Coming soon: Meet John Crispin, Demopublican for U.S. president

By David McElroy · May 24, 2013

Eight years ago, I made a short film and it had a successful run at 20 smaller film festivals. It even won a few awards. Since then, it’s been viewed more than 300,000 times on YouTube. It’s finally time to make another one.

I never dreamed I’d wait this long to get serious about making another film, but work has finally begun.

The working title is “John Crispin for President.” It’s a short parody of a political film for a presidential candidate of the “Demopublican Party.” Not only is Crispin willing to promise absolutely anything to anyone in order to pander for votes, but he also has a very serious and glaring physical flaw — which everyone completely ignores since he’s a powerful man.

The primary point is to satirize candidates who are willing to promise the moon to voters, but the secondary point is that a candidate can be completely flawed in obvious and serious ways, but few in the mainstream even seem to notice.

I’ll be launching a fundraising campaign on Indiegogo to raise some money to make it, so you’ll be hearing me talk about that when the sample footage is shot and we have a promotional video. Indiegogo is similar to Kickstarter, but I like the way the service works better.

I’m not going to spoil what Crispin’s major flaw is, but bringing it to the screen requires very specialized special effects makeup. Finding the person who can produce the look I need has been holding the project up for a couple of years, but I finally found a makeup artist recently who specializes in what the character requires. I think you’ll find the candidate’s look funny and outrageous at the same time. It’s something that might help in making the piece go viral online when it’s out. I have my fingers crossed.

I’m meeting Saturday with the actor I hope to cast for the lead role. I’m not going to mention who he is until he’s on board for sure, but I’m really excited about what he can potentially bring to the film. In addition to being a very talented actor, he’s also a director himself, so he will bring a special understanding of the acting required to pull off this part.

I know who I’d like to hire as director of photography, but I don’t yet whether she’s going to be available or interested. Other than the lead actor, the cinematographer is the most important person to making it what I need it to be. I’ll be looking for a production manager, video editor, sound recordist and various other people, but unless the fundraising is successful, none of the rest will matter. So that’s what I’m focusing on first. I have in mind a short sales piece involving Crispin that I think might be funny and compelling.

Can you tell I’m excited to finally talk about this? Yeah, I really am.

The process of making a film feels like launching yourself over a high cliff and building an airplane as you’re falling, while trying to conceal from others that you didn’t bring airplane plans or parts with you, so you’re improvising the whole way. We’ll see soon what it produces this time.

Most of us know that there’s little difference between the mainstream statist parties, so why not support a candidate who fits on either side? I’m really looking forward to introducing you to John Crispin in the months ahead. I hope you’ll eventually be almost as excited about it as I am.

I’ll let you know when there’s more to tell.

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Something small just made me happy. The specifics don’t matter, but I found myself smiling and I felt a kind of warm joy filling my heart and mind. In that brief moment of ecstasy, I felt the irrational desire to talk with a particular person. It wasn’t a calculated thought or a rational want. It wasn’t even that I wanted to tell the person about this particular thing. I simply felt ecstatic joy — and I somehow connected that feeling to this person. I can’t explain it. If we’re wise, we’ll pay attention to such moments, because the instincts of our hearts and minds often know more truth than our conscious and rational brains do. The same thing can be true in moments of great pain and suffering. If we pay attention to who our hearts are drawn to in such moments — of extreme joy or extreme hurt — we learn something about ourselves. I don’t know why. I only know that our gut instincts sometimes understand deep truths about ourselves that our rational brains haven’t yet figured out.

It started out as a satirical joke, but some friends liked the idea, so now it’s a real Facebook profile picture frame. If you’ve never heard of Moms Against Virtue-Signaling, let me explain. One of the dumber elements of social media is that it allows people to publicly signal their goodness and virtue to others — without actually doing anything of substance. So you see photo frames around profile photos saying things such as, “Moms Against Racism,” as though they’re standing up against those evil moms who are in favor of racism. It’s meaningless virtue-signaling and it deserves to be mocked, so I made a frame and published it on Facebook’s frame system today. If you go to your own Facebook profile picture and add a frame, then search for Moms Against Virtue-Signaling, you can select it. About a dozen of my friends are using it so far. It’s just fun satire — at least until Facebook decides it “goes against our community standards.” Or something. It’s just a fun way of mocking something that deserves to be mocked.

When I first told you about the project that would become DavidMcElroy.TV, I thought it would launch by mid-May. Since today is the last day of May — and I’m still not close to launching a finished product — here’s a brief update. The graphic above is the latest rough mockup of the format, but it’s still subject to change. Even the logo isn’t yet set in stone. Motion graphics are really difficult when you’re starting from scratch. Sunday night, my camera stopped recording, so it has to be sent off for repair. I have an older camera that I’ll keep using for testing, but I can’t launch without the better one. The audio system developed a low buzz this weekend that has me puzzled. I’ll be taking all the equipment over to the home of a local audio engineer who’s volunteered to help me figure out what I’ve done wrong. On top of all that, my on-camera performance seems to get worse with each test I do. There are days when I think I’m crazy to be attempting this. And in truth, I probably am insane to do it, but being crazy has never stopped me before. I’m at least a month away from launch and it could be a few months. Thanks for being patient — and thanks for all the support and enthusiasm for the project that you’ve sent my way.

I received the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine Monday — and I’m happy to report that I’m neither dead nor a zombie controlled by Bill Gates and Co. Eligibility was recently opened in Alabama to everyone who’s 16 or older, so I signed up for the Pfizer vaccine at a site run by a local university. I know this is a political issue for a lot of people, but that honestly baffles me. We can disagree about whether such a vaccine should be mandatory — which I’m against — but as a voluntary choice, it seems like an easy choice now that it’s been safely given to millions of people. Is it a perfect preventative? Of course not. But the decision seemed obvious to me when looking at the statistics and evidence. I haven’t had any of the side effects that some people have experienced, but that’s supposed to be more of an issue after the second dose, which I’ll get on May 3. In the meantime, I’ll let you know if I grow a third arm — or if the secret microchip kicks in and someone starts trying to control me remotely. All kidding aside, getting the vaccine seems like a rational voluntary choice to me.

I get a lot of email from readers. Some of it is fascinating and useful. Some of it is full of confessions that people want to share with a stranger. Some people write to ask advice. What’s really surprising, though, is the small percentage that seems to come from mentally unbalanced people. When I started using the metaphor about being an alien — the tagline at the top of each page here — it never occurred to me that I’d start hearing from people who took it seriously. But every few months, I get a strange email — such as the one above from a few months back — from someone who seems to think I’m claiming to be an actual alien. The first time it happened, I laughed. By the time it became a semi-regular thing, I was simply appalled. For the record, I can provide no proof that I’m an alien, because … well … it’s just a metaphor. I do feel like an alien among human beings, but as far as I know, I’m just as earthbound as you are. It’s just a metaphor. Honest. Or at least, that’s what my lizard-beast overlords told me to say.

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