Some of the best work acclaimed filmmaker Richard Linklater has done in years has been a series of thirty-second videos, about four shots each, of a Texan old-timer sitting at a diner table. Granted, said Texan has spent the videos slamming Ted Cruz — possibly the second least liked person on the planet, after Piers Morgan.
It’s all part of a series for the “Fire Ted Cruz” PAC, which is exactly what it sounds like. Linklater, a proud longtime Austinite, has directed the ads — three so far — which aren’t so much pro-Beto O’Rourke, Cruz’s Democratic opponent in the ongoing senatorial race, so much as virulently, beautifully anti-Cruz. They all star Sonny Carl Davis, a seen-it-all, straight-shootin’ local who appeared in Linklater’s 2011 film Bernie.
When last we sat with Davis, he was raking the Republican pol over the coals for dissing Texan burger joint Whataburger while signing the purported blue collar praises of White Castle — a chain that doesn’t even operate in Texas. Before that Davis belittled Cruz’s self-claimed “toughness,” despite the fact that he did nothing when a certain sitting president called his wife a “dog” and claimed his dad was in on the Kennedy assassination.
Now Davis is calling Cruz out on caring more about his own ambitions than his constituents.
“I like a guy that travels around the whole state of Texas, and meets people he wants to represent. And it’s a big state,” Davis says. “Ted’s been to every county…in Iowa.”
Davis is done with Cruz using his senate seat as a way for him to balloon his own career. “You go, Ted, don’t let us get in your way,” he says. “You got your fat cats backing ya.”
Of course, one problem with old-timers turning on the failed presidential candidate is Cruz is, like them, really bad at social media and at technology in general.