‘The Last Republican’ Filmmaker Steve Pink Talks How He Went From Comedy To Capitol Hill, And Won The Trust Of Political Polar Opposite Adam Kinzinger
If Kamala Harris wins the presidency, one aspect of her campaign that will be highlighted will be her support from Never Trumpers, the group of Republicans who want to ensure that the former president never makes it back to the White House.
In the election of 2024, these figures have been some of the most vocal in making the case that this isn’t a normal election cycle, that democracy is at stake. Proof enough is that many of them will be casting their ballots for a Democrat for the first time.
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Adam Kinzinger is one of the them, having spoken at the Democratic National Convention and appeared on the campaign trail for Harris. Steve Pink’s The Last Republican is backstory of how Kinzinger, a staunch conservative, got to that place. The documentary offers some key, behind-the-scenes moments as the Illinois congressman, along with Liz Cheney, were made outcasts in the GOP as they joined the January 6th Committee, investigated Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and revealed bombshell details in hearings during 2022.
The project was a career turn for Pink. In the documentary, Kinzinger makes clear that he is a fan of Pink’s Hot Tub Time Machine, the 2010 sci fi comedy that has become a cult classic. But Pink also has been expanding into other genres, including the romance drama The Wheel (2021). Upcoming is a psychological thriller starring Jermaine Fowler, James Morosini and Pauline Chalamet, among others.
Pink first approached Kinzinger in the fall of 2021, when he was already a Republican pariah, and on the first day of shooting, the congressman found out that a new redistricting map essentially meant that his House Republican career would be over.
Deadline spoke to Pink about the making of The Last Republican, how he earned Kinzinger’s trust, and how he found himself in the midst of one of the most momentous political moments in recent memory.
DEADLINE: This documentary was quite an evolution in your career. In the movie, Adam Kinzinger even mentions one of your past works, Hot Tub Time Machine.
STEVE PINK: A lot of the filmmakers that I love, from Sydney Pollack to even Adam McKay today, have been able to explore different genres. And so I started my thinking about other things I wanted to do, first with a movie called The Wheel, which went to Toronto about four years ago. It was this little romantic drama that we did during Covid. I thought the challenge of making a little romantic drama would be quite easy, actually, but it turned out to be incredibly challenging, just in terms of how I move camera. … So when the idea of doing a documentary came up, I had a familiarity be able to capture the things that are going on around me without a giant crew.
DEADLINE: I would think one of the bigger challenges was earning Adam Kinzinger’s trust. How did you approach him and and how did that come about?
PINK: We have a company called the Media Courthouse Documentary Collective that my good friends started. Because I’m a political junkie, the idea of doing a political subject was really intriguing. Our founder Kevin Morris had known Adam and introduced us, and my first reaction, which I’ve said many times in the press, was, ‘Please no. I couldn’t be less interested in documenting the life of a Republican, because I’m a far left progressive.’ But in really getting to see Adam’s courage in the face of January 6th, to stand up against Trump and his own party, and pay the consequences of that in the form of losing his job and his friends and family members … he was obviously an incredibly intriguing subject.
I was more interested in what he was experiencing in real time — how do you go from a near leadership position in the Republican caucus to a pariah, and what were the consequences of that to your family and your friends and your career and all those things? And I think he was interested in that. I did also say to him that I thought he would be a terrible documentary subject were it not for the fact that he had been so courageous. And I got a laugh out of him that day because it’s not something you say to someone, but I think we had real common ground because of Hot Tub. I was shooting with him one day, kind of thinking of myself as this important political documentary filmmaker of a very important political subject. And we’re walking up to his apartment in DC, and I’m following him with the camera, and he’s like, ‘Oh, by the way, I loved Hot Tub Time Machine. And I was like, ‘You love Hot Tub Time Machines?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I really love Hot Tub Time Machine. That’s my favorite movie.’ … So suddenly we had this common ground because we had these obviously opposing political views. That opened up our friendship and he trusted me more to follow him around.
DEADLINE: Did it take a while for him to get used to the camera following him around?
PINK: The more they trusted me, the more access I got, and the more comfortable [Kinzinger and wife Sofia] both became with the camera being in their space, and also answering questions. At first, all of their answers when I was around were very formal. So they almost felt like it was a journalist following them around for a news segment, which has a very different vibe…. So the more
they trusted us, the more they gave us access, and the more they came became comfortable that, just with time, and getting to know me and me getting to know them. And I tended to stay out a little way. I tended to be a fly on the wall, and would pick my spots to ask them questions. But the other way I experienced making the political documentary is by trying to be invisible in the space, so that they started to feel like I wouldn’t put any burden on them at all. I wouldn’t ask them any questions.
DEADLINE: Did you run into problems with the January 6th Committee giving you access?
PINK: Not problems, but it took a long time for us to get permission. We had to get permission from Bennie Thompson, the chairman. …We didn’t actually know whether or not we were going to be the Jan 6th hearings with our camera until two weeks before.
DEADLINE: One thing I really thought the documentary captured so well was there was much suspense over whether the hearings would fly or not.
PINK: That was an unexpected part of the documentary that we captured. [They] didn’t know if they would be able to pull it off, in what form, whether it would get any attention from the media. It was far from clear that it would become the kind of summer event that it became.
DEADLINE: What surprised you about kind of the end of this story, where Kinzinger leaves Congress?
PINK: Well, it was bittersweet, because all of these things were happening at once for Adam. There’s this extraordinary moment where the ending of the Jan 6th hearings were concluding at the very moment of his entire congressional career. And then he had to just change and then go down to his packed car with all of his things from his former DC apartment and drive out of town. He was part of this extraordinary event that was happening in real time to just driving away in his packed car out of DC.
DEADLINE: Did it surprise you that he got to where he is? He spoke at the Democratic Convention. He’s endorsed Kamala Harris.
PINK: He’s consistent in his views. He has truly held beliefs. He doesn’t waver that much for that from them. And when it came to his determined view of Jan 6th and his own party and Donald Trump, in terms of the future of the country, that is something that is fundamental for him. So I think he became a natural choice as a spokesperson for country over party. So at the moment, you’re saying, ‘It’s not politics anymore. It’s the preservation of democracy.’ I think that people recognized that he was a kind of singular champion in that regard, because he gave up everything to do it. There are plenty of Republican congressmen that are still in Congress who probably hate Trump and haven’t said a damn word because they don’t want to lose their jobs. I find that to be cowardice, and so does Adam. But it’s not like there’s a bunch of them out there who’ve been in his outspoken as Adam and sacrificed as much as he did.
DEADLINE: Given your political views, how much did you get in arguments just over issues with him?
PINK: All the time. I tend to be a little belligerent. I haven’t interacted with that many lawmakers. So it’s like, here’s this expert in politics, right? He was a Republican congressman, and my views are so diametrically opposed, I wanted to battle test them. I wanted to hear what a conservative politician really felt about all these issues that are really important to me. I found out quick that we, in fact, did disagree vehemently. We argued, but the more we did it, the more it became the material that helped us bond as as friends, as opposed to the obstacle that prevented us from being friend. It had a paradoxical effect, because the more I got to know him, the more I realized he had a good heart and was operating in good faith, and he knew I was too. … So that I learned a lot in terms of how to disagree with people who have opposing political views. That became kind of what the film in way becomes about. It starts as a Profile in Courage, and then becomes a movie about the importance of civil discourse.
DEADLINE: What do you think his future is?
PINK: That’s a hard question for me to answer. I think he has a bright future. … He’s such a committed guy, I think he will be a force in American politics, if he chooses to be one. At the end of the film, there’s this thing that becomes really revelatory, this moment where he realizes he might have lost the thing that he cared about most, which had nothing to do with courage….There’s this notion that he was really courageous, but the thing he really lost was his optimism. The thing that kept him going, this desire to serve. That was his fear. His fear wasn’t losing his job, his fear was that he lost his desire to serve and his kind of optimistic view of the world, and his fight is against cynicism. When he revealed that in my interview, I was astounded. I was like, ‘Oh, that’s what the movie is actually about. It’s not Profile in Courage about a guy who did all these brave things. It’s actually a movie about a guy who suddenly realizes he might have lost the thing that was most important to him, and that was his desire to serve, and his fight against cynicism.
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