Copyright 1991
by George Holliday. MultiShoW exclusively
license the footage to All Media Worldwide.
THE
VIDEO THAT SHOCKED THE WORLD The 90
SECONDS brutal beating by Police
wildly out of control.
30th Anniversary
2020
We
exclusively license the footage to all
media worldwide. MultiShoW represents
George Holliday and his Rodney King
Beating Video. Contact Roby
Massarotto info@rodneykingvideo.com WORLD +1(818)583-6838
USA | LATAM +54(911)4471-0825
Argentina
R E C E
N T L Y L I C E N C E
D M E D I A
Rodney King Beating Video is a videotape
filmed by George Holliday that turned what
would otherwise have been a violent, but
soon forgotten, encounter between Los
Angeles police and Rodney King into the most
widely watched and discussed incidents of
its kind. The 1992 Los Angeles Riots,
also known as the Rodney King Riots
are mostly associated with this beating by
LAPD.
Before there
was YouTube, before anyone
had ever heard the words "Viral Video"
there was Rodney King Beating Video.
Rodney King would have lived and died
complete unknown, were it not for the
most famous home-video ever made Rodney
King Beating Video. This is the story of
little known maker of the First Ever Viral
Video.
FIRST EVER VIRAL VIDEO. The story of George
Holliday. By Roby Massarotto.
Watch
the Teaser
George
Holliday, the man who pioneered citizen
journalism, captured the history-making
video that changed television news forever.
The major networks shocked Americans showing
LAPD officers beating King more than 50
times with wooden batons and shocked him
with an electric stun gun. Before the local
TV station paid him a cent, it aired the
tape on its evening news show. From there,
it went viral on the national cable and news
networks and became the most famous home
video of all time.
All images
are copyrighted. Rodney King
Beating Video Ⓒ1991 by
George Holliday U.S Copyright Registration
No. PA0000518451/1991 Rodney king Beating
Video and pictures represented, created and
displayed on this page by George Holliday
are protected by US Copyright Law and the
Berne Convention. No use, reuse, copying or
reproduction is allowed without specific
agreement and permission.
FIRST EVER VIRAL VIDEO The
story behind this dramatic footage
narrated by its author GEORGE HOLLIDAY Produced
and directed by ROBY MASSAROTTO
Before there
was YouTube, before anyone had
ever heard the words "Viral Video" there
was Rodney King Beating Video.
Rodney King would have lived and died
complete unknown, were it not for the most
famous home-video ever made Rodney King
Beating Video. This is the story of little
known maker of the FIRST EVER VIRAL
VIDEO.
George
Holliday, the man who pioneered citizen
journalism, captured the history-making
video that changed television news forever.
The major networks shocked Americans showing
LAPD officers beating King more than 50
times with wooden batons and shocked him
with an electric stun gun. Before the local
TV station paid him a cent, it aired the
tape on its evening news show. From there,
it went viral on the national cable and news
networks and became the most famous
home-video of all time.
But was King and what we saw on that
videotape the whole story?
George
Holliday reveals unknown details about the
story behind the footage. A story of an
Argentine plumber who inmigrated to the U.S.
escaping from a turbulent country, Argentina
in the 80s, looking for the American dream,
and suddenly gets involved in a case of
police brutallity, human rights leaders, the
media preasure who took advantage of him,
court rooms, millionaire demands,
unfaithfull lawyers and covered settlements.
However, one person later thanked him. In
late 1991 Holliday stopped at a gas station
and a young black man in a new sports car
pulled up at the same pump: "Hey, George...
George Holliday," the man said. "You do
not recognize me, do you?" Suddenly,
Holliday realized it was Rodney King. "I
just wanted to thank you. You saved my
life."
Rodney
King Beating Video is a continuous matter of
study in most schools and universities of
the U.S. It turned what would otherwise have
been a violent, but soon forgotten,
encounter between Los Angeles police and
Rodney King into one of the most widely
watched and discussed incidents of its kind.
Repeated
viewings of those images created within
the American subconscious a particular
code for the representation of racial
conflict.
A
dramatic encounter with a stranger and the
Los Angeles police. Rodney King was pulled
over by the police in Los Angeles, had an
angry verbal confrontation with the
officers, and was then brutally assaulted by
several of them. Public servants gone wildly
out of control, savagely kicked King, landed
56 baton blows to his body, battering and
bloodying him. The beating was so loud and
raucous, in fact, that it caught the
attention of George Holliday in his nearby
apartment. He got out of his bed and went to
his window, where he witnessed the horrible
scene. Holliday immediately went to get his
video camera, and he captured the whole
awful episode on tape.
Holliday reflects on how he did not realize
how newsworthy his video of the Rodney King
beating would be. He explains, "Coming from
Argentina, it's different over there.
If a criminal commits a crime, you know, the
police take him in and they take care of
him. For me, that's normal because
that's the way I grew up." But Holliday was
curious about what he had witnessed, so when
the L.A. police would give him no details,
he called local television station KTLA.
Those videotaped images rocked this nation's
consciousness.
The images of the Rodney King Beating Video
were seared into the American consciousness:
a black man struggling on the ground while
Los Angeles police officers stood in a
semicircle around him, beating him for 19
brutal seconds. Black leaders rallied behind
Rodney King immediately. They say, "Seeing
the Rodney King beating was, like, seeing
history repeated again and again."
A prosecutor who was absolutely convinced
that it was an open-and-shut case based on
the George Holliday video, which showed King
being beaten by the police. Little did he
realize that by re-editing the images, the
attorneys defending the L.A. police
officers, in the first criminal case,
totally changed the story. One year later,
in the same city, different images: angry
fists and faces, broken glass and flames, 54
dead, 2,000 injured and a city tearing
itself apart before the world.
Ever since, the beating of Rodney King and
the ensuing riots have formed a somber
backdrop to America's "dialogue" on race.
The beating itself, and the initial
exoneration of LAPD officers by a suburban
Simi Valley jury, supported the notion that
America remained a deeply racist society.
Today the Rodney King Beating Video is still
remaining as an unique reference.
The powerful echoes of which we see on
display in American cinema as Natural
Born Killers (which uses actual
footage from the King video), Strange
Days, Mace, Malcom-X,
Dark Blue, and The
Matrix Reloaded, in which the
beating of the main character "Morpheus"
seeks to draw upon its audience's
familiarity with the Rodney King beating.
the codes inherent to the historical
representation of racial conflict.
Due to a recent ruling by the Massachusetts
Supreme Court, Chief Justice stated in her
dissent that, had the King incident occurred
in Massachusetts, "...under today's ruling
Holliday would have been exposed to criminal
indictment rather than lauded for exposing
an injustice."
The Holliday tape is shown so often on world
wide television that one CNN executive calls
it "wallpaper." It is a
continuous matter of study in most schools
and universities of the U.S.
All images
are copyrighted. Rodney King
Beating Video Ⓒ1991 by
George Holliday U.S Copyright
Registration No. PA0000518451/1991 Rodney king
Beating Video and pictures represented,
created and displayed on this page by
George Holliday are protected by US
Copyright Law and the Berne Convention.
Use, reuse, copying or reproduction is not
allowed without permission.