"And the Emmy goes to…"

Most people know that Scott Huegerich and I are the directing team behind The Worlds Greatest Fair (American Public Television) and The Gateway Arch: A Reflection of America (APT Worldwide, Janson Media). I will never forget Scott and I standing on the stage of the Fabulous Fox theatre next to Mayor Francis Slay, in front of a standing room only crowd of 4500+ people to introduce our first documentary. I arrived to the theater early, only to find people literally lined-up around the block to see our documentary. My wife, who drove separately, called my cell and said “We’re going to be late, there must be something big happening on Grand because there’s a traffic jam.” I said “That’s us!” What an experience!

Joe Jones: Radical Painter of the American Scene was originally commissioned by the Saint Louis Art Museum as a 15-minute piece to accompany their exhibit of Jones’ work. As I worked with them on the project, it became obvious that Jones’ story was worthy of a broadcast documentary. Joe Jones began his career as a “radical” artist in St. Louis and by 1935 was being written about on the pages of Time magazine. Jones famously said that he didn’t want to paint pretty pictures to match pink and blue walls, he wanted to punch holes in walls.  His paintings of worker protests, poverty and lynchings certainly did that. Jones rose to fame in the 30’s and 40’s as a “self taught” artist – he had begun his career as a housepainter alongside his one-armed father. I believe one of the reasons Jones became the darling of the New York art world was that he was a handsome, brash, ordinary guy from the Midwest painting the working class that he knew. His is a fascinating story, and it’s a story that has played out countless other times with young, struggling, controversial artist.

I actually began the Jones documentary at Technisonic Studios, shortly before the production facility was shuttered after 81 years as a leader in film and video production. The folks at the Saint Louis Art Museum were kind enough to allow me to continue the production through my company miano.tv, LLC. It was a pleasure to work with many of the same creative team that worked on my other documentaries, several of whom were nominated for Emmys for their work on this production. Other nominees included Mike Radentz for his sound design and Laura Tomlinson for her wonderful script. The folks at the art museum on our team (Janeen, Louise, Andrew, and Bill) did the monumental task of researching the artist long before I was involved with the project. Without their work this story simply could not have been told.

Our approach to the Jones production was very simple. The budget did not allow for lavish reenactments or flashy effects. Storytelling is what we do best and that’s why this production received five Emmy nominations in all. Others may consider themselves “storytellers” just because they have learned the mechanics of holding a video camera and moving a mouse on an editing system.  There is a difference.  I can’t quantify exactly what it is, but I’ve been blessed with the ability to create stories that people want to watch – whether presented in a movie theater or a corporate video!

miano.tv, LLC has been very busy in recent months.  I hope we have the pleasure of working on many more productions – including “Scott and Bob” documentaries – in the coming months/years.

You can watch a snippet from Joe Jones: Radical Painter of the American Scene (AKA …Painter of the American Scene) here.