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University of maryland film targets governor Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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U. of Md. Student Film Targets Governor
Tim Daly, a 22-year-old activist and president of University of Maryland's student body, waits patiently outside the high, black iron gate of the governor's mansion. His camera crew lurks quietly behind him.
"I was hoping to meet with Governor Ehrlich, please," Daly says, pressing the button on an intercom for Gov. Robert Ehrlich's house.
Finally, out comes a security guard. Not the governor.
So begins Daly's hunt for Maryland's CEO, depicted in his half-hour documentary "Bob & Me," a take-off of Michael Moore's "Roger & Me, " the 1989 film that shows Moore pursuing former General Motors boss Roger Smith to confront him about laying off 33,000 auto workers in Flint, Mich.
Daly, who produced his film with $8,000 in private donations raised by a student-run political action committee, sees his pursuit of the governor as a venture similar to Moore's.
University tuition has increased by as much as 54 percent over the last four years, with the percentage increase at most campuses in the university system ranging from the low 30s to the mid 40s. An additional increase averaging 9.4 percent has been approved for next fall.
Daly and his producers hope the movie will inspire lawmakers to pass pending legislation that calls for caps on future tuition increases tied to requirements that Ehrlich increase funding for the university system. With only 12 days remaining in the 2004 General Assembly session, they showed the film Thursday in a legislative hearing room.
Daly hopes to find a wider audience with a Saturday premiere at the American Film Institute in Silver Spring. The event will raise money for his political committee, Student Citizens Action Network.
Likely absent from the screenings will be the governor. Daly never did get a meeting with him, and Ehrlich's press office on Wednesday said it never got a request for one.
"I've never met this kid," Ehrlich said at an unrelated news conference Wednesday, adding that maybe Daly has a promising career in stand-up comedy.
"Maybe we will buy him a cup of coffee sometime after session," Ehrlich joked.
The film splices interviews with financially strapped students and laid-off staffers into short bits of Daly hunting down the governor, who is depicted only in television news footage.
The humor of Daly peering up at a construction site poster on campus, saying: "Lemme get this straight. You cut $100 million, and then you put your name on all the signs?" is balanced with the seriousness of the real-life interviews, all in the style of Moore's documentaries.
"We needed to document how these decisions are affecting students and staff members," Daly said. "We needed to hold accountable the people who are making decisions that are destructive to the university system."
Daly may be best known in Annapolis for towing an old Ford Pinto to the Statehouse, after Ehrlich was quoted by The Washington Post as saying the state can't afford a Cadillac of a healthcare system and might have to settle for a Pinto.
"They should take us seriously, because while we may have started out with these outlandish things like the Pinto, now we've started our own political action committee and produced our own professionally made film," said Byron Macfarlane, a University of Maryland junior and a producer of the movie.
"While parts of it are humorous, we're also dead serious about it, too."
The University of Maryland isn't endorsing Daly's movie, although officials "appreciate that Tim and the other students are concerned about the future of the university," said Cassandra Robinson, a university spokeswoman.
Daly says the snubs from Ehrlich began in October, when the governor ditched an appearance on the weekly talk show Daly hosts on student-run 88.1 WMUC. Shortly after, Daly started the political action committee.
If Ehrlich misses the screenings, Daly and his partners have a plan to get their message heard, said another of its producers, Drew Vetter.
"We'll send him up a copy."
On the Net:
www.scanpac.net
www.gov.state.md.us
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04/02/2004 04:44
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