Davis Guggenheim: “Deaf President Now!” & The Power of Documentaries

Impolitic with John Heilemann

Audacy | Puck

News, Politics

4.8 • 4.2K Ratings

🗓️ 13 May 2025

⏱️ 93 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

John is joined by the Oscar and Emmy Award-winning documentarian Davis Guggenheim to discuss his new film for Apple TV +, “Deaf President Now!” Davis lays out the story behind the movie, which revolves around a student protest that erupted over eight days in 1988 at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC, the world’s only university for the deaf, and explains why it stands as “the greatest civil rights movement in history you’ve never heard of.” Davis also retraces his storied career as a non-fiction director, connecting the dots between his past films, from “An Inconvenient Truth” and “Waiting for ‘Superman’” to “He Named Me Malala" and "Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie”—and reveals why getting fired by Denzel Washington from “Training Day” changed his life, and for the better. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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0:36.7	Aloha and namaste everyone and welcome to Impolitic with John Hyalman, a puck and Odyssey
0:41.3	Joint featuring lively, in-depth conversations with the people who cruise the corridors of power
0:46.1	and influence in America, sculpting and shaping the ebb and flow of our politics and culture.
0:52.1	Today, we have a little bit different episode, a very special episode and is a
0:55.8	longer episode than normal. And this is an episode that brings together two very old and very
1:01.3	dear friends. That would be me and my friend Davis Guggenheim. You probably know Davis
1:05.7	Guggenheim as one of the most storied, respected, revered, and fantastic documentary filmmakers in the world,
1:12.6	someone who won Oscar for his movie An Inconvenient Truth with Al Gore back in 2006
1:18.4	and has really not stopped since then.
1:21.0	He's made incredible movies like Waiting for Superman about the Reform of Public Education,
1:25.4	made a movie about Malala, made a movie about Michael J. Fox that
1:28.9	won an Emmy Award last year, has done movies with Bill Gates and U2 and all kinds of wide
1:34.8	range of diverse subjects. Davis also made the biographical films for Barack Obama in the 2008
1:41.4	and 2012 conventions and then did some work for Joe Biden with his
1:45.4	convention movie, I believe, back in 2020. Davis has a new movie out. And whatever Davis
1:51.9	Guggenheim has a new movie out, it's an event. And in this case, this is a unusual movie
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