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Joe Winston and Laura Cohen. Photograph: Jim Newberry

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Picturedujour.com exclusive! Filmmakers Joe Winston and Laura Cohen recently completed work on a documentary film called “What’s the Matter with Kansas,” a sequel of sorts to Thomas Frank’s bestselling book of the same name. I photographed the couple (they’re married) at my studio, and planned to interview both of them here as well. Due to logistics involving their one-year-old son Milo, I ended up interviewing Joe in person, and Laura via email.

Jim Newberry: Tell me a little about your backgrounds in filmmaking.

Laura Cohen: I have been working in film and television for over ten years. Recently, I wrapped up production on the TV series “American Greed” for CNBC and “9/11’s Deadly Dust” on A&E for Kurtis Productions. In 2005, I finished research for the PBS documentary “The Power of Choice: The Life and Ideas of Milton Friedman.”

Joe Winston: Sure, let’s see…I didn’t go to film school or anything like that but when I got out of college my first interesting project was a public access show called “This Week In Joe’s Basement” which lasted four years and sixty episodes on Chicago Public Access…it was a great forum to do all sorts of things…But the strongest material that came out of it was usually the documentary material…We did a show called Sledgehammer Diplomacy where we asked black people, what do you think of white people, and white people, what do you think of black people, and got answers that hold up 18 years later, they could have been shot yesterday. Which is kind of a sad commentary on the state of the world…But we got really interesting very truthful answers from total strangers. Every now and then there was gold to be mined that way. After I got done with the cable access series I wanted to do longer more substantial projects…I did a could of movies in the mid-90s on the Burning Man Festival…

JN: How did this project come about?

JW: In the summer of 2004 I went and saw Tom Frank on a triple bill with Howard Dean and Studs Terkel. And I was really there to see the other two guys, it was at the Chicago Public Library and Tom had just come out with this new book called “What’s The Matter With Kansas”. Tom and I didn’t really know each other but I knew we were one degree of separation because we were both in Hyde Park at the same time when he was doing The Baffler magazine while at The University Of Chicago. So I knew his work and I always kind of kept an eye on him because I liked his stuff. I don’t remember exactly what he had to say that day actually, he was kind of overshadowed by Studs Terkel who was already practically deaf and was really hilarious anyway. But somehow he piqued my interest; that he’d done this book about what was going on in American politics that was set in Kansas. And I had this magnetic pull for me that there was this place that you could go, that I had never been, I had never been to Kansas and you know, a place that nobody would go to, I didn’t know anybody who’d ever went to Kansas for any reason. And he could figure out why American politics at the time seemed so upside-down.

So I asked him very flippantly, hey, anybody approach you with making a movie, and he just kind of laughed and he didn’t take it real seriously either and then I read the book and I was like, I was totally transfixed which is odd if you think about it. If you’ve read it, it’s basically a long, kind of, political essay and it has a few great stories in it but actually it’s not so obvious how you’d make it into a movie because there aren’t any characters that last for more than three pages and it doesn’t have a narrative arc of any kind either. But it has a flavor that’s really impressive that really grabbed me and somehow, you know, somehow I thought it had the makings of a good project. So I pursued Tom who was off to Washington D.C. by this time and we struck a deal, we optioned the rights to his book, we actually formally did that. Because I didn’t want somebody else making a movie called “What’s The Matter With Kansas”.

JN: So you dealt with the publisher—how do you do that when you option rights for a book? Who do you deal with?

JW: Well, it’s always best to approach the author directly which I did. I had to almost threaten the guy who booked him—I knew the guy who booked him for the public library event and I shook him down until I got Tom’s home phone number and then I called him. But he did make me talk to his agent, you know, as many writers, most writers will I suppose. But his agent turned out to be a good guy so we struck a deal that was fairly reasonable.

JN: Before you interviewed subjects, did they know the title of the film?

JW: We held off on that because that was a sticky issue because you know, when we started filmmaking we were following Tom Frank around at book signing events in Kansas hoping some controversy would erupt which it never did which is too bad.

JN: You didn’t try like an Albert Brooks, like uh…

JW: “Real People”?

JN: “Real Life”

JW: (Laughs) This was all very delicate how to approach people, so we decided we didn’t want to carry any of Tom Frank’s baggage. Because the thing about his book is that it’s heavy on commentary–really acid, pointed commentary. He calls the people of Kansas deranged, you know, I mean, so this has made him very unpopular with certain segments over there, exactly the sort of people, the conservative right wing that we wanted to speak to. So there was no point in confronting them with Tom Frank’s language because that wasn’t what we planned on doing and it wasn’t going to get us anywhere…so we left the title as kind of a working title thing, we left, we pushed, we kicked that ball down the road and just told them instead what we were looking to film and why because our approach was really different than Tom’s. I mean, he did get some, he was probably one of the first liberal commentators to take seriously the conservative movement, I think before him, you know he took the movement people seriously. And before him I think liberals tended to completely scorn, you know, anti-abortion activists or anti-gay rights activists or what have you and Tom actually did listen to those people.

And so we took, that was the main thing that we took from him was to take that a step further and be around there with cameras and just observe them and shut up and not impose our own opinions on things. We were really going for much more the cinema vérité Kartemquin Films kind of, you know, look at real life and try to stay out of the way filmmaking style, which is very unusual for political documentary…And by the way when you go to someplace like Kansas and you say I’m making a documentary film, especially if it’s about political issues, the first thing everybody asks you is, is this going to be like a Michael Moore thing.

JN: Well, he’s more polemical, like Frank…but that must be tricky because you have the same title, so you’re trying to have a more neutral point of view but people must assume, I would think, that you’re going to have a more, be more opinionated…

JW: It’s been tricky all along and I’m sure we had interesting reactions, when we screened this as a work in progress first here in Chicago at an IFP rough cut screening back in July and then in Wichita at the Tall Grass Film Festival in August. And we got a huge number of fans of the book showing up because there are, of course people in Kansas who totally agree with Tom Frank. And there were others who had very different reactions to the film. I mean, some of them loved it but some of them were really prickly and some of them were like, why didn’t you do this and why didn’t you do that and I could only laugh and think of the Harry Potter fans that say the same thing. So…I don’t, what’s the point of repeating somebody else’s rhetoric in a different medium, right?

JN: Right.

JW: This is kind of like a sequel to Tom’s book, we try to go further and learn more.

JN: How is the film different than the book?

LC: Our movie is much more sympathetic towards the social conservatives in Kansas.  We also deal much less with economic issues than Tom does in his book.  Frankly, we were drawn to the people who would give the movie a heart, an emotional center.

JN: Did your views of Kansas conservatives change after making the film? Were there any surprises?

LC: We spent a lot of time with our subjects, many of whom were conservative evangelical Christians, and we had that wonderful experience of getting to really like people who we wouldn’t normally ever meet.  I couldn’t believe how normal they were—these are people depicted in the media as single-minded zealots.

JN: How can we have a better discourse in the U.S. between those on the left and those on the right?

LC: Every American citizen, before they can vote, should be required to knock on the door of 100 strangers and try to convince them of something—it doesn’t matter what.  After even a day of doing this, you realize how complex people are, even if they hold seemingly contradictory beliefs.  I canvassed for Greenpeace full time while between colleges when I was 19, it was rough at times but very eye-opening.

JN: Did you talk to any liberals in Kansas while you were filming, either for the doc or otherwise?

LC: Sure, Kansas still has liberals. Kansas Farmers Union President Donn Teske, a major character in our movie, is a total liberal, even though he might not want to admit it.

JN: I saw in the trailer that Tom (WTMWK author Thomas Frank) is on camera at some points…what was his involvement?

JW: Well he was very helpful in the early stages, he kind of handed over his Rolodex and connected us up with people, which was extremely helpful, he knows a lot of interesting people in Kansas for sure. And he gave us a lot of background but there was no way, with his schedule, even if we wanted him to that he was going to consistently come along on shoots. So the truth is that he’d be the first person to tell you this that he was almost totally uninvolved with the actual production of the film. We went to two or three book signing events where we just kind of filmed him there, you know, and then we had one afternoon with him which is where you see they kind of, the scenes that he’s in in the film are represented in the trailer, that’s when we shot those and that was pretty much it, you know. We would talk to him and we would keep him up to date and we would send him rough cuts and he loves the film by the way, he’s a big fan, he’s definitely, he actually likes, he gets it. Like he understand why we went in a different direction than his book in many ways.

JN: So he let you guys do your own thing pretty much.

JW: Absolutely, absolutely, never interfered.

JN: So you didn’t tell people the title of the book, you gave them a more general idea about what it was about…

JW: Well, yeah we didn’t talk about the book at all because here’s the thing, we were totally ready to prove Tom wrong if he was wrong about something…You know, the thing, you know he did this work where he showed us that it was worthwhile to go to Kansas and talk to people who nobody wanted to talk to, the conservative activists and the rank and file. So we were willing to be completely as open-minded as we could be at that point. So what we said was and what we did was that we were making a film about the conservative movement in Kansas and we were going to follow some stories there and show what conservatives were really like without the shouting.

JN: And how many people, did anybody turn you down?

JW: Oh, lots of people turned us down. Conservatives, people who are very conservative by nature tend to be pretty suspicious and especially of the media…

JN: The “left wing” media, the supposed…

JW: We’re assumed to be hostile and you know they’re not unreasonable to think that. If you look at things from their point of view, what they are seeing on television and in movies. It’s not unreasonable for them to be untrusting. You know, so the way to do a project like this we found early on was to develop relationships with leaders of the community. So the first thing that we did was that we made a whole bunch phone calls and I got some liberal activist group of the phone whose mission is to combat the influence of the right wing Evangelical churches. And I talked to this woman who was very nice and I said, ok, tell me who are your three worst enemies. And she gave me three names of the three most powerful and political active right wing preachers in Kansas.

And I called all three of them and the first one to return my call was Pastor Terry Fox from Wichita and he granted us an interview no questions asked and we went and talked to him, we let him, you know we talked to him all afternoon, we had a great interview with him and he gives 150 interviews a year he tells us, whatever. He didn’t care who we were, but he’s a leader in his community. And then, you know, when we got back home we called his office again, called his assistant and said, ok who are your three most politically action parishioners? And they immediately knew what we were talking about, there was no need to beat around the bush so she pulled three names out of the Rolodex, called all three of them and did little, and interviewed two out of the three of them said yes, and the one that we liked the best were Angel and Rob Dillard who are the main, some of the main characters in the movie…so that’s kind of how we got in there, got people to trust us and to like us.

JN: Hmm.

JW: And then when the film was all done we did eventually tell them what it was going to be called and, we could have changed our mind and called it something else if there was a reason to do so, but you know, it’s a great title and people are going to come see it. Anyway, and they were all, by then they knew us. You know, we were people they knew, we weren’t the media, we were people they knew…And um, and also by the way Evangelicals are all really nice.

Um, so they were cool with it and we had a big screening which time we invited them to come and most of them came and they was a Q & A and they were there. They were kind of more on our side than some of the rest of the audience, especially the political moderates who are the people who we had pissed of the most.

JN: Yeah, on that note, um, one thing I’m frustrated with is, it seems like in this country it’s really hard to have a discourse between the left and the right and it seems like we can’t talk, it’s just people yelling and each other and insulting each other and pointing fingers. Like, how do you think we could have a better discourse between the left and right—or any other divergent political ideologies?

JW: Well, it would help if we all had the same information. You know, the thing that you learn when you go to Kansas is that, you know, people have, you find out why people on the right think the way they do because they have a totally different set of facts, you know.

JN: Right.

JW: So to them it’s a fact that Osama Bin Laden hangs out, hung out with Saddam Hussein and they are out to get us and that Muslims live to kill Christians and it’s a war of civilizations and liberals are trying to get rid of Christmas and ban the bible and to them, they just take those things on faith. Because if you watch Fox News all day, which they do, that’s what you think is true.

JN: So how do you get, assuming there are objective facts, which I believe, how do you get that information? Like if somebody asked you, OK I want the real facts, I don’t want the right wing or the left wing slant…

JW: Well, certainly the Barack Obama tilt on this is to try not to alienate the people you want to convince, which I think people on the left have forgotten about.

JN: Can you do you do that without pandering?

JW: That’s a good question, hopefully you can. Because that question is current right now with Rick Warren speaking that in inauguration, right? We’ll kind of see how that goes, but I mean, on the one hand it does seem like pandering, but he’s clearly got something he’s trying to get at with that. So, I don’t think I know completely the answer, I mean really the answer is, you know, better education systems so people aren’t so credulous when presented with provable false information. I mean, better school system, you know, more investment in our people. I mean, the most vulnerable populist, if you look at even just countries around the world, you know, like Iran or some place like that, right with the Ayatollahs, the most vulnerable population are people who are scared that their lifestyle, that their standard of living is going away. And that, I found a lot of that, we found a lot of that in middle America. You see lots of scenes of Kansas sort of in decay. You know, these people are scared that, you know, yeah, that their children’s future is definitely going to be worse than theirs and so on and that nobody listens to them and nobody cares. So I think if they were less scared, they would be less eager to believe terrible things about other people, right. They’d be less eager for scapegoating, which is what drives wedge issue politics.

JN: Right. And what’s interesting about the economic issues, I guess that’s the thesis of the book I think that they’re, uh, the Democrats arguably are more, are going to be, their policies are going to be more beneficial to the middle class, it’s like the Joe The Plumber…

JW: Right.

JN: Which was McCain’s example of how he was going to help and then it turns out that, talk about facts, that it’s actually, uh, Obama’s policies would be more beneficial to Joe The Plumber.

JW: Yeah, well Tom pointed out how well the right wing channels anger, working class anger, you know, and channels it towards scapegoats which are generally liberals and channels it away from the real problem.

JN: How have things changed since the book was published?

Well, on the surface, in Kansas do you mean, or in the country? Obviously a lot of things have changed some…

JN: In terms of the book and the movie.

JW: I think we saw some things changing. I think actually, I mean we, one of the, the narrative arc of our movie shows actually the right wing in serious decline actually. Um, you know without giving it all away, I mean, when we were following the conservative activists around we met them when their star was ascendant, you know, when it seemed like they were just going to rule the country forever. And the more time we, as we spent time with them, thing for them got worse and worse and worse. So, yeah, it’s not, it’s not all black and white and Kansas is certainly a much more complicated thing, just a bunch of Fox News viewing bible thumpers.

JN: Ok. So what’s the plan now with the film? You’re done, so what’s next?

Um, we’ve entered in a bunch of film festivals and we’re just waiting until we get into one that’s suitable for premiering it.

JN: Laura, what was it like to make a film on the road while pregnant?

Being pregnant on the road in the heat of Southern Kansas in August and September was something I’m still trying to forget. One day I looked over my bulging belly to my ever-so-swollen ankles and thought they were my thighs. In the home of a family we knew really well I actually took a nap behind a couch during an interview. Later Joe told me he could hear me snoring. But the families in our film love babies, both living and yet to be born. I was a bit of a superstar.

JN: Do you have any future projects planned yet?
We’ve got several things in the works, we’re really interested in alternative energy and changing the cultural resistance to it.