The Film Take Back America Took Back
As a result of the attention surrounding my film about the 2007 Conservative Political Action Conference–it was a YouTube hit–the liberal Campaign for America’s Future asked me to produce a similar video about their annual conference, Take Back America (TBA), held in Washington. On the first day of TBA, my film about CPAC was shown to an audience that appreciated its satirical edge. The planners of TBA promptly scheduled a screening of my film about their conference for their closing lunch banquet. But when I finally delivered that film, they were less amused.
With over a thousand people waiting to view my film, my videographer, Thomas Shomaker, and I were whisked backstage. There, conference organizers told us “technical” problems made our screening impossible. I was finally told that our film was too “edgy.” In it I interviewed participants at the conference, including Ralph Nader, Al Sharpton, Mike Gravel, bloggers from Atrios to Matt Stoller, and activists. I suspect that its good-natured humor failed to meet a threshold of dull earnestness. Judge for yourself. Watch the film now.
max, your a funny mofo. They were pansies.
Great opening, and the Gravel segment was great.
Obama girl? Just kind of annoying. The people you irked had nothing to do with that.
had nothing to do with that.
Oh, Ralph, where did you
lose your way?
What a bunch of humorless _________________ [insert plural noun].
Mr. Blumenthal,
I am proud to award you the Frankie Machine Positively Unemployed Medal of Honor.
Pray away the gay! Hilarious.
Oliver Willis rules!
Funny man.
Wow . You’re nuts. Brilliant work . Should be screened, it won’t, cause self deprecating humour and shame isn’t something you want the neighbours to see, you’d be labelled Unserious.
They did the right thing in censoring you . For themselves and their freaky insecurity.
Keeep it up .
Not that funny.
I liked the Gravel bits, and the “what blogs do you read” part.
Even funnier is the YouTube “Related” recommendation:
Jackie Mason Video Blog 12 on “Nifong and Duke Rape Case”*****
I thought the piece brilliant and funny.
The good folks at Take Back America need to:
1) get a sense of humor
2) loosen up
3) learn to laugh at themselves
I think by “edgy,” they meant “pissing off people with access to the comped hotelroom minifridge.”
Sheesh, some of those people had no sense of humor!
The only person who really seemed to laugh at
anything you said was the gay dude. I’d have a drink
with him. No wonder progressives have such a reputation
for being annoying. Quit giving us a bad name, humorless
lefties!
I’m not sure what they were so scared of. It was amusing
but not really that ‘edgy’.
How odd that these people could not understand the “good-natured humor” of a knife in the back. How narrow-minded of these humorless, earnest progressives that they did not get your satiric portrayal of a shallow, spoiled, rich, white, straight kid, who seems to delight in making fun of working class people, African-Americans, gays, bloggers, the elderly and people who chew their food before swallowing. Clearly, this obnoxious young man you are portraying is nothing like your true self. Is he?
I think Miles through them off.
I thought it was fine – kind of Michael Moore-lite, if you will.
“F” ‘em if they can’t take a joke.
Max, you should go into partnership with Michael Moore!
Wait!
Was Obamagirl at the conference?
that was hilarious Max
Needed more hagiography & cowbell.
– Max the Elder
LOFL – you rock. I can’t believe they didn’t want to show this. We’re liberals, damn it, we can laugh at ourselves.
Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!
Too funny!
P.S. voice over at the beginning sounds like a young Michael Douglas
film is silly and disspiriting — just like the mainstream media — manages to omit any mention of the issues that concern us enough to consider candidates and voting.
no wonder they didn’t want to show it. i didn’t want to see it.
obama girl is really insulting, and jason alexander is brave to have hosted (especially when idiots imply that he will never have work again)
not funny, and a put down of everything i think is important
l-o-freakin-l
That rocked!!
Ralph Nader won’t get over his jealousy of Al Gore.
Nader let his ego lead to a Bush presidency and he
refuses to take responsibility for it. He knows
America would be better with Gore in the White House.
this is like watching the old “get a life” television show.
Hahahahahaha. Great stuff. If they banned this, I don’t regret skipping the conference.
Hey, Max, sorry to bother you, brah, but have you put this video up on YouTube yet? For some reason the video won’t load up for me through your bloke (there’s a problem with my internet settings and I haven’t figured out how to fix it yet), but I’m still able to view videos on YouTube. If it’s not a problem could you upload the video there, too, so I can finally see it?
Damn, did I just say “bloke” rather than “blog”? (That shows I’ve been debating with the Brits over Margaret Thatcher far too long over at YouTube and it’s effecting my writing.)
Well, Max, in the words of our Savior, J.R.”BoB” Dobbs, patron saint of sales and One True Living Avatar of Slack, “FUCK ‘EM IF THEY CAN’T TAKE A JOKE.”
Nevermind, I got it to work.
I like the homage to Mike Gravel’s Dadaist campaign ad at the beginning of the video; I thought that was a nice way to set the tone for the entire video. And while I get the satirical style to the video, I don’t see why the planners felt so threatened to showcase it at the conference. I think they may felt you weren’t taking the event seriously and the video was a slap in a face to them. They failed to see how you were not only satirizing people in your age group—people such as myself—and why many of us tend to tune-out from listening to politicians and their phony, calculating, it’s-time-for-a-change rhetoric, but you were also scrutinizing their jaded, self-seriousness—the inability to poke fun and laugh at themselves.
Overall, I thought it was a funny video that kept in the same tradition as your prior ones. I guess too many references to “booty,†“gay sex†and the silliness of praying-away-gay, offended them the same way it would’ve displeased prudish conservatives. Honestly, as a current film student whose two main influences are Luis Buñuel and Jean-Luc Godard, my interpretation of the event had I intended it, would’ve been far more controversial, to say the least. They should be happy you went lite on ‘em.
Definitely, Preston. I went lite and actually edited out several scenes that would have made this video genuinely edgy. That is why I was so amazed the video was torpedoed. You have to be beyond uptight to think my video was truly over the edge.
So it’s okay for you to lampoon conservatives, but turn
that same light humor back on to ‘liberals’ and suddenly
it’s too edgy? Memo to TBA: satire and sardonic humor
cannot be pointed only in one direction, and this was
really a light-hearted approach. That they would sink
this type of video says a lot about the organizers.
Oh, yeah, and f!$k Nader. What a sanctimonious gasbag.
Stupid. Not funny. Just annoying and adolescent.
You know, as a fund raiser, the left could kidnap Ralph Nader
secret him in a room, tie him to a chair and tape electrode
s to sensitve parts. Via the internet, anyone with a credit
card and a touch of vengence could apply, for $50, had rob
ust bit of electricty. Would raise zillions.
There were some funny and poignant bits — Gravel, Nader, blogger whiteness, etc. — but overall, this feels like a failed attempt to pull off humor that takes more nuance, a la Stephen Colbert. I’m a lefty and laugh regularly at our movement and our players.
Max, most of your attempted jokes were great in theory, but — unlike Colbert – there seemed to be no undercurrent of respect for the people you were interviewing. So, your poking fun at them often came off as tactless at best and at times intentionally hurtful. That got in the way of the decent theoretical jokes, and made your overall piece less effective.
Lefties should definitely lighten up. But, if you can turn down the volume ego a bit, it won’t drown out your subjects and the good points you’re trying to make in your videos.
Asking elderly women what blogs they read on a daily basis threatened to be
offensive (toward the elderly in general) until the gal asked, “you mean [the blogs] in
newspapers?”. That jewel of a response trumped the question which is what separates
the funny from the not funny. Unfortunately, the vid had many more unfunny bits
than funny ones. Like it or not, flatness more honestly explains the rejection of your
vid than “it was too edgy”. Whoever told you that thought they were being nice.
I can see how humorless progressives might be offended by the TBA vid, but
comedians even more so; I love most of your work. This one either lost its
edge on the cuttiing room floor, or you just had an off-weekend. Looking forward to
the next one!
Merry Selk doesn’t really live up to her name, does she?
Unless it’s her last name with a “u” instead of “e”
Those “idiots” were joking, you idiot — the punchline was
that he was hosting the conference.
Try Zoloft. Hilarious video.
There were some funny and poignant bits — Gravel, Nader, blogger whiteness, etc. — but overall, this feels like a failed attempt to pull off humor that takes more nuance, a la Stephen Colbert. I’m a lefty and laugh regularly at our movement and our players.
Max, most of your attempted jokes were great in theory, but — unlike Colbert – there seemed to be no undercurrent of respect for the people you were interviewing. So, your poking fun at them often came off as tactless at best and at times intentionally hurtful. That got in the way of the decent theoretical jokes, and made your overall piece less effective.
Lefties should definitely lighten up. But, if you can
turn down the volume on your ego a bit, it won’t drown out your subjects and the good points you’re trying to make in your videos.
I knew it was going to be a crazy video when it opened with Miles Davis….
Nevermind the moderation, prior comment voluntarily withdrawn.
It didn’t need to be “edgyâ€. The CPAC video was edgy enough. Your question to Coulter will forever echo in the halls of future CPAC gatherings.
IMO, Sharpton is definitely doing more harm than good. Racism is a serious issue, but going around crucifying white men (the Twanna Brawley case, and then the Duke Lacrosse players) only makes Sharpton seem like the racist.
Your question to Coulter will forever echo in the halls of future CPAC gatherings.
However, I did find something ironic about the videos; In order to find some of the clueless figures at TBA you looked for average people. But in order to find them at CPAC you have to look towards best-selling authors and ivy-league graduates.
Edit out the second coulter sentance if you could Max.
Yawn…
I don’t find the video edgy; i find it obnoxious and mean-spirited. It looked like you were really trying to be a dick. Cn you really blame them for not being able to get behind this video?
I loved it, it was better than Cats…
Seriously, good job.
I get told to lighten up a lot and watching this, well, like looking in a mirror.
phat
That was terrible.
I think they said ‘edgy’ because they didn’t want to hurt your feelings.
seriously.i loved the cpac video but your forced attempts
at humor in this one fell flat. as an example, your ‘gags’ simply went on wayyyyy too long. how many times did we have to hear you ask someone about obamagirl? see, once or twice would have been funny. 100 times was not. similarly, your ken mehlman shtick was destroyed by its length. how many times did you have to ask that kid to pray with you?
don’t try so hard to be funny. it doesn’t work.
Yep. Those Conservatives don’t have a chance!
Sorry, but your timing was just off.
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