‘Waiting for Superman’ Director Defends His Film in Katie Couric Interview

Last night, Katie Couric sat down with Davis Guggenheim, the director of a little documentary that has been making a lot of noise lately, Waiting for Superman during her “@katiecouric” weekly show on CBSNews.com. The film has been described by New York Magazine as a “sequel” to Davis Guggenheim’s An Inconvenient Truth that follows the stories of five children, and their families, navigating the ins and outs of our public education system. The New York Times called the documentary “powerful and alarming,” the L.A. Times describes Guggenheim “as potent a storyteller and showman as an activist filmmaker with a serious issue on his mind,” noting that the film won the audience award at the Sundance Film Festival. While the film has received a lot of praise, it’s also seen its fair share of criticism. As reported by Ben Smith in Politico, Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers, has described the film as “inaccurate, inconsistent, and incomplete.” AFT has vocally taken issue with Guggenheim’s depiction of their union and public education more generally, Dana Goldstein also wrote a scathing review of the documentary in The Nation yesterday.

Yet in his conversation with Katie Couric, Guggenheim described himself as a “big believer in unions,” while explaining that his objective was to create a documentary that was “tough on all the adults.”

Watch the full broadcast here.

Sara is a Communications and Outreach Associate at Campus Progress.

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