Filmmaker Steve Pink and former Congressman Adam Kinzinger discussed the new documentary, The Last Republican. Given their political differences, Pink is probably the last filmmaker one would expect to make a documentary about Kinzinger. And yet, their comedic banter is what helped shape the film during the editing process. The film also serves as proof that civil discourse is still possible between Americans with political differences.
Kinzinger put his career on the line when he became one of ten Republicans–joining then-Congressman Liz Cheney–who voted to impeach then-former president Donald Trump after the January 6 election. Because of his profile in courage, many documentary filmmakers reached out. Pink’s background in comedy movies may very well explain the reason why he won the lottery so to speak. As Kinzinger tells Awards Focus, he was not a fan of having cameras following him around. His chief of staff, as Pink tells Awards Focus, was more opposed. There are instances in the film where Pink and crew are filming a coffee being made purely for the cinematic standpoint.
The press day for The Last Republican took place a few days after Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was forced to flee the country to Russia. Kinzinger touches on this during the final moments of our conversation as well as other divisions in America, which could potentially lead to the formation of a centrist party in a decade from now.
The Last Republican opens at the Film Forum in New York City on January 3, 2025.
Awards Focus: It’s so nice to meet you today. How are you doing?
Adam Kinzinger: I’m doing good, thanks. It’s nice to meet you too, by the way. Thanks.
Steve Pink: Yeah, doing great, thank you.
AF: Congressman, thank you for your service.
Adam Kinzinger: Yeah, you bet. Thank you for saying it. I wish we could have been a little more successful, but at least we’re gonna keep the fight up.
AF: Yeah. I was also talking about your military service, too.
Adam Kinzinger: Oh, thank you, thank you. I appreciate it. Tthanks for paying taxes, cause I got to fly your airplanes, so that was good.
AF: What was the genesis behind The Last Republican?
Steve Pink: Well, we started a documentary film company and we found out that Adam had been approached by people to make a documentary film about him. Of course, I’ve said this before that I absolutely did not want to make a film about Adam Kinzinger because of strictly on the basis of his political views and mine being so different. It just became quite clear that, based on his truly held beliefs and his actions in the aftermath of January 6, he was going to be an incredibly compelling subject and it was important to tell that story.
Adam Kinzinger: From my end, look, as Steve said, we had a lot of people that wanted to do a story. It was all about, we want to cover your reelection and whether an anti-Trumper can win in a Republican primary. I also knew I probably wasn’t going to run again. I liked Hot Tub Time Machine. I thought that was great so when Steve came to me and they’re like, we want to do this. It wasn’t a story just about the horse race. It was also about the human element behind it. That’s when my wife and I are like, yeah, that’s good. The other thing we have to look at is like, how do we ever tell—at that time, he was still in her belly, but now he’s three years old—how do we tell our son about this period of time? We’re like, well, the best way to do it is if it’s documented, too. It worked out very well. We’re extremely happy we did it.
AF: How did The Last Republican come to be the title of the film?
Steve Pink: I don’t remember how we came to that. My colleagues and I—my producers. I’m just going to take credit for it in this interview and just say I thought of it. It just became an organic title because obviously, another title for the for the documentary would have been Kinzinger, which I thought was a strong last name, single name, very political, strong title. I think as we went along and we were seeing what the movie became as we were making it, it just became very clear he was the last Republican. We’re like, he’s the last Republican and probably something we used to say out loud and it became the title probably that way. It just kind of emerged as the natural title while making the film.
Adam Kinzinger: The thing I like about it is, obviously, I believe I’m literally among the last Republicans, the old school Republicans, but it also kind of conveys that it’s a bigger story than just here’s a tick-tock of what happened while Adam was there. It’s a broader message, a broader story so that’s what I like about it. It kind of leaves you hanging, wanting more, I guess is the best way to put it.
Steve Pink: I mean, Adam said in the documentary that he hopes to be a part of what will be an important political party in this country. It just doesn’t exist anymore and so in that way, that speaks to the title as well.
AF: Congressman, how did it feel to have a camera following you around?
Adam Kinzinger: I didn’t love it. Steve knows this at some points, but I mean, we got along really well. But yeah, the tough thing is, I hate politicians that are all about just the image, right? I’ll use Matt Gaetz as an example. I mean, this guy wore makeup at 10 in the morning, just in case a camera was around. I mean, he realized like he was so shallow—wasn’t a serious politician. The idea of having big cameras follow me, I felt like it would, in that moment, make me look less serious, because it looked like I was in this for the publicity or whatever. But I’m glad I did it. We would push back against Steve on some things. If I had a pretty serious meeting, it’s not that I didn’t want them to film it, it’s more that I didn’t want that to take away from the meeting.
We had a lot of meetings, for instance, didn’t make the film with Ukrainian dissidents We had a meeting with two Ukrainian fighter pilots that ended up dead by the way—they both were killed recently. They were actually very famous. I think we got some shots of that, but I didn’t want that to kind of tamp down on the seriousness of the moment. But like I said, they did a good job, despite all the equipment and everything, of letting me still be a congressman and not performing for the cameras, which I really appreciated.
Steve Pink: Yeah, he really didn’t like it. You see in the documentary, his chief of staff, Austin Weatherford, double really didn’t like it. There’s a couple of moments that we left in where he’s like, turn off the cameras. I got that, too. There was a lot of things that didn’t occur to me. One was that they didn’t view us as journalists, right? There’s a default—it seemed like on their part to be wondering just exactly what we’re doing in terms of exposing what’s going on in their office on a daily basis, right? But of course, my interest is in telling Adam’s story, what he was going through, how he relates to the people around him, how he relates to his staff, getting to know everyone. That’s very different than some kind of objective journalistic approach where we’re just trying to tell some very specific political story. I think once people got used to that, this is a joke, but it would be like, oh, he’s filming coffee being made. Because when you’re making a documentary, you’re also trying to find—I mean, making coffee is not a particularly cinematic shot, but we were finding ways to tell a story that was cinematic and had emotional context for it, that was just very different. I think when they got used to that, it made it easier.
The other thing I’ll say about it is, because it would be often happen when we would go, is there was, there was that moment where you guys just didn’t want us to be there and then we would kind of fall in and everything would be okay. I understood that because he was in the middle of a really high stakes experience, right? During the investigation of January 6, plus running his congressional office, there was all these things happening. I was just trying to tell a story about it at the same time so my interest was very different. It became like, Yeah, I know you’re going through all this really important stuff right now, but I’d also just like to be filming it, please. It was a really interesting and cool dynamic and they were very generous and I appreciate the access I got, of course, because that’s how we were able to make the film.
AF: How long was the initial edit?
Steve Pink: Wow, it was long. It was probably a year, maybe, when we were really—maybe nine months, I would say, of editing. One of the things we found in the film, we were making a profile in courage. That’s what we were making when we were shooting. Our relationship, as it emerges in the film, this comedic banter that we have that frames the film, that we didn’t discover till the editing room. Because, as a matter of course, Adam would always be, and I would be joking around. We would be joking around about our opposing political views, and a lot of that just naturally happened. I always thought about that as stuff before the movie started, like, ha, it’s relationship building, we’re getting to know each other, and now I’m gonna shoot the actual movie part. It became part of the movie because it emerged as an important aspect of it so that we had to find in the editing room.
Adam Kinzinger: Well, that’s what I thought was pretty cool. If you’d have told us, hey, you need to make this film, and it needs to be about you and Steve having banter back and forth, we couldn’t have done it as well as it ended up because it was just natural. We became friends, I would say, certainly, in that, you know you’re a friend of mine if I rip on you. That’s kind of the military thing. I think it’s kind of universal, is if you get ripped on by your friends, it means they like you. That’s what happened, and it was perfect how it worked out, I think.
AF: Well, I was referring to the film’s runtime—the initial edit.
Adam Kinzinger: Oh.
Steve Pink: I love that we totally didn’t answer your question in any way. You mean like, how did we come to the length of the film?
AF: Yeah. How long was the initial edit?
Steve Pink: Oh, yeah. All my edits are like three hours. The first assembly was three hours for sure. The assembly where I thought we actually had a movie was probably 2:30, and then I was like, oh, now at least I can see the film, right? And then I was like, now we have to cut an hour out of it, which wasn’t that hard for me because the more you edit it, the more you find what the real gems are.
There’s a lot of stuff as always with any movie that I love that didn’t make the cut. There’s that moment when you guys came back from Illinois and we did a little interview in that little airstrip, the little fixed bay where you landed. It was a serious subject because you had been talking about some of the very serious things that were happening. I don’t know how it came up, but we were talking about Christian. I was like saying to Christian, like, universal healthcare, universal healthcare, to Christian as a baby, because I was like, oh, I’m gonna convert their child to my side of the political sphere. It just was a really, really funny moment. His dad was like, no, don’t indoctrinate my child with your political views. This is not about that. It was a really, really funny moment that didn’t make it. That’s just one example. There was a lot of great stuff we had to leave behind.
AF: How honored were you to premiere the film at TIFF and what has the reception been like on the festival circuit?
Steve Pink: Things have been great. It was great. I mean, TIFF was a great honor and a great experience. I love that festival, but it was great having Adam there, frankly. Adam is a better talker than me, as much as I like to talk. I think it was great for Adam to be there to help present the film and do the Q and A because it gave people access to someone, who I had access to in making the film, but people didn’t have a lot of access—you don’t have a lot of access to lawmakers in general, ironically. For Adam to be there and talk about the film and talk about his experience, for me, was what was I think so great about it because the audience really responded to that. People responded to the film, they really liked it, but it was just great that Adam was there to present it.
Adam Kinzinger: I’ll tell you. I’ve never done anything like this, obviously. It was an awesome experience TIFF was cool because that’s the big one, obviously. We went out to Maine which was kind of specific—they do documentaries and the reaction was amazing. Every time I watched it on the big screen, I would progressively cry less but you’re in tears the whole time because your life is up there in this really stressful time. I’m sitting there watching it with my wife and it was an awesome experience. I feel like the reaction has been incredible, which is cool.
Steve Pink: Yeah. Seeing collective laughter in a theater, you don’t see anymore. So many comedies are streamed. This has a very kind of comedic side to it, as we’ve discussed, despite the political drama that’s also going on. Hearing people laugh in the theater was great. My comedies prior to this were in the theater. I think that’s so important.
Adam and I talk about that a lot—any time, a group of people are in a movie theater, and if it’s a comedy and everyone’s laughing together, it brings people together. You walk out of a theater having a shared experience of laughter and fun, and of course, there’s a lot of thoughtful things in the movie to discuss, but right away, your political differences fall away. Every time someone laughs, it doesn’t matter what political persuasion you are. You’re laughing at something you found just genuinely funny. And for us, it was beautiful to see, and it was great to be—because the festivals allow that now in a streaming world, to put a bunch of people, hundreds of people in a theater to watch something together and enjoy it.
AF: Yeah. Seeing as how things are on both sides of the political spectrum right now, and I say this as someone that’s been experiencing a lot of left-wing antisemitism, do you think we’ll see the rise of a strong centrist party in the near future?
Adam Kinzinger: Look, let me just say one of the things I love about the timing of this film, too. There was part of me that’s like, oh, we should get this out before the election. And now after the election, I think it’s amazing because, look, there’s a lot of America that doesn’t understand the other part of America. The right doesn’t understand the left. The left doesn’t understand the right. I think Americans are desperate—I mean, in my political work, I see it. Americans are desperate for some understanding.
I mean, you have a CEO that’s murdered and what some of the country says, good, I’m glad he was murdered. The rest of the country is like, this is insane. You have a terrorist attack on October 7th and some of the country says, good, they deserved it. Most of the country rightfully says Israel should defend itself.
I think people have felt so kind of isolated or alienated from politics for so long that I think a centrist party is possible. I don’t think it’s gonna happen soon because we’re so programmed and everything has two sides and you got to just pick one or the other side. The idea of centrism is kind of foreign to how we’ve been programmed. I do think in the next five or ten years, if we continue down this path, there will be a strong middle party. Look, 80% of Americans I think actually agree on most things. It’s just the extremes that have typecast us, although I will say the far right’s gotten a little more bigger than it should be. But yeah, I do think it’s quite possible because there’s a verse in the Bible that says if nobody worships G-d, the rocks will cry out. I feel like that’s the way in politics, if nobody is represented, if you feel unrepresented, you will make sure you’re represented because that’s what democracy is.
AF: Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure getting to chat with the both of you.
Adam Kinzinger: It’s been an honor meeting you, and I love the DNC shirt, too.
AF: Yeah. Well, if you had told me a few months before, I had no intentions of going anywhere close to the DNC because of the threats of protesters.
Adam Kinzinger: Yeah.
AF: And then, all these Jewish sideline events pop up, and I’m like, I’m not missing out.
Adam Kinzinger: Yep. Yep. They did a good job, I think.
Steve Pink: That’s amazing. Did you go? Were you inside the hall?
AF: No, I just went to the sideline events with Jewish Dems and American Jewish Committee. The Israeli-American Council did a pop-up of Hostage Square.
Adam Kinzinger: That’s cool. Could I just say for 20 seconds real quick? The fall of Assad in Syria is a direct result of us killing Soleimani, and then Israel pushing back against Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iran has weakened Iran, which basically led to getting rid of the suppressive dictator, which has weakened Russia. It’s all connected and it’s pretty amazing to watch.