A collaboration between comic author David Rees and comedy news site 23/6, Get Your War On is the first video interpretation of Rees’ scathingly sarcastic and widely syndicated three-panel comic, which premiered three weeks after the 9/11 attacks.
At about three minutes apiece, the weekly vids are essentially a longer-form version of the strip — two office drones chatting about the war and American politics, sometimes supported by minor characters — bolstered by some scene-setting audio-visual geegaws, e.g., phones ringing, papers being shuffled, and voices suffused with bored desperation. It’s basically animated ennui.
“The big difference between the video and the comic is, in the videos the characters can have more involved conversations, and go back and forth from position to position in one episode,” Rees said. “I want the videos to be less about current events, and more about how people talk about current events and make up their minds about positions… Also, I’m hoping Steven Spielberg will watch the videos and fall in love with me and agree to direct Zombie E.T., which is a 3,000 page screenplay I’m working on. Basically E.T. comes back to earth as a zombie and goes buck wild.”
Rees says he’d been approached by other video producers, but he went with 23/6 because it “just felt right.” Rees decided to launch the videos now to promote his upcoming GYWO anthology. Though he doesn’t get a cut of any video advertising, he is being paid to write the episodes.
Rees’s current contract is for 10 videos.
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