aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Thursday, March 31, 2005

Left of the Dial

HBO’s documentary on Air America, Left of the Dial, premiers at 8 eastern tonight.  Wonkette’s Greg Beato asked the documentary’s co-director/co-producer, Patrick Farrelly, some questions:

GB: Were there any scenes that you missed that you wished you’d gotten?

Patrick: During Air America’s financial meltdown, there was a lot of stuff going on behind closed doors that we would have liked to have access to but we were shut out. Which is totally understandable, but at the same time, as documentary makers, we just want to see and shoot everything. But I think when people see the film they’ll get a great sense of what it was like to be on the inside.

GB: With 350 hours, it sounds like you guys could have actually made this into a reality series, akin to The Restaurant or something like that. Was there ever any talk of that?

Patrick: No. We think that Left of the Dial tells an important story. The founding of Air America Radio which now is a success story, is a really important media and political event. Air America has become an important addition to the political diversity of radio. At a time when the range of opinion you can see on television is getting narrower and narrower as television becomes more corporate, Air America is a really important development. I don’t think a reality show would do much justice to the story. Project Greenlight it certainly isn’t.