By Gus Saltonstall
For those who might not remember Zack Weiner, he ran to represent the Upper West Side in City Council District 6 in 2021 against the likes of Gale Brewer, Maria Danzilo, and Sara Lind. He finished in a distant 6th place, but made national headlines after the New York Post ran a story, titled — “Manhattan City Council Candidate Caught With Dominatrix in Leaked Video.”
It turns out, Weiner, along with campaign manager Joe Gallagher, were doing the whole thing with satire in mind, and now are releasing a pseudo-documentary film called “Citizen Weiner” about the process.
“When the film industry shut down due to COVID-19, Zack and his friend Joe embarked on a unique project: to make a film about running for City Council, while actually running for New York’s City Council,” the description for the movie reads.
The movie debuted this month at the Slamdance Film Festival in Utah. The details surrounding a wider release date have not been ironed out yet, but the film about the Upper West Side political process is expected to make it to Upper West Side screens at some point.
“I started this together with my campaign manager Joe Gallagher with the intention of making a film that draws attention to local politics,” Weiner told West Side Rag in a recent phone call. “At the outset of the project, the national political conversation created such a disconnect from the world we were observing on a local level. On a local level problems become a lot more personal rather than global.”
The idea was sparked after Zack and Joe attended a Community Board 7 meeting in January of 2020, and saw a “very engaged voter base” talking about neighborhood bike lanes.
Zack and Joe, who met working on a movie in 2016, both live on the Upper West Side and currently run a production company called Manhattan Movie Studio, based in the neighborhood.
“Joe and I had a mantra for our campaign and our movie that we repeated to each other throughout — ‘it’s funny but it’s not a joke,'” Weiner told the Rag. “What we hoped to accomplish was the production of an entertaining and funny movie that highlighted a true reality of politics — the ways in which it is accessible, the process of getting involved, the fun and impact that can be had in your community, and the larger discourse that surrounds politics.”
“We always wanted any of the humor to come from us, rather than some sort of pranking other people,” he added.
Weiner, who had a fully functioning candidate website that included a platform with ideas specific to the Upper West Side, also consistently participated in candidate forums and debates.
He also gave an extensive interview with West Side Rag at the time, where he showed legitimate knowledge about local issues: City Council Election 2021: Zack Weiner Is Ready to Convince You He’s Not ‘Way Too Young’
Weiner emphasized that he was not faking all aspects of the campaign.
“The campaign’s stances and proposals were not satirical in any way,” Weiner said. “For instance, we’d love to see the schools move more towards financial literacy in the curriculum. It is our hope that proposals like Universal Basic Investment are considered by the powers that be, and, also, that leadership works in practical ways to fill vacant storefronts and support small businesses with programs like Start Up Retail.”
For those Upper West Siders that might say a City Council election is not the place for satire or comedy, Gallagher pointed to the discourse around national politics in general.
“I would urge them to turn on Fox News or CNN,” he told the Rag. “Our leadership has made a mockery of political discourse long before we did. The actual actions we were taking were serious and in line with what we thought the issues were in the neighborhood.”
As far as how the first audience reaction to the movie went at the Slamdance Film Festival, Weiner called it “really positive.”
“Overwhelmingly really positive,” he said. “People laughed and enjoyed it, but also saw some good in it. They didn’t come away thinking it was cynical, which was our big worry because we did not want to appear that we were laughing at the process, we were invested, we cared.”
“We just thought that it would be okay to be a little goofy while doing it,” he added.
I definitely need to see this….Congrats to Joseph and Zack.
Nothing wrong with satire. The 5 boro political process has been so dysfunctional that if you don’t use satire you could cry!
I can’t comment until I see the film. It’s not as if entertainers don’t go into politics. They do – and the list includes President Ronald Reagan, Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger, Senator Al Franken, Congressman Fred Grandy, and Senator Fred Thompson. Zack Weiner might decide to run again for something … he has no idea what the future will bring.
The entire city and state legislators are laughable considering the destruction of our quality of life, decline in subway safety and continued declines of our neighborhoods with so many vacant stores, homeless shelters and mentally ill wandering all day, why not make a satire on it?
If the film exposes both the cronyism and dead wood that exists in our current governance, would be worth a watch for sure.
Maybe it can be screened at New Plaza Cinema one weekend?
Looking forward to seeing when it is released here!
Zack Weiner for President!
I still think about Weiner’s and Gallagher’s Startup Retail Initiative, which profiled then 12-year-old Obocho Peters and his mother, Sasha, owners of Obocho’s Closet, a thrift store in Brooklyn. It was a heartwarming event, which took place in a vacant retail space on the UWS!
I had a feeling this was the case in 2021. That was quite a race!
Would love to see this film. What a great idea Zack and Joseph had. I hope they get the opportunity to distribute it commercially or otherwise figure out a way to show it. Good luck!