Paul Stekler
George Christian Centennial Professor in Communication
E-mail: stek@mail.utexas.edu
Office: UA9 2.112C
Phone: 512-471-6679
Ph.D., Harvard University, 1982
Curriculum Vitae - PDF
Bio | Films | Links
LAST MAN STANDING
GEORGE WALLACE: SETTIN' THE WOODS ON FIRE
VOTE FOR ME: POLITICS IN AMERICA
LAST STAND AT LITTLE BIG HORN | James Welch
LOUISIANA BOYS: RAISED ON POLITICS
EYES ON THE PRIZE: II - AMERICA AT THE RACIAL CROSSROADS 1965-1980 | Henry Hampton
AMONG BROTHERS: POLITICS IN NEW ORLEANS
HANDS THAT PICKED COTTON: THE STORY OF BLACK POLITICS IN TODAY'S RURAL SOUTH
CLASS IN AMERICA
GREETINGS FROM TEXAS
LAST MAN STANDING | Purchase film
GEORGE WALLACE: SETTIN’ THE WOODS ON FIRE | Press | Purchase film
VOTE FOR ME: POLITICS IN AMERICA | Purchase film
Producer, Director and Writer, with Louis Alvarez and Andy Kolker, of this four-part, four hour series looking at American electoral politics by examining our political culture. Winner of the George Foster Peabody Award, the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award, and an Emmy Award, this series visits thirty states and covers elections from the smallest rural precinct to the White House using the humorous, provocative, entertaining style of Louisiana Boys . Described as a "a landslide of an election special" by the Los Angeles Times, "the standout in a season of documentaries" by the Chicago Tribune, "pure Americana, merry and marvelous and authentic" by USA Today, "the best four credit course on real politics you could ever take" by Roll Call, and, by the Atlanta Journal Constitution, as "a masterpiece, unmatched by anything you'll see this political season in the breadth and depth with which it makes you laugh, makes you enraged and— most remarkable of all— makes you care about politics." Funding support from PBS, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the C.I.T. Corporation. National PBS broadcast, as a two night special, October 1996.
To order VHS copies call (800) 343-5540 or visit www.cnam.com. Visit the Official Vote For Me website.
LAST STAND AT LITTLE BIG HORN | Purchase Film
Producer and Director Paul Stekler collaborated with Native-American novelist James Welch (Winter in the Blood, Fool's Crow) on this hour long documentary examining this most famous of all western battles, Custer's Last Stand on the Little Big Horn river in Montana territory, from both Native-American and white points of view. Originally broadcast on PBS's series THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE in November 1992 (to one of the largest public television audiences that year), it was nominated for two Emmys (winning one). The film also won the Spur Award from the Western Writer's of America and was used by the Little Big Horn National Monument as their unofficial introduction film at the battle site.
A chronicle of the making of the film can be found in James Welch's "Killing Custer: The Battle of the Little Bighorn and the Fate of the Plains Indians."
James Welch: 1940-2003
“His Presence Was a Lovely Thing” - by Paul Stekler
The Austin Chronicle, August 22, 2003
Looking back on his career, James Welch said that as an aspiring writer in the 1960s, fresh out of college, he had very little interest in writing about what he called "my Indian people." The son of a Blackfoot father and a Gros Ventre mother, Jim had grown up on reservations near the Montana Hi-Line border with Canada . "I thought people would not be interested in reading about Indians, especially northern Montana Indians," he later wrote. "The area was so remote and the tribes so unheard-of that I thought the people and landscape unworthy of my heroic efforts."
Fortunately for us, Jim's first creative-writing teacher at the graduate program at the University of Montana, the poet Richard Hugo, critiqued his work and bluntly told him to write what he knew. Write about the reservation, the landscape, the people. And so he did, becoming one of our most admired writers, an author whose books, including such treasures as Winter in the Blood and Fools Crow, beautifully explore the Native American experience in our country.
At the end of this summer filled with books to read, you could do no better than to rediscover this great American writer who passed away Aug. 7, 2003, at his Missoula, Mont., home at the age of 62. All of his books remain in print: his volume of poetry, Riding the Earthboy 40 (1971); the novels Winter in the Blood (1974), The Death of Jim Loney (1979), Fools Crow (1986), The Indian Lawyer (1990), The Heartsong of Charging Elk (2000); and the nonfiction book, Killing Custer (1994).
A poet-turned-novelist, Jim wrote in a spare style that other authors marveled at. His friend Ivan Doig, author of This House of Sky, once cited a favorite sentence of his, from Winter in the Blood, describing a character's attitude toward work: "He had learned to give the illusion of work, even to the point of sweating as soon as he put his gloves on, while doing very little." It was short, to the point, and, like much of Jim's writing, very funny in a sly way.
I have my own favorite moments and passages, words and scenes that have stayed with me years after I first read them:
The would-be politician, Sylvester Yellow Calf, alone and shooting baskets in the sleet and snow at his old reservation home, away from his life in the white world, at the end of The Indian Lawyer; the mixture of reality and vision in the title character's journey to Skunk Bear, the wolverine, and Feather Woman's revelation of hard times to come, in Fools Crow, a historical novel inspired by the survival of Welch's great-grandmother in the massacre of the Blackfeet at the Marais River in 1870; the grandmother's daydream about how to slit her grandson's Cree girlfriend's throat, as well as the unnamed grandson's later absurd encounters with Airplane Man, a teddy bear, and his now bar-hopping Cree ex in Winter in the Blood, a novel that somehow made hopeful, in a darkly comic way, a situation that others might describe as hopeless.
Thirteen years ago, Jim and I collaborated on a documentary film about the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Our often-surreal adventures, driving back and forth across Montana and its lonesome reservations in search of first-person accounts, are recounted in Killing Custer. Interweaving the historical story of the battle with moments from his own life and tales of our filmmaking, the book starts with the story of Jim's search, with his wife Lois, for the site of the massacre that his great-grandmother had survived. He also recounts our surprise dinner with former American Indian Movement leader Russell Means at the Hardin, Mont., Elks Club, during which we argued over who did what to whom at the Little Big Horn. He describes lighting a bonfire despite a torrential lightning storm to help us re-create the funeral pyres in the village after the battle. But my favorite memory in the book took place one Halloween night.
We'd stopped at the only open restaurant we could find on a cold Saturday in Hardin, on the edge of Crow Agency: the Little Big Man Pizza Parlor. Several pitchers of beer later, with Jim dozing comfortably in the back seat of my old Toyota wagon, I decided that it would be great fun to sneak out onto the battlefield and commune with the spirits. Waking Jim and taking advantage of the full moon, we drove in without lights and tiptoed through the military cemetery where General Custer's Indian scouts -- luckily dismissed by the general before he charged into battle -- are buried. And suddenly there we were, looking out over the strange and lonely landscape of the most famous battlefield in the West, now brilliant in the moonlight. To me, it was a silly adventure. To Jim, it was something magical. He later wrote:
"At night you are alone with your imagination. Especially if the moon has lit up the battlefield for you. You can see the soldiers racing their horses ... You can smell the gunpowder, blood, dust, guts, horseshit, sage, and fear. You can also taste it, metallic on your tongue. And in the hundred-degree heat and the dust, you forget you want a drink of water, and for some, a drink will do no good. The battle is over and the women and children are coming up the hill from the camp."
In the last line of his last book, The Heartsong of Charging Elk, Jim wrote that for his main character "the Moon of the Falling Leaves would light his way." That beautiful moonlight lit the way for Jim's writing all of his life.
Those of us fortunate enough to have known him know that, as his friend and the widow of his mentor, Ripley Hugo, so aptly said, "his presence was a lovely thing." So was his writing, and we are all richer for it. Despite his initial intentions, Jim Welch brilliantly wrote what he knew, and yes, those efforts were heroic.
LOUISIANA BOYS: RAISED ON POLITICS | Purchase Film
Producer, Director and Writer, with Louis Alvarez and Andy Kolker, of an hour-length video documentary examining the colorful, Byzantine political culture of Louisiana, from the days of Huey Long up to the present. Winner of an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award, an Ohio State Award, a Chicago International Film Festival Silver Plaque, a National Educational Film Festival Silver Apple, and nominated for a national Emmy. National PBS broadcast on P.O.V. series August 1992.
EYES ON THE PRIZE: II – AMERICAN AT THE RACIAL CROSSROADS 1965-1980 | Purchase Film
Producer, Director and Writer, with Jacqueline Shearer, of two hour-long segments of Blackside's civil rights history series. "The Promised Land: 1967-68," about Dr. Martin Luther King's last year (nominated for two Emmys, for writing and editing, winner of CINE Golden Eagle, Banff Television Festival documentary finalist) and "The Keys to the Kingdom: 1972-78", about school desegregation in Boston, the election of Atlanta's first black mayor, and affirmative action. Series was the winner of a duPont-Columbia Journalism Award, a Peabody Award, and the Organization of American Historians' Eric Barnouw Award. National PBS broadcast, January 1990.
To order VHS copies visit: http://www2.blackside.com/blackside/BlacksideFilms/EYES2film.html
“Henry Hampton (1940-1998): In Memory” - by Paul Stekler, The Austin Chronicle, January 1, 1999
You know the one thing we did right.
Was the day we started to fight.
Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on, hold on.
Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on.
—Civil rights freedom song
Last month, a documentary film producer in Boston died. He wasn't a celebrity or someone famous, but in a small way, he changed the world we live in. His name was Henry Hampton, and he was the creator of a series about the civil rights movement called Eyes on the Prize.
I first heard of Henry 16 years ago. I was a beginning filmmaker in New Orleans, trying to raise money for a documentary on black politics. A friend of mine who had worked for Henry thought we had a lot of interests in common. I wrote to him for advice and got back a detailed, encouraging letter, full of ideas. At the time, I figured everyone in the film business must be as helpful. In all the years that followed, I've never gotten another letter like it.
When I eventually finished my film, I flew to Boston, hoping to interest the producers of a PBS series. My meeting with them lasted barely longer than "we're not interested" and I found myself far from home with time to kill. Then I remembered Henry's letter and called to see if I could come visit his production office. Later, I'd become familiar with Henry's usually frenetic schedule, full of meetings, phone calls, and screenings. But that morning, he said he'd love to meet me, to just come on over.
I found Henry in a crowded, book-strewn office in Boston's South End, a short, stocky, conservatively dressed black man with a ready smile. Within a few minutes, we were talking about filmmaking and history and Southern politics—the field that I'd done my graduate work in—and about Henry's feelings that this series he was making, about the civil rights movement, might really make an impact. On the way out the door, he asked me if I might consider being an advisor for the series. I thought about it for a moment and said I rather help him make some of the films. He looked me in the eye for a minute, and then he said, "What an interesting idea." In time, I moved to Boston and was working on EYES ON THE PRIZE.
Henry's dream was to make a history of the civil rights movement that would focus on the people who had made up that movement, mostly regular folks who'd risked their lives, endured beatings and jail time, and experienced the triumphs and tragedies firsthand. It would truly be a people's history. As Henry later said, he wanted to get away from the usual depiction of black Americans as simply "poor, downtrodden, and brutalized primitives" and show that "it was the strength of blacks that made the civil rights movement happen, with support from some whites." It would be their story.
Making a series about the civil rights movement in this country would seem to be the most logical of projects for public television. But back in the late 1970s, that logic was only clear to Henry. It took him 10 years of fundraising and false starts to raise the money he needed. A charismatic man who was always the center of any gathering, he never despaired. He always talked about never taking rejection personally, that someday, sometime, the people who were not willing to help now might do so later, and probably never remember their earlier rejection at all. And he was right.
Henry had an amazing ability to see what people, often without direct experience in making documentary films, might be able to accomplish. In hindsight, perhaps that might be expected, given his commitment to hire African-Americans to make films, people who had not had the opportunities to produce before. He convinced them that they could turn one of the most important moments in American history into sensitive, complex, emotionally compelling narratives, introducing a national audience to a cast of characters—grassroots activists, firebrands, plain folk, and civil rights icons—most of whom they'd never heard of, some when they really only knew as symbols.
For two years, our dedicated crew of independent filmmakers, whom Henry had assembled, fought over history as much as we did about filmmaking. Henry's idea to avoid complacency was to put together production teams of black and white filmmakers, usually one man and one woman, one black, one white, neither of whom had ever met the other before. It made for lively dynamics on the job.
We'd have meetings, sometimes lasting into the night, day after day, around the old Ping-Pong table that we sat around to argue story content. In retrospect, they were amazing meetings, black and white filmmakers fighting with real passion over whose history it was, what stories "had to be told," what history a national audience needed to know.
Our responsibility was to get the "history" right, because this might be the only chance to reach a wider audience with these untold stories. And I remember Henry Hampton, a black man born in a country obsessed with race and burdened by its history of racial oppression, always admonishing us to remember that we had to tell stories "that people in Peoria could understand and relate to." White people and black. If we couldn't make the history inclusive, then we were not doing our jobs.
Henry was the optimist. He always talked about moments in our shared American history when things might have gone better, when race relations or governmental policies might have changed for the better—but always expressed with the belief that we learned from the roads not taken in the past. And that if we presented those stories clearly in our films, that maybe sometime in the future the dreams of people in the past might still be realized.
Henry's dream became 1987's EYES ON THE PRIZE. The miniseries won every award given to television documentaries. It has been seen by over 20 million viewers. It came to exemplify what's best about public television, a national platform that can broadcast the realized visions of filmmakers who have something important to say.
More importantly, the films in the EYES series can be found in almost every public library and school system in this country, where they continue to be shown to a new generation of students— and are available to be seen by generations in the future.
Go to a library or a video store and watch one of the EYES ON THE PRIZE programs. In its signature animated introduction, with the old freedom lyrics being sung, there is a line of black marchers. And they're holding an American flag in their hands. EYES was a story about the triumph of African-Americans in this country, yes. But it was told with an equal emphasis on their being Americans. And that their triumph was one that we all shared.
After the success of EYES, the documentary and public television world climbed aboard Henry's bandwagon to celebrate his accomplishment. Funding for future projects and a multitude of honors followed. But Henry's commitment to chronicling the lives of the poor and the disenfranchised— and their attempts to create a more just and equal country—never wavered. It showed in his films about America's Depression years and on the War on Poverty in the Sixties.
Today, Henry's work lives on, in the films being made by the filmmakers who helped him make EYES. In the last year, Orlando Bagwell and a production team full of EYES exes produced Africans in America, a multi-part series on the history of slavery in America . Louie Massiah made his fine “W.E.B. DuBois: A Biography in Four Voices.” Jon Else finished “Cadillac Desert” a beautifully filmed history about water and politics in the West. Sam Pollard (the producer who visited Austin with his “Four Little Girls” last spring) is finishing “I'll Make Me a World,” a series about the black contributions to the arts in America in this century, produced by Henry and his Blackside production company, which will air on PBS in February. There are literally hundreds of people working on documentary films, mostly minority filmmakers, who trained with Henry and who will continue to add to this distinguished body of work.
And in the years since EYES, I've gotten to help make films about grassroots politics across the country, the Battle of the Little Big Horn, and George Wallace. But without the break that Henry gave me, an inexperienced filmmaker who didn't yet know just how much he didn't know, I'm not sure I'd be making films at all today.
I last saw Henry in Miami last June, at the PBS national meetings. He'd given the keynote address and was standing off to the side of a reception being given to celebrate his newest series. His slow walk, the result of the polio he contracted as a teenager and the heavy leg braces he had relearned to walk with, had grown more labored after years of chemotherapy for lung cancer. He was tired and looked a lot older than when I'd first met him, but when he smiled, he still shone. Ever the optimist, in his life, in his films, in the country that he truly loved, for what it was and for what it could be.
Last month, a documentary film producer in Boston died. He wasn't a celebrity or someone famous, but in a small but important way, my friend Henry Hampton changed the world in which we live. And proved that a filmmaker, sometimes, really can change the world, and make it a better place.
AMONG BROTHER: POLITICS IN NEW ORLEANS
Producer, Director and Writer of an hour-long video documentary about an election for mayor of New Orleans between two black candidates. Winner of an American Film Festival Red Ribbon and National Educational Film Festival Bronze Apple. National PBS broadcast, September 1987.
HANDS THAT PICKED COTTON: THE STORY OF BLACK POLITICS IN TODAY’S RURAL SOUTH
Producer, Director, Writer and Editor, with Alan Bell, of hour-long documentary film examining the political legacy of the civil rights movement for blacks in the Mississippi Delta. Winner of a Gabriel Award and a finalist among documentary features at the American Film Festival. National PBS broadcast, February 1985.
CLASS IN AMERICA (working title)
Sequel series by the VOTE FOR ME production team, focusing on social and economic class in America. In a country where 85% of Americans believe themselves to be "middle class," this series is about the myriad of ways that class identity and divisions shapes our society— and the consequences of our national myth of a "classless society." $1.5 million dollar budget funded by PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting ($750,000 challenge fund grant), the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation ($350,000) and ITVS ($400,000). Completion for national PBS broadcast in 1999.
GREETINGS FROM TEXAS — a documentary series
Executive producer of a series of eight documentaries about Texas, produced by independent filmmakers in Texas and presented for national broadcast on PBS by KLRU, the public television affiliate in Austin, Texas. Films subjects include the accordion based conjunto music of South Texas, an essay on cheerleading, football and marriage, a history of Jews in Texas, a portrait of Juarez, and a contest to win a truck in a small East Texas town by standing next to it and holding on the longest. The films are in various stages of development, while fundraising takes place.
