When Daniel Robbins set out to make a reality television-like comedy about local elections in Manhattan, he knew his preferred candidate, Zack Weiner, for city council, would likely lose, but the film itself has been a runaway success.
In “Citizen Weiner,” Robbins follows Zack Weiner and his campaign staff as they collectively gun to defeat front-runner Gale Brewer in District 6 on the Upper West Side. Brewer has held the seat intermittently for 13 years.
“I’m surprised that the production even made it over the finish line,” Robbins told The Epoch Times.
The film’s release a week before the Nov. 5 general election is not an accident. It’s by design, according to Robbins, because society as a whole is obsessed with national politics.
“People are going to be either very elated or depressed depending on who wins,” he said. “We want the film to be somewhat of a salve to let people know that regardless of the outcome, the difference is really made on a community level.”
The production began in September 2020 during COVID-19 lockdowns and ended in June 2021.
“We wanted to see if we got a candidate who is an actor and his whole campaign staff are actors, [and from that] would this feel genuine and surprisingly, it felt like a real campaign to most people,” Robbins said.
Joe Gallagher played Weiner’s campaign manager. Sarah Coffey portrays the communications director. James D. Watson is the trusty finance director while Aaron Dalla Villa plays head of security, and attorney Dan Bright plays Weiner’s campaign lawyer.
Robbins is a New York University (NYU)-educated director who also helmed “Pledge” in 2018 and “Bad Shabbos” in 2024 starring Kyra Sedgwick and Method Man.
A high point in “Citizen Weiner” is when a video clip is leaked on social media showing a blindfolded Weiner being tortured and whipped by a leather-clad dominatrix in a midtown BDSM dungeon.
“It played a big role because for the seven to eight months leading up to primary election day, Zack and his team came up with a lot of policy to help the neighborhood,” Robbins said. “No one really paid attention to his campaign until that tape was leaked to the New York Post.”
Instead of being rejected, Weiner’s base of voter support widened.
“Once that video got loose, all of a sudden, Zack got this groundswell of support of all these people liking his statements on Twitter, paying attention to him and other candidates paying attention to him,” Robbins said. “So, it got him attention, which is the currency in politics.”
The attention wasn’t enough to win him the election. Brewer was re-elected with 59.8 percent of the vote. Weiner received 2.4 percent or 959 votes. Other candidates included Maria Danzilo, Sara Lind, Jeffrey Omura, and David Gold.
The camera was heavily focused on Weiner, but his mother, Cherie Vogelstein, stole the show.
Vogelstein, a member of the Ensemble Studio Theater on West 52 Street, is the author of several published short plays, including “Brown” and “All About Al.”
“Because of that skill, she knows what’s funny,” Robbins said. “I did not give her a single line for the whole shoot, and even if I did, she wouldn’t have listened to me. She did not originally want to be in the film, but we kept asking her.”
Weiner’s campaign headquarters are inside his mother’s cushy Upper West Side apartment and a recurring comedic thread is Weiner scolding his mom like a child and banishing her from campaign meetings, which are convening in her living room.
“We can’t call it a documentary because it’s not completely real, and we can’t call it a mockumentary because it’s not completely fiction,” Robbins added. “This all did happen in real life, but we were guiding it. The best comparison to that is reality TV. So, that’s why it’s been called a reality movie.”
