When two men showed up to Ted Cruz’s campaign rally in New Hampshire in February, holding mirrors and a cross and saying they had come to perform an exorcism on the Republican presidential hopeful, many just took them for wacky protesters.
“Usually, lefties don’t believe in God,’’ said Cruz, brushing off the erratic scene as the men were escorted out of the building by security.
That same day, elsewhere in the Granite State, news cameras homed in on a pair of friends standing directly behind Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton as she spoke to supporters. The men were wearing shirts that read “Settle For Hillary.’’Some noted online that the apparel was a dig at Clinton’s campaign but wrote it off as two hecklers who were unimpressed by the party’s top candidate.
In a crazy, crowded election, the incidents seemed believable, at least to some. As the presidential field narrowed, people forgot about the mockery. The Internet, as it tends to do, moved on.
But if you’ve turned on Netflix this week and cruised through the latest releases, you might have recognized some familiar faces. As it turns out, the people behind the public stunts — and many, many others throughout the campaign season — were piecing together scenes for a new feature film, called “Undecided: The Movie.’’
For months, Jason Selvig and Davram Stiefler, who collectively go by “The Good Liars,’’ a comedy duo out of New York City, mingled with campaign crowds to create the comedy-mockumentary.
The film, which uses real-life footage and mixes it with scripted scenes, takes Stiefler and Selvig, two undecided voters, on a cross-country excursion in an RV. They visit multiple campaign rallies on a quest to find a candidate worthy of their votes.
Along the way, they duped thousands of unsuspecting American voters, various news outlets, and a dozen presidential candidates. (It should be noted, some people caught on and connected the dots.)
“I think we basically pulled it off,’’ Stiefler said. “But if you told me at the beginning that we would get kicked out of 30 rallies and end up on a list for the Secret Service, I would have said, ‘Maybe we shouldn’t do this.’ ’’
The 85-minute film begins at a gun range in Iowa with Republican Rick Santorum and runs to July’s Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Throughout filming, no candidate was spared, and both Stiefler and Selvig gave it their all to stay in character.
“It was a nine-month commitment from the beginning of January up to right now,’’ Selvig said. “It’s a film that we feel really proud of, and we’re excited to share it with the world.’’
While they managed to get into the candidates’ town hall functions and rallies, a process that required “tons of time, patience, sometimes a disguise, and some luck,’’ actually staying under the radar until the movie’s release was sometimes a challenge.
In one scene, Selvig and Stiefler strap on armbands bearing the letter “T’’ and attend a Donald Trump event. Because of the controversy surrounding the Republican presidential candidate, the presence of Nazi-style paraphernalia on Trump “supporters’’ grabbed the attention of the media.
As The Washington Post put it, “the Internet (briefly) went nuts.’’
While filming in March in Florida at a rally with Marco Rubio, Stiefler stood up and shouted, “Marco Rubio stole my girlfriend!’’
In another scene, filmed in Windham, N.H., Stiefler and Selvig posed as Trump supporters.
Wearing the candidate’s signature red hat, they booed Trump for being “boring’’ before they were kicked out.
The outburst led to Trump firing back.
“Get him out of here,’’ he ordered.
And in California, in May, Stiefler and Selvig stripped off their shirts at a Clinton rally and got up close as she spoke to a crowd. The stunt stopped Clinton midspeech. She later took a selfie with the shirtless duo.
Steve Annear can be reached at steve.annear@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @steveannear.
