The allegorical Riley Thomas (blogs.citypages.com).
by Steve Timmer
Jun 13, 2012, 7:30 PM

Kurt, the reviews are in: it’s a giant clunker!

Look at my face! This is what you will become!

That’s the old Riley Thomas talking to the young Riley Thomas in a short narrated by the political (and apparently artistic) naif, Kurt Bills. City Pages quotes the trailer:

Bills, narrating the trailer, says: “[Riley] will be given a second chance. The right choices will lead to growth and family; the wrong choice, despair… A chance meeting, transcending time and space, will change his life forever.”

Just like the Twilight Zone, which is ironic and Freudian when it comes to the Bills’ campaign.

A more transparent and laughable allegory to what Bills thinks is in store for the United States if it doesn’t follow his and Ron Paul’s lead could not be made. Bills will have to transcend more than time and space to win a seat in the U.S. Senate.

The other ironic and Fruedian thing is that Bills is right; this is what the U.S. will become without health insurance for (a) that horrid skin condition (really, I think it’s just ink), (b) dental work, (c) chemical dependency, and (d) durable glasses.

There is apparently a debut of this stinker tonight at 9 PM at the Riverview Theater. If you hurry, you can still miss it.

And please, God, let Keith Downey, Bills’ campaign chair, introduce it.

Thanks to MNO for old Riley’s real message.

Update: From a Minnesota Public Radio web article about the movie:

Mike Osskopp, Bills’ campaign manager, said the time-travel story is a metaphor for his candidate’s message that the U.S. is running out of time to do something about its national debt.

* * *

Osskopp said that with 20 years of experience working on campaigns, he was “the biggest doubter” about doing such a film. “But some younger folks on the staff thought this could reach a different audience, a younger group of people who might not normally listen to our message,” Osskopp said.

Bills has been teaching high school too long. This stinker will hold the Guinness Book of World Records title for the most clumsy and amateurish allegory until the end of recorded history.

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