Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-CA) has been getting some bad press lately. He’s been caught spending $10,000 a month in campaign donor funds to hire a limousine service in the Los Angeles area. Why does he need a limousine all the time in LA, when his congressional district is 350 miles away? We now know the answer, and we can’t believe we missed this story earlier this year! In addition to running for governor in California next year, Swalwell has now taken on another job. He’s a bigshot Hollywood movie producer!
It’s true!
And his first major motion picture is off to a greeaaaaat start!
The announcement was made earlier this year that Swalwell would be collaborating with noted philosopher-genius Sean Penn as co-executive producers. They’re producing a crime drama called “The Gun on Second Street,” with Rohit Karn Batra signed on to direct. Roseanne Barr’s ex-husband, Tom Arnold, who disappeared in a cloud of Trump Derangement Syndrome a few years ago, is set to star in the film.
This movie sounds like a hoot! It doesn’t sound like it will be good. We’re sure it will be chock-full of anti-Second Amendment nonsense and liberal moralizing with these two executive producers involved. But it still sounds unintentionally hilarious.
Principal photography just got underway last week in the red state of West Virginia. You can just picture Sean Penn and Swalwell, sitting in the back of Swalwell’s rented limousine and swilling champagne as they look down their noses and laugh at “the poors” in West Virginia.
We’re not sure if it’s strictly “legal” for a member of Congress to spend campaign donor funds on a limousine while acting as a bigshot movie producer. But we’ll leave it to the Federal Election Commission to sort that out.
This is such a great opportunity for Eric Swalwell! If everything goes off without a hitch, he’ll be the only Democrat running for governor of California next year with an authentic movie credit under his belt. That’s some serious “street cred” with California’s liberal voters.
Unfortunately, there’s been a little bit of a hiccup with the movie. As in, the entire 40-person crew walked off the set last Thursday. It turns out that the producers of the film had misclassified all of them as 1099 contractors instead of employees. The workers were being underpaid and had no benefits. They voted to organize with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) but say the producers have refused to engage with them.
“I am a lifelong supporter of labor,” said Swalwell after his entire crew walked off the set.
“While I am prohibited by Congressional ethics rules from participating in the negotiations between production and labor, I joined the film expecting labor standards would be adhered to. I urge the production team to seek a fair outcome for the crew. Should that not be achieved, I will remove my name from the film’s screen credits.”
The threat of losing Eric Swalwell’s prestigious name on the movie certainly sounds threatening. That statement is a little bit wishy-washy, however. It’s true that Swalwell can’t participate in labor negotiations.
Executive producers like Swalwell have several duties when it comes to the movies they’re making. They bring investors on board to finance the film, by riding around in a limousine in LA. They oversee the main producers and sign off on the hiring of major talent like Tom Arnold. And they are supposed to ensure union compliance to protect their employees.
That’s literally the job!
So, Swalwell can’t participate in labor negotiations, but he was the guy who was supposed to make sure that the employees were classified correctly, so they receive union wages and benefits. This is only his first movie, and Eric Swalwell already stiffed his union employees!
That’s not very “labor-friendly,” Mr. Swalwell! The liberal voters in California don’t look kindly on rich fat-cats who stiff their workers out of a fair living wage.
As for Sean Penn, he’s already detached from the movie. He bailed faster than Mrs. Swalwell when she found out her congressman husband was having sex with Fang Fang the Chinese spy!
What a sad sack! Nothing ever seems to go Eric Swalwell’s way. This was his chance to break in as a fancy pants Hollywood producer, and his first movie is already going up in flames. And so much for Tom Arnold’s big comeback!