Texas Trail Mix

Expect a twofer from a Paul Stekler political documentary: a film with a compelling cinematic narrative mediated by a filmmaker with genuine political expertise. In his new film, Last Man Standing, Stekler takes a long look at Texas' transmogrification from LBJ and Ann Richards country to today's Republican dominance and asks, essentially, "Is that all there is?" After following the 2002 statewide and local campaigns that Stekler zeroes in on, the Reader's Digest answer to that question is: maybe, or then again, maybe not. But you'll draw your own conclusions.

Politics has always been an obsession with Stekler, who originally thought that life as a poli-sci academic was the way to go. But while teaching at Tulane, his head got turned by the political doc-making life -- Louisiana politics will do that -- and he eventually jumped ship from gown to town, at least for a while. (He's now in University of Texas's Department of Radio-Television-Film, where he can both teach and make movies.) The films he has made during the past decade -- including Vote for Me: Politics in America (1996), Louisiana Boys: Raised on Politics (1991), Eyes on the Prize II (1990), and George Wallace: Settin' the Woods on Fire (2000) -- have been duly decorated with Emmys and Peabodys.

The Texas political landscape that caught Stekler's eye at election time 2002 was a mixed bag of the predictable and the intriguing, from the usual Bush clones to the Texas Democratic Party's strategic "Dream Team" slate, featuring the first Mexican-American major-party nominee for governor (Laredo oil man Tony Sanchez) and the first African-American major-party nominee for U.S. Senate from Texas (former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk). Would either of these candidates be able to stem the Republican tsunami? Alas, an exciting race does not necessarily mean an easy film for the doc-maker who wants to chronicle it.

"Part of what was so hard about making this film was that the statewide campaigns were not always cooperative, and that was a drag," Stekler says. "For example, we'd be following Perry one day and he'd go in a door, and his guys would not let us follow him, so we'd have to go all the way around the mall -- very petty. Or a campaign would not tell us exactly where they were going to be, and we'd been driving half the state to get there. Or a campaign would say we could ride on their plane and at the last minute say we couldn't, so we'd have to drive nine hours to meet them someplace else.

"The most cooperative campaign was [John] Cornyn's. They understood what many of the others, who view the press as some kind of enemy, failed to grasp. A good campaign has nothing to fear from the press if only they give them enough access to keep them satiated, keep them informed, and if the campaign is able to control its candidate in public. Then the candidate gets on television -- which is what everyone wants."

In the end, Last Man Standing closes in on a little-known race for state representative in Dripping Springs, which, to the filmmaker's delight, turned out to be a cliffhanger, right down to the last precinct box. "Of the zillions of races we could have picked, we picked this one for good reasons -- it wasn't just luck. This was a swing district with two extraordinary characters and candidates who, to me, represented something important in terms of where their parties are going."

It seems only fitting to ask Stekler, recently emergent from the rough and tumble of Texas politics, to make sense of his experience and offer some thoughts on what makes for a good political doc:

The Paul Stekler Top 10 Essential Ingredients of a Compelling Political Documentary

1. It's the Characters, Stupid: "Earnestness and seriousness do not make a film interesting to watch. Good characters can -- and they're not always the big-time candidates. In films like The War Room and A Perfect Candidate, the stars are the consultants. In Last Man Standing, the stars are two young, ambitious rivals for state representative, Rick Green and Patrick Rose. In any case, you've got to offer main characters that an audience can get to know and who are compelling. If you don't care who wins or loses, you're not liable to make it to the election night in a film."