Last Man Standing: Politics, Texas Style (2004)

Producer, Director, Writer and Narrator of a feature length documentary about a contest for Texas state representative in Lyndon Johnson’s old hometown between a Rick Green, the GOP Christian conservative incumbent, and Patrick Rose, his 24 year old Democratic challenger. The film also highlights the 2002 battle, across the Lone Star state, between George W. Bush’s ascendant Texas Republicans and a multi-cultural Democratic ticket headed by a Mexican-American gubernatorial candidate and an African-American candidate for United States Senate. What happens sheds light on American politics then -- and today as well. The Austin American Statesman wrote that “if everyone could see elections this gripping, more of us might get off the couch and vote.” John Leonard, in New York Magazine, wrote “compared to the sound bites that pass for coverage on the networks, and the yaps that pass analysis on the primal-scream cable shows, this flying visit to a small election towers like De Tocqueville.” Three short sequences were nationally broadcast on PBS’s Washington Week with Gwen Ifill in 2003. Funding support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Mattsson-McHale Foundation, the Audre and Bernard Rapoport Foundation, and the Austin Community Foundation. Premiered at South by Southwest 2004. Nominated for a Writer’s Guild Award.

National PBS broadcast on the PBS P.O.V. series July 2004.

Produced & Directed by Paul Stekler Edited & Co-Produced by Sandra Guardado

Cinematography by Deborah Eve Lewis Sound by Diane Zander-Mason

POV Filmmaker Interview, 2004