Interview: AJ Schnack On 'Majority Rules'
The filmmaker talks about his return to political documentaries, his hopeful perspective on ranked-choice voting, and his debut in the role of narrator.
AJ Schnack is the Michael Corleone of political documentaries. Just when he thought he was done with the genre, they pulled him back in. However, the director of such election-focused films as Convention and Caucus makes a bit of a turn with his latest, Majority Rules. Rather than observing another piece of the campaign process, Schnack uses his unbiased lens to explain the system of ranked voting while following the U.S. Senate and House races in Alaska in 2022. We talked to Schnack, who is also the founder of the prestigious Cinema Eye Honors, about the film, how he appeals to his participants, and what made him take on the role of narrator for the first time. Our conversation is presented below with minor editing for clarity.
I have to start by asking you if you’re getting more questions about the filmmaking or the film’s topic. Are people treating you like an expert on ranked voting now?
I just did an interview with a reporter from Idaho where it looks like this will be on the ballot in November, so in that case, it was a lot about: what did we see looking at these reforms elsewhere? Other questions are more like, "Why do you make these kinds of films?" "How is this one different?" It's been a mix. It is a weird project that I have fallen into and now returned to.
I've never made a film before that had to explain concepts.
One element that makes you seem like more of an expert this time around is your narration. You’re the voice telling us a lot of the information, not just relying on the expert interviewees.
It was an interesting thing to happen. It wasn't like I planned, going in, that we would have narration or that I would be the narrator. The other political films that I've made have been really focused on the candidates themselves and what is it about that candidate. Their personality. Or the way in which they run. Their good points. Their failures. How does that show how they win or how they lose? Trying to find the absurdity within the political process. Here we have some wonderful candidates to film with, including Sarah Palin who I think is one of the most consequential figures of the last 20 years. But the film itself is trying to explain some concepts, and I've never made a film before that had to explain concepts.
Not just one concept. Not just explaining ranked choice voting or explaining open primary all-candidate ballots. Why do states do things so differently than other states? There are so many aspects to the ways in which we can choose to vote, and explaining those systems really was a question for a long time as to how to do it.
Strangely, last summer we were shooting in Oregon and I was having a beer with my DP and suddenly I just thought of Raising Arizona. And just how heavy the narration is to establish that story. It became pretty clear pretty quickly — because we had already started editing — that we needed to have a narration that was relatively heavy within the film explaining concepts but also had a sense of humor that wasn't just a dry PowerPoint presentation.
I wasn't clear at that point that I was going to be that narrator. I've never narrated a film before. I'm not Alex Gibney, who is a great narrator. But it was pretty clear that I was taking people on a journey which was also a journey for me to understand all of these things. I didn't come into this knowing all of this stuff. Part of it is also just me saying, “Well, this is what I saw.” That is in alignment with all of the other films I've made. Every film I've made I've tried to have it reflect what I witnessed. That is my version of documentary truth: if I'm conveying to you something that feels like how it felt to me to be there to film it, then that's the goal. We just did that here with a lot more writing. Actual writing.
I think it's important that we're able to reflect candidates across the political spectrum.
When you make a political film, is it tough to find participants? Are they wary of documentarians and the chance of having their view skewed or being misled as to what the film is actually about?
A lot of times, the biggest thing is that we don't really give them much in terms of value for letting us be there. If you're running a campaign and you're a candidate allowing someone in, whether it's embedding for a day or for longer, you know it’s because there's going to be a story in the Washington Post or a report on CNN. Whatever that is, you know that there is a value that you're going to get from it because it's exposure, and it’s all going to be out in the world before the election. We make the opposite promise, which is that nobody will see any of this footage until after the election. So you should let us film because there's no electoral downside where we could capture something, and that gets out into the world.
Definitely, I've seen candidates, including on this project, where we show up and they're like, “Why are they here again? Why are they still filming? What is this for?” It's hard to wrap your brain around it. In a lot of cases, it's a discussion, and it's not always the easiest discussion. But I have a lot of respect. I think that's why I think about these things as bipartisan because I think it's important that we're able to reflect candidates across the political spectrum. And for them to feel like they can participate. And what we're saying and doing we are doing in good faith, which is we're capturing a moment. And hopefully, if they win we've captured a moment that shows why they won, and if they lost maybe it's that we've captured a moment that shows why their opponent won, or maybe we captured a moment that shows why their campaign was troubled. Who's to say, but it's footage that we will keep to ourselves until after the election.
Getting into this project, I was really resistant.
You also tend to take an unbiased approach, enough that it’s impossible to tell what your political leanings are. Is that easier here, presenting a topic that could benefit or not benefit both sides, depending on the situation?
I'm generally curious about people who choose to run for office, and now, having spent a lot of time around them, I find all of them to be unique creatures. If I can figure out the humanity there and the foibles — I don't know, there's something about that, maybe that’s my personal kink. I can't say for sure.
This particular project, though… I made political work starting in 2008, filming all the way through 2016. I did a video art installation after that, so it was really like a decade-long project. But the 2016 election was kind of a miserable one to film, in part because it was the opposite of what made Caucus so great. Caucus was a film in which a candidate, whether you like Rick Santorum or not, really did go everywhere. He did go to 10-person meetings. He did shake every hand and have every conversation even when it was a person talking conspiracy theories to him. Then you went to 2016 and you had kind of the last candidate standing. Whether it was Trump or Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, they were doing these very large events that were not at all like these retail politics things, which I liked filming in.
In addition to all the other badness about the 2016 election, it was just a very depressing campaign to shoot. Part of that felt like the party system, this binary choice system, felt really broken. So getting into this project, I was really resistant. The producer, Nick Troiano, had come to me with the idea of making the film and I said no several times because I was like I did that for a while, I don't need to do it again.
But the more I read about it: (a) there was a little bit of hope potentially, but (b) when you started looking at where the opposition to these reforms was coming from, it was really from whichever political party felt the most in control of their area. So in Nevada, the Democrats were fighting, and in Idaho now, it's the current Republican party that's fighting it. There was something about it, a different kind of story to tell, that felt more driven by the ability to dive into what could this bring, what could this result in, and not just be solely driven by like I'm at the whim of a political candidate who will or will not let me outside of the pen at their arena rallies.
Why do we want fewer voices? Why do we want fewer choices? Why are we locking ourselves in a binary decision?
I like how you were prepared to follow this story and have it reflect either the success or failure of the experiment. But it’s still not black or white, as many still see the ranked voting in Alaska as a failure even though the doc seems to say it’s a success. Can you talk about how different viewers could see the film differently?
It's an interesting thing. There were several situations when making the film where I felt like, oh, that's something I hadn't thought of and that makes so much sense. One of them was when we were at a debate for Alaska's only House race with the four candidates who had advanced to the general election. They included a Libertarian, this guy Chris Bye, who is a fly fisherman, and he was just saying things that were unconventional but smart — the everyperson Alaskan. So when we went to film the Senate debate a couple of nights later, I asked the moderators, “Would Chris have been in that debate in the old system? Would you have included him?” And they looked at each other and were like, “Probably not.”
Why do we want fewer voices? Why do we want fewer choices? Why are we locking ourselves in a binary decision? I'm Gen X, and I've lived most of my life with the generation above me frantically clinging onto power and tradition and not wanting to make way for other people. There are lots of people younger than me that should have a voice. Maybe that's them actually being elected or maybe that's them being part of a process that says, hey, we think that when we get to a general election there should be multiple people who are advancing a vision that they have for where they want their state, their district, their country to go.
That was not something I was thinking about going into this project, but the more I was out in the country for the last two years, it’s something that became so clear to me. It felt like such a no-brainer to have, instead of a primary election where it's just the party base or it's just the political parties themselves telling me these are your choices, we have a system where we actually get to go into a November election — the election that we really pay attention to, the one we really care about — and there are a bunch of different people who are saying, “This is where I would like to take things.” I think that's the better system.
There are definitely people who don't want to change or want to go back to the way things were, and I think that they'll have their chance in Alaska in November to try to take things back to the way things were. It will be interesting to see what happens.
If the older members of the Academy's acting branch can figure it out, then most people can probably figure it out.
As a founder of a film awards, how do you feel now about ranked voting for awards?
I'm in the Motion Picture Academy, so I'm used to ranked voting for awards. We rank our Best Picture choices as well as the documentary shortlists and our final five choices for the nominations, and then it's pick one when we get the final ballot. You only rank the Best Picture choices. I don't know, I like it. The thing about this year's Best Picture nominees, I had a very clear favorite that was always going to be my number one, and if I could only pick one, I would have voted for that and been excited to vote for that. But it was nice to be able to acknowledge all of the other films that I also thought were really good last year. There were other things I could vote for that I thought were also really great.
So, yeah, I'm in favor. Also, one of the things about when people make the “it's too confusing” argument about ranked-choice voting, I'm pretty aware that they were able to get the older members of the acting branch of the Academy. I think if the older members of the Academy's acting branch can figure it out, then most people can probably figure it out.
Majority Rules is now in theaters.