Paul Stekler

Paul J. Stekler (born January 3, 1953) is a political documentary filmmaker, a professor, and former chair and head of the production program in the Department of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas at Austin College of Communication.

Stekler's first collaboration with Louis Alvarez and Andrew Kolker (The Center for New American Media), friends from New Orleans, was Louisiana Boys: Raised on Politics (1991), which aired on PBS's POV series.

The Emmy Award film was described by the Chicago Tribune as a "fine experience… allowing us to hear the story of the battle from the Native-American perspective," by the New York Times as "a moving and intelligent contribution," and in the Boston Globe as "Custer wouldn’t have believed it – an Indian collaborating with a white man to write, and right the history."

The series won an Emmy, Columbia-duPont, and a Peabody, whose committee called the it "a glimpse of our system that ultimately turns the surprising trick of making viewers more appreciative of and less cynical about the political process."

Based on Dan Carter's Wallace biography, The Politics of Rage, about the four-time candidate for the presidency and Alabama governor for nearly two decades, it aired as a two night American Experience special.

Newsday said it "sets the television on fire," while the Wall Street Journal wrote that the film was a "documentary filled with enough drama and dark comedy, wry twists of fate and fortune, corruption of the spirit and of the body politic, sin and salvation to make fans of ‘The Sopranos’ forget for a while."

Stekler was nominated by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) in 2004 for outstanding achievement in television writing for his documentary film "Last Man Standing: Politics Texas Style" which aired nationally on the PBS series "P.O.V."