Bill Moyers on Three Decades Documenting 'Two American Families' With Tom Casciato and Kathleen Hughes

The FRONTLINE Dispatch

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4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 2 August 2024

⏱️ 44 minutes

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Summary

For more than 30 years, and over the course of five documentaries, correspondent Bill Moyers and filmmakers Tom Casciato and Kathleen Hughes have returned to Milwaukee again and again, to follow two families: one Black, the Stanleys, and one white, the Neumanns. The newest installment of the project, released this summer, chronicles the families’ struggle to stay afloat in a changing economy across three decades and six presidential administrations.

Moyers, Casciato and Hughes join host Raney Aronson-Rath to discuss how the project began and evolved over time, documenting moments they’ll never forget, what Two American Families says about America, and the powerful response to the Neumann and Stanley families’ stories over the years from the public media audience.

“I've watched a thousand films in my life, and I've never seen an audience, felt an audience, that wrote the way they did,” Moyers says of comments from viewers who saw their own lives reflected on screen. “Real people dealing with real issues, practical issues, in their life, and they were getting it from a television show. That's the highest compliment that I think we can expect as journalists, when they feel that we've shown them the world that they experience.”

You can stream Two American Families: 1991-2024 on FRONTLINE’s website, FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel, and the PBS App.

Transcript

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0:00.0	That's the highest compliment that I think we can expect as journalists when they feel that we've shown them the world that they experience.
0:12.0	Bill Moyers is one of the most celebrated journalists in American media.
0:16.0	And for more than 30 years he and his team have come back to one project
0:21.0	again and again, the story of two American families.
0:25.6	That's the title of our latest film with him.
0:28.4	It covers the Stanley's and the Newman's two families from Milwaukee,
0:32.4	one white, one black, struggling to stay afloat, and a
0:35.8	changing economy.
0:38.3	There are all these people out there who work hard, continue to work hard, continue to do the right thing, and they never get a break.
0:46.0	I mean... That's supposed to be the American dream.
0:49.0	That's supposed to be the American dream. A house, a big job.
0:52.0	Where is it? I can't afford to talk negative and it allow my children
0:56.8	to see me that way, down or depressed.
0:59.8	Moyersen is producing partners, Kathleen Hughes and Tom Keshado all join me today to talk
1:05.4	about this very special decades spanning project.
1:09.2	Hey Jackie, good to see you.
1:11.2	I'm Rainy Aronson Roth, editor-in-chief and executive producer of Frontline, and this is the Frontline Dispatch is made possible by the Abrams Foundation, committed to excellence in journalism,
1:31.0	and by the Frontline Journalism Fund, with major support from John and Joanne
1:35.3	Hagler.
1:36.7	Support for Frontline Dispatch comes from the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center,
1:40.7	dedicated to providing the latest therapies and cancer specialists who are experienced
1:44.7	in your cancer.
	...

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