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Reclaiming the Culture through Film

Along with my wife and business partner, Gina Cappo Pack, I have been producing documentaries for many years. Over 15 of our films have been nationally broadcast on PBS. All have won awards and garnered many favorable reviews. (A full list of our films along with clips can be found at www.ManifoldProductions.com.) So, I am a maker of culture, a practitioner, not just a critic or expert. 

In addition, I have run some major cultural institutions, including serving as president of the Claremont Institute, senior vice president for television programming at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and CEO of the US Agency for Global Media and the US government’s international broadcasters, including the Voice of America. So, I also have the perspective of a media executive. And, I have watched numerous conservative efforts to take back the culture and the media over the years. Those are my bona fides. 

The Importance of Culture, Films, and Documentaries

In the late ’60s, the New Left called for a “long march through the institutions,” meaning the gradual subversion of the elements of civil society. The phrase is attributed to German Marxist student leader Rudi Dutschke, who was intending to echo Mao’s long march. The concept was quickly picked up by the Frankfurt School and has roots in the cultural Marxism of Antonio Gramsci. Student radicals knew they had failed to foment violent revolution in the sixties, so they turned to capturing the West’s cultural institutions. Today, their success is undeniable—in the academy, in Hollywood, in tech, in woke corporations, and in the permanent government bureaucracy. 

Their first target was the university, where, as student radicals, they were already sitting. They quickly expanded to Hollywood. For example, Bert Schneider, one of the producers of Easy Rider, helped finance and plan Black Panther leader Huey Newton’s flight to Cuba to evade charges of shooting a 17-year-old prostitute. To the Hollywood elite, Schneider was just earning his street cred. 

Over the years, the Left has come to own the narrative. Their version of contemporary events and history dominates—we are told that the American Revolution was fought to preserve slavery, the Soviet Union collapsed on its own thanks to Gorbachev, trans women have a civil right to compete in sports with biological women, and the rest of the woke litany. 

In the past, conservatives have downplayed the importance of culture, seeing its airy fictions as less serious than economics or politics. After losing many of their children and grandchildren to the progressive Left, they have come to see the error of their ways, at least in theory. Many quote Andrew Breitbart’s aphorism that “politics is downstream of culture,” as if it were news. In 1820, Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote that poets are “the unacknowledged legislators of the world,” and by “poets” he meant all artists. Plato and Aristotle understood this thousands of years earlier. 

The Importance of Story

Now, you hear conservatives talking about culture and story-telling all the time. 

But, I am still not sure they really get it. 

I watch a lot of conservative films, especially documentaries. Few are really good, as I am often told by my friends on the Left, and most don’t even coherently tell a story. Preaching at the audience isn’t telling a story. A series of anecdotes is not a story. A story is something that happens to a protagonist, or a group of protagonists, with a beginning, middle, and end. It has a story arc. Characters change and develop. Ideas emerge from the action. 

Let me offer two examples of how story works, drawn from my own films. Our documentary, Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words, tells the story of Justice Thomas, from growing up in the segregated South to the Supreme Court. And, we let him tell his story himself. He is the only interviewee, except his wife, Ginni. He looks directly at the camera, as if speaking directly to the viewer. 

The trailer can be found here.

The film deals with race in America, being a black conservative, originalism, the principles of the Founding, and much else, not by experts telling us what to think but through Clarence Thomas’ life story. Viewers hear directly how he experienced these issues personally and how they impacted his life. To make a compelling story, we needed to structure the narrative to build to the right climactic moments, employing music, editing rhythms, visual imagery, and the rest of the cinematic toolkit. 

Good documentary filmmakers reveal their biases not so much by distorting facts but by the stories they choose to tell. Several progressive filmmakers have chosen to tell the Ruth Bader Ginsburg story. Ginsburg has been graced with two documentaries and a fictional feature film. All have been widely acclaimed, and Robert Redford invited her to the Sundance film festival to celebrate her even more. We chose to tell Clarence Thomas’s story. America needs both. 

Our film, The Last 600 Meters, tells a different kind of story, depicting the biggest battles of the Iraq war, Fallujah and Najaf, in 2004. A climax is this scene toward the end of the film, one of the most intense firefights of the war, called Hell House. The clip can be found here.

I am gratified that many senior military leaders have praised the film. For example, General James Mattis, who was in charge of the first battle of Fallujah, said: 

The Last 600 Meters reveals the infantry’s world as it has seldom been seen by those who have not experienced it. This film, uncaptured by politics or ideology, reveals the most bruising ethical environment on earth and the character of the young men that our nation sends in harm’s way—its infantry. It does so without veneer or apology, and in the tumult shown, understanding builds to respect for those who do our nation’s bidding in the highly unforgiving environment of The Last 600 Meters. This film is a classic, unique in its approach and unique in what it reveals.

However, the film has not yet been released. The reason tells you a lot about how differently the Left and Right respond to movies and understand stories. 

Although the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was the principal funder, PBS rejected the finished film, which had never before happened in my entire career. They said the film was too pro-military and too sympathetic to the young soldiers and marines. In fact, they accused me of using selective casting to make them look more attractive and articulate, as if they needed my help. In other words, PBS didn’t like what they took to be its message. 

Next, we tried to raise money to release the film in movie theaters hoping to generate audience buzz, and perhaps a good cable or streaming deal. I went around the country screening the film and meeting with wealthy donors. I was accompanied by one of our executive producers, Steve Bannon (yes, that Steve Bannon, then a movie guy, and clearly a great salesman). Consistently, these potential donors told us that, while the film was emotionally moving, they didn’t know at the end what they were supposed to think. Was it pro- or anti-war? Why was there no “call to action”? At that time, we failed to raise the necessary funds. 

Clearly, the film deals with issues like patriotism, honor, the nature of counterinsurgency warfare, and how the military functions—but through the medium of story. For our potential donors, it was not explicit enough. They were uncomfortable with the ambiguities of story, unlike PBS. But that was part of the point of the film. War is messy, and certainties vanish. 

We still hope to release the film. Perhaps its moment has come. With the war in Ukraine, the disaster in Afghanistan, and other worldwide threats, we need to decide how we want to wage war. It would be wise to look back at what happened last time, during the biggest battles since Vietnam, Fallujah, and Najaf. 

What is wanted is not merely story-telling. Story is the beginning, not the end. The viewer’s mind must be teased to see more than just a rollicking good tale, through ambiguity, metaphor, and the rest. The story must be in the service of ideas. 

The Left’s Documentary Ecosystem

Not only does the Left have a better intuitive grasp of story, but they are more serious about developing the institutions to support story-telling culture. 

Over the last fifty years, the Left has poured time, money, and creativity into this project. Looking only at documentaries and small independent features, I estimate, conservatively, that the Left spends tens of billions of dollars annually. For example, the annual budget of public broadcasting, radio, and TV is about $2.5 billion. Netflix, according to the Wall Street Journal, spent $17 billion last year on content. Not all of this money is going to left-leaning products, but much of it is. And these are only two out of many left-leaning media enterprises. On the other side, the right spends, maybe, tens of millions of dollars on films and television. So, over fifty years, this gap has grown to hundreds of billions of dollars, which has underwritten a progressive ecosystem of supportive and reinforcing institutions, in addition to many, many powerful films. 

The Left starts nurturing young filmmakers right from the beginning of their careers and then at every step along the way. 

Looking only at documentaries and small independent features, I estimate, conservatively, that the Left spends tens of billions of dollars annually.

It starts with film schools. Virtually every college and university in America has a film school, and there are about 4,000 colleges. Almost every film school professor is a self-described progressive. I have never met one who is conservative. Every year, these film schools graduate hundreds of thousands of progressive aspiring filmmakers (along with camera operators, editors, film composers, etc.). Only a small percentage have the talent, ambition, and drive to succeed, and they become the basis for the next generation of progressive creative talent. On the right, we have no such winnowing process. We are left with the few filmmakers who fall off the Left-wing applecart. 

After film school, there are many training programs for progressive young filmmakers to sharpen their skills and make industry contacts. 

Then, when looking for their first job, they can apply to any of the vast networks of progressive film companies, which range from the one-man shops to divisions of major studios. 

When our budding young progressive filmmakers have acquired enough experience and are ready to make their first big film, they can turn to an extensive network of progressive funding sources. All the largest American foundations, including the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation, have divisions devoted to supporting social justice documentaries. The federal government funds documentaries through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Science Foundation, among others. The staff of these government entities is very focused, explicitly, on social justice and DEI, and their grants reflect that. 

For-profit funding is also available. Several boutique distribution and production companies have been created by wealthy Leftist billionaires, often from Silicon Valley, to support woke films, such as Participant, bankrolled by eBay founder Jeff Skoll. HBO, Showtime, Amazon, Netflix, and the other cable and streaming companies commission woke documentaries and non-fiction series, in addition to acquiring them. 

As these young progressives start to produce their films, they can rely on a talent pool of skilled artists and craftsmen, from cameramen and composers to editors and computer graphics artists, who proudly call themselves progressive too. 

3 Conservative Films QUOTE
The trope of the radical artist defying convention and society is comparatively recent, a creation of the Romantic Movement, with its Byronic rebel artists and its critique of industrialization and the values of the rising bourgeoisie.

When their woke film is finished, how do they make sure a large audience sees it? Our up-and-coming progressive filmmakers have a host of options, especially among cable and streaming services. Years ago, we all hoped that these new companies, like Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu, would provide a diversity of programming, different from the standard Hollywood fare. This has failed to materialize, in part because they are run by the same progressive Hollywood and New York elites that run the legacy media companies. 

Finally, our progressive filmmakers can enter their films in prestigious film festivals, like Sundance or Telluride, or the many smaller ones, including ones dedicated to environmental, LGBT, or other niche markets. Then, they might be lucky enough to get an award, from the Oscars and Emmys to many others, all run by the same woke club. 

Not surprisingly, with all this attention and need for content, there is a renaissance of documentary and non-fiction filmmaking. Both feature-length documentary films and short documentaries are being produced in large numbers. Many are of very high quality, but almost all are very progressive, especially in the choice of subject. For example, the proposed Emmy nominees for non-fiction in one year included docs and series celebrating Stacey Abrams, Greta Thunberg, progressive Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner, Breonna Taylor, and the ’70s black militant group MOVE, a virtual litany of woke causes and progressive heroes and victims. None had voices questioning the saintly nature of their protagonists. 

The Myth of the Left’s Artistic Superiority

The Left’s dominance of the culture may seem daunting. This should not deter us. To put our problem in perspective, look back at how radical leaders felt when they began their march through the institutions. They too were discouraged. 

Frankfurt school writers decried the hopelessly bourgeois nature of mid-century America, narcotized, according to them, by TV shows like Bonanza and Father Knows Best. How would they ever radicalize these comfortable middle-class Americans? But they persisted and are now rewarded with success. We can succeed too. A restoration is easier than a revolution. 

Cowards who want to surrender in the culture wars often claim we can’t fight back because “the Left is naturally more artistic and given to storytelling. Our side is more interested in politics and making money.” This may describe our society as it is now, but it is not a natural law. 

I am not even sure what this assertion means. Great art and artists are hard to pigeonhole, and the politics of the past are very different from the politics of the present. Just to cite a few examples: Virgil’s Aeneid, the most influential poem in human history, glorified the Roman Emperor Augustus. Dante’s Divine Comedy longed for a reconstituted pan-European monarchy and a universal church. Shakespeare’s history plays celebrated and justified Elizabethan rule. 

Whatever you call these works, they are not left-leaning or anti-authoritarian. 

The trope of the radical artist defying convention and society is comparatively recent, a creation of the Romantic Movement, with its Byronic rebel artists and its critique of industrialization and the values of the rising bourgeoisie. But, over the last two centuries, there are plenty of exceptions to this Romantic myth, from Robert Frost to T. S. Eliot. 

My part of the cultural battlefield is the movies. The movie industry itself is the best rejoinder to the myth of Leftist artistic superiority. Hollywood, in its golden age, from the ’20s through the ’50s, consistently made movies with a patriotic subtext, selling the American dream to audiences here and all over the world. These movies celebrated faith, family, and individual opportunity. Hollywood moguls, like Louis B. Mayer, Jack Warner, and Samuel Goldwyn, were Jewish immigrants, who fled oppression and pogroms in Eastern Europe. They prized American liberty and freedom, having bitter memories of its opposite. And, of course, selling the American dream was good business, leading to immensely popular movies, since these movies mirrored the values of their countrymen. 

The iconic American genre is the Western, whose greatest director was John Ford, and its greatest star was John Wayne. Ford’s movies, like the Man Who Shot Liberty Valence or The Searchers, tell complex stories of the settling of the West, which are basically positive but with complicating features. John Wayne often portrays the rugged-individualist hero, who is maybe too violent for civilization but necessary for its success. These movies, and icons like Wayne, made people all over the world want to come to America and be Americans. 

When it comes to storytelling, in truth, the advantage is all on our side, not on the Lefts. Our stories, especially about America, have heroes and villains, and great world-changing adventures. These are stories past generations of Americans have loved hearing. Moreover, they are actually true and reflect even deeper truths. The Left has had to turn this all on its head, with anti-heroes, nihilistic postmodern Westerns, dystopian anti-Capitalist fantasies, and the rest. With the help of deep pockets and the control of all cultural institutions, they have done surprisingly well with a weak hand. 

Solutions

We may be in a culture war, but only one side is fighting. Their side is making culture. Ours is complaining about it. Imagine a war where one side deploys troops and weapons and the other side complains about the first group’s inhumane behavior. No wonder we are losing. We haven’t really begun to fight, to get our troops into the field. 

We need to start producing culture. It can be done. 

To give you an idea of what can be accomplished, let me describe what we are doing. We have launched a new production company, Palladium Pictures, to help fill this need. Fortunately, we have a generous multi-year grant to help us get started. Naturally, we will need to fundraise aggressively to realize the grandest of our ambitions. Our plans have two parts. 

First, we intend to expand production. As is typical for a production company, we have many projects in development and the list is always growing. Let me briefly describe five from this list, without too much detail. 

Several of our projects could be called revisionist history, aiming to retell a part of our history that the Left has distorted or ignored. Our multi-part history of the environmental movement is that kind of project. From Earth Day in 1970 to today’s climate change initiatives, the environmental movement has long argued against industrial capitalism, claiming it is destroying the planet. Are their claims true? For starters, many environmentalist predictions have proven dramatically false, such as Paul Ehrlich’s claim in 1968 that a “population bomb” would lead to raw material shortages by the 1980s, which clearly did not come to pass. In a bigger sense, capitalism has lifted huge numbers of people out of poverty and, in many cases, improved the environment. Our series will be a comprehensive history of the environmental movement, crediting it with successes, in clean air and water or the national parks, but looking at the dire consequences of its excesses, culminating in a consideration of Climate Change and the Green New Deal. 

Another revisionist history project is our series looking back at the sixties. The Left has consistently made heroes out of sixties activists, beginning in the sixties itself and continuing unabated today; a recent example is Aaron Sorkin’s Oscar-nominated movie The Trial of the Chicago 7. Even radical groups, like the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers, have had their hagiographies. It’s time for a truthful history of this turbulent decade, which has set a lot of today’s progressive agenda and is rarely critically examined. 

We have been successful for decades in getting our films nationally broadcast in primetime on PBS, hardly a right wing outlet. The key is to have truly excellent content, whose value cannot be denied.

The Left’s prime evidence that America is systemically racist is their charge that the police are wantonly shooting unarmed Black men out of racist hate. The BLM movement used the George Floyd killing to unleash nationwide riots. But is this charge true? Was that killing, and the many others, examples of excessive force or racism, both, or neither? What is the real story? We will re-examine the history to find out, as we have in our 1999 film The Rodney King Incident, about the first of these iconic cases, which set the pattern for what was to come. 

America’s Founding Fathers are under attack as never before, from tearing down their statues to the 1619 Project’s claim that the American revolution was mainly about protecting slavery. So, this seems to us a good time to re-examine our founding. We have done two previous films on founders, Rediscovering George Washington and Rediscovering Alexander Hamilton, which placed their lives in the context of today’s world. 

Next, we want to turn to Thomas Jefferson. These days he is under attack not only for being a slave owner, but also for his Enlightenment ideas, as realized in the Declaration of Independence. We will present him—warts and all. 

Our other biopic, and the last film I will describe, is not a documentary but an independent feature film about young Teddy Roosevelt’s adventures out West, which combines a coming-of-age story, a Western, and a historical drama. 

Grieving from the sudden death of his beloved wife, Teddy, a young, well-to-do Easterner, flees his native New York City to cowboy life in North Dakota. There, he helps to bring law and order to the frontier and discovers in himself the stuff of American greatness. This is the kind of story that earlier generations of Americans were raised on. 

The second part of our plan, which is perhaps even more necessary, is an effort to train the next generation of up-and-coming right-of-center documentary filmmakers. For all the reasons I have explained, there are very few well-trained, talented, non-woke filmmakers who can continue this work for the next twenty or thirty years. 

So, we are creating an incubator program to nurture this talent. We plan to post an application page on our website, where applicants will submit their ideas for short docs along with budgets, and samples of past work. Each year, we will fully fund several of these shorts, which will be produced under our tutelage, with us serving as executive producers. 

The shorts will be faster turnaround videos dealing with hot-button issues, such as cancel culture, election integrity, and transgender policies in elementary schools. These shorts will deal with issues by finding the human story that reveals the essence of what is at stake, rather than being issue-oriented essays, with a lot of explanation and narration. The format will be closer to the New York Times’ Op-Docs, rather than the video essays popular on conservative websites. Although topical, these films will not be advocacy. Instead, they will present a fair consideration of the issues, featuring all sides. Through making these short films, a new generation of non-woke filmmakers will learn producing skills, narrative techniques, and journalistic judgment. 

As my overview of the Left’s ecosystem indicates, these projects of ours are not enough, not nearly enough, to counter the Left. We need many more production companies, and all the other institutions of culture as well. 

A positive development, which I find encouraging, is that there are many more ways for a non-woke film to reach an audience. You can stream it from your own YouTube site. You can make a deal with one of the several new conservative streaming sites. It’s also possible that you can persuade one of the major streaming services to pick up. After all, we have been successful for decades in getting our films nationally broadcast in primetime on PBS, hardly a right-wing outlet. The key is to have truly excellent content, whose value cannot be denied. Content is indeed king. 

Conclusion

Contrary to conventional wisdom, I am much more optimistic about the culture, especially the story-telling media, than about politics and government. Sure, we can win elections, but the permanent bureaucracy has spent decades burrowing in and is protected by civil service rules. Anyone can make a movie. Although all the supporting institutions are on the Left, entertainment remains a free market. We can build cultural institutions of our own. We can nurture our own filmmakers and make our own movies. 

America, it is often said, is roughly divided into thirds: one-third on the Left, one-third on the Right, and one-third in the middle. I believe the latter two-thirds would support and welcome documentaries and feature films that present a positive, but accurate, portrait of America, reflecting traditional values, without preaching and without distortion. 

We need to summon the will to do it—and the funding.