Derek Savage

“Ignorance of the lawl is not an excuse!”

Derek Savage (b. May 13, 1962) is a director and producer who is most recognized from his universally panned movie, Cool Cat Saves the Kids, and his equally bad movie Gun Self-Defense for Women. He is often considered to be one of the worst film directors of all time. However, lots of his films have gained a cult following and are often reviewed on YouTube, thanks to a bunch of reviewers.

Filmography

2019 - Cool Cat's Crazy Dream (Web short)
2019 - 420 Awards (Award show)
TBA - I Have Cancer: A Medical Marijuana Story (Documentary)
2018 - Gun Self-Defense for Ladies (Documentary; re-edit of Gun Self-Defense for Women)
2018 - Cool Cat: Kids Superhero (re-edit of Cool Cat Saves the Kids)
2017 - Savage Crime Show (Video short)
2016 - Gun Self-Defense for Women (Documentary)
2015 - Cool Cat Saves the Kids
2013 - Cool Cat Finds a Gun (Video short)
2012 - Cool Cat Stops Bullying (Video short)
2012 - Cool Cat in the Hollywood Parade (Video short)

Why He And His Movies Suck

All his films are horribly edited. Particularly in Cool Cat Saves the Kids, where lots of mistakes were left in the final cut of the movie, as well as the whole movie just being a mish-mash of some short films featuring Cool Cat.
Bad acting across all of his movies, especially from Savage himself.
His movies are supposed to be educational and spread good messages. However, they send out wrong messages rather than the intended ones. As a result, a lot of them feel really mean spirited.
Recycled footage: Cool Cat Saves the Kids and Cool Cat: Kids Superhero are the worst, as they're just Cool Cat Stops Bullying, Cool Cat in the Hollywood Parade and Cool Cat Finds a Gun rolled into one film, with the second video already using footage from the 2011 and 2012 Hollywood Christmas Parades, new footage to tie them together, pointless new scenes in Kids Superhero, and an ending that resolves all the plot threads. Gun Self-Defense for Women also needlessly shoehorns in archive footage of Cool Cat Finds a Gun into the movie. Cool Cat's Crazy Dream is literally footage from the second video with Savage dubbing over Jason Johnson as Cool Cat.
To add to this, Cool Cat: Kids Superhero is essential Cool Cat Saves the Kids, just edited with more pointless scenes.
The characters in his movies speak like caricatures instead of actual characters. The actors' phoned in performances don't help.
The villains are a one-dimensional stereotype. In particular, schoolyard bullies are presented as cartoonish supervillains that wring their hands together as if they were the antagonists of a James Bond film.
He seems to have an intense dislike of overweight people. Butch the Bully in the Cool Cat series is presented as a fat slob in dirty clothes, and Cool Cat Saves The Kids features a nearly-five minute segment of Cool Cat exercising, which Savage only added so that he can claim that his film is helping to combat childhood obesity.
Cool Cat, the titular protagonist of the Cool Cat series, is meant to be seen as caring and endearing to children. Instead, he comes off as a creepy pedophile.
Derek seems to not know anything about kids or how guns work.
Loads of padding in all his films. In particular, a scene in Cool Cat Saves The Kids where Cool Cat and Daddy Derek (played by Savage) practice their song is only in the film so that Savage can show off his guitar that was signed by Van Halen.
His films are all cheap-looking, low-budget and direct to video, which you can tell by their overall lack of quality.
He cannot take even the slightest amount of criticism. The sad part: It didn't use to be this way. Before November 2015, Savage took his criticism in stride, giving YMS a cameo appearance in Gun Self-Defense for Women and even recutting Cool Cat Saves the Kids. However, after the IHE debacle, Savage lost all respect for YMS, deleting his cameo in the former and taking down the original cut of the latter. In addition, Savage, at one point, THREATENED TO RELEASE PERSONAL INFORMATION OF PEOPLE TRYING TO MAKE PARODY VIDEOS. Later, he took down an interview with Jason Johnson (the actor who played Cool Cat), which has thankfully been reuploaded.
Adding to this, he does not appear to know the difference between fair use and copyright. This is why he took down lots of Cool Cat Saves The Kids reviews on copyright grounds, but in several conversations has unintentionally admitted that he has only removed the videos for "blaspheming" his film. They were later re-uploaded, though Savage still refuses to admit that they are indeed fair use.
Despite speaking against bullying, he infamously resorted to harassing and insulting the reviewers that criticized his film, even to the point where he went as far as to impersonate a law firm in an attempt to terrorize I Hate Everything.
- Savage could have gotten charged for the last one!
He uses the same Twitter account that he promotes his child-friendly Cool Cat merchandise on to insult and argue with other users, often with language that is best described as not child-friendly. In February 2019, he even got into a fight on Twitter with Sebastian Murdock, the senior reporter for HuffPost.
Similarly, his website proudly advertises assorted Cool Cat games and merchandise on the same page as his adult work, such as his book Bad Boy: The Male Dancer and photographs from his days posing for Playgirl Magazine.
He has an unusual habit of renaming his works (e.g. Barnyard Buddies became Circus Buddies and later Best Buddies).
He does not consider or realize the implications of Cool Cat fan art that he likes on Twitter. For example, commenting "Cool Cat loves this picture" on an image of Cool Cat photoshopped into a photograph of the September 11th attacks. He also recently retweeted that he likes football on an image that contains blurred hentai in the background.
Treats the character of Cool Cat as if he were a real person.
Is willing to use touchy subjects such as school shootings to promote his brand. When someone called him out on this, he claimed that it was because of "ignorant" people like them that children were dying.
On that topic, despite his campaign getting to half the required amount, Derek changed the focus to a stranger danger film a few days before ending, and, instead of giving out refunds as he promised, he kept the money. Mumkey Jones (who promoted the film and would've starred in it) was so rightfully irritated, he made his own school shooting safety film on YouTube with a $5 budget just to spite Savage. Not only did the campaign still fail, but it was also reported to IndieGoGo for possible fraud. Savage tried to cover it up by claiming it was him being ripped off. Savage is supposedly working on it again, but with (get this) PewDiePie.
In his Copyright Infringement video, he argued that his film has more supporters than detractors because of the number of merchandise he has sold. Seeing that several of his critics, particularly YMS and Bobsheaux, have pieces of this merchandise, he clearly has not processed the fact that people are buying his merchandise ironically because of how bad it is.
Despite the amount of criticism he and his films have received, he has made no attempt to change or improve his work based on these criticisms, likely because he believes these criticisms are "blasphemy".
His website looks like it was made in the ‘90s, and features made-up reviews with random celebrities' names tacked onto them, notably the Adam West one. A site check on the Internet Archive proves they were.
For someone who spends a lot of time threatening others over copyright, he seems to be totally oblivious to the fact that "Cool Cat" is actually the name of an obscure Looney Tunes character from the 1960s, who is also orange, meaning that Warner Bros. would have far more legitimate reasons to sue him for copyright infringement than he does his critics, assuming they actually felt it be worth the effort (which they apparently don't). In addition, a check on the Internet Archive reveals on the bottom of this page that Savage stole the Pink Panther.
- However, a post made on the official Cool Cat Twitter account reveals that since Derek used to collect Looney Tunes cups when he was a kid shows that he's completely aware of the other Cool Cat, which makes the whole thing even worse.
His award show (the 420 Awards) tries to be apolitical, but is themed after marijuana, which is a politically debated topic.

Redeeming Qualities

Lots of his movies are so bad, they're funny and have gained a cult following due to how low-budget and poorly made they are.
He's surprisingly good at vlogs.