DOC STORY 911
stories & pictures
anatomy of a scene
Excerpt from Episode 5 of The Lincoln Project series on Showtime that showcases my approach to storytelling.
This is a prime example of how we help filmmakers shape sprawling material into gripping narrative.
The Lincoln Project series started as a celebratory chronicle. We embedded with a rogue group of Republican operatives fighting to unseat Trump in 2020. We had a mountain of material: vérité footage, interviews, ads, live streams, podcasts, social posts—hundreds of hours spanning months. The story was big, bold, and full of characters.
But then came the twist.
One of the founders, John Weaver, had allegedly offered internships to young men in exchange for sex—at least 21, including one who was 14. Some leadership knew. And we had the documentation to prove it.
Suddenly, our film had a second act. And a moral reckoning.
We used a vérité spine to keep things grounded. In this case, it was Conor Rogers—a young staffer who’d once been targeted by Weaver himself. He had warned the founders. His interview became a linchpin. As the New York Times story broke in January 2021, we framed the fallout through real-time scenes of Conor and his colleague Lily walking the streets of D.C., absorbing the news. That gave the exposition narrative propulsion and emotional texture.
The result: the scandal unfolds not through a headline dump but through lived experience. Testimony, receipts, and confrontation build momentum. We called the leadership to account. Founders turned on each other. The press descended. The film's tone shifted from idealism to tragic irony.
This wasn’t the story we set out to tell—but it became the story we had to tell.
It’s a case of staying embedded, keeping the camera rolling, and finding structure not just in events, but in character, contradiction, and consequence. That’s the kind of narrative work we do.
Kudos to directors Fisher Stevens, Karim Amer, editor Chris White, and the team.
screen grabs & short stories
Watch these stories
Here are two excerpts from of one of my favorite stories from CBS Sunday Morning, a look at the Mt Zion Christian Academy, a private prep school in Durham North Carolina that takes in young, underprivileged basketball players from around the country and puts them through a Christian boot camp to prepare them for life. I was drawn to the story from an article about NBA player, Tracy McGrady, who was drafted out of high school by the Toronto Raptors. Coach Hopkins was tough on the kids because, as he says "life is tough". I agree. And there is something about stories that combine faith & social justice.
In a feature length, premium doc episode like this one for the Netflix series, The Innocence Files, there is always a lot going on to make it come together, I produced this story for director Sarah Dowland and came to know Ken Wyniemko, its protagonist during the development process. I found him to be an easy going guy, but the more I spent time with him, I began to experience how he processed his PTSD -- imagine being arrest, tried, convicted and imprisoned for a crime you didn't do? So when we asked Ken if he would take us back to the cell where he was locked up, I was surpised that he said yes. But that was Ken. He's willing to give you anything to share his story. Arranging it was complicated -- this was a decommissioned part of Jackson State Prison in Michigan. It took a lot of paperwork and time was limited inside. Walking in there with Ken was emotional and in a weird way, Ken held us all together. Later on in this scene we meet his son, Ken Jr., who really was messed up over the whole experience of seeing his father locked up for a rape he didn't commit. This was just one day of a series of shoots we did for this story and piecing it all together took time and a huge effort from everyone involved.
A story about polka. What can go wrong? In fact, nothing! It was just a lot of fun from beginning to end with this story from the vault. I like to make people smile sometimes. It's not all gloom and doom.