Their ’96 campaign story isn't who wins or loses
but how they play the game

This two-night documentary series, which aired in October 1996, may have been the comic high point of several PBS seasons, judging from audience reactions to previews and the producers' past work. In-person premiere screenings were scheduled in a number of cities. This feature was originally published in Current, July 4, 1994, when the series was in production. By Karen Everhart Bedford As public TV considers new ways to cover the 1996 elections, producers of one multipart series on U.S. politics are already out in the field, canvassing the country in search of races that offer timeless truths about the electoral process. Politics in America, a five-hour series from the team that created "Louisiana Boys: Raised on Politics," is about "the culture of politics," explained Andrew Kolker, one of three producers leading the project. "It's not about who wins or loses but, quite literally, how they play the game." Already in production by mid-1994 for an early '96 delivery date, the series is designed to build on public TV's strength in political coverage--taking a step back from the day-to-day horse race and exploring the process with breadth and depth. On this particular project, however, viewers can anticipate generous doses of humor to liven up self-government and make it dance. Louis Alvarez, Kolker's longtime partner in the Center for New American Media, and Paul Stekler, who heads Midnight Films and holds a Ph.D. in political science, make up the other two-thirds of the production team. Together, the filmmakers aim to create an election-year series that, with a style reminiscent of "Louisiana Boys," will get viewers chuckling as they gain insights into politics. This spring, the trio embarked on a journey that, by 1996, will prove every bit as grueling as what politicians endure, but for a much different purpose: not to kiss babies or shake hands, but to roll the cameras and ask voters, "Why are you here?" and "What do you think of this race?" In choosing which campaigns to follow, the producers have looked for "races and candidates who somehow reflect the culture they're running in," Alvarez explained. "We're kind of looking for archetypes." "When we put it all together, we hope to essentially have a profile of America and Americans, viewed through the prism of politics." There's the annual shad planking, for example. It's a political ritual in small-town Virginia. Big-name pols and wannabes politick while "hundreds of pounds of semi-edible fish simmer over planks for hours," described Kolker. People eat shad, drink beer and "everyone picks up after themselves," said Stekler. It's kind of typical of Virginia's politics, historically characterized by its relatively "genteel" demeanor. A recent Philadelphia primary that played out the "time for a change" cycle, the recurring clash of "the old versus the new," drew the producers to the City of Brotherly Love. Sixty-year-old Rep. Lucian Blackwell, an "old city pol" of the "knock down, drag out" variety, who "used to punch people at City Council meetings," according to Stekler, faced state Sen. Chaka Fattah, a young, well-educated, middle-class challenger who adopted the style of the "new Democrat." Fattah won the primary, but the lessons to be drawn from the race are in the cultural nuances that lie beneath each candidates' message and how they campaigned. The shooting schedule for this spring included Crow tribal elections in Montana, a gubernatorial challenge from the Christian right in Minnesota, and state legislative campaigns in California. In all of these contests, the focus isn't just on the candidates. "A lot of the best stuff for us is on the margin," said Stekler, such as an activist cleaning up after the shad planking, or the local reporters covering an event. "What politics indicates about America includes people at all different levels and people who don't vote." "As Tip O'Neill said, 'All politics is local.' That's the name of our show and that's really the driving force here," said Alvarez. "The challenge is to get somebody in Iowa interested in what happens in Philadelphia and to bring other styles to other people." O'Neill's famous political truism is the working title for program one, which will give a broad overview of American political culture in two hours. The next three shows, each one-hour, will cover politics of the past, present and future. "Vote for Me," is program two, a look at the history of presidential campaigns that also examines the evolution of American society. "The Endless Campaign" documents "the business of politics," Kolker said, and "what it takes to maintain your office after having gotten it." And the final episode, "New Faces, Old Politics," follows historical and contemporary races that show how emerging minority groups affect the U.S. political process. The series is budgeted at just under $3 million, Alvarez said. PBS and CPB, after funding the research and development, committed about one-quarter of that amount from their joint Challenge Fund, according to Kolker. "We're still scraping," he acknowledged. If and when the series is fully funded, Stekler described big plans for a major educational package to accompany the series. He hopes to enlist political scientist Kathleen Hall Jamieson, whose commentary on the 1992 elections was a highlight of Bill Moyers' Listening to America series, to design an entry-level college/high-school course on American politics on interactive videodiscs. The discs would include text written by Jamieson, out-takes from the TV series, archival material and mini-lectures from poli-sci scholars, all of which teachers can call up using bar codes. "The educational package will not happen until the later part of production, if the funding comes through," said Stekler. Politics in America is the first series for all three producers to lead, although they've contributed to major PBS shows for years. Stekler produced "Last Stand at Little Big Horn" for American Experience and coproduced two episodes of Eyes on the Prize II for Henry Hampton's Blackside Inc. Kolker and Alvarez produced "American Tongues," a documentary about the differences in American speech patterns that premiered the first season of P.O.V., and "L.A. Is It with John Gregory Dunne," a meditation on Los Angeles culture that aired on Travels. It was "Louisiana Boys," which aired on P.O.V. last summer, that opened the way for the trio to make Politics in America. The documentary won an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University silver baton and was nominated for an Emmy; it became an "instant calling card" for the filmmakers, Stekler said. Recognition was not the only thing earned with the trio's first collaboration, however: producers learned a very valuable lesson about pulling their camera several steps back from political personalities. "Louisiana Boys" started out as a film about former Gov. Edwin Edwards' last campaign in 1987, explained Alvarez. The flamboyant pol later lost the race. "We'd spent all our time following his campaign, and we didn't have a show. The last great campaign was down the tubes." "From there, we learned not to treat it as a campaign, per se, but as a representation of how people campaign."

Kolker, Stekler and Alvarez on location in Plaquemines Parish, La.

 

	.	To Current's home page
	.	Later news: Kolker and Alvarez undertake a more sensitive subject: social class in America, 2001.

Web page posted Sept. 12, 1995
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