Making The Short

In November of 2003, MoveOn.org launched "Bush in 30 Seconds", a contest whose goal was to "bring new talent and new messages into the world of mainstream political advertising". Captalizing on our mutual love of 20's and 30's animation, a depression-era setting seemed like a natural fit to describe the first presidency since Herbert Hoover to end his term with job losses.

After the contest ended and the votes were counted, "Brother, Can You Spare a Job?" was nominated as one of four finalists in the "Best Animation" category. Although we didn't win, the awards ceremony in New York gave us the opportunity to meet some of the people whose work inspired "Brother..." in the first place, including Tom Tomorrow, Michael Moore, and Janeane Garofalo.

Rejuvenated by our experience, we decided to expand our commercial into a full length short cartoon. By the time our plane had brought us home, we had a rough draft of the script. As the months progressed and we began to fill in our outline with details, our original plan to simply animate around the song from the commercial ("Blue Blues" by Red McKenzie) took a life of its own. What was originally supposed to be 3 minutes has now expanded into a 7-minute short.

The end result is a tribute to all those who have fallen through society's cracks due to the negligence of leaders who are too busy patting themselves on the back for being "optimistic" than paying attention to how the economy is really doing.

Distribution

We will soon be pressing a limited number of DVDs which we hope to distribute to as many people and film-festivals as we can. This is a non-profit venture, so anything we sell is going to be at cost. For details on where an how you can get a DVD, check out the news page.

In keeping with the non-profit spirit, the short itself (along with this site) are all licensed under a Creative Commons License. Feel free to copy, share, and host "Brother, Can You Spare A Job?" as much as you want.

Did somebody say "recovery"?

Despite strong, yet quickly diminishing, job creation for the first half of 2004, the monthly average over the past year is still well below the 150,000 new jobs per month needed to keep up with population growth.

Even with a sharp spike in job creation during March and April, the unemployment rate is at the exact same level it was in January (5.6%). Shouldn't adding new jobs mean less people are looking for work?

The growth in temporary employment has been at a much higher pace than full-time, which means those who are rejoining the workforce are often greeted with much lower wages, no job security, and no health insurance.

The stock market has been seeing steady growth lately, but the percentage of the GDP used for labor compensation is at its lowest level in almost 40 years. The four percent drop in labor compensation since 2001 is mirrored by the four percent rise in corporate profits over the same period. Raising the bottom line hasn't done anything to raise those on the bottom rung.

Although some economists point out that wages have grown 2.2% over the past year, that number is offset by the 3.1% rate of inflation. Even if you were one of the lucky few to get a raise over the last year, odds are that your dollars are still worth less now than they were four years ago.