Cross posted at MEGA-DITTOS!!! The Tea Party Cult.
Also, please see our "Kickstarter" campaign.
How about some love folks. I've been a member here since 2005, and I recently did something a lot of people only talk about.
I made a film . . . a political film. Specifically, I made a documentary film about the tea party cult.
The film took me three years to make. The film took every resource I could beg, borrow or steal. My whole life and fortune is tied to it.
We actually had a budget . . . a "low budget" . . . which I personally raised to finance the project. Shooting the film was the easy part. We bought a used but very nice three chip near broadcast quality camera . . . and hit the road. We travelled over a good part of the country. We even attended Glenn Beck's 912 Rally in DC, back in September, 2009.
Google "Brendan Steinhauser." He's a player with FreedomWorks, one of the 912 organizers. We interviewed him. He says that "no government has ever, or will ever, create prosperity." We prove him wrong . . . on film . . . which you can watch, right now.
Find out more after the jump . . .
Did you know that Florida has a new tea party Lieutenant Governor? Her name is Jennifer Carroll. We interviewed her too . . . though to be candid, she was a mere State Representative at the time. She says government shouldn't do things for hungry children that they can do for themselves. She seemed to suggest that depriving children because of the sins of their parents is a legitimate social policy. I'm not sure that's what she meant . . . but you can see what she said, and judge for yourself.
As for rank and file, sign carrying tea partiers, you've seen them . . . at a distance, anyway. Funded by the Koch Brothers, promoted by Fox News and right wing radio, the tea party movement can fairly take credit for the Republican victory in 2010. Since that election, Tea Party driven politicians in Congress and State Legislatures are advancing the most reactionary agenda since the Gilded Age. They're goal is nothing short of repealing the entire twentieth century.
Maybe you think I'm exxagerating. I'm not. I have actual footage of numerous tea partiers calling the last 100 years a mistake.
Ken Marrero, co-founder of the American LIberty Tour told a tea party audience in Kansas City, "I wouldn't have done what's been done the economy and the country over the last 100 years in the first place."
Got that? He wouldn't have legalized labor unions, or created a minimum wage, or the eight hour work day. He doesn't approve of Social Security or medicare. He wants to go back to the days of sweatshops and child labor.
So do all of the tea party, from the Koch brothers at the top, to the rank and file sign carriers at the bottom.
Do you know who tea partiers blame for the economic meltdown of 2008? It isn't the banks, or hedgefund managers defrauding investors with securitized worthless mortgages.
Incredibly, Limbaugh and his fellow tea partiers have found a way to blame it on "lazy blacks" . . . and I have the footage to prove it. I have footage of Limbaugh "explaining" it ... and tea partiers repeating it . . . like brainwashed robots!
Do you think you know just how fanatical . . . and dangerous . . . the tea party movement is? I have seen the reaction of the small groups who have seen the film.
They are shocked. It's one thing to read about them or hear about them, or even watch them in grainy, unedited video. It's another thing to see them up close, answering hard questions.
That close look is why one viewer of the film said "everybody in America needs to see this."
It's not me they need to see. I've got a face made for radio . . . as you will see in the film.
The important part of the story is what happened when I was behind the camera asking questions . . . which is all I did. It's the one thing I know how to do. I know how to cross-examine a witness . . . a skill readily transferrable to the business of political film making.
That is what makes this film different from every other political documentary you've ever seen. We actually managed to have not just brief, soundbite interviews. We went into depth and detail.
We challenged them on their apparent contradictions.
We confronted them with facts . . . provable, historical facts. We confronted them with the real track record of Republicans and Democrats in managing the nation's economy. We asked them if they were really . . . really and truly . . . groaning under the yoke of Stalinism, the way they claim they are.
In other words, we did more than journalistic stenography. We engaged in what Justice Louis Brandeis called "the greatest engine for the discovery of truth."
We cross-examined them with pointed, critical, well designed questions.
The result is the sharpest, closest, most detailed picture of the tea party movement, and the ideology it is based on.
We didn't always observe the finer points of film making. Sometimes the camera is a little shaky. Sometimes the exposure is wrong . . . especially the earlier footage. [We got better at it as we went along.] As for that ugly joker who narrates the film, what can I say? I would much rather have gotten Morgan Freeman to do the narrative, but he was little beyond our budget.
What we did capture is a picture of the tea party movement you won't find anywhere else. No, I'm not as pretty as most television journalists. But I ask better questions. Yes, I make that claim . . . and you will see what I mean when you see the film.
You can see the film right now. It is available for viewing online at my website, MEGA-DITTOS!!! The Tea Party Cult.
We want to take it on tour, and show it on the big screen. We'd also like to find a distributor for it.
We think people need to see it. Who else has exposed the tea party in any detailed or meaningful way? We're not the "best" film exposing the tea party. We're the ONLY film exposing the tea party.
The problem is we're broke. We spent our pile . . . it wasn't a very big pile . . . making the film. Now I have to raise money to distribute the film.
We're doing that two ways.
1. We are offering an online screening, for a limited time.
2. We have a "Kickstarter" campaign to raise money to take the film to Washington, DC, New York, and other cities, if we can raise enough money.
I am asking this community for help. If this community isn't interested in this film, who else will be?
Here are a few very short clips to give you taste of the film . . . including the most recent clip that includes my face-made-for-radio.
After you've watched the clips, here's a simple question. Do you believe this project deserves at the very least, for other members of this community to learn about it? Very few people will even be aware of it if you don't click that little star at the top.
Recommend us, please. So other people can see what we're doing.
It's almost Friday night. Great night for a movie. I know where a good one is playing.
[At Orlando Marriott.]
Miss Cloward-Piven [No, that isn't her real name]: When you are able to vote largesse from the public treasury you keep these people in power. They're being used.
They don't understand, they're being used.
[Cut to zoom out of still photo of Rush Limbaugh]
Voice of Rush Limbaugh: The objective here is to get everybody on the dole . . .
[Cut to Orlando Marriott]
Miss Cloward-Piven: The strategy is to put as many people on the welfare entitlement system as possible, so that it has to give . . . it will collapse . . .
[Freeze frame woman and zoom in toward her right eyeglass lens. As the camera zooms in, out of her eyeglass lens comes a small but growing freeze frame of the narrator, which gradually grows to occupy the full frame.]
Voiceover: And here it is, the dirtiest of dirty words to tea partiers . . .
[Unfreeze the image of the narrator]
Narrator: Welfare!
[Closing tag sequence.]
[At Lake Eola, Orlando, Florida.]
Interviewer [Me]: Obamunism, what's that?
Squeaky: It's communism.
[Zoom out of still photo of Rush Limbaugh.]
Voice of Limbaugh: Marxists, socialists, communists, liberals, progressives . . .
[Cut to tea party crowd outside Orlando Marriott Hotel. Pan crowd until the camera finds "Squeaky."]
Interviewer: What is socialism?
Squeaky [with cross talk from other protesters]: Basically socialism is the ideology . . .
[Cut to Lake Eola.]
Interviewer: Socialism, communism, is it all the same?
Voice of Squeaky: Yep, almost . . . actually they're very different, if you really studied it . . .
[Cut to Orlando Marriott]
Squeaky: Ummm . . . people . . . spread the wealth . . .
[Cut to Lake Eolo]
Interviewer: So which one is he?
Squeaky: He's Marxist . . .
[Cut to Marriott}
Squeaky [with crosstalk from other protesters]: . . . taking wealth and using it for the greater good, that's what it is . . . and who decides what the greater good is?
[Cut to Lake Eola]
Interviewer: Which provisions of Marxism?
Squeaky: I don't even know, Marxism is when . . . [to someone off camera] what is Marxism?"
[Closing tag sequence.]
[Zoom out image of Limbaugh in his studio]
Voice of Limbaugh: Anybody who wanted to create jobs would be investing in the private sector, not in government
[Cut to Rick Hartley in Boone Park, Jacksonville, FL]
Hartley: Did the government subsidize the development of the gasiline engine?
Joe Lyles: I don't know ...
Hartley: NO!
Joe Lyles: . . . but it subsized development of the jet engine . . .
Hartley: That was wrong!
Joe Lyles: It WAS?? What about the computers, what about the internet?
Hartley: It's none fo the government's business . . . Do you think Microsoft is here because the government gave them a grant?
Joe Lyles: I think that Microsoft is here because the government did the research and development into the basic technology of computers . .
Hartley: That is a basic difference in our philosophies . . .
Joe Lyles: But we wouldn't have those things.
Hartley: Yes we WOULD!!!
[Cut to Closing Tag]
[In the shadow of Capitol building in Washington, a woman under a tree is holding a large sign.]
Woman in Woman In Red Shirt: You guys, here's a communist!"
[Cut to Rush Limbaugh upside down, zoom in, then zoom with him right side up.]
Limbaugh: Because they are all liberals slash socialists slash communists ... [yes, he says the word "slash"]
[Cut to Old Guy With Bull Horn and Woman In Red Shirt on a sidewalk on the Capitol grounds not far where she was standing in the first scene.]
Woman in Red Shirt: Tell me a communist or socialist country that's doing well ...
Joe Lyles: Well ... some say that THIS is a socialist country ...
Woman in Red Shirt: It is ... it's becoming a socialist country ...
Old Guy With Bull Horn: It's starting there that's for sure, we're trying to stop it ...
Joe Lyles: Are we socialist yet, huh?
Woman in Red Shirt: Yes, ever since 1913 when the fed was created . . .
Joe Lyles: Ah!
Woman in Red Shirt: So since then, our government and the world bank has manipulated our finances ...
[Cut to same setting a few seconds later, woman talking to crowd behind her.]
Woman in Red Shirt: Does anyone want to talk to the communist, anyone have any words for him.
Old Guy With Bull Horn: [Mumbling something incoherent].
[Cut to closing tag.]
[Outside a Town Hall meeting with then Congressman Allen Boyd, August 26, 2009.]
Scott Shubitz: Grover Cleveland ...
Male Voice Off Camera: I was gonna ask you about that ...
Shubitz: ... And there was a drought in Texas in the late 1880's, and he said no. We're not going to bail the farmers out ...
[Cut to zoom out of a still photo of Rush Limbaugh]
Rush Limbaugh: The objective here is to make everyone as dependent on government . . .
{Cut to Shubitz]
Joe Lyles: Should we get rid of like, our emergency response to hurricanes and other disasters ... you wanna get rid of that?
Shubitz: At this point, that's too radical ...
Joe Lyles: At this point ... A natural disaster like a drought, is that something we might want to ...
Shubitz: It's in the scope of people to step in and act for themselves . . . but if a hurricane comes ...
Joe Lyles: How?
Shubitz: How?
Joe Lyles: How? Can you move your farm ... pick your farm up and move it a couple of states over where it's raining? Come on.
Shubitz: [Laughs]
[Cut to closing tag]