Many might describe “Boys State,” the critically acclaimed and Sundance Film Festival award-winning documentary by Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine as timely. Especially as the United States finds itself once again in a divisive presidential election. A more accurate description may be “timeless,” because everything the doc captures has happened before and is destined to happen again.
Moss and McBaine chronicled the 2018 Texas session of Boys State, a summer conference held in different states across the nation for high school juniors that centers on government and politics (there is a Girls State as well). Every summer, different “statesmen” spend a week forming political parties (specifically not the Democrat or Republican parties) and going through the process of electing representatives and leaders. After the 2017 Texas session voted to secede from the United States, a first for the 83-year-old event, it caught the filmmakers’ attention.
The duo joined the Four Quadrant podcast to discuss how they found each of their four surprising subjects (Ben Feinstein, Steven Garza, Robert MacDougall and René Otero), whether this class of statesman were an accurate representation of Texas youth and how Richard Linklater’s “Dazed and Confused” inspired the film.
Listen to the conversation in the Soundcloud embed below or on iTunes. If you do listen on iTunes please rate, subscribe, and share it with your friends!
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“Boys State” is available worldwide on Apple TV+
