The subtle structure and elegant editing build to the pointed insight that the vast gulf in the country isn’t between right and left but between secular and religious. Wisely, Winston includes only a couple of the narrow-minded comments that provoke viewers to snort, jeer, and jettison their empathy. Carefully cultivating a nonjudgmental tone that’s largely free of condescension—no small achievement, when the itinerary includes a trip to the Creation Museum in Kentucky—the filmmaker’s approach pays off in the final reel, when everyone’s dilemmas touch us.

Read the full review here.

• Voice of America interview (in Russian)

This fall, as national attention turns to the mid-term elections, understanding the conservative movement, who is in it, where they come from, and what they want – is more important than ever.

A screening of What’s the Matter with Kansas? is the perfect tool to energize the conversation, get beyond the shouting and the stereotypes and engage people in a way that can make a difference.

BUT WE NEED YOUR HELP!

Grassroots organizers can use a screening of What’s the Matter with Kansas? to create a community event.  Hold a discussion afterwards, invite guest speakers, use it as a fundraiser for your organization – the possibilities are limitless!

To bring this acclaimed film to your town, just fill in the form below, and we’ll get back to you with more details.

* – required field

• Jan 22 screening in Oklahoma City
• Denver area screening – April 15, 2010 – One night only!
• Friday, Oct 16 – One night screening at Columbia College Chicago

Barbara Ehrenreich and Thomas Frank will speak and sign books (including copies of Franks recently-revived Baffler magazine) on Wednesday, July 28, at Borders Park Avenue, 461 Park Avenue (at 57th Street) in New York City.

The title of the forum is: “What’s the Matter with Kansas? six years later – the backlash in hard times.”

Thomas will reflect on how times have changed – and how they haven’t – since his highly influential best-seller debuted in 2004.  Barbara Ehrenreich, whose books, from “Fear of Falling” to “Nickel and Dimed,” to name just a few, have been tremendously influential, will also speak.

Of course, this event is in celebration of the opening of the movie “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” in New York City on Friday, July 30 at the Producers Club IndieHouse Cinema, 358 W. 44th Street in mid-town Manhattan.

Director Joe Winston will also be in attendance, and offer a brief sneak preview of the upcoming movie and give away free passes to a lucky few from the audience!

”WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS? SIX YEARS AFTER: THE BACKLASH IN HARD TIMES”

WHEN:  Wednesday, July 28, 2010, 7:00pm

WHERE:  Borders Bookstore, Park Avenue and 57^th St.

• Thomas Frank: the backlash returns
• New York City run opens July 30, 2010
• Thomas Frank: “We are all Kansans now”

The New York Times once cracked that “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” should really be called “What’s the Matter with Wichita?” The heart of the conservative movement in Kansas is here, in the state’s largest city: the mega-churches, Operation Rescue, and numerous Christian schools, including one which ponied up for Sarah Palin to fly in and speak for a fundraiser (although she drew a smaller crowd than expected.)

For audiences across the country, “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” is a fascinating journey into the heart of American conservatism, a place that for many of us is warmly familiar yet utterly foreign — in the best documentary fashion, the movie gets viewers close to people they don’t really know.

In Wichita, however, everybody feels they already know these folks, they are their neighbors.

Liberals in San Francisco, Chicago and Washington, D.C. are fascinated and surprised to find out what conservatives are really thinking, and why the believe what they do.

Liberals in Wichita, sometimes just get irritated.

audience at the Wichita Public Library July 8, 2010

We just held a special screening of “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” at the Wichita Public Library, on Thursday, July 8.

The movie had played in Wichita before — in fact, the first public screening of the finished film was at the 2008 Tallgrass Film Festival in Wichita. It was a huge hit, selling out three screenings.  Many of the documentary subjects were in the audience (they’d all seen the movie and liked it very much.)  Our reflections and some photos are here.

Generally, Kansans in general and Wichitans in particular enjoy the movie for the same reasons everyone else does, with the added thrill of seeing their home town on the big screen.

But, at post-screening discussions, a few Wichitans react strongly to seeing evangelical Christians featured in a movie with Kansas in the title: Why do you have to show those people? Don’t folks in other parts of the country already think Kansans are backwards, ignorant, and overly religious?

Two years ago, Laura and I were taken aback.

This time, I was ready.

Director Joe Winston takes a question from the audience

“Look,” I replied, “whatever you worry that folks in New York thinking about you — they already think that.  They already associate this part of the country with narrow stereotypes of the evangelicals.  But until they see this movie, they don’t know about the progressive farmers movement, and the Kansas Populist tradition.  They don’t know about people like Donn Teske and M.T. Liggett, who are as whip-smart as anyone on the coasts.”

The discussion got livelier after that.  Kansans really know their history, and one woman reminded me that racism was a big factor in thwarting the original Populist Party in the late 1890s, as institutions like sharecropping pitted poor southern whites against poor southern blacks, with whom they had much in common otherwise.

Another blogger has quoted me here, when I reminded the crowd that rigid ideology is always a problem, no matter what the beliefs.

To be clear: Wichita gave the film a very warm reception, and even our critics were thoughtful and respectful.  They showed us what all documentary filmmakers should remember, that movies about real people’s lives have an impact, and are personal to those involved.

Young viewers were welcome, and well-behaved

• Mike Huckabee: “Nothing’s the Matter with Kansas?”
• Wichita screening – Thursday, July 8 – one night only!
• Kansas theatrical premiere at Liberty Hall, Lawrence, Dec 11-17

Reich begins with the familiar outlines of the situation we face: for a variety of reasons, since the 1970s, a tiny share of the U.S. population has become fantastically wealthy, at the expense of stagnant or declining incomes for the vast majority.  Vast sums have become available for financial speculation while most families must borrow to keep up middle-class living standards.  The financial meltdown of 2008 is best understood in this context, rather than as just the result of particular Wall Street machinations.  But Reich goes on to warn us:

It’s too facile to blame Ronald Reagan and his Republican ilk. Democrats have been almost as reluctant to attack inequality or even to recognize it as the central economic and social problem of our age. (As Bill Clinton’s labor secretary, I should know.) The reason is simple. As money has risen to the top, so has political power. Politicians are more dependent than ever on big money for their campaigns. Modern Washington is far removed from the Gilded Age, when, it’s been said, the lackeys of robber barons literally deposited sacks of cash on the desks of friendly legislators. Today’s cash comes in the form of ever increasing campaign donations from corporate executives and Wall Street, their ever bigger platoons of lobbyists and their hordes of PR flacks.

Reich then reaches a fascinating conclusion – that excessive inequality is so dangerous to the fabric of society as a whole, that eventually even elites will support reform:

If nothing more is done, America’s three-decade-long lurch toward widening inequality is an open invitation to a future demagogue who misconnects the dots, blaming immigrants, the poor, government, foreign nations, “socialists” or “intellectual elites” for the growing frustrations of the middle class. The major fault line in American politics will no longer be between Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives. It will be between the “establishment” and an increasingly mad-as-hell populace determined to “take back America” from them. When they understand where this is heading, powerful interests that have so far resisted reform may come to see that the alternative is far worse.

The entire essay is well worth a read.

• What’s the Matter with Democrats?
• Democrats distracted by wedge issues of their own?
• Time for a sequel?

Stories We Tell Ourselves

• SF Examiner: An engrossing visit to another world – no 3-D glasses required
• Lincoln, Nebraska May 28 – June 3
• Time for a sequel?

The theater is brand new, set to open mid-July - What’s the Matter with Kansas? will be only the third movie to play there.

NEW YORK:

Producers’ Club INDIEHOUSE Cinema
358 West 44 Street (Between 8th & 9th Ave.)
New York, NY 10036

Opens July 30, 2010 – author Thomas Frank and director Joe Winston in person for weekend shows!

daily shows at 12noon, 2:15pm, 5:00pm, 7:15pm, 9:30pm

Tickets $10

More information on advance ticket purchase when its available….

• NYC: Thomas Frank & Barbara Ehrenreich at Borders Park Ave. 7/28/10
• Washington, D.C. starting March 19, 2010
• Rochester, NY – March 13, 2010 – one night only!

Perhaps in part because he recognizes the wide range of Kansans in the film from his own adventures in Nebraska, Clay easily got past the, er, strong emotional response, that many liberals have to a close encounter with conservative Kansans and grasped the nuance of what we were striving to achieve with the film.

He begins:

Human nature can be finicky as a cat. It often causes us to turn up our noses and reject people from our circle of trust at the first whiff of difference. Like cats, we react instinctively to appearance, smell, and behavior. Studies show that we instinctively analyze faces for degree of symmetry. Bet you were never conscious of that! But being higher apes, we simultaneously subject others to a cultural and political checklist, deciding in a flash whether they are “our kind of folks.”

High on the American checklist these days is how biblical a person is. If they’re wearing a gaudy cross around their neck, or a John 3:16 t-shirt, or even a purity ring, they’re instantly either brethren in Christ or dweebs from Jesusland. It’s human nature to react this way. But, in an interdependent world, and even in a nation “indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,” we simply cannot afford to be so dismissive.

That’s why a documentary film now slouching its way through Midwestern and West Coast art houses toward a New York opening this summer has such value. It gently nudges us beyond our stereotypes to consider the humanity of the “Other.”

The entire post is well worth a read, you can find it here.

• Can liberals and conservatives enjoy the same movie?
• Washington, D.C. starting March 19, 2010
• Time for a sequel?

The Wichita Public Library will screen the movie on Thursday, July 8 at 6:00 pm.

The screening is part of the library’s 25th Annual Academy Award Shorts program.

After the screening, director Joe Winston will talk about the making of the film and take questions from the audience.

“What’s the Matter with Kansas?” screening and Q & A

Thursday, July 8, 2010
6:00 pm

Wichita Central Public Library
223 S. Main
Wichita, KS 67202
(316) 261-8500
http://www.wichita.lib.ks.us/Locations/CentralLibrary.htm
ADMISSION IS FREE

• Denver area screening – April 15, 2010 – One night only!
• Wichita reacts to “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”
• Friday, Oct 16 – One night screening at Columbia College Chicago

Following his gaffes on the Rachel Maddow Show, Tea Party favorite Rand Paul has been keeping a lower profile, but the damage has been done. Powerful Republicans and even the conservative American Enterprise Institute have gone out of their way to rebuke him.  Of course, he still boats a comfortable lead in the polls over his Democratic opponent.

Meanwhile, the GOP is trying to suppress Tea Party-backed candidates in other states.

Is the Tea Party more of a threat to the Republican establishment, or to the Democrats?

From Frank Rich’s assessment:

Unlike Scott Brown, whose Tea Party cred consisted mainly of opposition to the health care bill and a pickup truck, Paul is one of the movement’s card-carrying founding fathers. From the start, he openly defined himself as a Tea Party tribune, and its followers embraced him (and contributed to him) as their uncompromising avatar. Now, after months of debate about what this movement is and isn’t, Paul’s victory provides clear-cut answers.

The Tea Party is not merely an inchoate expression of a political mood, or an amorphous ragtag band of diverse elements, or a bipartisan cry of dissatisfaction with the supposed “government takeover” of health care. The Tea Party is a right-wing populist movement with a specific ideology. It resides in the aging white base of the Republican Party and wants to purge that party of leaders who veer from its dogma. But divisive as the Tea Party may be within the G.O.P., it’s hardly good news for President Obama and the Democrats either.

That’s because – and this is the central insight of Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” – during hard times, in the absence of a credible liberal alternative, right-wing populism flourishes and trumps “stay the course” (or “too big to fail”) centrism every time.  As long as Paul can call huge bailouts to corporations a liberal program (and exclude Medicare from his critiques of intrusive government), he’ll do well.

• The Tea Party takes over?
• Tea-Party: The Documentary Film
• Inside the mind of the Tea Partier