Letterman suffered scrutiny after it surfaced he had sexual relationships with his female staffers while married to his wife, Regina. Blackmailed for $2 million, Letterman confessed  to the allegations live on “The Late Show” and subsequently retired in 2009.  Unfit for cable, he turned to Netflix, which agreed to facilitate a new kind of talk show.

The show debuts Letterman’s shockingly long beard giving us a biblical, omniscient impression much different from his typical “working man” appearance. The audience is unaware of who each guest is at the start of the first episode. On an eerily vacant and dark stage, Letterman stands in front of two black chairs as he gives a small introduction, then casually brings out former president of the United States, Barack Obama.

This is the perfect platform for Obama to talk about his personal life that had been absent from his presidential image. He talks of current politics, his mother, absent father, and childhood so focused on the importance of education. Obama also admits that he grew somewhat envious of his wife Michelle’s more pleasurable role as First Lady. As he had to deliver formal speeches from the Oval Office, his wife participated in human interest campaigns with children and young women.

Revolutionizing U.S. presidential campaign tactics, Obama is the first to mobilize voters using an online presence. Twitter and Facebook were handy in coordinating rallies, grassroots efforts, as well as sharing the campaign platform. Obama pioneered a strategy that Trump himself employed to become his successor. “It seems like a handy tool that has turned against us,” Letterman says.

In this episode, Obama touches on the “fake news” phenomenon. “One of the biggest challenges we have to our democracy is the degree to which we don’t share a common baseline of facts,” he explains. “You are entitled to your own opinion, you are not entitled to your own facts,” Obama quotes former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY.)

One of Obama’s inspirations is former Congressman John Lewis (D-GA) who helped organize the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965. Letterman visited the Edmund Pettus Bridge where the police rained down tear gas on Civil Rights protesters. Although peaceful, Lewis says that he truly believed he would die that day.

“We had been taught not to be a threat, but be determined and be orderly, peaceful and abide by the philosophy and discipline of non-violence.” Lewis tells Letterman that he believes the current administration “is a major setback to the hopes, dreams, and aspirations of a people…and a threat not only to our country but to the planet.”

The second episode, “You Be The Newsman, I’ll Be Liz Taylor,” features George Clooney who speaks of his Catholic upbringing, activism, personal life, and relationship with his family.

In the late 1960’s-70’s, Clooney’s father, hosted a local talk show in Ohio called “The Nick Clooney Show.” The local morning talk show gave rise to George’s love of show business, as his father would have him dress up as characters and mock interview him.

Clooney’s wife, Amal, is a human rights lawyer sharing Clooney’s interest in activism. He became very involved with the genocide in Darfur and began the Not On Our Watch Foundation in 2008. Clooney visited the decimated Darfur region of Sudan in order to investigate the corruption. He found that the banks were aiding the Sudanese government’s massacre of Darfur and used this information to spread awareness in the U.S. through the media.

We learn that Clooney is not just the former “sexiest man alive,” but a passionate, intelligent man driven by his Catholic virtues. When Clooney goes into detail about his wife, I was in awe of the degree of his sincerity. “Before I had the twins,” Clooney says, “I felt that way about her. I felt that I’d met someone who I would absolutely trade my life for…her life meant more to me than my life.”

After the first two episodes, I feel like I’ve earned friendships in Obama and Clooney. This show revolutionizes television’s 15-minute interview into an extensive, in-depth conversation with the iconic. Unfortunately, I’m unable to reminisce with George Clooney over a glass of his Casamigos Tequila, or visit the Edmund Pettus bridge with one of the founders of the Civil Rights movement, but Letterman’s show serves as a perfect substitute.

“My Next Guest” will continue with a new episode every month. The March episode will feature Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, who survived a shot in the head from the Taliban. As the title hints, surely her bravery “needs no introduction.”

The post Netflix and Trill: Letterman Revolutionizes the Talk Show appeared first on KRUI Radio.

Arun Chaudhary answers this question and more as the first official White House videographer on the second day of the Witching Hour festival at the Englert in Iowa City.

Chaudhary began his speech joking that although now he’s “the most artsy guy in the White House,” he used to be “the most political guy in art school.” He then dived right into the content of his Power Point, explaining that because the digital age we live in is so different from what people have ever seen before, the way we present politics should change, too.

And he has a point – following President Barack Obama, who hired him in the very beginning of his 2008 campaign, the filmmaker has had a chance to see how storytelling works in today’s politics, and has aimed to focus less on the “sleek,” finished look of political photography and more on the backstage, personal, and human aspects of a politician. The main point with which Chaudhary led his talk was the fact that today, with all this instant access of information, people first have to care about something before they look it up. He says, “we need to make politics compelling.”

Chaudhary broke the rest of his speech into two parts, (and this is where the talk’s title begins to make more sense): Authenticity and Authorship.

The filmmaker explained that authenticity had quite a bit to do with narrative. “Put facts into an emotional framework,” he said, as he talked about the narrative he found in our president. He talked about how in order to be authentic and grab attention, he focuses not on what is happening, but about how the character reacts and changes as a response, how the narrative of a politician shows a hero’s journey.

Chaudhary also showed us his recent work as creative director of Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, calling him “the time stamp of authenticity.” For this campaign he basically took the message Sanders was trying to relate to the American people, that “someone gives a shit about you,” (in Chaudhary’s own words), and applied this narrative for everything media. He showed us a “404 Page Not Found” video featuring the senator standing against a brick wall, telling us to “scoot” to the bottom of the page to get back to the homepage. This video is a perfect example of the narrative in authenticity Chaudhary was explaining – this nice old man cares to personally guide us back to “home,” which follows Sanders’ initial message, and there is nothing staged or fake about it.

Authorship was the next step. Chaudhary’s style is very “hand-painted,” as he said. He wanted to be sure to be as real and gritty with the public and show as much truth and “behind-the-scenes” of Obama and Sanders’ personalities as possible, and we audience members were lucky enough to learn how he did just that. As a cinema major at the University of Iowa, I took avid notes that I am going to share with you now in points:

• A bit of humor makes the dark things seem more okay.

• Authorship in an editing timeline: Cutting audio and video together without overlap reminds a viewer that he or she is watching something from real life.

• “Editing is the ruthless suppression of being insignificant.”

• Be gritty, not glossy. Don’t stage, capture.

• Videos do not educate! Film is art, which represents ideas and points, but words educate. Represent to capture attention, then explain.

• Before you can have an idea, you need a notion.

• Match form to content, not content to form. Chaudhary showed a good example of this in a video comparing George Allen to a prescription drug. The video could be no longer than 15 seconds, which forced the creative way they showcased the content.

• Connect to the people and today’s culture.

• “The medium is the message” (Marshall McLuhan)

• Facts can be superfluous

• Propaganda is making the mundane seem extraordinary. Chaudhary’s grit comes from making the extraordinary seem mundane.

All this takes part in Chaudhary’s definition of authorship.

I feel really grateful to have been able to experience this talk – Arun Chaudhary is a very talented filmmaker as well as a funny, charming speaker who gave me a real look at a type political media most have never seen before. I do believe that soon politics will catch up to the rest of the rapidly evolving world, and it was very exciting to see the man who did it first.

If you’re curious to see what else Arun Chaudhary has done, check out Revolution Messaging or his Tumblr page. To keep up otherwise, follow him on Twitter!

The post Witching Hour: Authenticity and Authorship: Political Storytelling in the Digital Age @ The Englert 11/05/2016 appeared first on KRUI Radio.