Joe the Magician – video now in Museum of the Moving Image

In what is almost certainly the final chapter of my little campaign video, I just found it online at The Living Room Candidate, a project of the Museum of the Moving Image.

My video is a commentary-captioned retrospective of “real person political ads” going back to the 1950s! It includes footage of supporters, presidents and candidates — Eisenhower, JFK, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Kerry, Edwards… and me! This particular collection was put together by Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Errol Morris.

A grateful hat tip to Mr. Morris for including me in his playlist!

What an interesting odyssey this has been!

Joe the Magician – video referenced in blogs and print media

As you know, my “Joe the Magician” video has appeared on Good Morning America (and Nightline), and also on the McCain web site.  I recently found out that it was referenced in some other locations.

The video was referenced in a story by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on October 26 and was picked up in newspapers around the country.  The first part of the story:

McCain hopes to change fortunes with ‘Joe’ campaign, but its effectiveness is unclear

(St. Louis Post-Dispatch Via Acquire Media NewsEdge)
WASHINGTON _ Joe the Entrepreneur, Joe the Shadow and other Joes from all walks of life are responding to a John McCain video contest, part of his late offensive skewering Barack Obama’s tax proposals.

“I work very hard for what I earn and I don’t need Barack Obama to tell me how to spread my money around,” says Joe the Magician, a professional magician from Atlanta and video contributor who turns dollar bills into hundred-dollar notes in front of the camera.

In the campaign’s final days, McCain is attempting a magic act of his own: trying to reverse his political fortunes by relying heavily on Obama’s promise to “spread the wealth” when he met Joe Wurzelbacher, the now-famous Ohio plumber.

So far, the Joe campaign and the GOP effort to paint Obama as a “socialist” appears to be having little impact, judging by polls showing Obama’s leads in Ohio and several other battleground states steady or widening. An exception is Missouri, which remains a tossup according to a new St. Louis Post-Dispatch poll.

The video was linked to on The Heymann Family Journal blog.

It was also referred to (negatively) in a blog by Tom von Alten in Idaho.  While his politics differ from mine and he panned the video and the whole project, he also called it an “instant classic”.  I responded to him as follows:

Hi, Tom!

Even though we differ on politics, I wanted to thank you for at least noticing my little video contribution to the McCain campaign.  “Instant classic” is a nice thing to say.

I just thought I’d clarify a couple of things for you.
- No video editing or camera tricks were used in that video.  I performed it live and could do it for you right now.
- The production values were lame, yes.  I don’t make a lot of videos and was totally winging it.  We were given a short time limit and I just threw that together in a few minutes one afternoon before my kids got home from school.  My wife held our camcorder and we did it a few times until I got the whole thing within the time limit.  If it didn’t ring sincere enough for you in the video, let me assure you that it is sincerely felt.
- The illusion was simply a neat visual metaphor upon which to hang the point I was making… same thing I do in a lot of my work, using magical visual effects as a framework around which to tell the story that my client wants to tell… whether it’s about a person, place, product, company, charity, or other entity.  Waving wheat, ones-to-hundreds, whatever.

Whatever your election leanings, hopefully it was at least momentarily fun to watch!

Thanks again.  Best to you.

Isn’t it strange how something you do on a lark can end up reaching people all over, across various forms of media?  What a great country we live in!

Here’s the video, if you haven’t seen it.