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The Biographers International Organization (BIO) honors Dawn Porter, a renowned American documentary filmmaker, for her contributions to the art of biography. Porter's documentaries focus on social justice, history, and cultural icons like John Lewis and Luther Vandross. She discusses her transition from being a corporate attorney to a filmmaker, highlighting the skills she developed as a lawyer, such as listening and understanding people's backgrounds. Porter also talks about the importance of collaboration in filmmaking and the challenges of raising funds for projects. She shares how she found the characters for her films, including her first film, "Gideon's Army," which focused on young public defenders. Porter emphasizes her passion for storytelling and her enjoyment of the puzzle-solving aspect of filmmaking. She discusses her film "Spies in Mississippi," which explores the state's use of spies to infiltrate the NAACP in the 1950s and 1960s. The spies' reports provided valuable in Welcome to BIO, a podcast produced by the Biographers International Organization. BIO is devoted to promoting the work of biographers and advocating for biography as a genre, with the support of biographers and biography lovers worldwide. I'm BIO member Jenny Psoog in New York City. On each episode, we talk with biographers about their work. Every year, BIO presents its highest honor to an individual for contributions to advancing the art and craft of biography. This year, we honor Dawn Porter, acclaimed American documentary filmmaker and founder of Trilogy Films. Porter is known for her storytelling on social justice, history, and cultural icons. Her celebrated documentaries include Traps, John Lewis Did Trouble, and The Lady Bird Diaries. Her recent work, Luther, Never Too Much, highlights the life and legacy of Luther Vandross. Produced with Sony Music Entertainment, Jamie Foxx's Foxhole, and Colin Firth's Raindog Films, this intimate portrayal of the Grammy-winning artist was released in theaters and premiered on CNN Max on January 1, 2025. We are thrilled to share this Zoom-recorded conversation between BIO member A'Lelia Bundles and Dawn Porter on April 8, 2025. Dawn Porter, it is so good to see you, and congratulations. We are just thrilled that you have accepted this award from BIO. Thank you for nominating me. Truly, A'Lelia, I have admired you for so long, as long as I've known you and the work that you've done in biography is so admirable, so it is truly something that's delightful to me to be able to be in conversation, but to have you be the person who brought me to the attention of the organization, so thank you. Well, and we have known each other for, I don't know, more than 20 years. Dawn Porter and I used to work together at ABC News, and I was at that point either a producer or maybe director of talent development, but Dawn was on the fifth floor, on the executive floor, as an attorney. So talk to us a bit about that transition that you made from being a corporate attorney to being a documentary filmmaker. You know, it really is a very topical conversation for this audience, because when I was a lawyer I was in private practice in Washington, D.C. I was a litigator, and what you do as a litigator is, you know, you do a lot of writing and research, but I did a lot of depositions, and depositions really are, it's biographical work. It's listening to people, it's kind of trying to understand their positions, it's understanding their background, and so I think if you're doing it right, you're actually doing more listening than speaking, particularly at the deposition stage. And so, you know, when I was at ABC, one of the many benefits I had was being able to sit in edit rooms and watch producers work with editors in crafting a story. And so I realized that the building blocks for listening and understanding, those had been really crafted during my time as a lawyer, and the storytelling piece of it, I thought you really work in collaboration with your editor. And so when I decided that I was going to make films and make the shift, it wasn't that hard. The storytelling piece was the easier part for me. The hard part was I didn't do anything useful. I couldn't shoot or edit or compose, so I had to be in charge, because that was the big option for me. But then there's also the raising money, which is a big part of what you do. There is the raising money, and you're not just selling an idea to somebody. You're selling the idea that you can execute and complete it. And so one of the other things about being a lawyer is we are very capable people. We are stable. We understand business. And I think that that gave people some comfort with the idea that I could figure it out, that I would surround myself, which is what I did. I met some terrific people. Julie Goldman was an established producer. She came on as my first producer. Ryan Harrington was working at Tribeca Institute. He was a big mentor. And then those two experienced people, they liked my first idea, which was Gideon's Army, about public defenders working in the Deep South. Then they helped me find the rest of the team members. So a great editor, Matt Hamachak, and then things just kind of rolled on from there. But nobody makes a film by themselves. The directors get a lot of the credit, and we do work really hard, and we have a lot of the stressful pieces. But films are made in collaboration, and that's something I enjoy very, very much. So part of the reason that you're receiving the Bio Award is because of documentaries that are specifically on characters like John Lewis, like Luther Vandross, like Robert F. Kennedy, Lady Bird Johnson. But your first film, as you mentioned, was Gideon's Army. But the strength of that film and your other films is having strong characters. So how did you find that character for that first film? My first film, it also relates to my legal career. Kirsten Levingston, at that time, she had been a lawyer in Washington, D.C. When she moved to New York, New Jersey, she went to work for the Ford Foundation. And so I went to meet with her. We knew each other from our lawyer days. And she was working at Ford. And Kirsten, who had a background in criminal legal system and in justice work, she introduced me to John Rapping, who was training all these young public defenders. And the first time I met him, his energy, his enthusiasm, he was talking about the Constitution. He was talking about people's rights, and he was training lawyers to protect that. And I was just really taken with that. You know, as a person working at a corporate law firm, we didn't talk about the Constitution that much. You know, we didn't talk about people. We talked about businesses. And so I was very taken. You know, I went to Georgetown Law School. I lived on Capitol Hill. I used to walk down East Capitol Street in front of the Supreme Court. And as you do, you look up and you cannot help but be struck by the grandeur of that building, but also by the importance of the decisions that are happening. And I thought, well, as a lawyer, maybe I can help people understand some of this process. And so that gave me the confidence that I could start doing that. But I didn't really plan to just shift careers entirely. I just wanted to tell that particular story about these young public defenders. So that was also biographical work. So were you at that point, were you still on the fence? Were you like, I'm still going to be doing law, and I might make some films occasionally? I was just like, I just want to do this. I was just so focused on getting it done. I didn't think I'm going to do another one after that. I just was like, I'm just going to be doing this. How can I get this done? And so I didn't really call myself a director for a very long time, because I thought I haven't earned that. And as a woman, as a Black woman, I think we're very, we don't grab things we don't deserve. You know, the women Black women I admire, we don't grab things we don't deserve. And I thought, the fact that I could tell this one story doesn't mean I'm a filmmaker. It means I'm telling this one story. But then after I did it, I was like, this is all the things I love. This is listening to people. This is giving people who may not have a big voice, a way to be heard, the cinema. My father was a photographer. So it was gathering all these things that I just loved. And then the strategy to making the film. And I really enjoyed the puzzle of how do I get the money? How do I get the right people? How do I put the team together? That was very appealing to me. And I think that's the part of directing that people don't focus on so much is you are responsible for the team. And to me, I find it very satisfying when the right people are doing the right job. And you can get out of the way and let them do their jobs. I find that very fulfilling. Well, and I guess with a legal case, there's a verdict and you either win or you lose. But with a film and when you're dealing with people's lives and telling stories that have some consequence, there's another metric that you must use to measure. So with Gideon's Army or Spies in Mississippi, maybe tell us a bit about Spies in Mississippi. When did you feel like you had told the story? What resonated with people? So Spies in Mississippi is about in the 1950s and early 1960s. The state of Mississippi used spies to infiltrate the NAACP. And as you can imagine, white people were not particularly effective in that job. They were not going to be able to infiltrate black churches and meetings. And so they started recruiting black people to attend those meetings and report back on who was saying what. And the operation became fairly sophisticated. It was sophisticated enough that these spies would file reports. The entity that was overseeing this was located in the governor's office. And so they kept all these reports. And Mississippi at some point made all those, after FOIA requests, after journalists pushing, made that treasure trove of documents available. And so you could see what the spies were reporting. Medgar Evers was here. King was there. Some of it was inaccurate, but a lot was very accurate, including the identity of the three civil rights workers who were murdered. So a spy was at the training session in Ohio. And students had gone to Ohio to train for Freedom Summer, white and black students. And for their safety, the organizers asked them all to give their driver's licenses so that they had a record of who was going into these. So the civil rights workers who went, they went to investigate the bombing of a church. And this agent, this black agent, Agent X was his code name. He told the police in Mississippi that they were coming. But if you think about it, how did they know to target this one car? It wasn't just that they were in a racial car. And so they intercepted them and they passed on the ID of that car to the Klan. And then the Klan killed them. Wow. Yeah. What you're talking about is, you know, both the legal training and investigative reporting. And many BIO members are journalists or former journalists. You know, many are academics. But that blend of journalism, investigative reporting is very much a part of what BIO is about. And you have done that kind of work. Many people have looked at this, but were there things that you knew you were uncovering? There were. I mean, we were able to find Agent X. He was still alive. And so after he did his spying, he was a very prolific spy. He went to work for Strom Thurmond. And then he was living out his days in Mississippi. And so I was working with a journalist who was determined to find out if this man was still alive. And ultimately, we threw the phone book. The spy was in the phone book in the early 2000s, thinking that no one would put X and Y together. But it was through the work of a journalist. But one thing that I think sometimes we forget is, it's just good old fashioned matching A with B and having the patience to go dig through records and match things up. And then he finally did admit to us. And did you get him on camera? We did. It wasn't the greatest interview because he was pretty old by then, but we did. So if my list of your filmography is correct, Gideon's Army was 2013, Spies in Mississippi 2014. You did every year almost, my friend. You have had something. 2015 is Rise, The Promise of My Brother's Keeper. 2016 was Trapped. And then in 2018, it looks like you did your, you know, in a sense your first name biography with Bobby Kennedy for president. How did that come about? I worked with a German company on Spies in Mississippi. We could not raise the money for a straight historical story about a spy during the civil rights movement. So I had gone to a documentary conference and there was a session called Meet the Germans. So I was like, I want to meet the Germans. So I just signed up and went in. The Germans are very polite. So what they didn't say was this was for German producers to meet the buyers, but they didn't kick me out. So I just went in. I talked about the spy project and every table, instead of saying, who are you and why are you here? They said, oh, you should speak to Gunnar. Gunnar loves these kinds of stories. And I finally get to Gunnar and he did. And he secured the first money for Spies in Mississippi. He said, oh, Germans. We love Spies. We love this. So I worked with Gunnar several years later. He came to me and he had a person who was interested in investigating Bobby Kennedy's death. And I was like, I'm not a conspiracy person. But then I started looking around and I was like, you know, there's no Bobby Kennedy story. And this is such a rich and fascinating story. Lots of JFK and other Kennedys, but I don't really think anyone's done this whole story. But what really sealed it for me was how Bobby Kennedy was so influenced by so many Black people. John Lewis volunteered for Bobby Kennedy after he was kind of kicked out of SNCC. Bobby Kennedy invited Marian Wright. She wasn't in Edelman then. She was a young 20-something activist working in the South. He invited her to come testify before Congress when he was a senator about starvation in Mississippi. And she invites him to Mississippi. She says, come see for yourself. So that was the first time that he asked his aide, Peter Edelman, to drive around Marian Wright. And now it's Marian Wright Edelman. But when Bobby Kennedy went to see starvation in America, he directs Peter Edelman, his then aide, to free up food. We sent food assistance to Mississippi to ward off starvation. So Bobby Kennedy evolved in a way, and his evolution was very, very much influenced by Black people. The night that Dr. King was killed, John Lewis had organized in Indianapolis a rally in the Black community for Bobby Kennedy. And Bobby Kennedy's white aide said, do not address this crowd. There's going to be rioting. It's going to be terrible. And a very young, a 20-something-year-old John Lewis said, you must speak to them. You must address their anger. And he did. And it is the only time that he mentioned his brother's murder. And he says, at the hands of a white man, I understand your anger. And Indianapolis is one of the only cities that did not burn. So Harry Belafonte was an advisor to Kennedy. How does King get out of jail when the Kennedy brothers are deciding? Are they going to send support so that King isn't murdered in jail? So the Bobby Kennedy story is inextricably intertwined with the fight for civil rights as taught and discussed with Black leaders. And so I'm like, nobody really knows that. And so, you know, literally when I pitched it to Netflix, I was like, this is going to be the Blackest Bobby Kennedy you've ever seen, because that's who he was interacting with and listening to. And he wasn't always perfect. He had a very famous meeting with some Black nationalist Panther-type people where he was very angry that they weren't more grateful to be invited to his fancy apartment. But he listened to people. And that, to me, was really interesting and important to see people can evolve if they're open to hearing. Right. And there was the meeting with Lorraine Hansberry that didn't end well. And I will say, you know, I grew up in Indianapolis. So that night, it was burning up everywhere else. And we're like, what is happening here? And my mother had actually worked for the Kennedy campaign. And my little story was Ethel Kennedy needed a hairdryer in her hotel room. And my mother drove home and got her portable hairdryer and brought it back. But she really did believe in Bobby Kennedy's ability to bridge that divide. I did not know that John Lewis was there. So that is really an important piece of information for us. And then after Bobby Kennedy, you moved on to John Lewis. Did one lead to the other? Or was that just a coincidence? Well, you know, John Lewis had addressed the public defenders in Gideon's Army. So I met him then. And then we interviewed him for Bobby Kennedy. I did not realize how significant their relationship was. And so I think it was CNN who said, did John Lewis do a documentary? And I said, well, you should just ask him. And so I did. And he said, sure. That was it. I think he was ready. You know, he was about to turn 80. And so it was very easy. His staff was a whole nother situation. But he was ready. He would have had me live with him for a year, like if I wanted to. He was such an open book. And we did not know that that was going to be his last year of life when we started. He was the energizer bunny. We followed him one Sunday. He was campaigning for other candidates. And we were filming. So we had a van that was following his car. And our van could not keep up. And our camera guy said, if you can take a break. And I was like, he's 80. We got to keep up with him. He went to three churches one Sunday morning. And if you know, like, Metro Atlanta is far. There's traffic and churches only a little bit. So we're going to get to those three places. But that was such a significant time for me. It was the middle of the Trump presidency. I was really distraught about so many things, kids in cages and deportation, the Muslim ban. And Damas was just chipper and focused. And he would say this a lot. He was like, you can't become bitter because then they win. And they take your humanity, make you an unhappy, bitter person. Bitter people can make change. You have to find what gives you joy. So then my husband started calling Damas my life. But boy, what a gift to have spent that time with him and to have gained his confidence. I'm sure he enjoyed it as much as you did. Oh, he loved being filmed. He loved it. He would say something that he thought was very funny. And he would say, did you get that? We got that. Well, you've done so many biographical studies, in a sense. Dawn, when you did the Lady Bird Diaries, you actually worked with one of BIOS members, Julia Sly. So how did you meet each other? Well, Julia had written this marvelous book. And it was based on Lady Bird. Johnson had recorded 123 hours of audio tapes. She recorded them on her press secretary, Liz Carpenter's son's little plastic recorder. So she would record something. And then sometimes she would slow the tape down to give her more space. But Julia's book was really a revelation. You know, based on Lady Bird's very meticulous diary entries, Julia was able to construct this vision of the White House that was totally different. And so for me, I had done Tom Lewis. So I had his perspective on that period of time. I had done Bobby Kennedy. I knew his perspective on that period of time. So to be able to then take it and twist it and look at it from a different perspective, which is from within the White House. Well, I mean, that was documentary crack. I mean, I'm so familiar with this footage, but from the perspective of these men. And so to have the perspective of this woman, who, although privileged, was still a product of 1950s America. And she had her role when Lady Bird was trying to carve out a new position. But she was still a woman, a white woman from Texas. So it was really interesting to hear her thought process about what was happening, but also to see what a partner she was to Johnson, which I don't think was adequately explored in any other places. Some of the things that were the most fun for me is I knew Bobby Kennedy's feeling about some events like signing of the Civil Rights Bill. He was angry about his brother's death. He felt that his brother should be there signing that legislation. Johnson got it through. And Lady Bird says in her diary, the Attorney General, she called him the Attorney General, the Attorney General. You couldn't let a mat go between his hands as the bill was signed. She was so furious with Bobby because she thought he was blaming Johnson for something that Johnson had nothing to do with. And then she's, of course, not perfect, you know, by any means. I mean, there's a really interesting experience she has with Eartha Kitt, where she's all mad at Eartha Kitt. Eartha Kitt confronts Johnson in the White House about poverty, and Lady Bird was not having it. And do you know Eartha Kitt did not work again after that? There was a whole protest of the Johnson White House after it was reported that she stood up to the president. A lot of anti-Johnson people were really mad about how Eartha Kitt was treated. They protested in front of the White House about Eartha Kitt, but then she didn't work again. I can't draw any causation. I didn't find any of that. But it was quite an interesting coincidence. She was pretty much at the top of her game. We can see people in power can be petty. So most of the bio members are people who write books. And this is, if not the first time, one of the first times that the award has gone to a filmmaker. But we understand biographical films are actually seen by more people, often than the people who are reading books. So I'm just wondering if you can talk about the impact of having a film and having something on CNN and having something on HBO and on Netflix. What is the reach and what is the impact using that platform? You know, one thing that should not be lost on any of us is the hunger and demand for these stories in whatever form. And so CNN reaches millions of people. But I think that we all exist in an ecosystem. When you do a film, somebody might access the story that way, but it usually ignites an interest in other forms of media, in podcasts, in books. The other thing is a film just cannot do what a book can do. We usually have 90 minutes, even if we have a series, the amount of detail and sourcing that a book has is just far more substantial than even the most meticulously researched film is. And so I think it's important that we kind of keep that in mind and work together to amplify these stories. I think there's a really lovely symbiotic relationship that can happen. I mean, one of my favorite biographies is Kathryn Graham's autobiography. I just ate that book up. You know, and living in Washington and reading the Post and caring about journalism and her being a woman and I saw the film, which I think is really good, but having read the book, I imported so much knowledge. The film doesn't deal with Phil's philandering. You know, it doesn't really deal with the fact that she wrote these lovely notes to Jackie Kennedy after Jackie Kennedy had miscarriages. And that's not a criticism of the filmmakers, because I very well know we cannot include everything or we might not have the material to include everything. But that's the magic of books. You all can't include everything. Right, until your editor says you have gone down too many rabbit holes. So there's so many more films. We haven't talked about 37 Words, The Sing Sing Chronicles and Luther. So can you tell me what you love the most, what you're proudest of, though they're all your babies, I know. They are. And they're all different and they all serve a purpose. It's always fascinating to see what life they will have, you know. So we just finished as a team Eyes on the Prize 3, kind of the next in that sequence of civil rights stories. I think the Providence Gideons Army will always have a special place for me because it was the first. I love Lady Bird. I just I just love the intimacy of that film. Every film is an opportunity to grow and change and push yourself right now. I'm working on something I think is very ambitious about Winnie and Nelson Mandela. Winnie also kept a diary about her time in solitary confinement. She was in solitary confinement for 491 days, psychologically torched her while her husband was away. She was arrested multiple times. You know, we know the story that is told about Nelson. But what about Winnie? What was it like for her those 27 years that he was gone? And how did she survive? And what happened to her? You know, I've been describing it as the wicked version, like Elsheba didn't start out evil. Things happened along the way. And I don't think Winnie was evil. But I think a lot of things happened along the way. And she gave great sacrifices. She also committed some terrible acts. But you have to understand the beginning in order to understand where she ends up. And when you think about it, it's so basic. If Nelson Mandela is in prison for 27 years and is not allowed to speak to the press or read a newspaper or communicate with anybody, how do we know anything about him? And how did we know anything about him while he was incarcerated? Because his wife was keeping his story alive. She's banished. So banished under apartheid meant she had to leave her home. And they moved her. They forcibly moved her 400 kilometers away to a town that she didn't even speak the language of the local people. And she lived in this tiny three-room house. And she was confined to her home for most of the day. She could only get one visitor a day. So one of the visitors she gets is Ted Kennedy. She's like, I only get one visitor? I'm like, Ted Kennedy here. And he brings cameras. So this is what biography does. It allows you to step back and contextualize. We can understand, maybe. We can seek to explain. But I think life is continual learning. And so that's what I love about these biographical stories. When you say banned and banished, we are in a moment of banning and banishment. And I'm just wondering how you reflect on that. What advice do you have for biographers, for documentary filmmakers who are trying to decide whether they want to delve into something that's complicated? It is so critical that we are documenting this time period, because so many extraordinarily anti-democratic things are happening that it's hard to keep track. So a few years ago, I did a series about the Supreme Court. And it's called Deadlocked. I chose that name. But the purpose of the series was to document how did we get to a place where we have this conservative court that is undoing decades of precedent? That's not a simple story. And basically, the network kind of gave me some freedom. So finally, I said, I want to start with the Warren Court, which is a 1950s, very liberal court. The Warren Court gives us the Bill of Rights protected by the Supreme Court. He has the right to an attorney. That's the Warren Court. Rosie Ray, you know, like all these really significant decisions. Again, search and seizure, all of these things. Right. So we've traced from the Warren Court to the Roberts Court. And you see, when you tell those stories, part of telling those stories is telling about the people who occupied the court, what their philosophy is. Biography underpins all of that. People do things. You have to understand who the people are and what their philosophies are in order to understand how they're behaving. So I think it is so crucially important to not obey in exams right now. You need to stay alive and you need to not become a target that you can document and we can record what is happening in this period. Because in 25 years, I'm sure philosophers, biographers, historians and political scientists are all going to be trying to figure out what happened in this period. And if we don't leave the diaries, I don't think that they'll be able to tell the story. So you may not tell the story now, but maybe you just leave the diary. Dawn Porter, thank you so much. Congratulations. And we are so glad that you are now a part of the BIO family. Thank you so much. That was Dawn Porter, 2025 recipient of the BIO Award, talking with BIO member A'Lelia Bundles via Zoom on April 8th, 2025. For more information about BIO, including awards and fellowships, please visit our website, biographersinternational.org. I'm BIO member and producer Jenny Smoog in New York City. Our executive producer is Sonia Williams. Darren Neslitt created our theme music. Thank you for listening.
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