In 'Boys State,' American politics in a teenage microcosm

NEW YORK -- Even mock elections require wall-to-wall coverage, so when Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine set out to document Texas' Boys State, the weeklong summer camp of civics simulation run by the American Legion since 1935, they hired seven cinematographers to stay close to a handful of the 1,100 participants -- all 17- and 18-year-old boys, some with very real political ambition.

In the often patient and plodding world of documentary filmmaking, it was an intense pace keeping up with the campaigns of two fictional parties -- the Federalists and the Nationalists -- as they picked their candidates and established a party platform.

"We're used to filming over two years, doing research. There's a slow burn to that," said McBaine in an interview alongside Moss, her husband. "This one was a wildfire."

The result, "Boys State," is one of the most acclaimed documentaries of the year; it took the grand jury prize for documentary at the Sundance Film Festival in January. It's an uncommonly engaging, thoughtful and often funny documentary, so much so that Apple and A24 paid a Sundance record of $12 million for it. It debuts Friday on Apple TV+.

"Boys State" may sound like a mere mock government exercise, but the film finds in Boys State a microcosm of American politics, one that frighteningly reflects much of the tenor of today's Washington and, in other ways, counters our more cynical grown-up government with stirring idealism. "Boys State" will give you both hope and fear for America's future.

"The film is an unvarnished depiction of what we encountered," says Moss. "And that includes the horrifying but also the profoundly moving and the uplifting."

Boys States are run throughout the country by the American Legion, along with corresponding Girls States. Some notable names -- from Bill Clinton to Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh to Mark Wahlberg -- have gone through the program. Moss and McBaine were unaware of Boys State before reading a 2017 Washington Post article about a first in the program's history: Texas voted to secede.

The filmmakers sensed they had found a prism through which to view the changing nature of civic discourse in the U.S. following the election of Donald Trump. Paul Barker, then Chairman of the American Legion Texas Boys State, was impressed by McBaine and Moss' previous film ( "The Overnighters" ) and figured a documentary could expand the program. He had one suggestion.

"When kids are 17-years-old, sometimes their mouth gets ahead of their brain," says Barker. "But you have to see that as part of a learning process. My only caution to them was to let the needle run."

The filmmakers, who shot the 2018 program, expected juvenile behavior and got it. The boys, not irrationally, enact a statewide ban on pineapple pizza. But Moss and McBaine were less prepared for the emotional ride of watching some of the students find their voice.

Foremost among them is Steven Garza, a liberal-minded son of Mexican immigrants. He's more reserved than many of his fellow high-schoolers. In an overwhelmingly white and largely conservative mass of boys, Garza stands out. Yet his underdog campaign gains momentum, rising on his own idealism and his ability to connect straightforwardly with others.

"I came out even more idealistic," says Garza, now a 19-year-old studying politics at the University of Texas, Austin. "I knew that I could run a campaign as a brown person, a progressive person and have conservatives vote for me. Even if they didn't believe everything I stood for, they believed that if I was elected that I would work with them to come to agreements."

"We're a lot closer than most people think and a lot closer than the people who are actually in Congress are," says Garza.

The Texas Boys State, like the national political system, is a skewed representation. It's a program that, as Moss says, "has a foot in the 21st century and a foot in the 1950s."

Barker readily grants the film has been cause for reflection for the program. The huge imbalance in diversity, he says, is something that may take a cultural shift for the organization to change. (Field offices of the American Legion interview students from across the state and pluck one or two per high school.)

"They can make a better effort to create an outreach or recruitment program that reflects the growing diversity of Texas," says Rene Otero, one of the few African American students seen in "Boys State" and the film's most gifted orator. "I didn't feel protected as a student of color. If you want to engage people in civics, you have to show them that the people who need civics the most -- the oppressed -- have the power to engage."

Otero departed jaded from the experience and disinterested in politics. His place, he feels now, is outside the system. He wants to be activist and an educator.

"I've been around a lot of white folks before but not THAT many for seven days. It felt like I had to conform to a different space. I was trying to figure out how to change and twist myself up," says Otero. "But being forced to self-advocate was a beautiful lesson in developing my agency as a person."

There are smear campaigns and reckless gambits of self-preservation in "Boys State." Abortion rights are wielded as a political tool. Robert MacDougall runs on a pro-life platform but acknowledges in a private interview he's pro-choice. "Sometimes you can't win on what you believe in your heart," he says. Federalist Party chairman Ben Feinstein, a Ronald Reagan acolyte who lost his legs to meningitis, in one scene cribs from what he calls "the Trump playbook."

"It was chilling to hear Ben -- who we really love as a person and is complex -- invoke Trump," says Moss. "That was a question for us. Are young people internalizing the norms of behavior that we see? Of course they are."

But they are also forging their own conceptions of government. The film's primary subjects have stayed in touch since 2018 and attended Sundance together. Some of their views have since aligned, some still diverge. But they all respect each other. Talking -- and filmmaking -- has brought them closer.

"Collectively as a group is how we're going to change this country," says Garza.

McBaine and Moss aren't done with the program. When the pandemic passes, they plan to document Girls State.

"It's not a sequel," says McBaine. "It's a sibling."