To most of the country, Jimmy McMillan came out of nowhere and seemed to be everywhere overnight. (Not us, though; we’d been chronicling his electoral shenanigans for about a year before he blew up. He was like our Shins, pre–Garden State.) A documentary, Damn!, which has been playing at various New York venues and will be available for download and on DVD on August 16, explores what happened to McMillan when he became an instant phenomenon. The obvious answer is: It was awesome! He made a lot of money and everyone loved him! But director Aaron Fisher-Cohen has a more sober take. “Documenting this journey, the film is able to raise many difficult, yet critical, questions,” he says. “Are viral hits victimized by the media or are they complicit? Have we all been transformed into attention-mongers, willing to sacrifice dignity for, now quantifiable, views on a screen?”
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