When I’m asking someone for money … people work hard for their money. They work jobs that don’t pay well, they work long hours. It’s their time is what you’re asking for,” Bolerjack said in an interview with ComicBook. “And to me, when I say, ‘Hey, just give me money … you like Stan, give me 30 bucks to help make this movie, you get nothing,’ … to me, that doesn’t seem like a fair tradeoff. To me, it was more important to give people something for their money.”
He said he wanted to give donors options to choose from (like comics or screenings of the film as opposed to just asking for money for nothing).
“I understand why [the rewards look weird],” Bolerjack added. “I’ve seen some of the videos, and I think that without context … it totally seems weird. People singled out the tour around L.A. … I have had countless friends, both who are from L.A. and not from L.A., be like, ‘Hey, dude, show me where Stan’s house is. Hey, dude, show me where that thing you told me about happened,’ … We live in a country where you have murder tours … this is not even remotely close to that. This is just someone who might be nerding out on the stuff they saw in the movie and might be interested to see where some of this happened.”
Some people have also balked at the $300,000 goal of the Kickstarter campaign, concerned that all of the money will not be going towards the film. Bolerjack explained why he is asking for so much.
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“It is a lot of money,” Bolerjack said. “But for a documentary film, even at a low level, it’s not a lot of money. When you pay an editor, they’re $4,000 per week. When you pay an assistant editor, they’re $2,000 per week. That’s $6,000 a week, and it takes 52 weeks to edit a film … a lot of the money is actually going to go towards the film. I understand that people think we’re just gonna pocket it or something, but honestly, realistically, almost all the money is gonna go to the film and whatever’s left is essentially because there’s something that came up that we forgot or unexpectedly happened and it’s gonna go there. I do not, with $300,000, anticipate any extra money.”
Another question people have raised is why this documentary has been revealed now, nearly seven years after Lee’s passing. Those critical of the project perceive it as being exploitative and have wondered why Bolerjack didn’t do anything with the footage beforehand. Bolerjack explained that the first couple of years he worked with Lee (2015-2016) was like “a party” with Lee being his usual energetic self and “there wasn’t anything to report.” It wasn’t until 2017 that he started to show signs of declining health, catching the attention of various entourage members, but for various reasons, nothing came of it.
“In the Kickstarter, people just assume that nothing was attempted, but I didn’t have [the time] to go over the history of all the attempts that were made,” Bolerjack said. “At that time, people did raise questions about it, about Stan and the traveling. And part of the entourage were vocal. And what would happen is, if they got too vocal, they were gone … we were told they were caught stealing from Stan and they were fired. So, it was pretty clear that there was some attempt here to silence that kind of thing. So, instinctively, I’m thinking to myself, ‘Okay, do I want to be that third person who goes off and is gone and Stan has no one to advocate for him?’ So I had to wait for a time where I could really do something.”
Bolerjack also described his experience sharing his footage with the Beverly Hills police department and the Los Angeles district attorney.
“The way it was described to me was that some of this stuff was morally reprehensible, but not necessarily [illegal],” he said. “I could have a bunch of things that are messed up, but you need a lot to prove that it’s a real case. And they did have wellness checks on Stan during that time … but the elder abuse system … is one guy with a thousand cases. So when he goes to Stan’s house … Stan’s not bruised, Stan’s not starving, he’s going to work at his daily job. Outside of conventions, he looks fine. So they move on.”
Additionally, Bolerjack tried to share his footage with various media outlets after uploading some of it to YouTube, but nothing came of it.
“There was a lot of fear about making this a big deal,” he said, explaining why the media was hesitant to cover the story. He mentioned that some people passed on it because they were afraid of being sued.
After these failed attempts, Bolerjack opted to take matters into his own hands and make the documentary, but that became a very long process due to a variety of factors. For a period, Bolerjack was dealing with lawsuits of his own, after he was sued by Max Anderson, Lee’s former manager who is prominently featured in the documentary.
“Max Anderson finds out that I’m doing [the film], and he sues me,” Bolerjack said. “He sues me to stop this film. To say that it’s his footage, he owns it, I can’t do anything with it … we had to fight that lawsuit until today. So that also stops things, when you’re getting sued. No one wants to make a movie with you when you’re getting sued.”
The COVID-19 pandemic also impacted work on the documentary. Bolerjack shared that he had assembled a team, including an “Oscar-nominated director,” and had a distributor in place to buy the documentary. The distributor “backed out of the deal” during the pandemic. Another potential distributor halted talks over concerns about upsetting Disney.
If you or anyone you know is a victim of elder abuse, please contact the National Adult Protective Services Association.
