Tea Party: The Documentary Film

Jenny Beth Martin didn't set out to become a movie star. Yet Wednesday night at the Ronald Reagan Center amphitheatre, the mom from Georgia was a celebrity at the big-screen premiere of a new film that features a cast of thousands. Wait -- better make that "hundreds of thousands." Martin is one of several activists featured in Tea Party: The Documentary Film, which tells the story of how a movement that began in February with a few hundred people showing up at scattered protests culminated in September's massive taxpayer march on Washington. Although the documentary (directed by Pritchett Cotton) uses Martin as one of a half-dozen featured "characters" to carry the narrative arc of the story, the true stars of the film are the hundreds of thousands of people who turned out to wave homemade signs and cheer speakers at Tea Party rallies all over the country during 2009. The amazing growth of the movement is highlighted by one of Martin's earliest on-screen appearances, showing her speaking at a Feb. 27 event in Atlanta, where a small crowd turned out on a cold rainy Friday. Martin subsequently explains that she was one of about 20 organizers on a Feb. 20 conference call that led to that first round of Tea Party gatherings, which followed commodities analyst Rick Santelli's now-famous Feb. 19 rant on the CNBC network. As the film makes clear, however, Santelli's call for a Tea Party protest tapped into a deep vein of discontent that started growing among grassroots conservatives during the Bush administration...read more



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