November
13
Behind the Sarah Palin hoax: Interview with Dan Mirvish
This was a good week for the culture jammers. First the Yes Men distributed 1.2 million copies of a fake New York Times announcing the end of the Iraqi war; then, indie filmmakers Dan Mirvish and Eitan Gorlin wrote a new play for the How To Get Ahead in Hollywood handbook: Create a political pundit, make him famous and then confess that he doesn’t exist.
The NYT broke the “Martin Eisendstadt” story Thursday, explaining that the would-be John McCain pundit who publishes a blog, operates a Washington, DC consultancy and is the subject of multiple YouTube videos as well as the apparent subject of a BBC documentary, is actually the creation of filmmakers Mirvish (co-founder, Slamdance Film Festival) and Gorlin, whose “The Holy Land” won the Slamdance grand jury prize in 2002.
Eisenstadt was initially created for a sitcom Mirvish and Gorlin are pitching, “The Pundit.” With Gorlin portraying the character in popular YouTube videos, the myth remained relatively intact throughout the election cycle; sources ranging from CNN to the Huffington Post took his existence on faith.
Mirvish and Eitan also manipulated the spin cycle to spread rumors that Paris Hilton was feuding with McCain, that Sarah Palin received a $900 spray-on tan and that Joe the Plumber had a tryst with SNL's Kristen Wiig.
However, Mirvish and Gorlin decided to reveal themselves the week after the election, when reports surfaced that an anonymous McCain source said Palin didn’t know Africa was a continent.
“Someone said it, but it wasn’t us,” Mirvish says. “So we took credit for it.”
Mirvish posted the claim Tuesday on Eisenstadt’s blog and then spent a few hours at the American Film Market. By the time he got home, MSNBC’s David Shuster was reporting the Eisenstadt-Africa connection as a breaking news story.
Eisenstadt’s political career may be over, but Mirvish and Gorlin’s has just begun. They already have received an offer from the publishers of Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Borat” book. And, says Mirvish, “We still think he's a brand. We're doing meetings next week. Eisenstadt still has to carry on.”
Mirvish is nothing else if not persistent. He made his first film, "Omaha," in 1995; when Sundance rejected the comedy for its lineup, Mirvish responded by launching Slamdance. When he wrote and directed the “real-estate musical” "Open House" in 2004, he raised a ruckus when the Academy refused to activate its live-musical category that year.
I spoke with Mirvish as he was preparing and shuttling his three kids to school on Thursday morning. His wife, a doctor, had worked the night shift.
Did your agent know you were doing this? Or anyone else in the industry?
It's very generous for you to presume I have an agent. I've had a few over the years; I don't have one right now. There's a number of people in the TV world who knew about us and our shenanigans -- production companies, networks. JJ Abrams' company Bad Robot, Paramount TV, CBS, Comedy Central, Sony TV, Ashton Kutcher's company...
So basically, it was a massive left-wing conspiracy?
(Laughs) Right. Not that any of them were involved at all, because they weren't. (At this point, chaos takes over as his daughter Becca starts to scream.) Zip it up, no, OK, take it off. Who left me in charge? You know what, Dana, let's continue this a little bit later.
[Later]
It goes back to "Open House.” We did an online video game where you play the characters and we put it on the "Open House" website. I was in New York and I send out an email to my friends saying, "Let's shoot a promo for the videogame." And the only one who showed up was Eitan.
We came up with this character, a fast-talking reactionary New Yorker. People liked the character. And when Eitan was back in LA, he said, "Let's shoot something else with this guy." The character's name was Sheldon and the film was "Sheldon." It got into the HBO Comedy Arts Festival. We called it a short pilot. And we started talking to some TV people. We started developing the idea for a TV show, "The Bitter Valet," and started pitching that around. We even talked to Michael Rappaport about starring in it.
Along the way, it was going to play at the Montreal Just For Laughs Festival and we thought, "Let's shoot a couple more of these promos. It's so easy, it's a guy driving my car.” This was going on about the same time that the (Obama girl) ad was on YouTube. So we thought, “Let's couch these as Giuliani ads.” We didn’t make any reference to Sheldon and we took our names off the credits. Three of them were shot on the way to CAA.
People started trying to figure out who did it. ABC thought it was the company who did the Swift Boat ads; we may have left a few clues to make them think that. Those wound up getting written up in USA Today, New York Times, ABC and MSNBC.
So then the strike started and that put TV plans on hold. But while that was going on, we started to create this other character, Martin Eisenstadt. We wanted a pundit to talk about the importance of the Giuliani ads - these fake ads that were getting four or five times as many hits as Giuliani’s real ones.
We realized was Martin was a character for a whole different show. He was based on these ludicrous blowhards who are associated with vanity think tanks. And of course he had to have a consultancy named after him, “The Eisenstadt Group,” and he was a pundit/consultant/lobbyist -- everyone knew him, no one ever respected him and he was one guest spot on “Hardball” away from getting his own show.
We conceived “The Pundit” around how he would say something that would offend and it would center around the spin control. As a proof of concept, we had Martin being interviewed on Iraqi TV about opening casinos in the green zone. We shot that in my garage; you can see the green screen in the corner. It's about eight minutes long and it becomes progressively more absurd as he talks about how well the Indians have done with them and then he gets them confused with India. That led us to issuing an apology to India that got picked up in every Indian paper: "McCain advisor apologizes to India". We didn't really promulgate it. Daily Kos and Mother Jones discovered it on their own.
By this point, there were people online who knew that Martin Eisenstadt was a hoax and there was a pattern emerging: Fall for the hoax and then 10 minutes or 24 hours later people would say, “Ah ha! He's a hoax.” That freed us up -- if you believed it, it was your own damn fault. In August, we shot the fake BBC series, “The Last Republican,” and divided it into 10 webisodes. Put it up on YouTube. Meanwhile, we had to keep (Eisenstadt’s) blog going. Part of doing that was doing other hoaxes along the way. When McCain did the ads comparing Obama to Paris Hilton, I thought, “I bet Paris Hilton’s family were big Republican contributors.” By now, we said Eisenstadt was a McCain consultant, so we said the Hiltons were calling and the phones were ringing off the hook. The Daily Show had no idea it was fake. Paris Hilton comes out with her video and this one- or two-day story became this two-week story about Paris Hilton. That's an example of what we call “speculative truth” – it’s a variation on Steven Colbert’s “truthiness.”
We were doing real research. We went to the same SEC report (re: the Palin wardrobe and makeup expenses) and I went to IMDB and saw the names of the two Emmy-winning makeup artists, but there was this other makeup artist who was paid $900 and had no credits. I go to her MySpace page – oh, she does spray-on tans! So we put out the word that Palin had a $900 spray-on tan.
Maybe she did.
Well, someone got something for $900 from this lady. The fake pundit was revealing real news. And then we had Martin hanging out at the SNL afterparty and he said a drunk Seth Myers said Obama would be on the show. Anyone will believe anything if your mention the afterparty. We had him say that "Patrick someone" from Endeavor said that Joe the Plumber was talking with him about being on "The Bachelor" -- honestly, we do think that is a good idea. He’s a really good-looking guy. And that Joe the Plumber was canoodling with Kristen Wiig.
We thought the election was over and then we hear that a “disgruntled McCain advisor” said Palin didn't know Africa was a continent. We didn't know who said that -- so we took credit for it. Someone did it, but it wasn’t us. I posted it on the blog, went to the AFM for a couple of hours and saw David Shuster on MSNBC with, “Breaking news! Martin Eisenstadt is taking the credit!” And the irony is that Shuster had two pundits on the show with him and these guys are bigger losers than our fake guy. Our fake consultant probably did more to win over McCain votes than the real pundits in their air-conditioned offices who were trying to get on MSNBC.
To Hollywood’s credit, no one ratted us out. New York, Washington, DC -- they don't read the comedy blogs. Hollywood -- they don't read Wonkette. No one ever made the connection. We were living in two worlds.
We still think he's a brand. We're doing meetings next week. He still has to carry on. Meanwhile, we have been working on a feature project, “Between Us,” based on an off-Broadway play. Chris O’Donnell and Skeet Ulrich are attached and we're looking for money.
I used to be a speechwriter for Tom Harkin in DC and worked for the Washington Monthly. Eitan used to work for Jack Kemp. That helps the verisimilitude. We know (politicians) never deny anything and it gives you complete freedom to keep doing what you were doing. Prove that I exist? Prove that I don't exist. They're telling you off the record I don't exist and I'm telling you on the record that I do.
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The truth, it seems, is stranger than the fiction; and if I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times also: "the fiction is often the last refuge of the truth."
The true sources of the 'ContinentGate' leaks have yet to be discovered, but when they are, Joe the Plumber will fix them, and we will make them famous.
The fact is that I, Sarah Palin, did not know that the NAFTA is a trade agreement between our country and Canada and also Mexico. And also, I didn't know that Africa is a continent and not a country. In fact, I kinda still don't.
Now, let me just say here that running for Vice President has humbled me greatly. I now know just exactly what it is that the VP does every day: deal with complicated things of which I know very little. That is why I am going back to Alaska, where my talents as a Governor and a hockey mom will be more fully appreciated.
For more information about my insights and the knowledge that I have regarding foreign policy matters, please visit my website:
http://www.SarahPalin.com
and remember:
Sarah Palin TwentyTwelve!
You betcha.
Posted by: I, Sarah Palin | November 16, 2008 at 01:22 PM
I have known Mr. Mirvish since his salad days, when he was making "Omaha: the Movie" on a wing and a prayer. That he continues to manipulate the media and Hollywood power brokers with such skill and elan does not come as a surprise. The Whirling Mirvish strikes again!
Posted by: Tony Moton | February 19, 2009 at 05:54 AM