Back in March we first told you about the documentary True Son when it had its world premiere at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival. Well now the inspiring film is will be released this Friday in New York and in November 7th in Los Angeles.
True Son is the story of Michael Tubbs, a 22-year old Stanford University graduate destined for an affluent career in the private, tech or political sectors. But instead he returns home to Stockton, California, considered one of the worst cities in the United States and riddled with financial crisis and crime rates rivaling Afghanistan. Yet where everyone else saw hopelessness, Tubbs saw possibility. In 2012, he ran for City Council, building his campaign from the ground up by rallying hundreds of young Stockton residents between the ages of 14 and 21 to join his movement. In Kevin Gordon’s passionate and inspirational documentary he sets out to beat a politician twice his age and bring his community back from bankruptcy.
We caught up with Tubbs and Gordon to get more a more in-depth perspective on the film and each of their motivations in bringing this exciting story to film audiences.
Two years and one inspiring documentary film later you are still on the Stockton City Council. How has your life changed since then? And, has their been any effective change you’ve seen either in the city, the city government or the people of Stockton?
Michael Tubbs: I’ve learned that the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. are so true when he said that, “change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.” Over the past two years we’ve made some gains as a city but have a long way to go. Over the past two years, I’ve had a leadership role in creating an Office of Violence Prevention in the city, establishing a summer literacy program for youth in public housing, passing ban the box legislation (allows ex-offenders the opportunity to apply to work for the city), and piloted anti-recidivism back to work programs. I’ve also worked with community leaders to establish coalitions including: the Black Community Crusade, Alliance for Boys and Men of Color, and the Reinvent South Stockton Coalition.
Kevin, ‘True Son’ focuses on Michael’s evolution into a believable political candidate. What evolutions have you made as a filmmaker, fresh out of film school yourself, since making ‘True Son’ and getting it into the Tribeca Film Festival, among others?
Kevin Gordon: TRUE SON was the first feature length project for our whole team and it was definitely a learning experience. Just as Michael and his team were figuring out how to run a campaign, we were figuring out how to make a feature film. As invaluable as film school was for me, nothing can fully prepare you for the experience of making a feature. I came away with a much stronger connection to my filmmaking intuition and even more confidence to tackle the next project.
Michael, You seem very even tempered, but were there any moments during the filming, especially since your campaign’s inexperience was mirrored with a first time feature filmmaking crew, that the filming got too annoying to you?
Tubbs: During the hot summer months, campaigning was difficult enough and even more so with cameras following you around. Several times I would get frustrated with the cameras and found their ubiquitous presence incredibly annoying!
In other interviews Kevin, you mention ‘Street Fight’, but are there any other political documentary films or campaign films that inspired the final cut for ‘True Son’ – whether going with or against their styles?
Gordon: Before production began, I must have watched every major campaign documentary. Bits of each of them were probably bouncing around in my head at different times. My major takeaway was that many of those films focused on the people around the candidate or the opponent, but our strength laid in our intimate access to the candidate himself and his personal journey, so we made that the center of the film. We also wanted the city of Stockton and its challenges to be the main opponent so to that end we looked to other films that tackled urban crises, in particular The Interrupters, for models.
It’s mentioned that you have social justice ‘roots.’ Can you share what some of those are and briefly explain how they helped you in deciding to direct ‘True Son’?
After college I worked for a human rights group abroad and then spent three years working as an investigator on appeals for men on death row. It was my job to travel across California to interview our clients’ family members, friends, neighbors, teachers, and doctors – anyone who had ever known them – in order to put together a complete profile of who they were. The goal was to try to humanize them, contextualize their lives, and provide some explanation for their actions. It was a crash course in the realities of life for America’s underclass but tragically there was little we could do at such a late stage in our clients’ lives and these important stories were buried in court archives instead of being shared with the public. Frustrated with the law, I turned to filmmaking as a more effective tool for change and in Michael’s story I saw so many of these themes played out but with an inspirational twist. I knew this was a story I wanted to help broadcast.
Lastly, in one of the film’s greatest moments, you declared, “Change is not going to happen because one person gets elected…It’s going to happen because that one person elected is a catalyst to bringing a whole lot of people into that process of creating change.” How have you been able to implement this into the youth and adults of Stockton since being elected to City Council? If you haven’t yet, how do you plan to do so?
Tubbs: Some of my greatest successes have been in building coalitions and strategic partnerships that are leveraged to bring citizens not usually a part of the policy making process to the table. A great example of that would be the Community Assessment work done by a coalition I created in my district called the Reinvent South Stockton Coalition. Over the summer, the coalition trained 40 youth organizers and brought 800 new voices to the table to articulate policy priorities and solutions.
True Son will make its theatrical debut this Friday, October 31st at Cinema Village in New York City and its Lost Angeles theatrical release on November 7th at Laemmie Music Hall. You will leave the theater ready to evoke real change in your city or neighborhood. For more information on this film go towww.TrueSondoc.com
TRUE SON
Documentary
68 minutes
Featuring: Michael Tubbs, Nicholas Hatten, Lange Luntao
Director: Kevin Gordon
Co-Producers: Jhanvi Shriram & Ketaki Shriram
Editors: Laura Green, Emile Bokaer
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