PBS–Premiere Broadcast of FIRST ANGRY MAN

Still from FIRST ANGRY MAN. PBS SoCal–If you ever wondered how the great public ambitions of postwar America collapsed into Reagan era parsimony and the permanent tax revolt, look no farther than Howard Jarvis, whose 1978 ballot initiative, Proposition 13, changed everything in California and beyond. The film unpacks the dramatic campaign, its quirky characters and its enduring consequences.

Featuring lively archival footage and interviews with first- hand witnesses to the events, including Governor Gray Davis, Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz and anti-tax firebrand Grover Norquist, The First Angry Man puts a bracket around the last four decades of American political life, inviting viewers to see our era as an anomaly in American history, at odds with some of our nation’s deepest underpinnings.

Directed by Jason Cohn USA, 2019, 56m.  KCET (PBS So Cal) October 13 at 7 pm KQED (Bay Area) October 16 at 8 pm KQED+ (Bay Area) October 19 at 3 pm This film is supported by California Humanities through a California Documentary Project grant.