Local director wins national contest for health care spot

A Charlottesville filmmaker’s video on health-care reform has won a national contest sponsored by President Barack Obama’s “Organizing for America.”

Eric Hurt’s 30-second film, titled “I Deserve Health Care,” features four children at a playground speaking directly to the camera about their families’ need for affordable health care coverage.

“A year from now, I’ll break my leg and my parents will have to sell our house because we couldn’t afford health care,” one says.

“Two years from now, I’ll be diagnosed with leukemia,” another says, “and I’ll die because we couldn’t afford health care.”

The video was chosen out of nearly 1,000 submissions from across the country.

Hurt said he was pleasantly surprised “I Deserve Health Care” won because he thought it might be a little “too heavy.”

“The [submissions] ranged all over the place,” he said. “Some were funny. Some were heavy. Some were personal stories. Ours was one of the heaviest.”

Selecting the contest’s winner was a 15-member panel that included Democratic National Committee Chairman and Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine; will.i.am, front man of the Black Eyed Peas; Seth MacFarlane, creator of animated sitcom “Family Guy”; actress Olivia Wilde, from the TV show “House”; actor Brandon Routh, best known for his role as star of “Superman Returns”; actress Rosario Dawson; and David Plouffe, Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign manager.

“The winning video shows that our supporters’ creativity and passion is more than a match for the slick ads and partisan spin doctors on the other side,” Plouffe wrote in an e-mail Wednesday to Obama supporters announcing the contest’s winner.

Organizing for America is seeking contributions to run the spot as a national TV commercial as the debate over health-care reform continues in Congress.

“With Congress wrapping up its last round of negotiations and closely gauging the public’s mood in these crucial final weeks, now is the exact time to get this grassroots message out far and wide,” Plouffe wrote. “Your passion has brought our country closer to health reform than we’ve ever been before — and it’s what will keep our momentum strong so that we finish the job before the end of the year.”

Organizing for America is a project of the DNC that aims to advance Obama’s political agenda.

Health-care reform legislation backed by Obama narrowly passed the House on Nov. 7. Many Democrats say it would greatly expand access to affordable health insurance. Many Republicans, however, have criticized the proposal, saying the nation can ill afford such sweeping and potentially expensive reform.

Charlottesville resident Erica Arvold of Plumcot Productions helped cast and produce the winning “I Deserve Health Care” video. Arvold has cast around 90 productions in her career, including TV shows “Frasier” and “Wings” and films “Natural Born Killers” and “Rudy.”

Hurt wrote and directed the spot and shot it with the help of Charlottesville resident Jason Mitchell.

The filmmakers shot the two videos at Riverview Park in Woolen Mills to compete in OFA’s Health Reform Video Challenge.

Hurt’s work as an independent filmmaker is well known in the Charlottes-ville area. His horror film, “Lullaby,” was recently screened as part of this year’s Virginia Film Festival.

To see the winning health care video, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB7MxBIN6Ok&feature=channel