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Erik: What parallels exist in promoting and publicizing movies and politicians?
Matt: You know, publicity is a fascinating point on the public relations or communications
spectrum. If you think about it, I think at one end you have what often people call Public
Information Officer, a kind of reactive press and on the other end, a publicist, proactive,
somebody who's constantly pushing news stories and trying to make things happen and putting
on events. For a short time I worked doing movie public relations and it was the mid-nineties
and I had just gotten out of college and I was trying to make a name for myself working
at film conferences and taking films to different film festivals and I really enjoyed it, it
was a lot of fun. Often times it would mean putting on a little event, some kind of spectacular,
something that drew eyes to it a little bit more than the other films did, the innovative
campaign for instance... So then I got into politics and into public service and I thought
'Boy what am I going to do this week?' Because we're working on zoning or some sort of a
development issue, maybe an economic agreement but nothing too terribly exciting or fascinating
in terms of the community really getting, being hooked and so I'd start to look for
the little things. We had a little bit of a tragedy that happened when the tsunami hit
southeast-- the southeast Asia coast line and African coast line and so we went down
to a spot downtown and we had a big drive-through fund raising opportunity with the Mayor and
with some radio DJ's and even though it was for, it's an unfortunate topic, we used our
celebrity status to help raise money. On the lighter side, the Mayor and other elected
officials that I work with go down to Barton Springs, a near by water swimming hole and
on New Year's Day started to do sort of a Polar Bear Plunge into Barton Springs and
it's become quite the phenomenon, the press comes down and they watch it and it's a whole
big thing where all these elected officials from Austin jump into Barton Springs, even
though it's only seventy degrees cause we're in Austin, Texas. At it's coldest maybe it's
fifty-six but when they do that in the northeast it's a big deal cause it's Polar Bears and
they're jumping into some cold body of water, in Austin it's constant sixty-seven degree
spring-fed body of water but the press still comes out and they make a whole big thing
out of it. And for one day, even though it might be a little bit light-hearted and they
are your elected officials and they have a fulltime important job, I think for one day
the community feels a little bit better because they're seeing something fun.