VC and conservative political activist Paul Martino on his docu-series and the tech landscape post-Trump
Bucks County USA is a documentary-series that debuted at The 2025 Sundance Film Festival
(Note: the words Covid and suicide are muted out to avoid being censored on certain platforms. Paul’s interview starts around 36:00)
At the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, the first and second episodes of “Bucks County, USA,” a five-part episodic series premiered in front of the typical liberal Sundance audience. It was an ideal setting for a political show whose main stars, two 14-year-old best friends with opposing political views - Vanessa and Evi - demonstrate inspiring civil conduct that is an anachronism in today’s polarized society.
Vanessa Martino is the daughter of Paul Martino, entrepreneur-turned-venture capitalist-turned conservative political activist. (Disclosure: he’s also one of my oldest friends in Silicon Valley as we met when he and Mark Pincus co-founded Tribe, one of the original social networks). The documentary, so far three years in the making, is co-produced and co-directed by accomplished filmmakers Robert May and Barry Levinson. May was the executive producer of The Fog of War, which won an Academy Award for Best Documentary. Levinson won the Academy Award for Best Director for Rain Man.
Doubtless this series is in good hands as the storytelling requires purposeful avoidance of politics itself in order to humanize both sides. It’s quite a departure from Michael Moore’s approach to political documentation with his films, such as Fahrenheit 11/9, which essentially demonizes conservatives.
“It’s the intentional decision by the filmmakers that you see them as friends and not as political rivals,” said Paul, in our conversation. “So far, what I’ve seen on film is their friendship because that is the literary device of the film,” he added.
Indeed, as someone who wrote a political book - Unequally Yoked: Finding Balance and Hope in our Differences - that attempts to unite people in common values, the first step to do so is to see the other side as a potential friend.
I have no doubt some in the audience will be moved in that direction. It is a process I am fascinated with and one most of my readers and viewers are familiar with. It’s called the throughline moment: a time when there is a realization that there’s a coordinated and concerted effort to subvert the truth. Often people have multiple throughline moments that happen over the course of years. Even though Paul will explain he never had one (you’ll have to listen), most people experience them.
Paul explains that one of the crew members of the film admitted that she was a liberal who would always look askance at a Maga-hat-wearing person. But she ends up having a conversation with one because of the friendship she developed with Paul and his family having spent many days with them during filming. She realized conservatives aren’t sycophantic Trump clone troopers.
“That is a throughline moment,” said Paul. “And that will lead to behavior change permanently because she realized that’s a human being and not a caricature.”
Paul goes on to explain accurately that “there’s an asymmetry between conservatives and liberals in US politics. Conservatives think liberals have bad policies and liberals think conservatives are bad people.” The more we can get liberals to see conservatives as people trying to achieve the same goal, that’s progress.
I hope you enjoy.