In this special bonus episode, Andrew and Morgan review Whiz Kids, a new documentary film that focuses on three high schoolers who enter the prestigious Intel Science Talent Search competition. Andrew then calls up one of the film's directors, Tom Shepard, to discuss the film and the state of American science education.
Click below the break for trailers, an interview transcript, and to check and see when the film is playing in your area.
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Whiz Kids:
About Tom Shepard: Tom Shepard was a finalist in the Science Talent Search competition in 1987. He has worked as an editor for NPR, and has been directing and producing documentary films for over a decade. His film SCOUT'S HONOR won the Audience Award and Freedom of Expression Award at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. He also directed KNOCKING, a film about Jehovah's Witnesses which was broadcast nationally on PBS. His new film, WHIZ KIDS, opened in New York on June 4 and is currently expanding across the nation.
SHOW NOTES:
TRAILER:
THE INTERVIEW:
Question: You yourself were a finalist in the Science Talent Search back in 1987, correct?
Answer: Right.
Q: I'm curious as to what extent that inspired you to make this film. Were you just feeling nostalgic and decided to go back and see how the competition is doing now? What was your inspiration?
A: Right, actually initially it was a director-for-hire project and a company, Sandbad Pictures in California, were researching this competition, what's now called the Intel Science Talent Search. This competition actually goes back to the early 40s and was previously sponsored by Westinghouse. One of the staff at Sandbar had worked at the admissions office at Stanford University and had noticed these candidates who were applying to get into Stanford who had been Intel Science Talent Search finalists were getting some preferential treatment and wondered, "Who are these kids? What is this competition?" So they decided to make the film and put out a call, and I saw it and called them and said, "Hey, I've been making documentaries for a while and I was a finalist in this competition when I was in high school, so it might be a pretty good match." In fact, I think having been in the competition allowed us some entree to behind-the-scenes because no one had filmed that competition before and they had been pretty careful about the behind-the-scenes access. So that was important. And I think it was important in terms of cultivating relationships with young people who are doing science because that was my world when I was in high school, so I think it helped us gain access into the lives of some of these younger people. So yeah, it was a win-win and then we began collaborating with Jane Wagner and Tina Di Feliciantonio, who are great filmmakers who had made films about youth, and it just turned out to be quite a good creative collaboration all the way around.
Q: Now, the finalists in this competition... I mean, this is a pretty prestigious deal here. These are some of the nation's brightest young minds, and you were a finalist. I'm curious how you went from being one fo the nation's top young scientists to switching over into documentary filmmaking.
A: Well, in fact, someone has done some research on what happens to the finalists from the Science Talent Search. Like, what do they do when they go on in their lives? And 80 percent or more get advanced degrees in science. They become research scientists, professors, people who work in hospitals or laboratories. I definitely took a big left turn in college and started taking film classes and cultural studies classes and this sort of thing and realized that my interest was much more in communication. In truth, I think what I loved more in high school in doing all these science projects was communicating the results in the end more than the field work. And also the collaboration, because science is very collaborative and documentary filmmaking is very collaborative. My science teacher from high school says, "Thomas, you're actually still a scientist in many ways," and she has drawn the parallel that making a documentary film is quite analogous to doing a science fair project where we collect hours and hours and hours of footage, sort of like data, and we distill that down to the essential questions. And I think there's truth in that. So it may not be quite as crazy as it sounds.
Q: Right. I mean, I guess it's all research in one way or another. It's just a different presentation. Now the three main students you focus on the film are Ana Cisneros, who's doing a project on botany; Harmain Khan, who's interested in paleontology; and Kelydra Welcker, who hopes to use her project to remove harmful chemicals from water. I'm curious as to how many students you looked at over the course of making this film, and why did you ultimately settle on those three?
A: The truth is we met dozens of young people doing science, and we went around and scoured science fairs around the country... The International Science and Engineering Fair... a number of regional science fairs... We visited a number of high schools, magnet schools, science academies, I mean there was a huge research component to this film. And we probably ended up with eight or nine students we were tracking pretty heavily and then deciced to film six. Now in the edit room we realized that the film couldn't hold six full stories because as the film evolved we all felt really strongly that the coming-of-age stories and the personal stories of the young people were as important, if not more important, than the science that they were doing and the competition that they were vying for. So I think that informed the decision in the end to cut it down to three. And I would say we met kids that were doing extraordinary work, and kind of bowled over the level of sophistication, and as I said many of these students were coming from schools that offered mentorships with scientists in the field and who just had a number of opportunities. Which is really great, and that should definitely be a model, but I think we were drawn to the three students who you just mentioned, who are in the film, in part because they didn't have the same opportunities just handed to them. In some ways they were kind of doing it themselves and really relying on the support of their family and in some cases teachers and local programs to kind of push them forward. So we were really impressed with their fortitude and I think that's probably why they ended up in the final cut.
Q: Yeah, I was really impressed and surprised by the sheer willpower of the three of them and their level of motivation. I mean, they're working hours upon hours every week, they're working weekends, they essentially just live and breathe this scientific research. And I personally grew up not knowing very many kids with that level of motivation when I was in high school. What is it that makes these students different, in your opinion?
A: Well, I think that that willpower is directly proportional to the backstories that these young people were carrying, and in many ways the stakes for moving forward in the world. I mean, in the case of Harmain and Ana, they're both first-generation Americans, one from Pakistan and one from Ecuardor. So certainly in Ana's case she was holding the sacrifice of her parents who had moved to the United States and given up their own educational opportunities in Ecuador, and she's an only child so I think for her it was really important to take advantage of that opportunity that her parents had given. In the case of Harmain, Pakistani-American, his parents had come over from Pakistan when he was just an infant and unfortunately his father pretty much abandoned the family so she (his mother) was left with five kids and raised them al on welfare. So I think Harmain... I think you kind of feel this in the film... his ferocious need to kind of overcome that background is very palpable and for him science is the thing he discovers in high school that's gonna help him do that. And then the third story that you mentioned, Kelydra Welcker, she has figured out a way to measure and remove a toxic chemical that had been dumped into the Ohio River in her community for many decades by local industry. And so there's this kind of driving need to help her communicty and figure out a way that ordinary people can make sure that their water is gonna be clean, and so there were some political overtones to her story that I think propelled her even more than just doing a typical science fair project.
Q: Yeah, I mean any time you're doing a film or you're trying to focus on kids and education, the issues are pretty complex. And, I mean, just growing up initself is pretty complex. One thing I noticed in the film is that it seems like these students don't really have much of a social life. They don't hang out. Tthey don't date. Some would say that, yes, it's great that they're at the top of their class and they're gonna have incredible opportunities because of all their hard work, but on the other hand some would argue that sometimes its just good to have fun. Is it possible to be too interested in your education? I thought that was an interesteing extreme that you focused on the film.
A: Absolutely. And I think we hope that the film might actually be a critique for not just what you're describing but of competition in geenral at that age. I mean, competition can be a really great motivator, but the flip side of it is that it can force kids to go to the extremes. I have to say that that's how I was in high school, and I kind of got to college and thereafter and was left at times feeling really socially not adept in the world. The nice thing about science, though, which is maybe a little different than saying striving for like a spelling bee or certain athletic pursuits, is that there is also this milieu - there's this social world of other people who are doing science. And I have to say, like, intrinstically what drives people who are interested in science often is less about winning and more about just the process of discovery. Now sure, competitions are important, but I think if you talk to the three kids now that they have some distance from their high school years, they'll talk about not just the competition but what it was like to do some of this research with their mentors and with their friends and how that was meaningful for them. Because, as you say, they're pretty unabashedly not dating and not doing what a lot of the other kids are doing when they're in high school. I think it's a really good question.
Q: Yeah, and I mean any time you're dealing with a huge national competition like this there's so many different players involved. I mean one of the more interesting complexities in the film is that Kelydra is focusing on water purification techniques largely because she lives in a community where Dupont chemical plant has polluted a lot of the water, and it's sort of implied that Dupont has attempted to stifle her research when her regional science fair is cancelled and stuff like that. And yet, at the same time, the Science Talent Search is sponsored by Intel and other major corproations so that sort of brings up the question of how science can be truly objective with all of these major corporate players involved.
A: It's a great point that you raise, and I think it's one that the students in our film started to encounter. Iin particular Kelydra, as you say, because her project definitely had political overtones. I mean it put her in an uncomfortable spotlight in a community where Dupont is the biggest employer, and in fact her own family members have worked there at different points. She would say she wasn't really going against Dupont but that she was trying to have a conversation with the scientists who work within that industry, and more or less for her that could happen at a local science fair because some of those judges would actually come from the industry. But I think the stakes for her in getting to something like the Intel Science Talent Search were higher because there she would have a national aduience who would actually be interested in what she was doing and could vet her work and could really give her the kind of feedback that she wasn't getting locally. But you're right, I mean, the truth is science and scientific research does not happen in a vaccum and in fact the engine for a lot of it has been corporations in America and there have been a lot of good things that have come out of that. And certainly Intel has pumped huge amounts of resources into that competition and other competitions and so without them we wouldn't have these platforms for young people to do some of the work that they're doing. And you kind of get that in the film, that the kids are awakening not just to this competition but to what things are like in the real world.
Q: Right. And I guess when you have so many corporate players involved, like you said, these corporations can be a great help to getting kids motivated in science and helping start these big competitions. But at the same time in th case of corporations like Dupont they can also have sort of a negative influence on things, and I guess it all goes back to the supposed objectivity of scientific research. And ideally I guess that's what journalism and documentary filmmaking are supposed to convey, even though many would argue that it's impossible to be truly objective. Now, you used to be an editor at NPR, so i'm curious if you have any thoughts on the current politicization of the news media and frequently of documentary filmmaking, and do you have a particular philosophy regarding the representation of truth, for example, that influences your work at all?
A: I think what I can say about that is that long-form documentary filmmaking, just by its nature being longer than a one-page newspaper article or a six-minmute segment on network news or NPR, really allows viewers the time to kind of settle into a story. And you're able to present both information, but you're also able to present emotional content that allows an audience to really get invested in the story and get invested in the characters and how those characters change. And then if you're lucky you're able to ornament that process with some real information that educates your audience. So I think it's unique in that way, that it is able to open hearts and open minds. I would say about this particular film, as I was saying, first and foremost it's really a human interest story and it's kind of a coming-of-age story. But if we're able to make science more accessible to the general public I feel like that's really helping the cause, because there has always been a slightly uncomfortable relationsihp between journalism and science and part of that is because the public just really shuts down when they start hearing scientific facts and figures. So you either go to one extreme, where the media just dumbs down science research to the point where it's just ridiculous and inane, or it's too complicated and too technical for a lot of people to grasp and people feel threatened by it. So I think one of the things we were tyring to do with the film is make science interesting, engaging, sexy, and fun through the vibrant eyes of these young people, and hopefully that's a model in some ways for science journalism. At least one.
Q: Right. Like you just said, many times I think the genral public has this impression of science as just being sort of dry and kind of dull and there's all this research... I mean, we're a film podcast, we're focused on entertainment and the arts. Many of our listeners might be wondering: in your opinion, why is science important? Why should the U.S. be focusing more on science education? Why not something like the arts, for example?
A: Well, when I did this competition back in 1987, over 20 years ago, my sense of my competitors, the other finalists that year, were that they were driven to specialize very, very early. So you had kids that were at that time drilling incredibly deeply into the specific areas of science. And in filming over the last two or three years this same competition, but also young people who are doing science fairs and that sort of thing, it feels like there's been a shift, that young people are being taught in equal amounts the importance of practical application and actually how to use science to change the world. And I think, you know, the oil spill in the Gulf right now is a really good example. It takes some real understanding of science, not just politics and not just understanding of corporate America, to understand that very complicated problem. And I feel like young people are now being taught to look at science in a much more interdisciplinary way, with the view to make the world a better place and really solve problems. And that's exciting. I think we're pretty hopeful that releasing the film at this time, given what people in Washington are talking about around education and around the need to invest in science and math and the need to sort of bolster... that it's a good time and a hopeful time.
Q: You just brought up the incident in the Gulf. Now whenever I turn on the news and hear more about that, I can't help but think of people like Kelydra and think, "Thank God there are people like that out there who are doing the research and maybe in the future will be able to come up with a solution to some of these major problems."
A: That's so right, and I think the field of environmental science has just exploded in the last decade and it's really quite exciting. Both the need to become less dependent on fossil fuels and the need to increase alternative forms of energy is driving a lot of what young people are thinking about today and that's really exciting.
Q: Well, Tom, it's been great talking to you. I know the film got released in New York this past week and now it's getting ready to open up in LA. How can people see Whiz Kids if they don't live in either of those two areas. Will there be a DVD release? Will it expand?
A: Yeah! Great question. We're opening in Los Angeles and also in Irvine this weekend, June 11. And then a week-and-a-half, two weeks later, it will be opening in Washington D.C. for a short theatrical run and also playing at the Silverdocs Film Festival as part of their education component. And then we're hoping to open the film in at least a handful of other cities this summer, and then definitely there will be a DVD release, and people will be able to get the DVD right through our website. Our website is whizkidsmovie.com. You can go there and you can see this fancy new theatrical trailer that we just made, and as I said, as we get into the summer the DVD will definitely be available. And then our hope is that we have an offer from a group to distribute the film nationally on PBS and we'll look to be doing that in the fall or early winter.
Q: Well, your filmography is certainly varied. You've done films on homosexuality and the Boy Scouts. You did a film about Jehovah's Witnesses. And now you've got this film about the science competition. I'm curious as to what's next for you.
A: Right. Well, I'm actually in the edit room right now. We're finishing a film I'm working on with Andy Wilson called Forget Me Not, which is a film about the National AIDS Memorial Grove, which is in Golden Gate Pond in San Francisco. And it was sort of an environmental and community response to the AIDS tragedy, first locally here in San Francisco but then this memorial has become sort of a national memorial, so it's a little bit on par with Mount Rushmore and the Vietnam Memorial and that sort of thing. And so the film chronicles the story of this AIDS Grove in San Francisco, and we hope to be finished and submitting to film festivals by the end of the summer.
Q: Okay, well I look forward to that. Whiz Kids is currently playing in New York and expands to California on June 11. Tom, thank you very much for joining me today on MovieChatter.
A: Alright, thanks so much for having us.
