Jake Gyllenhaal's Father

Broke My Heart a progressive liberal’s perzine for smartphones #2

A-BEGGIN' WE WILL GO ON KICKSTARTER—FOR AMERICA!

PIC: LAST DAYS AT KING EDDY SALOON, DOWNTOWN LA JAN PERRY FOR MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES

A-BEGGIN' WE WILL GO ON KICKSTARTER—FOR AMERICA!

Creatures of Hollywood have no right to ask for money on Kickstarter. Kickstarter is one of those online businesses, the best known of its kind, where struggling artists and cultural activists can go to publicize their projects in order to solicit donations. Crowdsourcing I think they call it. I can't say I endorse this approach to

fundraising unreservedly. I think an activist would fare better working within her own geographical community where her project has more urgency; and that an artist ought to build up his audience via his own private network first before hitting up the general public for cold hard cash. Then there's that matter of the service fee in which you see a hefty cut—10-12%—of your proceeds go to the financial institutions that underwrite Kickstarter, which are

probably the financial institutions that have kept you struggling in the first place. But if you accept the premise that these online gimmicks exist to serve the culturally needy, you also have to agree that only the needy have a right to use them. Yes, I know. A rich man has a right to stand in a bread line as much as anyone, but why would he want to? Which brings me back to two particular

Creatures of Hollywood and their crowdsourcing project. The partners in this particularly cockamamie enterprise are none other than actor Jason Biggs, star of the American Pie comedies from a few years ago, and his sidekick, commercial director Stephen Gyllenhaal, whose biggest claim to fame is that he is the father of movie stars Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Their project? A short,

humorous, but presumably instructive film on how a young person should audition, ahem, run for public office. “I star in a movie coming out this summer called Grassroots,” writes Biggs on the homepage of his project, which is modesly entitled Jason Biggs Saves American Democracy, “and thanks to what I Iearned while playing this role, I have become totally passionate about grassroots

politics on the local level. Therefore, I've decided to dedicate my abilities to helping every single grassroots candidate in America, so that we can turn America around and get it going in the right direction again!! That's why I'm launching this Kickstarter campaign to raise money for a How-to-Get-Elected-Grassroots-Style video starring me, to be directed by the director of Grassroots, Stephen Gyllenhaal.”

This is some of the “cool stuff” (Jason's words) you get for your donation: For $3 you get a “shout-out” from director Stephen Gyllenhaal on Twitter; for $15 you can submit your headshot to Stephen Gyllenhaal to be kept “on file”; for $150 you get to submit your script to Stephen Gyllenhaal's “team” for “professional coverage”; for $250 you get notes on your YouTube video from Stephen Gyllenhaal; for $350 you get coverage on your script from the

big guy himself, Stephen Gyllenhaal; for $1000 you get “a chance to work with Jason Biggs”; for $1500 you get to play a round of miniature golf with Stephen Gyllenhaal; for $2000 you get an acting lesson from Stephen Gyllenhaal; and for a neat $10,000 Stephen Gyllenhaal will hold a read-through of your script with you via Skype. Oh, and there are the usual posters, mugs, and blooper reels thrown in as well.

As Jack Paar would say, I kid you not. But it makes me wonder how much these two bozos are kidding the American public and why in the name of God they would want to do so. Jason Biggs is still a bankable name, Stephen Gyllenhaal not so much, but either of them could raise the very modest $5000 they set as their fundraising goal with a swipe of their American Express cards. So why didn't they?

The answer lies in the very sobriquet given them: they are Creatures of Hollywood. Hollywood loves cool, and Kickstarter is cool. Kickstarter will get your image out there, position you as a struggling artist no matter how much is in your bank account, publicize your name in association with a lofty-sounding project. What aging creature of Hollywood whose star is dimming wouldn't leap at that, especially for no effort and

free of charge? Ah, but you say, it isn't free of charge. What about that hefty service fee on Kickstarter? Well, they charge that only if you meet your fundraising goal; if you don't meet it, your potential donors needn't honor their pledges and you don't complete your project, which means Kickstarter doesn't take their fee from you. How's that for prime publicity for no work and no money? As it was, the boys did fail to meet their

fundraising goal. They got close, though! No, I lie. In the two months of their campaign they raised $497 in pledges from 23 potential donors, along with one who was potentially willing to cough up $1000 for that chance to work with Jason Biggs. Number of pledges for Stephen Gyllenhaal to read your script? Watch your YouTube video? Give you an acting lesson? Play miniature golf with you? Send you a Twitter shout-out? Zero, zero, zero, zero, and...zero.

Damn. And I really did want to watch Jason Biggs humorously fill out the forms to run for office. I wonder if he could have come up with the forty-buck filing fee.

JAN PERRY FOR MAYOR, SAYS LA CITIZEN

“I live in Councilwoman Jan Perry's district, which means I live a stone's throw from Skid Row and a pebble fling from King Eddy that you see in the picture above. They're going to close the King for a little while and re-open it as a hip new bar, which means my friends and I will have no more place to go for a cheap glass of beer. I already see

the hipsters here. They come in with their sneakers and their backpacks making like they're poor. I heard one of them say to her friend, ‘This is just like New York before they got rid of the bums.’ When the bar changes they'll be here all the time. “I hate what Downtown is becoming. They're closing all the residence hotels so there's noplace for us to live. When Jan Perry became councilwoman we got free public showers and a

cheap laundromat put in over on San Pedro, and there's a stack of cheap apartments there too that she helped to put in. Although not enough. “My colored friend Arthur is blind and homeless, he's always carrying his big duffel bag on his back wherever he goes, but he's got a good temper and he always has a smile on his face when anyone helps him cross the street or get a bus. He says he's voting for Jan Perry next spring, because she

says she'll get rid of all the corrupt politicians. If Jan Perry is good enough for Arthur, she's good enough for me.”

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