Wed. Oct. 8th

We just added some new dates - we’ll be playing over 35 cities before the election!

Sept. 24th

Just heard that Boogie Man won a Chris Award at the Columbus Int’l. Film Festival. Very cool.

Fri. Sept. 12th

Director Stefan Forbes will be appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and NPR’s Talk of the Nation on Sept. 23rd.

Sat. Aug 16th

We’re playing both the Democratic and GOP Conventions, as part of the Impact Film Festival. There are 3 films a day, including Flow, I.O.U.S.A., Kicking It, and Trouble The Water. More info at www.impactfilmfestival.org. We will have a panel afterwards with journalists and interviewees from the film discussing Atwater’s impact on American politics - more info as it comes.

June 27th

Just started screening in the Documentary Competition at the Los Angeles International Film Festival. Turnout has been very good. A funny thing happened at our Monday screening: writer Jeffrey Ressner came in with some GOP operatives, talked all through the Q&A with them, disturbing the people around them, and then trashed the film online. My favorite quote: “Mike Murphy…who knew Atwater back in the day and has since gone on to advise prominent Republicans such as John McCain, Mitt Romney and Arnold Schwarzenegger, said the documentary was guilty of “a greater assault on the truth than anything Lee Atwater was accused of.”

I’ve gotten great responses from some Republicans who loved Boogie Man and think it should be seen widely, but the guys in Ressner’s article strangely ignored all the elite Republicans interviewed in the film and made it seem like it’s all Democrats. You can read about it at AJ Schnack’s blog. Some of the networks asked me to go on prime-time TV to discuss the controversy. There’s definitely more to say but I’m staying mum for now.

Update: Mr. Ressner responded to AJ Schnack’s observations in most unjournalistic fashion!

June 24th

Patrick Goldstein just wrote a great piece in the LA Times about the film. I suspect that as a Jew growing up in the South, he understands Atwater a little more than most Northerners. Who, frankly, underestimated Atwater throughout his career, much to their expense. Here’s how the article starts:

“Lee Atwater did more than any political strategist of his generation to help the GOP gain a decades-long stranglehold on the South. Atwater is dead, but his malevolent spirit roars back to life in the new documentary “Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story”…Directed by Stefan Forbes, it offers a compelling portrait of one of the great con men of modern American politics. The movie isn’t a knee-jerk lefty hit job. In fact, it shows that Atwater was a runaway success not just because he was a devious political operator, but because, in the words of one liberal reporter Forbes interviewed, the sass-talking, guitar-playing Atwater “was the most fun man I ever met.”

June 15th

We’re been invited into the Documentary Competition at the Los Angeles International Film Festival. Very excited to be screening there and I’m working around the clock to put final touches on the film and finish the soundtrack.

April 10th

Great news: our film will be repped internationally by the amazing sales agent Annie Roney of Roco Films International, who sold such films as Born Into Brothels worldwide. It’s great that Annie believes in the film, as she’s also a noted producer. She did We Are Together, which was on HBO and distributed by Palm Pictures.

April 7th

I just appeared on a panel here at The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival with David Shipley, editor of the NY Times Op-Ed page, Anne Derry of the Times, and Laura Poitras, who made the Oscar-nominated film My Country, My Country. Laura showed a riveting scene from her film. We discussed the future of video on the web, and how it’s working for The Times.

March 10th

Just went down to Fort Lauderdale and got an amazing interview with legendary Republican operative Roger Stone. Wow - he said some stuff that may be truly incendiary when it hits the news cycle. He has classic Nixon posters all over his office.

March 1st

It’s a great honor to be selected for the Documentary Competition at the Full Frame Film Festival, sponsored by the New York Times. The new Director Phoebe Brush has been programming some amazing stuff, including Steve James and Peter Gilbert’s new film At the Death House Door and one of my favorite docs of the year, Man on Wire. We’re screening on April 5th.