I've had the pleasure of meeting Stephen Bannon, speaking with him and listening to him discuss the making of "The Undefeated". Someone unfamiliar with the making of "The Undefeated" would, most likely, assume that Sarah Palin was heavily involved in the making of the film and influencing its outcome. She was not. In fact, you'll notice in Bannon's "Grit, Tenacity, and Fortitude" article he specifically mentions filming and observing from a distance but not meeting Palin. For a documentary film, this might, at first glance, seem odd to some. I say it lends for a more objective weaving of the story Bannon tells in "The Undefeated", one of "Grit Tenacity, and Fortitude".
From Human Events:
By Stephen Bannon
I repeatedly get asked: “Why would you make a movie about Sarah Palin–what could we possibly not already know about her?”
The answer is quite simply, “everything that’s important.”
Sarah Palin is what I describe as a “McLuhanesque” figure—one of the most media-saturated people in the world, relentlessly covered by the 24/7 news cycle, yet her real story is there hiding in plain sight, never having been told.
And what story exactly is that? The rise of a woman from complete obscurity to national prominence through her own force of will and sense of justice.When The Undefeated starts in the late 80s, Sarah Palin is working on a small commercial fishing vessel she co-owns with her husband Todd, who is a blue-collar union member, working on the North Slope. The daughter of a school teacher, she is not part of the social, political, or cultural elite in the remote Mat-Su Valley, 40 miles northeast of Anchorage. In fact, Alaska at that time, was still a wilderness with the rough-hewen culture of a frontier state.
She is essentially out of the loop in a state that is out of the loop. More
