EP020 – A Shared Reality with Richard Whittaker

09.04.2025 - Season: 1 Episode 20

It’s a sobering summer day in Austin as we invite the Austin Chronicle’s Richard Whittaker out for a walk. Fresh off the presses, Richard has researched and written a story that details the ramifications of the recent defunding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the impact that this move has on independent documentaries. We get into it, talking up the history and significance of PBS and ITVS, the Independent Television Service — the leading funder of indie docs in the public sphere. Richard provides context and detail far beyond the headlines for this hot-button issue affecting everyone who tells or takes-in non-fiction media. It’s a frustrating, shared reality that we inhabit, and this episode is a must-listen for anyone passionate about documentary filmmaking and the future of public broadcasting. Subscribe and stay tuned for our conversation!

Richard’s article in The Austin Chronicle: https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2025-08-01/texas-public-media-grapples-with-funding-loss-from-gop-bill/

00:00 Introduction and Setting the Scene

00:28 Interview with Richard Whittaker

03:56 Impact of Funding Cuts on Public Broadcasting

09:20 The Role of ITVS in Independent Documentaries

10:48 Historical Context and Future Implications

16:48 Challenges and Responses from ITVS

22:00 Independent Production Budgets

22:29 Funding Strategies for Documentaries

23:20 The Role of Major Filmmakers

26:07 Challenges in Nonprofit Funding

28:17 Public Media and Political Perception

32:30 The Value of Public Media

36:29 Future of Documentary Filmmaking

38:37 Conclusion and Next Episode Preview

I hope you can hear that.

It sounds like a cottonwood, but I think, is that an L?

Oh, I'm the wrong person to ask.

It is beautiful though.

I'll give you that.

Well, it is beautiful and it's a beautiful day here in Austin.

It's summertime, but it's not as hot as it could be.

No.

Well, we are standing in the shade and sweating now.

I'll point that out.

That is true.

Um, what are we about to do here, Ben?

We are about to talk to Richard Whitaker, who is, um, from the Austin

Chronicle and just wrote a, a very lengthy, very powerful piece about

what the, um, loss of funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting

means for, uh, independent documentaries.

So we are gonna talk to him about the state or about that decision

and, uh, its ramifications.

Uh, we're gonna go ahead and link to Richard's article in the show notes.

And, uh, if you wanna seem smarter than us, you could read the article before

listening, but, uh, whether you do it before or it's not to do after, I highly

recommend you read this article, mainly because I'm quoted extensively in it.

Hey, well, I, it's not an accident that, uh, we are having Richard on.

You are quoted, but also, uh.

It's, uh, it's not gratuitous.

You are quoted because you, uh, had your first film and one of your

other films funded by ITVS and.

You're a case in point of why funding for it is so pivotal.

So, uh,

as always been, it makes a great press agent for

me.

I appreciate you, Kyle.

Well, I, I do take 10%, so don't forget that part

10% of nothing is still

nothing.

Well, I hope you enjoy this conversation.

It's a heavy one, but it's an important

On your left,

you're listening to Dock Walks.

With Ben and Keith.

All right.

It is a beautiful summer day.

We are approaching the hike and bike trail where we are hiking and not biking.

And who are we with today, Keith?

Well, I am, uh, I am happy to introduce a Dock Walks first.

This is Richard Whitaker.

He's not a filmmaker.

Nope.

He's not a documentarian.

Nope.

He's a journalist.

Well, why don't you, amongst many things.

He is a reviewer.

Yeah.

Why don't you tell us what, but he's also a journalist and

an investigative journalist.

Yeah.

Um,

I've been with the, um, the Austin Chronicle for, uh, coming up on 19 years.

Wow.

Before my sins.

That's, uh, that's a, um, yesterday was the 20th anniversary

of me moving to Austin.

Hey, halfway through a drink.

So, uh, yeah, that sounds like a very awesome way to realize that too.

Yeah, it's kind of perfect.

But yeah, I've kind of been around the film scene, uh, for pretty much all of

that period and started off as a politics journalist and then kind of headed more

into film and then realized how much of, how much of a crossover there is

between those two things all the time.

So mostly these days.

Yeah.

I'm.

Covering kind of the Austin film scene, uh, which is, there's, there's, as

Tom White said, there's always seem killing to be done around the farm.

So it's always a big thing, uh, which is how I got to know, uh, YouTube five.

Gentle.

That's right, yes.

And, um, where are you from originally?

I am originally from a small town in the north of England called MLEs Field.

There is no reason why that sounds fake.

Yeah, he did.

Or like something from the British office.

MLEs Field is famous for only two things, one.

Um, in the mid 19th century, it was the center of the British silk industry.

Oh, well now you're just showing off.

That's Imperial is all.

I'll get out.

Yeah.

Pretty much.

Uh, two, um, Ian Curtis and Joy Division killed himself there.

Oh, that's all we've got.

Hey, you don't have anything else?

Unknown pleasures with Richard Whitaker.

You just wrote this fantastic article for the Chronicle about what the

canceling of the, uh, corporation for Public Broadcasting will do to.

NPR and PBS and specifically in the documentaries.

So we wanted to have you on to sort of further talk about that issue since

that is so dramatically, uh, affecting the world of documentaries, which we

are specifically concerned about here.

Well, the basic,

uh, outline is that, um, the Trump administration.

Finally did what, you know, everybody wants to go like, oh,

this is just a Trump administration.

Now, this is been the game plan for a very long time.

Um, republicans really don't like intended media and they really don't like money

going through to public broadcasters.

And you can go back decades of how they've stripped away broadcast likes, uh, under

the thinnest excuses from progressive radio stations and handed them over to.

Uh, Christian broadcasters, this is a longstanding problem, but

this time they went, let's just go cut it off at the finance side.

And so they zeroed out the funding for public broadcasting,

the CPD, they took it all out.

And so this meant that, uh, everybody who counted on that for a section of their

funding suddenly lost all that money.

And so it's, it's kind of a. A trickle down effect in some ways.

You start off at the highest level, you have P-B-S-N-P-R and

a, a lesser known organization.

Um, that's incredibly important.

Which toll get to ITVS?

Yes.

The independent television sets.

Right.

So big headline everybody knows is that NPR and PBS lock.

A big chunk of their funding Estimates were very variable for a while about how

much exactly it was going to account.

But the New York Times yesterday ran a piece saying that they've got confirmation

that PBS is gonna have to cut.

Its, uh, its funding by is giving its funding cut overall by 21%.

21%. 21%.

And and that's PBS specifically, you said?

PBS specifically.

Okay.

Wow.

That's at the national level.

National level.

Okay.

So you start digging down to that.

You've got all the CPB also gave money to utter augment to

the local affiliates as well.

Yeah.

And, and can I pause you here and just say, the Corporation

for Public Broadcasting was established by Lyndon Johnson in

1967, but he's done some research.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

And it's done and it's, it's been around since then and has been.

Part of the, like, you know, federal government's funding since 1967

with some challenges obviously, but until, since 1967, it has been

funding our, the PBS stations and, uh, NPR stations, national, national,

right.

So 67, the CPB comes along 69 national PBS organizes.

Okay.

Taking a bunch of small education based.

Stations and kind of putting 'em together to one big affiliate system.

Right.

That we all have grown up under watching Totally.

Sesame Street, dis Old House, Mr. Rogers.

Yeah.

Antiques Road Show.

My favorite.

Yeah.

And of course, go V. An independent lens.

Right.

It shows that as documentary filmmakers we aspire to be a part of.

Absolutely.

And also buying in a lot of British shows and calling the masterpiece.

There you go.

That's fine.

So long.

This is one thing.

It's the ego stroke for you.

Well, no, but the thing is that the.

This isn't gonna be localized just to America.

Part of how those shows are made if by their ability to sell internationally.

And a lot of those series, um, have been able to count on PBS money.

So internationally this changes the equation, not just in the us.

Oh.

Because wow.

We'll, we'll start getting into like how this trip event.

Starts hitting deep.

The issue you have there, the top level, you have the big organizations,

P-B-S-F-P-R, at the national level losing.

You get lower down and the money that goes from them to the local areas to

the local affiliates, they start getting hit because it's gonna be a bigger

chunk for some people than others.

So, for example, I talked to Austin PBS, and they're like, well,

we're probably talking about 10% of our revenue is disappearing.

Right?

That's the number I've heard is like, yeah, between five and 10%.

And then there's all the hidden costs

because, uh, CPB covered a lot of stuff like satellite costs

and electronic infrastructure.

And suddenly they're in a situation where, how do we pay this?

Do we all come together?

Do we have to get an independent contracts?

How do we sort this all out?

And one of the big ones for KUTX, which is the Austin Music Station.

CPB used to cover music licensing.

Music licensing.

I, I remember this from your article.

Yeah.

So now they've gotta go, well, how much is this gonna cost us?

Right.

And it could be hundreds of thousands of dollars to license songs now.

And let's pause here and, and focus for our purposes on documentaries and talk

about PBS and its, um, program ITVS, which is the independent television.

Service and how many documentaries that is responsible for each year, and what a huge

blow that is gonna be to to our field.

It's,

it's absolutely enormous.

So can you kind of set the stage for like, explain what ITVS is

and what they're responsible for?

So, I think a lot of people who watch documentaries and sit around to the end of

the credits, uh, have seen the ITVS logo,

including on.

Uh, Keith's films.

Yes.

Two of

my, two of my films.

Yeah.

Keith Films.

So basically they're the biggest producer of independent documentaries in America.

You know, they come in at an early stage on a lot of projects and either

from, you know, I know, talk to you, you know, even when they turn down, they.

Provided advice.

That's right.

They, they come in with grabs

until like 25 to sometimes 35 or 40 films a year.

Yeah.

So a huge amount of, you know, very important stories.

The, I mean, as, as you said, the streamers aren't gonna pay for

Right.

But are fantastically important.

Yeah.

And a lot of times these are, like you said, these are

not projects that streamers.

Would fund, like, you know, they're political.

They're like idiosyncratic in way that the thing That's amazing commercial.

The thing that's amazing about ITVS to me is the birth of ITVS, which comes out of

a moment in time when independent voices we're having a hard time because of the

political moment they were living in.

Yeah.

Getting their voices heard on national PBS.

And so there, this is

69 you're talking about?

No, no, no.

69 is the birth of P-B-S-I-T-B-S-I think is in the eighties.

And basically during the Reagan era, there was a lot of pressure by right wing

power in Washington to drive PBS into a more center right, or just straight

up right kind of storytelling model.

And independent filmmakers from around the country banded together and went

to Congress and demanded an opportunity to present outside perspectives.

And so independent voices came to the fore and said, we need an independent arm

that allows for these types of stories.

That's right.

And I learned this story straight from one of the people who

testified in front of Congress.

Somebody I'd love to get on one of these walks, which is Gordon Quinn, who's

the founder of Carm Quinn in Chicago.

He is one of the executive producers and producers of Hoop Dreams.

Um, and he's, he's a legend.

And I met Gordon at ITVS, uh, when I was there presenting my first.

Film, um, the Eyes of Me and he was there with the film he was producing and all

these years later he was still kind of grinding it out just like the rest of us.

And uh, but he told us this story over lunch at Burma Superstar in San Francisco.

Ooh, I love that place.

So delicious.

Um, and the idea of independent voices kind of getting together

and saying, we need our own way.

Is where ITVS came from.

And so it was funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting outside

of the control of national PBS.

Mm-hmm.

And so it was a response to this moment, uh, uh, it was a response

to an idea, like this moment, right, that, uh, that ITVS was born.

And so here we are almost 40 years later, the fact that what they

were afraid of has not only come to pass, but is, is hobbling.

That very institution, you know, is beyond irony to me.

Yeah.

Not That's, yeah, it's

dark.

And that's the thing.

You

need

independent

documentaries.

Right.

The statistic that I read that just floored me was that it

costs 5 cents per American Yeah.

To fund these, uh, CPB each year out of, out of the budget.

So we're talking about a tiny amount that is responsible

for so many incredible films.

Like basically like.

A lot of our art form Yeah.

You know, is created under this organization.

You're talking about

multiple Emmys, multiple pea bodies, several Oscar nominations.

I mean, these are, these aren't, when you say independents, people

think small, but they may be

small production, but the impact is huge.

Right.

Just two more quick things I wanna point out about ITVS that I think

matter more than anything to me, one.

They take a chance on emerging voices.

So much of what they fund are from people who haven't broken into the industry,

who haven't made a name for themselves, who haven't proven that they can do this

complicated magic trick of producing, directing, editing, and, and delivering

Yeah, you know, a featured documentary.

But they, they're willing to take that risk because they know that we need

always new voices joining the mix.

So they're always letting new, new people.

Onto the playing field.

And because of that, they're, they're making work that is

impacting audiences in a new way every season of independent lens.

The second thing that matters even more than that, and this is not just

ITBS, this is PBS in general, we keep throwing around the word streamers.

Before there was streamers, there was cable.

Before there was cable, there was broadcast tv.

Right?

The one thing that's been consistent all through these changing

formats is PBS and PBS is free.

Yeah.

And when you're making a film, uh, about a marginalized community that nobody's ever

focused on, the people in that community need to see their, their story reflected.

They need to hear their voices and asking 'em to pay 9 99 a month, or 1599 a month.

Just to kind of have the privilege of, of seeing their own story reflected.

Right.

There's something like really powerful about knowing that the work

you've made is widely available.

Yeah, that's, and that there's no barriers.

That's a really great point.

I hadn't thought about that.

The, the thing I thought you were gonna mention, Keith, which

is also so incredible about their funding model, is that the

ownership reverts to the filmmakers.

Yeah.

So like.

Which stays with

them.

That's right.

It's a licensing agreement.

Right.

So just ITBS just gets the, uh, yeah.

That it's just public broadcastings.

So that, that's a great thing.

You can still, it's incredible.

No deal.

No deal exists like that.

Like if you, uh, get Netflix to fund your film, Netflix owns your film.

Whereas if PBS comes aboard as, uh, a financier and a backer,

you own the intellectual property and you can then take it out and.

And, uh, sell it.

And that oftentimes starts people's careers.

Well, and the Netflix danger.

And a, the streamers, the issue there is that if they suddenly decide they're

gonna take it offline, it's gone.

Right.

And that's the scary thing.

And, and yeah, we talked about POV, we talked about it in Bend the Lanes.

Uh, but there's also American experience.

Uh, anymore, not anymore.

American experience has gone away.

Yeah.

Uh, you know, the, uh, Boston Station that's responsible for that said, we just.

We've lost so much money in these cuts, we just can't afford to do this anymore.

And that's decades of tradition.

And another outlet for documentary and audiences just gone, just vaporized.

So I talked to Ben, um, talked to people who are gonna be directly

affected by ITVS called ITBS.

I think I was one of very few people actually called ITBS.

Yeah, because they're what I call an invisible entity.

They, they, they, they're like, cult gu things move, but you don't know what.

So I think, you know, I called them when I was like, when I first

heard they're losing their funding about taught the CEO out there.

And that's the thing, as a journalist, I, I hate box.

I hate grabbing random people and going like, so what do you think?

'cause it's like, well, what do they know?

So talking to ITBS, getting details from them, getting them to call it back when

they, when they start clearer Id, part of it was being able to call people like you

and people like First Step because you know, we have a history and I think that's

the, that points the value of, yeah.

Experience, um, which I think is one things that ITVS is very important about.

It gives people first experience and then sticks with it and allows them to,

to grow in a non-commercial environment.

And you always get this thing of people saying like, well, you

know, if people really want it.

Then, you know, the market will provide for it, which is utter nonsense.

Thank you.

Well, let's, the market will provide, will provide for certain things.

Yeah, but

that, that's what I was gonna say.

Let's societal good.

Let's steal, man.

The argument of like, let's understand it from the other side of like why half

of America who voted for Trump feels like the CPB should be done away with.

Like, what do you understand that viewpoint to be?

Well, I think a lot of people who voted, um, the Trump didn't

understand what they were gonna get.

They didn't believe it.

Uh, I, it's even though he said it over and over and over and published it

and it was clear, I think there was a great, what he was gonna do going on.

Um, you know, it's, it's the, it, the, the new repeated story.

Which is the farmer or the factory owner or the meat processing plants

owner who goes, well, when they said undocumented workers, I didn't think

they meant my undocumented workers.

Mm. Right.

So I think people didn't think what it meant didn't take things seriously.

I think there is also always this thing of we presume people know

what we know, um, and they don't.

So.

We understand the mechanics and the history and the purpose of CTB and ITBS.

Uh, but most people have got no clue what that, you know, I used to cover

education a lot and the idea that part of the attack on education is to

make people generally less informed.

So there'll be less informed voters.

That's very common currency in education service.

They won't say it out loud 'cause nobody wants to be the

person to, you know, upset.

They, they still think you're gonna be able to deal with people who hold

those positions, which you can't.

They are absolutely your, your cultural enemy.

Um, so I think there's, most people just didn't get it.

Uh, I think that are cultural

enemy.

Richard Whitaker.

Sorry.

So he's looking for a title.

Uh, I well, can I, I grew, wanna break.

I wanna

break in here up during the strikes.

Yeah.

Lots of strikes in the uk so I'm very, a very, uh, no, you're

very hard line and that stuff.

There's no, and I appreciate it.

I like, I like laying a line in the sand.

Can we get back to ITVS and, and PBS and kind of what you learned about the impact

on what's gonna change for them and what the CEO of ITVS had to, had to say to you?

Well, the, they were, the, the CEO was very specific, um, and told me.

We'd know this was coming down the law, and even if it didn't happen, then we

wanted to be prepared for it to happen.

So they've shuffled a lot of their financing around.

So they're good for the next year.

They can fulfill their responsibilities to every project

that is currently in production.

But they fired a fair amount of people, correct?

They did.

They had to fire a bunch of people.

I think it was about 15% of the staff.

They had to fire.

So that's, I mean, they've, they've taken a hit automatically.

Um, but this was, I think this wasn't as surprising to them.

They knew in turn, right.

So they had to lay a bunch of people off restructure.

They, uh, didn't do, um, uh, a coal this summer.

They didn't do a coal for applicants to grab.

Okay.

So basically like they're not offering their service Yeah.

Any longer.

Wow.

That's just for this year.

Okay.

'cause the whole point is to buy themselves a year so they can run

around and do this one thing they've never done before, which is fundraise.

Oh wow.

That's not their expertise.

Yeah.

But the crazy thing is, I mean, I know independent production budgets, you

talk, you talk in terms of millions, and that's got a dream number.

Yeah.

You know, in your, in your article you lay out those numbers and it's

like, it's only what, a couple mil, like it's eight, uh, about 8 million.

8 million funds, uh, for 30 some odd documentary features, which is because

fund absolutely everything, but they're, you know,

they give a bulk of the financing.

Yeah.

A good chunk of it.

So they get starting

right.

And then a lot of those projects go on to then find additional

investors because they are.

50% or more whole

grande for their finishing funds.

Yeah.

More often it's the opposite.

More often it's you have to come to the table having raised some money,

they prefer to be the last money in.

Oh, I

see.

That.

And the reason why to their, you know, smart credit is, uh, they

want the money that they put into projects to go to projects that

will definitely be completed.

Yeah.

Right.

And so everybody wants to be the last money in because you know, the film's

gonna get, gonna get, you know, delivered.

Right.

But

can't blame for that.

But yeah, so I mean, basically what they're lucky to do is fill that funding

and I think their target from what they said is the rest of the filmmakers.

Um,

and

that, that's

all the sense in the world.

I mean, it really does.

If, if like an Amazon or an Apple or somebody wanted to like

sort of rehab their image, if I was them, yeah, I wouldn't go.

To the stream I would go to.

Oh, that's interesting.

That's interesting.

So you're saying if you were Apple tv, let's say you would work with ITVS to

say, Hey, we're gonna have a portion of our content come from you guys.

Like it always has.

Here's your yearly operating budget.

Let's try this out and we'll get, well, I'd also go direct,

you know, if I were them,

I would go directly to, okay.

I, I. Not to name, not to, not to single him out, but yeah.

One of the greatest documentary projects of the 1980s was show,

which Steven Spielberg produced,

which was, I'm sorry, say that again.

Shoa Show.

Shoa.

Okay.

Right.

12 hour Long Holocaust.

Yes.

Yep, yep.

I'm Super Do.

Right.

Which, which Spielberg produced.

So Spielberg has a track record in documents now, earlier

this year, I was in Barcelona.

Uh, don't worry this is going similar.

Uh, Keith knows done less.

Keith knows.

Keith knows I have circular stories that always end up

coming back to life that, um,

well it takes one to no one I guess.

Right?

And so I was, I, we took a, took a boat out onto, uh, the harbor and

at one point we were going past all the super guts that are parked up.

And the captain of the, the on was like, well, this belongs to this person.

And that's Bill Gates'.

Um, you know, that's some Russian oligarch.

And that was pointing at one of the biggest of these yachts.

That's Steven spiel.

I think I, I had this moment where I was going like, I wonder how many

films that could pay for, uh, right.

You think that's what you do, is you go to.

These mainstays of cinema who have connections to documentary filmmaking.

Yep.

And say, look,

Scorsese.

Yeah.

Come.

Yeah.

you, you know how documentary filmmaking work.

You know that odds are you'll never make any money.

Right.

This is your chance for a relatively small amount to have a huge impact.

Yeah.

On documentary filmmaking.

Right.

And, and this is the, this is the Medici model.

This is like the history of art production essentially is

you need a, a wealthy donor.

And the problem with that is that that focuses on just a few artists instead

of throwing a wide net like ITVS does.

And I, I totally hear what you're saying and I don't disagree.

Uh, but it, but it is

my TVS has with going out for the wider net Yeah.

Is that everybody is out there at the moment.

Right.

Everybody's,

well explain that.

What do you mean?

Every single nonprofit out there Yeah.

Is struggling.

'cause they've lost, um, their, if they got federal grants, there's a

good possibility that they've lost the two of their federal grants.

So if you had an, any, a grant or an NA grant lost

that.

that's a big chunky of funding, right?

The

National Science Foundation.

The National Endowment for the Humanities.

National Endowment for the Arts.

Our culture is under attack right now.

Yeah.

And I will push back.

I don't agree with you.

It's not the Medici model to go after Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese.

Those are artists.

The Medici model isn't going to Michelangelo and saying fund

the, you know, the next Da Vinci.

Uh, my timeline's off there, but it's going to the people who are honestly.

Thriving off of our society, and I don't know.

I don't know how we tap into that.

I mean, look, we're independent filmmakers.

I've been walking around with my handout for 25 years.

Yeah, yeah.

What we're lamenting on this podcast is the loss of one of the funding

mechanisms that I have relied on and that I have pushed every

emerging filmmaker I've ever met.

To, to try and rely on.

I think there's a degree of deprogram every nose getting any film made

is, is borderline impossible.

That's really dire in the streaming television, indie film world right now.

And so this, in addition is just a, it feels like a really shattering blow

because this is, it's very significant.

One thing I do want to talk about before, 'cause we're

coming back to the start here.

Is, I want to go back to just steel manning the argument just for a second

so that we can have a little bit of like a broader context for this so

that I think we can maybe, hopefully find, I don't know, maybe there's a

silver lining here in the next subject.

Yards.

Well, I just think it's important, doable.

I think it's important to understand the pushback, right?

'cause it's not just Trump, which he is.

Singular and mean and nasty and all the things.

But this is the criticism about public media has been around for a long time.

And I wanna just give you like a personal anecdote here about this

to sort of illustrate the point.

So my mom lives in a small town in Kansas.

Uh, it's mainly farmers.

And for a long time when I have gone back to this small town and I was a

film major at the University of Kansas.

Starting as far back as like, you know, 1998, I would go to this small

town and I would talk about all the, you know, things I love, like, uh,

this American Life and fresh air and things like that, that NPR, and I'm

specifically talking about NPR right now is responsible for, and they have

created some of the most amazing shows.

And I would be talking to this Elks Lodge bar full of farmers about this.

And they would laugh at me.

Yeah.

Like I'm the big city liberal who listens to this stuff.

Right.

And so you have to think if you're a Republican voter, if you're a small town

farmer, the cliche about NPR is that you're a tote bag wearing Subaru driving,

you know, BL coastal Blue City Liberal.

Yeah.

Right.

And it has been for a long time.

And so.

The idea that everyone collectively would fund something that is widely

viewed as a left-leaning institution.

Uhhuh is by its nature a problem.

And you can sort of understand it if you think of it from a, from like a 30,000

foot view of like why, because if the, if the shoe here in the shade, if, if the

shoe were on the other foot, for example.

Yeah.

And we were, you know, funding our tax dollars were going towards.

Something that was like, you know, touting project 2025, right?

We would all be like, what the fuck?

Why would we, why would we want our money going to that?

I, and it is, I'm gonna just jump in here.

This is the, you, you, you keep saying steel man.

I'm gonna say straw man.

Uhhuh, because this is the biggest bullshit argument.

It's so silly to me.

Uhhuh, the biggest takers in society are red state.

W our you a nickel.

You just pointed out a nickel goes to the corporation for public broadcasting.

Yeah.

I don't have the figures, but I know it's a lot more than a nickel

goes to funding all the safe safety nets that fall in that support.

Kentucky, Tennessee, the Carolinas, Texas, Georgia, Texas, Texas, Texas

is a net recipient of federal funds, which they don't like to talk about.

They get very upset when you talk about that.

That's right.

I once mentioned that around Rick Perry when he was still

governor, when he looked.

He just shot me this dirty look and moved on.

We subsidized the energy sector left and right.

We subsidized banking.

We've bailed out every major bank in America.

We've bailed out every major automotive manufacturer.

Yeah, Elon Musk is the biggest taker in this town right now.

He's taking from our tax dollars under the, the, the bullshit gimme like from

like tax breaks and things like that, tax breaks, incentives, uh, grants.

Like federal contracts that don't go through the standard process.

Right.

You know, just last week they were reporting that ai, like the government

is doing a massive push into ai and Sam Altman went on a trip with Donald Trump

and over that trip got in his ear and when they came back they fast tracked

into the front of the line with the, with the General Services administration

to basically put together the biggest federal contract for AI services.

That we've seen in 25 years and they did it over the course of like a week.

Yeah.

If you can bail out the banks, if you can throw all that money at

ai, if you can bail out the energy sector, the automotive sector mm-hmm.

You can cover a nickel.

I'm not gonna take your Elk's lodge, uh, argument.

Yeah.

And say like, oh we are such a cliche of Subaru driving tow bag.

You know what else is a cliche?

Red Hat wearing cyber truck.

Uh, people.

Mm-hmm.

And, and what they don't do is sit around worrying about if

they're coming off as a cliche.

So I'm not gonna sit around worrying about if I come off as a cliche,

yes, I have a Subaru in my driveway.

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

This gear is going back in a tote bag when this podcast ends.

Right.

But I am proud to wake up every morning and go and pick up a camera

to connect with stories, to bring stories to light, to serve our culture.

This is a service industry.

And anybody who, who, who.

Ignores that is ignoring what makes life worth living.

And I, I think you've gotta go back to some of the roots of this.

This is about money.

This is about rich people who don't believe that anything in

the public sphere is good because they're not making money off it.

That you're dealing with very greedy people.

And that's what it comes down to.

It's, it's greed and hatred of anything that's not there.

And then they've, you know.

Send that message out to people who don't necessarily have the contrary messages.

Uh, they don't have people going like, Hey, well, you know, you say

it's all left wing, but, you know, go watch where soldiers come from.

Like, that's about dudes.

You know, go watch Okey noling.

Right.

Which is, you know, Oklahoma as it gets.

Yeah.

It's, you know, watch these, because these are stories that are about you.

You're not excluded.

You are part.

And then I think it's, it's, it's that tone.

You don't say you are not excluded, you are part of it.

You go, you're not excluded.

You are part of our family.

Right.

And it's that long, slow process of winning people background and saying,

Hey, this stuff's cool and it's fun and it's your, you are part of it.

Advice.

Right.

And you, I think it's, it's the long slot.

This is the, you know, as my wife keeps saying, this isn't, um,

one election cycle to fix this.

This is decade.

Mm. Um, which is, that's always hard to hear.

Yeah.

Because when you're already in a fight, you don't wanna hear, the

fight's gonna go on for a long time.

Right.

Well, and maybe, and maybe this is to find some version of a silver lining.

'cause my, because Kansas Youth Pastor demeanor has to always look for that.

But right now, when we are in, we're all so.

Marginalized and individualized by looking at our phones and

having our own like private world.

All of us.

And that's the thing that's fracturing us and what public media provides is a

sense of community and hopefully we come back around societally to valuing that.

And like Keith, you've put so well, like this is a service.

This is an, an.

Artistic endeavor that is not just about money, it's serving kind of a

greater purpose, and hopefully this will shock us back awake to value that

I, I like the idea of what you said.

I also think it's okay to sit in the sadness of this moment and to

recognize there's never been a moment in my professional career where

PBS wasn't under threat of being defunded where CPB wasn't, you know.

I worried about congressional oversight, but I took it for granted.

And I think it's okay to acknowledge that, to recognize and to just sit

with that sadness for a moment before making a plan and taking action.

I think it's,

it's, it's one of these positions among for Publicies

now that they have to say it.

Now it's point of orthodoxy, but a lot of them don't believe it.

When I was talking to Paul Stack, yes, I was just, Paul was saying, you

know, a lot of the access he got to.

Hard line Republicans over the past 30 years who was like 90 PBS,

so they know it's not a fault.

They know it's not a public.

They've built up this myth and I think it's, you know, it's getting those,

it's getting some Republicans to say no, it's been still, and I think it,

you know, if we're lucky, we'll have some distancing effect eventually

where they start to back, back down.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's a hope.

Um, the other hope, and this is gonna, I hate to do the whole, the children

are our future because I've met some children and some of them really dumb.

Um, but we are starting to see again, this new phase of type A

reaction to the isolated build your own reality online existence.

Mm-hmm.

Um, as shown by, you know, the fact that some.

We've had some real weird breakout success films again.

Hmm.

Um, original ips, kind of strange little movies that are like, hang

on, how did this suddenly, how did sinners make a huge amount of money?

Right.

How did weapons make a huge amount of money?

What is happening?

And there's been some interesting deep dive pieces where a lot of

younger people are going, like, you know, I like being in theaters.

Yep.

And the thing about theaters is that they are a communal experience.

And this means you have to accept a shared reality.

And documentaries at the end of the day, are about a shared reality.

It's about saying, this thing happened, even if you didn't know

about this story, affected you.

It happened in the world you live in.

Which I think is, is, is the core of the documentary, right?

Um, well, there, there is people being able to, I think people going like,

hang on, this is actually true and real.

Yeah.

Um, I think there's a window there.

I forget who, who called it this, but movies are empathy machines.

Yes.

And no greater version of that than documentaries and particularly

independent ones that have a very subjective, idiosyncratic viewpoint.

Absolutely.

And that's, I, I totally agree with you.

I think we're gonna come culturally to this moment where we're like,

wait a minute, why do we want computers to tell us about ourselves?

Like we are the artists who about the final records

can make a comeback.

Yeah.

Then the theater experience is making a comeback.

I think the shared reality of documentaries, which hasn't gone anywhere,

but I don't think it's going anywhere.

I do think as always, we're charting our own path and figuring it out,

building the plane as we take off.

Did you say charting or sharding,

a shared reality with Richard Whitaker?

Yeah.

Thank you Drew so much.

Jenny.

Thank you for the tiring.

This has been a real pleasure and some good exercise

and very sweaty.

Sorry,

I, uh, am leaving feeling very grateful that we got to speak with him and

also feeling, uh, kind of down in the dumps about the state of our industry

because it is, um, we're on the ropes.

This is a, this is a heavy time.

It's

just a question of like accepting that the rules have changed.

Taking a moment to absorb that blow and then coming back and figuring

out a plan and figuring out a way to, uh, to play a role in, into making

the world better around this subject.

It reminds me of a, uh, 12 step maxim, which is don't

just do something, sit there.

So it's the opposite.

They flip it, and I really like that.

And I think you're smart to bring that up.

Like it's okay to just kind of sit back and.

Reflect for a second.

'cause it's a, it's a, like I said, a heavy blow.

And don't get us wrong out there.

We want to take the fight to the streets.

Always.

I got a little feisty during that conversation.

I got a lot of Fes left in me.

Um, but for now I'm just grateful that Richard was able to come on.

Yeah.

You know, rich has been a fixture here in the Austin film community

as a critic and a reviewer and a writer, I would've loved to get into.

His role of a, of being a critic.

So maybe we'll have him back on a future episode.

That's

a great idea.

Um, but for now, let's wrap it up.

Yeah.

So, uh, thank you for listening and we'll be here, uh, trying to build community

and celebrate this art form that we love.

And let's talk about next week while we're here,

which

is, 'cause we've got Reed Davenport.

So Reed is the director of life after.

We talked to Reed about the making of the film and his point of view

as a director and this subject.

We also talked to his producer Colleen Singham, about what it's like to work

together as a team and what it's like to self distribute, uh, this important

film, you know, before it, uh, finds its home on independent lens this fall.

So apropos,

so stay tuned for that one.

Everybody.

Thank you as always for listening.

If you like our show, please rate it, uh, um, tell your friends.

Um, we are in this to again celebrate this R four and build community and

we hope that you, um, are getting some something out of it 'cause we certainly

are getting some kind of making it.

So thanks for being here and we'll see you on the next one.

Doc Walks is created, produced, and edited by my friend Ben Steinhower of the Bear.

Hello, and my friend Keith Maitland of Go Valley.

Thanks

for tuning in.