Former Milwaukeean Joel Schudson is a very busy New York City musician. A violinist and guitarist who plays in a rock band, he recently composed incidental music for a production of the Shakespeare play “King Lear” that opened last week.
Yet he feels strongly that he has to take time and energy from his other creative pursuits and “do something for the [presidential] election.”
“Living here this past year, experiencing the political events unfolding before me, from the ‘shock and awe’ [of the war in Iraq] to the Republican national convention, I felt like a witness to it all,” he said in a recent telephone interview. “I wanted to try with this election to engage myself … in a way more artistic and more substantial.”
And that impulse will bring him back to Wisconsin next week with two of his friends and a film crew to start making a documentary with the working title, “The Undecided Feasts.”
Schudson and co-creators filmmaker Kristjan Thor, chef Holly Shaffer and the film crew will tour from a base in Spring Green through the northern and western parts of the state.
During the day, Schudson said, they will strive to meet undecided voters and, over food, engage them in discussions, often at public events such as a University of Wisconsin-Madison Badgers football game. In the evenings, they will cook meals for various families — Republicans, Democrats and undecided voters.
Or, as he put it in a letter seeking support for this project, “Our plan: engage voters in conversation. Our golden rule: no talking politics unless food or drink is shared.”
Schudson acknowledged that he is doing this in part to sway undecided voters toward the Democratic presidential candidate, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry. But he is also taking aim at a broader question: How people make up their minds and do or do not allow themselves to be persuaded.
“I’m fascinated” by this issue, he said. In his social and professional life, “I hang out with a lot of liberal, ideological young kids that have pretty strong opinions,” and has “encountered strong conservatives, too.” As for himself, “I’ve changed my beliefs a lot, but I’ve always had strong ones.”
Therefore, he wants to meet “true swing voters” who are “not one way or the other,” who have “the attitude of being able to be swayed,” he said. And the best way to do this, he and his colleagues are convinced, is over food.
“If I just document a family or try to convince the family by going door-to-door, I am outside the situation, external to their lives,” Schudson said. “If we cook together, we have something shared, an experience created between us….” And the film will be “documenting the shared experience.”
Or as he wrote in the letter: “With food, we feel more comfortable. We give gifts. With mouths full, we listen better and learn more. And with this approach, we hope to whet the appetite of Wisconsinites so that they, too, will become more engaged in the choice of our next president.”
At present, the three creators are funding the project themselves with help from friends and family members. Schudson said filming will continue right up to “the day before the election.”
Then the editing process will begin, and “we’re really attempting to get funding” so that in November and December, “we can edit away and not work any other jobs.”
They hope to finish and release the film “in January for Kerry’s inauguration,” then try to get it shown at major film festivals.
Schudson, a 2002 graduate of Dartmouth College, is the son of Karen and retired Wisconsin Court of Appeals Judge Charles Schudson.
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