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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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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