Megan Fox, Brian Austin Green Face Off Against Schwarzenegger for Public Schools

The quality of public education in California right now is a pretty depressing topic, and as discussion of yet more cuts builds, it’s no wonder that local parents are turning to humor. It is however impressive that they’re enlisting movie stars as well — not to mention the Funny Or Die brand.

In Hot for Teachers, a four minute short released Wednesday, Brian Austin Green (who in real life is the father of an eight-year-old boy) is attending a parent’s meeting that consists mostly of shouting. Meanwhile, his girlfriend Megan Fox (who in real life is actually his girlfriend), while waiting for him to finish, is given a first-hand glimpse of the overcrowding and lack of teachers and support staff that currently plague our public schools, thanks to a classroom packed with cute youngsters and an aide from Governor Schwarzenegger’s office, who’s there to assure them that everything is going to be just fine. It’s an extremely bleak look at where we’re headed…

Fortunately, it’s pretty funny.

Written by John Koch and Ari Posner, directed by Eric Appel and shot at Wonderland Elementary (where both Koch, Posner and Green’s children all attend school), the short is very much an exaggeration of the current budget crisis, ending with a call-to-action from Fox and Green encouraging those who watch to speak out via the usual means: petitions, phone calls, etcetera.

Its genesis was much like any feature film: Once the parents of Wonderland got the idea for doing the short and Koch and Posner had written it, Koch, whose work in public relations had already lead to him collaborating with Appel on an earlier FOD short, took the script to the site with Green and Fox attached. Funny Or Die paid for the production and owns the rights to the video, but the Wonderland parents were able to use it to promote their cause. Via phone, Koch credited Green as being the reason the video got made, and also said that contrary to what happens in the actual video, Fox didn’t hesitate to give out as many autographs as requested.

What’s notable about the sketch is that it points the finger of blame not at Republicans or at the state legislature, but entirely at Governor Schwarzenegger — he’s set up as a straw dog right from the beginning, and some of the better jokes get a lot of mileage out of his “legendary” achievements, factual and fictional. The tag’s use of the Terminator theme is an especially bold choice (given how much rights to Brad Fiedel’s score for the original film must cost) though appropriate, given that Green also starred in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

The big question with this is will it work? Perhaps. Hot for Teachers has one advantage over one of Funny Or Die’s previous political statements, Prop 8: The Musical — it isn’t occurring after the fact.

Related GigaOm Pro Content (subscription required): The State of Social TV

Comments have been disabled for this post