A Manhattan actor and screenwriter ran for City Council to make a political satire about it — and staged a video of himself with a dominatrix to feature in the mockumentary, his campaign manager admitted.
Zack Weiner, a certified candidate in the Sixth District on the Upper West Side, won a bottom-of-the barrel 959 votes in the June 22, 2021 Democratic primary. Ex-Borough President Gale Brewer ultimately won the seat by a landslide in the Nov. 2, 2021 election.
As a climax to his fabricated campaign, Weiner launched himself into the spotlight with a video posted on Twitter showing the shirtless candidate gagged, while a leather-clad dominatrix dripped hot wax on him and clipped clothespins to his nipples.
It was all part of an elaborate hoax. Weiner, whose dad Eric Weiner co-created the famed TV kids show “Dora the Explorer,” played a dirty trick on himself that hoodwinked the media, the public — and the people he asked to vote for him.
At the time, Weiner’s team flagged the video to the Post, claiming they wanted to get ahead of political opponents who might weaponize it.
“I am a proud BDSMer. I like BDSM activity,” Weiner said then, referring to sex acts such as bondage, domination and sadomasochism.
But Weiner’s friend Joe Gallagher, a fellow actor and scriptwriter who served as campaign manager, admitted this week that the whole campaign was fodder for their satirical “reality movie” inspired by the Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer sex scandals.
“It was just something we filmed for the campaign,” Gallagher told The Post. “We decided we wanted to do some sort of political comedy. And Zack actually had an idea. He wanted to write a script about a local politician or bureaucrat who benefits through some sort of scandal.”
The dominatrix stunt generated international news and late-night hilarity by Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, and Greg Gutfeld, among others. In the film, Weiner and his campaign aides roar with laughter at Colbert’s jokes.
Besides The Post, other major news outlets covering the story included The Guardian, the Jerusalem Post, the Daily Mail, Teen Vogue and Vice. In the film, “Fly me to the Moon” sung by Frank Sinatra plays amid a barrage of news clips and commentary on Weiner.
The film’s big reveal comes in the final scene, showing Weiner, with the dominatrix, taking off the mouth gag.
“How was that, Joe, Did we get it?” he asks Gallagher, off screen, who replies, “Yep, that should work.”
The entire affair is now the focus of “Citizen Weiner,” an 80-minute flick set to premiere in Manhattan Tuesday at the Angelika Film Center in the East Village.
