Milwaukee-born, Chicago lawyer and advocate Newton Minow, the last remaining member of the Kennedy administration, is the subject of an hourlong tribute doc, “Newton Minow: An American Story,” airing May 7 on WTTW/11.
Minow was Federal Communications Commission chairman in the ‘60s and is famously known for calling television “a vast wasteland.”
Fittingly, WTTW is honoring Minow at its 60th anniversary dinner, as he advocated and helped create public television while leading the FCC. He also served as WTTW’s board chairman.
The doc was conceived and produced by Mike Leonard as part of his Ch. 11 series, “inCommon with Mike Leonard,” broadcast on Thursday nights.
Leonard had been part of NBC’s “Today Show” for more than three decades, covering stories about ordinary Americans doing extraordinary things, a theme he continues in his TV series.
Picture Show, headed by director Jamie Fleischel and partner/post supervisor Matt Leonard, started doc production six months ago and wrapped in early April. Producers were Katie Prentiss and Brian Gailey. Corey Lillard was DP.
More than Minow’s advocacy for the common good, the doc traces the life and career of the child of Ukraine immigrant parents who became an adviser to presidents and an eye witness to history.
Picture Show shot interviews with Minow at his Winnetka home, coincidentally he and Leonard’s are neighbors; shot at locations around Chicago, spent several days in Washington, D.C. and in Milwaukee for scenes of his childhood.
Invaluable archival footage came from the Library of Congress, the National Archives, Boston station WGBH and Minow’s papers and film collection from his government service that are housed at the University of Wisconsin/Madison.
“He is an amazing man,” Fleischel says of the doc subject, “with his story being so close to events and influence on the 20th Century, the changes he quietly advocated for and their ripple effects socially and technologically, such the launch of the first communications satellite in space, which relayed the first TV pictures, phone calls, fax imaged and provided thefirst live transatlantic TV feed.”
Doc EP was Mary Kay Wall, also EP on Mike Leonard’s Ch. 11 series, and the director of “The Telling Well,” where the Minow doc may be seen starting May 8.
