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Sometime in the 1980s, a kid came home from soccer practice at Gunn High School, grabbed some chips and salsa, and settled down in front of the TV to watch the talk show “Donahue.” On the show that day, a primarily white audience jeered at young Black civil rights activists as they shouted above the noise to make their point about the upsetting realities of systemic racism in America at the time.
One of those activists was Rev. Al Sharpton. The kid watching the show was Josh Alexander, who grew up to become a documentary filmmaker.
Alexander is a Gunn High School alumnus. He recently wrote and directed “Loudmouth,” a biographical documentary on Sharpton’s career, focused on fighting against racial injustice, particularly in New York in the 1980s and 1990s. Through archival footage, and a detailed interview with Sharpton in the present day, the film recounts tragic stories of victims of racial violence — from Michael Griffith in 1986 to George Floyd in 2020, and several in between and since.
A ‘system story’
“Loudmouth” is a documentary, not just about an individual but also about an ecosystem, comprising the criminal justice system, the political system, the media and the people who consume it.
“It’s a ‘system story,'” Alexander said.
Looking back, he said he finds the narrative of race from that period in history “shocking,” not least for the media’s portrayal of passionate social justice activists as “grotesque caricatures and clowns.”
“Loudmouth” was the closing film at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival and was released on Showtime in 2023. It is also available on Apple TV and several other streaming platforms. The film’s executive producer is musician John Legend.
The idea to make the film struck Alexander in the summer of 2018. Sharpton signed on the following year. From inspiration to fruition, the process took five years. This sort of slow burn is typical of nonfiction storytelling, a genre Alexander was drawn to because of his experience with dyslexia as a child.
“I really struggled to learn to read,” he said. “Rote learning specifically was very difficult for me.”
The academically competitive environment in Palo Alto didn’t help matters. Empathetic and skilled teachers, however, did. Diane Spicer, his tutor through childhood, helped him brave this challenge by giving him mental tools that he continued to use as an adult. “She taught me how to retain details through storytelling,” he said. “It’s all about the piecing together of narratives.”
Finding the narrative
During the making of “Loudmouth,” being confronted with editing through 1,200 hours of video footage, took Alexander back in time. “In some ways, it throws me right back to the trauma and edge of my childhood dyslexia, because I can’t see the story in it,” he said. “It’s only through constant re-engagement with that archival material, interviews, piecing together of themes, that I started to put the story together and retain all the details.”
Alexander’s appetite for nonfiction has a lot to do with the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001. He was in Brooklyn then and saw the second plane fly over the Statue of Liberty and then through the building. “Pieces of paper from the World Trade Center were falling onto our rooftop, across the East River,” he said.
In the months that followed, spurred by an urgent need to seek out the “larger context” to what had happened, he became obsessed with reading nonfiction, the lifeblood of documentary filmmaking.
A theater major at Vassar College in New York, Alexander worked as an actor across Broadway, plays, TV and film, before pivoting to writing and directing. His oeuvre comprises both fiction and nonfiction movies.
A family ‘orientation’
“Loudmouth” is not Alexander’s first film about race, though. In 2015, he wrote and produced “Southern Rites,” a documentary about racial segregation and crime in Georgia.
Alexander, who is white, was cognizant of the reality of race from a very young age, due in no small measure to the “social justice orientation” in his family, “which felt like an inheritance.”
Alexander was raised by professors. His mother, who taught psychology at University of California at Berkeley, worked to do away with the system of tracking students by perceived academic abilities in an East Bay public school district. His father taught psychiatry at Stanford University and spent the last part of his career advocating public health and human rights at UC Berkeley. His twin brother, who teaches political science at Stanford, wrote about the economics of rebellion in Africa during his time studying at Harvard University.
Moreover, after Alexander moved to New York City, he became more acutely aware of disparate social realities. “I started to feel very present to difference and segregation by neighborhood and wealth inequality,” he said. “It opened me up to look at race more critically.”
What draws him to the subject of race? “I grew up in America. As Rev. Sharpton says, ‘All Black people are born into race.’ So are white people,” he said. “It’s the caste system in this country.”
“As someone who has benefitted from the privileges, structures and entitlements that come with being white in this country — with some complexity because I’m Jewish — I felt like it was my responsibility to be the one asking the questions, and not always requiring Black storytellers or brown storytellers to talk about race,” he said.
Building mutual trust
Working closely with Sharpton was quite the experience for Alexander. “One of the things most shocking to me as I started following him and interviewing him and working with him, is how quiet he is,” he said. “His loudness was a choice … he is measured, thoughtful and calm.”
In a recent episode of “The Late Show” with Stephen Colbert, Sharpton said he did not have any editorial control in the process of making the film. Was that pre-condition upheld?
“He totally honored it,” said Alexander, adding, however, “That does not mean there was not friction.”
The first time Sharpton saw the film he was understandably skeptical. “I think it was quite hard for him,” Alexander said. “He was very uncomfortable.”
“It was bringing back a part of his life where he was most righteously angry, and there’s language in there that’s scary for people to have to confront.”
In projects like these, the relationship between director and subject is complex and difficult. The trip Alexander and his team took to Minneapolis to film Sharpton’s public eulogy for George Floyd, did a lot to cement their mutual trust, Alexander said.
The team also consulted journalist Logan Hill on the interview questions for Sharpton.
Early influences
Alexander is an admirer of African American writer and activist James Baldwin. Among things he does to stay energized are working out, escaping to Paris, engaging with nature and practicing vipassana meditation, which involves going to a retreat and sitting in silence for weeks on end.
Among his early influences at Gunn are his theater teacher James Shelby and his athletics coach Hal Daner.
Shelby encouraged students to produce their own shows. Alexander recalls getting together with his friends to recreate David Mamet’s “American Buffalo,” a play from the 1970s. “It was one of the most powerful experiences for me in high school,” he said. “It gave me a kind of confidence that has served me throughout my career.”
As for Coach Daner, it was his training on the track that taught Alexander the importance of staying physically strong, leading an active life and being disciplined with workouts.
“Loudmouth” is available to watch for rent on Apple TV, Vudu or Amazon Prime or by subscription to Showtime, Paramount Plus or Amazon Prime. For more information, visit greenwichentertainment.com.
Check out Showtime’s trailer for “Loudmouth:”