The Tea Party Movement is taking it to the big small screen. Tea Party: The Documentary Film will be available on DVD this Thanksgiving.
The film, which follows five “grassroots individuals” from town halls to the 9/12 March on Washington, is still being filmed as the crew (working at cost) captures tea parties in the field in their battle against healthcare reform.
“It began as a ripple” — booms a baritone voice over a crescendo of music in the trailer — “to a new threat on freedom.” Then, we meet the first “grassroots individual”, Jack, who intones: “I’ve had a yearning inside me, for quite sometime, in order to go on living within myself, I had to take an action.”
The other featured “grassroots individuals” include a colonial re-enactor, a urologist, and Nate, a young black man who said he stopped supporting Obama after he became a Libertarian. Also in the lens is Jenny Beth Martin, whose trouble with the IRS was recently covered at TPMMuckraker.
The documentary first began to take form in July after writer and promotions manager Joel Foster, then a local talk radio host, struck up a working relationship with executive producer Luke Livingston at tea party events around Atlanta in the spring.
“Livingston decided there was a story here, one of the largest political movements in recent history, or in the entire history of the country, and from the inside, we had full access,” Foster said.
The production’s funding, $6,000 or $7,000, came from “one or two grassroots” donors, according to Foster. The donors were routed to Livingston and Foster through a FreedomWorks email list — a list they were on since Livingston was hired by FreedomWorks to film the 9/12 march, Foster said. Foster maintains that the project is a “bottom-up thing.”
There has been some free promotion from decidedly non-grassroots organizations including FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity. Tea Party Patriots and local chapters of Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Project have also helped out. The film crew, supplied by Ground Floor Video, is working out of pocket until the DVD orders start rolling in, Foster said.
In the run up to the Thanksgiving release, the group behind the film is organizing “cinematic tea parties” around the country. After screening a 30-minute rough cut of the documentary participants will discuss the future of the tea party movement in a “town hall” style forum.
Foster said they have confirmed about 200 of these events.
But, Foster hopes, there will be a premiere. He’s aiming to unroll the red carpet sometime around Nov. 23 at the Capitol Visitors’ Center.
And yes, we have the trailer:
