Utilizing the talents of the filmmaking and advertising communities, political advocacy group MoveOn.org has produced the "Bush In 30 Seconds: Phase 2" campaign, a series of spots critical of President George W. Bush. The work is slated to begin airing nationwide this month and run right up until the November presidential election. Primarily issue-based, the ads take the policies of the Bush administration to task and demonstrate what MoveOn.org contends is their negative impact on the American people, according to Laura Dawn, New York-based event director of MoveOn.org and director of the "Bush In 30 Seconds: Phase 2" campaign.
In related news, Dawn reported that director Errol Morris, who is represented for spotwork by bicoastal/international @radical.media, has been tapped to direct a separate series of ads for MoveOn.org highlighting "switchers"—people who voted for Bush in the last election but will not support him this time around. Meanwhile, Dawn confirmed the involvement of a number of high-profile participants in the "Bush In 30 Seconds: Phase 2" project, including Allison Anders, who directed a spot called "The Pie" with production support spearheaded by David Starr, executive producer/partner of New York-headquartered Curious Pictures. Based on a chapter from Al Franken’s book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, the spot was scripted by James Brown, a creative director at Arnold Worldwide, Los Angeles, and stars Ione Skye, Illeana Douglas and W. Earl Brown. Josh Porter served as producer on the spot; Patrick Cady was DP.
Additionally, Curious Pictures produced an ad on the disenfranchisement of African-American voters who were turned away from the polls in Florida during the 2000 presidential election by voting officials who wrongly deemed them convicted felons. Directed by Benny Boom, who is represented for spotwork by Boondoggle, Santa Monica (the spot division of music video house F.M. Rocks), the ad features a voiceover by Danny Glover.
Elsewhere, San Francisco-based animation studio Wild Brain created an animated ad about the war in Iraq featuring the voices of Kevin Bacon, Scarlett Johansson and Ed Asner; and Charlie Fisher, creative director of the Copenhagen office of Publicis Group ad agency Leo Burnett, directed a spot on Bush’s environmental record featuring music by Moby and a voiceover by Peter Coyote.
The "Bush In 30 Seconds: Phase 2" campaign also includes an ad written by Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing) and helmed by director Rob Reiner; and another spot written and directed by filmmaker Richard Linklater.
Copies of the spots were not available for viewing at press time. "They’re all very creative and all very much unlike any political ads ever seen," Dawn maintained.
This isn’t the first time that MoveOn.org, which was founded as an online political advocacy organization, has delved into the spot world. Earlier this year, the group sponsored the "Bush In 30 Seconds" ad contest in which filmmakers aspired to create the best anti-Bush ad. The winner—chosen by a panel of celebrity judges including Farenheit 9/11 director Michael Moore—was a spot called "Child’s Pay." Created and directed by the aforementioned Fisher, the spot, rejected by CBS for airing during the most recent Super Bowl for being too political (SHOOT, 2/6, p. 1), showed children toiling as dishwashers and factory workers and concluded with the question "Guess who’s going to pay off President Bush’s $1 trillion deficit?"
Given the considerable buzz the "Bush In 30 Seconds" contest generated, Dawn, who was co-founder of the initiative, said it was natural that MoveOn.org would continue the effort and call on the talents of the creative community once again. "This is a way to reach out to people who are really talented who can significantly contribute in their chosen milieu," Dawn said. "If you get a fantastic director and get him to direct something that is really creative and unique, then that’s an incredible way for him to contribute [to the cause] aside from just giving money or writing a letter to The New York Times."
MoveOn.org was actually offered more help than it could accept on the "Bush In 30 Seconds: Phrase 2" campaign, Dawn said, noting that everyone who pitched in worked gratis—except for the actors who must be paid due to Screen Actors Guild (SAG) rules.
The aforementioned Starr of Curious Pictures was one of those eager to get involved in the "Bush In 30 Seconds: Phase 2" project. Starr, who described himself as a "lefty, politically speaking," said he had reached a point about 15 months ago where he felt "tortured by the fact that we had a president that was doing so much damage to the reputation of the United States."
At the time, Starr considered taking a leave of absence from the commercial production industry to go to work for the campaign of the Democratic presidential candidate (at that time, Senator John Kerry had yet to be chosen) but ultimately found that involvement with MoveOn.org’s "Bush In 30 Seconds: Phase 2" campaign would be a better option. "It was just the perfect opportunity to use my experience to benefit a cause I so deeply believe in," Starr remarked.
Is Starr fearful of any backlash for being so open about his liberal bent? After all, not everyone in the advertising industry would agree with his views, and when it comes to clients, in general corporate America stands firmly behind Bush. "The truth of the matter is, all presidential elections are pretty much fifty-fifty propositions. So even if that were to occur to me, and it has not, it wouldn’t be that much of a concern because half of the world is going to be on your side and half isn’t," Starr mused. "You can’t please all the people all the time."
