Delivering a new kind of public service announcement, SNL style

Matthew Wing, Julian Klepper, and Adam Janos formed “Hack New York” to fill a hole in how government informs the public about programs and provides benefits that can improve our lives.  The three friends produce short films highlighting free or low-cost services in a humorous, easily-digested format that more so resemble skits from Saturday Night Live than public service messages. Their latest piece was a risque film released last week that encourages New Yorkers to serve as poll workers and the group is not shy about exploiting double meanings to get a laugh.

Wing, Klepper and Janos tried to put their humor aside and sat down with City & State to discuss what goes into their creative process and how highlighting what the government does for the general public can be a blast. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

If you don't mind, please introduce yourselves and your organization to our readers, because, I imagine, since you're new, most of our readers know very little about you.

Wing: I'll start. I'm the creator of @Hack_NY. I'm a New York political consultant. I spent the first ten years of my career working in government and politics and I came up with the idea of starting Hack New York, with these two wonderful people, and with the goal of helping make New Yorkers aware of cool things that government does for them that are small but high-impact that they likely don't know about.

Klepper: I make the movies, or films, as I like to call them. I'm obsessed with film and like all the various ways of how to communicate a message, whether you're doing a film essay, a short film, a commercial or anything like that. I've been doing it for 20 years except for a brief foray where I owned a live music venue for 2 years. And I teach film. I teach with Janos, too, and that's my life. I'm just obsessed with the visual medium. And so I do everything from shooting the film to editing . Sometimes, I narrate as well.

Janos: I am the lead writer and one of the performers in a lot of these films. I also wear many hats, as Klepper said. We teach theater together in a prison in upstate New York, in Fishkill… This and some reporting that I do: all of that stuff is storytelling. And so within the context of this group of three, I help come up with what the story is going to be, that Klepper is going to make beautiful. And it's always elucidating some program that Wing has uncovered, that will be of value to New Yorkers of all stripes. 

Why are you doing this now? 

Wing: The original idea happened before DOGE or Trump, or any of the you know stuff that's going on down in DC. We first started talking and filming last year before the election. But the original inspiration came partly from two things: The first was I read an article about a woman who had discovered that the New York State Department of Homes and Community Renewal had a hotline that you could call, if you were in a rent stabilized unit, to report if you were paying more rent than your landlord is entitled to, and then you could get a refund from your landlord. She had posted something on Tiktok and she was just a normal person. She didn't have a following. She just put this out to the world. And within a couple of weeks that hotline had a one-week wait time because so many people were calling. I saw that and I thought that's really interesting. It's such a perfect example because that is a complicated program you wouldn't really know about. Where would this be advertised? When you just put that information out people come to it.

And then the second thing was, I saw this wonderful documentary called, “And so it Begins,” which is about the 2022 Filipino elections which featured Vice President Lenny Robredo, who was the first woman to run for president. She unfortunately lost. But artists populated her campaign with street art. Her name “Lenny” was everywhere. They had these beautiful pink signs they took when they would go into neighborhoods to try to knock on doors and educate voters. Because in the Philippines you had a regime that had disappeared people, they would stage these kind of dramatic street theater productions where people would start yelling out, “Where's my brother? Where's my cousin?” And people would come to the windows and be drawn to the commotion. Then they would sort of reenact what happened, and then go knock on doors. So I thought to myself, if you brought art into the public space and into politics it would be so much more interesting and dynamic and really touch people in a way that only art can, and which nothing in politics today does, certainly none in the political advertising way. So I brought those seeds together, and then found my two friends who I knew and trusted, who were wonderful artists, and asked them to be a part of it.

Klepper: And I get to ad-lib some of the fun stuff, like the baby shark improv in the free tax prep video. I get inspired and these guys sometimes let me run with it. Janos gets a little testy with me, because I'm big into improv and sort of making stuff up as I flow along. Janos wants me to stay on the script, which I do most of the time. 

Janos: There's the script. It's like a recipe. But the cook's got to cook! Julian does his own thing, and he definitely adds his own flavor into the work between the shooting and the acting and the and the cutting together. 

I understand the public service aspect of what you're doing. What feedback have you received about Hack_NY?

Wing: I think many of our productions are not only humorous, they are exquisite and beautiful. A lot of the commentary I get from people is about enjoying them just on their own sake, which is the thing that I like about them the most, because that's what they should be … like the famous 1984 Mac commercial. Ultimately, that's just trying to get us to buy stuff. What I like about these is we're not trying to get people to be consumers. We're trying to get people to be civically engaged with public servants, public service and their government which works for them and exists to serve their needs and make their lives better. At a time when the very nature and existence of government is being questioned and to some degree persecuted, I think it's good and nice to hold up beautiful pieces of art that just say, this is a nice thing that people should enjoy, that makes lives better. You can talk all you want about efficiency or tearing things down, and anyone can tear things down. But it's really hard to make stuff that makes people's lives better. And when we do, we should make sure people know and enjoy it.

So it sounds like a creatively collaborative enterprise. Can you describe your process?

Wing: We have a meeting where it starts from finding the programs. I will do some research. I'll look online. I ask a lot of friends who still work in government, “What is the thing in New York City government that everyone should know about, but no one (knows)? What is no one using that everyone should be using?” And I'll put those in a long document with a description of what they do in really simple terms and links to the sourcing. And then we meet, usually for a couple of hours … [and] we kind of just spitball ideas together. Most of them are very silly.

Klepper: There's a lot of weird stuff.

Wing: There's a lot! Then, after we all sort of agree on an idea for a program, Janos writes the full draft himself. We each give our feedback: Klepper, from the filmmaker’s perspective. Is this going to be hard to shoot this way? Or are we  going to need to cast for this?  I come from the programmatic perspective and always try to make sure we describe the programs we are highlighting accurately. Then (Klepper) does a revision … and we go and make it

Have you planned your next production? 

Wing: I don't want to spoil it. So, I'm trying to think of how we can tease our future projects without giving away everything. But we do have two lined up ready to go. One is election themed but not partisan or political. The other is about how New Yorkers can get free money.

Janos: I would like to extend an open invitation to City & State readers. If there is a government program that benefits all New Yorkers, or especially low income New Yorkers, that not enough people know about, we would love for people to contact us and tell us about [those] programs. Let us know. Also, we happily cast extras all the time. We love to feature New Yorkers. So reach out!

So what would you say is ultimately the end goal with Hack_NY? is it service exposure?

Klepper: No one's like, “Hey, man, did you check out that new government composting video?” I've never really heard that one said out loud. It's like they're all these great ideas, but oftentimes they're just a difficult thing to make engaging. That's where I think a lot of the creativity is, and all the fun of it is, just finding a way to make something that doesn't inherently sound engaging actually reach people's eyeballs and ears. This is the fun part.

Janos: And to do it in a way that is not about the negative. It's nice to be able to try to figure out how to come up with a film about free pet cremation in New York City in a way that is memorable and as a story. We'll make it so that if you know somebody whose pet died, you're going to remember it enough to be like, “Oh, you know what? There's actually a city service that does that.”

Wing: I think our first goal is, can we build an audience? Can we attract enough people who are interested in learning about new things that government does and want to know about it on a regular basis. Our top video is one promoting a Public Space App, which has had almost 75,000 views. But that's also been up the longest … We went from an audience of 0. 

Secondarily, if we can, could we branch out that audience to other cities and in the long term, could we ever convince governments to take a chance, and let us do our thing and bring some of what they do to life? I would say [yes], particularly at the local level, where government is much more ingrained in what goes on in your life, and also has important messages that they need people to see and to know about. For example … when the city’s composting program started, we needed to educate people on how to do that. Where were the bins, and where do you go? There's a lot of moments like this that you want people engaging in that information. We'd love the chance and the challenge of bringing some of that to life – while staying true to our core – which is being artistic, being different, being creative and being a little weird.