Spike Jonze + YouTube = Al Gore is President? (or How the Wooden VP Became a Real Boy)

Going through unlabeled tracks in my iTunes library, I came across “What’s Up Fatlip?” by Fatlip (formerly of The Pharcyde). It got me thinking of the song’s excellent video – directed by Spike Jonze (see below).

Around the same time he was making videos and documentaries with Fatip, Jonze created a piece for the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. It’s in the Brightcove player you see above. If I remember correctly, the video aired in the afternoon during one of the sessions early in the convention week. As such, it was relegated to that portion of the convention that only those of us in the hall and C-Span viewers witnessed. Count yourself among the few to have seen it.

Had there been a distribution channel like YouTube in 2000, this is the kind of video that could have been tremendously effective. Apart from being too long (remember it was for a the most partisan captive audience imaginable), this piece had the right stuff to spread far and chop down Gore’s wooden image – not so much by defying that image, but reveling in it.

Forget the fact that you see Al Gore shirtless and body surfing. Any candidate can take off their shirt. Gore strips off the trappings of a life in politics.

The scene of Gore Family Movie Night is great. You see all of the things people tended to not like about Gore, that he is cerebral and a bit nitpicky…but it’s about which movies to pop in the VCR – and even how they get watched! As his kids gang up on him – even mocking his voice and demeanor – you see those qualities that were off-putting in the first debate in an “everyday people” light. All of those male voters who “wanted to have a beer” with Bush could watch that scene and instantly identify with the dad getting ribbed by his wife and kids.

I know I can relate.

Watch the scenes with Tipper and think about all the contrived videos you’ve ever seen of candidates and their wives (I’m looking at you, Mitt Romney). Watch his confidence and comfort in talking about global warming (famously verboten from the campaign at large). It’s no surprise that people started to like Gore more after An Inconvenient Truth. Jonze got that same performance years earlier.

For all of Hillary Clinton’s meticulously crafted attempts at humor, her trilogy of Song Contest films pale next to the humanizing power of Jonze’s loose, disarming Gore film. Hillary’s videos are clever and well produced, but how many of the views are like gawkers at a car crash…

“Oh my God…is she dancing?” or “Is that Bill? I can’t believe it.”

It’s a shock to see the Clinton’s in that light. It’s effective, but clearly canned. Jonze escapes that with Gore. From the last scene, it is clear that Jonze has just been rolling tape after tape after tape. It’s really just Gore talking…being Gore – to fall into the cliche.

Long disappeared, this video found re-release in the inaugural issue of Wolphin, a DVD magazine of unreleased short films. This first issue also contains the great Soldier’s Pay, by David O. Russell – director of I Heart Huckabee’s, Three Kings, and indie classic Spanking the Monkey. You can subscribe to Wolphin, or buy back-issues on their website.

The page on the Gore film features an interview with Jonze:

Q: So you just spent one day with them? You started in Carthage, Tennessee?

SJ: Yeah, I went down there to Tennessee and it was supposed to be just an afternoon. I guess he had liked my movie Being John Malkovich and so from that had I don’t know why he gave me this sort of access. It was very intimate and personal in terms of letting a cameraman into your home, but I guess that after the afternoon, they felt comfortable with me, so they invited me to go on their vacation. They were leaving that day to go to North Carolina, so in the middle of the afternoon the helicopters came and landed in the Tennessee farmhouse and we went to the army base and got on Air Force Two and flew to North Carolina. (Wolphin @ McSweeney’s)

For your viewing pleasure, here is the Spike Jonze-directed video for What’s Up Fatlip: