A vote for mirth
Two brothers with ties to Clearwater are partisans only to comedy in their cartoon sendup of attack politics, scoring big with Web users.
By COLETTE BANCROFT
Published July 27, 2004
Finally, something the country can stand united on: This Land, a two-minute Web cartoon cheerily lampooning George W. Bush, John Kerry and the whole sorry political process.
This Land is the brainchild of Gregg and Evan Spiridellis, brothers and partners in an animation company, JibJab Media, in Santa Monica, Calif.
Gregg, 33, wrote This Land, and 30-year-old Evan animated it. They grew up in New Jersey. Their dad, Nick Spiridellis, who lives in Clearwater now, says, "Needless to say, I'm proud of them."
Released July 9 on the Web site www.jibjab.com the flash animation satire has scored so many hits - 5-million in the first week - that the site has crashed repeatedly. But getting to it is worth the wait just so the presidential campaign will make you laugh instead of snarl for a change.
Set to the tune of folk singer Woody Guthrie's classic paean to democracy, This Land Is Your Land, the cartoon's lyrics are sung by the goofy dancing figures of Bush and Kerry, gleefully trading insults: "You have more waffles than a House of Pancakes / You offer flip-flops, I offer tax breaks" vs. "You can't say "nuclear,' that really scares me / Sometimes a brain can come in quite handy."
Bush waves a cowboy hat as he rides a missile to its target a la Dr. Strangelove, and Kerry counters every insult by waving his three Purple Hearts.
The lyrics are a hilarious sendup of attack politics, the background details clever (like the gas station sign with $9-a-gallon prices) and the Bill-and-Hillary moment priceless.
Adrienne Spiridellis, Evan's wife, did the cartoon's music, and the wickedly accurate voices were supplied by Jim Meskimen.
JibJab's marketing clients have included Sony, Kraft and Disney, and the brothers wrote and illustrated a children's book, Are You Grumpy, Santa?, which they are developing as a feature film.
The Spiridellis brothers have been making online cartoons as advertisements for themselves for several years. Their earlier political cartoons include Ahnuld for Governor, shown at the Sundance Film Festival, and Bush and Al Gore rapping in Capitol Ill.
But This Land has taken off like a rocket. Within a week of its release, it was popping up in millions of e-mail in-boxes all over the world and being broadcast with subtitles on Dutch television.
Nick Spiridellis says, "Me being an old entrepreneur, I keep saying, "Why don't you have more advertising on the site?' "
Spiridellis, who has lived in Clearwater for eight years and runs a communications company, CIQ Inc., says his sons have always been creative. "Evan first expressed interest in being a cartoonist from the age of 5 or 6," and Gregg is "a very talented writer."
Humor was always part of the family dynamic, too. "I guess they've taken it to the next level."
When Evan was in high school and his father talked to him about careers, "I told him, do prints. Being the next Rembrandt is hard. You can make a living doing prints.
"I told him, I don't want to see you at the corner gas station selling velvet Elvises."
For a recent birthday, Nick says, "He sent me a signed, numbered velvet Elvis - which I sent back to him for his 30th birthday."
Since This Land became a phenomenon, he says, "I've heard from people I haven't heard from for years. They like to say they knew them when."
He is close to his sons. "Normally I talk to them once a day, and I go out to see them every six weeks, whether they need it or not."
Since the cartoon hit the media, they've been talking two or three times a day, just so the boys can keep him up to date. "They've had movie offers, show offers.
"When they gave me the list this morning, they were about to be interviewed for Australian TV. It's gone worldwide."
His sons, he says, "aren't political in the sense of going to rallies and stuff. But they're very knowledgeable. They're very up on what's going on."
With political debate so acridly polarized, much of the appeal of This Land is its blithe evenhandedness: It makes fun of everybody.
As Bush and Kerry sing together at the end, "From the liberal wieners to the right-wing nut jobs, this land belongs to you and me." Woody Guthrie would dig it.
-- Colette Bancroft can be reached at 727 893-8435 or bancroft@sptimes.com