The film “Follow the Leader,” tells the poignant, funny, respectful story of three conservative teens with presidential ambitions and their coming of age. Just in time for peak political season, it will tour with a facilitated “unique episodic film presentation with interactive voting,” according to a press release.
In Reality Check Interactive screenings, audience members will watch segments of the film and vote about issues, using keypads linked to their demographic group while a side screen shows the results.
Brooklyn-based filmmaker Jonathan Goodman Levitt said in a phone interview, “We can only heal the divide if we start talking to each other. We self-select our own media. We self-select what our friends curate for us on Facebook.”
Levitt suspects that most Americans do not understand those on the other side of the political fence. “If you ask a progressive or conservative person what the other side thinks, their ideas are not in touch with reality.”
His documentary is nonpolemic: the opposite of “Fahrenheit 911,” “Obama 2016,” or “Game Change.” The film is meant to break both sides out of the “forward-leaning,” Limbaugh-drenched, “fair and balanced” echo chamber that keeps us apart.
“Everyone is completely divided. They have their cliques. … People don’t know what people who aren’t in their club are like,” said Levitt.
From thousands of young people, he chose 16-year-old class presidents Ben (the loyalist from Virginia), D.J. (the believer from Massachusetts), and Nick (the idealist from Pennsylvania). Levitt followed them for three years.
The boys mature and begin to look at the world more deeply. Of the three, one becomes an Independent, one a Democrat, and one stays Republican. Only one keeps his presidential ambition.
“They are learning to be adults, learning to be people. The issue of personhood, learning to think for yourself,” is the central theme of the documentary, said Levitt.
From demonstrating set gestures to punctuate a speech, to rolling into a ball after receiving a cruel Facebook hack, to debating the Iraq war with a parent, the boys are human, endearing, and sincere. Levitt creates a nuanced portrait of a generation through the trio.
He said many people comment on his choice of only boys and no girls for subjects, yet “mostly guys run the country now, so it is realistic,” said Levitt. On the other hand, he said it was those three who personally engaged him the most.
Ben’s girlfriend, Anna, does a good 21st-century Abigail Adams as she challenges his ideas about maleness and leadership qualities. According to Levitt, in a chat during an event for the film, she wrote, “I'd love to live in the White House.”
“Follow the Leader” takes a fresh look at how millennial voters think. The generation’s defining event was 9/11, and they see the world differently than do older citizens.
Levitt lived in London for nearly a decade and said in a press release that the project “began as a personal investigation into the politics of today’s youth, whose contradictory views confused me while teaching in the U.S. post-9/11. By sympathetically portraying its characters on their own terms, the film provokes us to re-examine both our preconceptions about youth and conservatives, as well as our own political views.”
Bill and Hillary Clinton, John McCain, the late Ted Kennedy, and Michael Bloomberg are among the national figures with cameos in “Follow the Leader.”
The film premieres on Aug. 30 at the Republican National Convention and on Sept. 6 at the Democratic National Convention kick off the Reality Check Tour, which so far will consist of 100 interactive events including the PaleyDocFest at the Paley Center in New York on Oct. 16.
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