Coming to PBS today, Tuesday, March 24: JAMES BAKER: THE MAN WHO MADE WASHINGTON WORK
Eric Stange’s portrait of the political life of former Secretary of State debuted at Worldfest Houston last year. It now comes to PBS stations around the nation.
Stange and producer John Hesse pull together a remarkable number of political heavy hitters for this interview and narration driven biography, including George and Barbara Bush, Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, Dick Cheney, Lesley Stahl, Condoleeza Rice, Mikhael Gorbachev, Thomas L Friedman, Colin Powell, Shimon Peres, and narrator Tom Brokaw. While very conventional in its approach, the film is comprehensive and watchable as it recounts Baker’s influential, if often behind-the-scenes, roles in the halls of Washington DC power, including Ford, Reagan, and both Bush administrations, from overseeing the negotiations of the end of the Cold War and the reunification of Germany, to the beginnings of a would-be peace in the Middle East and the strategy that saw George W Bush contentiously claim the White House.
what (not) to doc 