An independent candidate in the upcoming election has garnered international headlines for his wacky campaign video that begins with him riding a giant computer-generated Canada goose, and ends with him shooting laser beams from his eyes.
Wyatt Scott, who is running in the newly created Mission-Matsqui-Fraser Canyon riding, released the video in June, but it gained attention on Twitter this week, inundating the Mission businessman with calls from around North America and generating headlines as far away as the United Kingdom.
The minute-long video sees Scott plummet to earth with an sword, slay a dragon, fist bump an alien, and catch a man falling to earth. It concludes with Scott using laser beams shot from his eyes to destroy a robot adorned with a Conservative logo.
On Tuesday with just 1,000 views, the video had been watched more than 770,000 times by Friday morning.
The video drew raves for its sheer weirdness, with some calling it the best campaign video of all time.
The Washington Post ran an online story with the headline “This Canadian campaign ad is amazing — and by amazing, we mean utterly insane.”
Scott knows the video is weird. But he said it’s already accomplished its goal.
“We need to garner attention, which we’re doing here.”
He said the video was borne from a Craigslist ad asking for student filmmakers to work on a campaign ad. A trio of filmmakers calling themselves Three Amigos drew Scott’s attention with a video clip he described as hilarious.
After a meeting and a review of the video’s script, shooting commenced and the filmmakers took it from there.
“We wanted to see how far we could push the envelope without going too far,” said Scott, who put the cost of the production at under $1,000.
Scott was the campaign manager for Rhett Nicholson, who ran for the Liberal nomination but lost to the party’s eventual candidate Jati Sidhu. He said he was unhappy with the way the nomination process was conducted, and decided to run. He has also produced more traditional videos, and his website has a complete absence of robots and aliens.
Scott said he knows that he has “slim-to-none odds” of actually being elected, but suggested that he might throw his support behind another candidate closer to voting time.