Carmel filmmaker Ashton Gleckman chronicles JFK for new audience

Carmel-based filmmaker Ashton Gleckman said he reflected on President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 inaugural address during tumultuous 2020, a year defined by the pandemic, social unrest and a contentious presidential election.

In the speech, Kennedy famously challenged U.S. citizens: “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”

Gleckman decided his calling was to make a documentary about the 35th president.

“I was thinking back to seeing that color footage of this young, vibrant, charismatic president,” said Gleckman, who was seeking a project to follow documentaries he made based on the Holocaust and life in the Appalachian Mountains. “I think in our world today we’re frustrated, we’re confused and we’re a little bit disillusioned with the political system—not only in our country but the circumstances around the world.”

Kennedy, of course, isn’t a novel subject. In 2013, The New York Times estimated that 40,000 books had been published about his political family. At online database IMDb, 950 movies are listed as featuring archival footage of President Kennedy.

So there’s only one reason to do another Kennedy project, Gleckman said. “And that’s if you have something to say that’s new. I realized that 90% of films that have been done about Kennedy have been about the assassination. They’ve all been about that day in Dallas.”

So Gleckman set out to do more.

On Nov. 18-20, the History Channel will broadcast the result: Gleckman’s eight-episode documentary series that chronicles all 46 years of Kennedy’s life.

Nov. 22 is the 60th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination.

Gleckman, 23, wrote, directed, edited and co-scored “Kennedy.” The filmmaker said he brings a youthful perspective and an intent to present Kennedy’s story to a new audience that might be inspired by the leader’s actions on civil rights and the Cold War.

“I didn’t want to focus on the blood and the gore of Dallas,” Gleckman said. “I wanted to focus on who the guy was and how he was able to get to the highest office. And also how he was able to pull the world back from the brink of annihilation during the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

Kennedy remains the youngest president at the time of his election. He was 43.

At 23, Gleckman is two years younger than Orson Welles was when the Hollywood icon made “Citizen Kane.” Ken Burns, a master at telling American history through documentaries, was 28 when he made his debut feature-length film, “Brooklyn Bridge.”

Gleckman made his Holocaust documentary, “We Shall Not Die Now,” at age 19.

Lawrence Haas, who worked as a spokesman in the Clinton White House, serves as a consulting producer on “Kennedy.” The author of the book “The Kennedys in the World: How Jack, Bobby, and Ted Remade America’s Empire” said Gleckman succeeds in saying something new with the documentary series.

“Ashton is introducing John F. Kennedy to generations of Americans who have perhaps heard about him and perhaps read about him,” Haas said, “but do not have any intimate sense of who he was and the extraordinary personal and public challenges he faced.”

Epic filmmaking

Gleckman, who composed his first score for a film at age 15, didn’t rely on gimmicks when launching his “Kennedy” efforts. He tackled a wish list of interview subjects with transparency.

“I never tried to use my age or anything like that,” he said. “It was always, ‘Hey, I’m a filmmaker based in Indianapolis. I want to make a documentary about John F. Kennedy. Here’s what I’ve done so far.’”

Kennedy historian Haas appears on camera across multiple episodes of the series.

“When he first reached out to me and I only knew the basics, which were his age and his aspirations, yes, I initially was skeptical,” Haas said. “I think anyone would be. But he and I have developed a relationship over the last three years, and I’ve since become a great fan. I’m very proud to be associated with this project.”

Gleckman is aware that he represents a different age bracket than most of his peers in documentary filmmaking.

“On ‘Kennedy,’ I would go into an interview and hear, ‘Oh, I’ve been communicating with this person, but you seem like you might be too young. Is this a student project?’ It’s always a little fun seeing their surprise reaction when I come into the room,” Gleckman said.

Boston’s John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum proved to be a crucial resource for the project. Gleckman interviewed talk-show host Conan O’Brien, a board member at the Kennedy Library Foundation.

Gleckman also talked with Anthony Shriver, a nephew of Kennedy, and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a niece, among dozens of family members, historians and politicians.

On-camera subjects, who were filmed from March to June 2021, were generous with their time, Gleckman said.

“Some of them gave me two or three hours for the interview,” he said. “That’s a big thing for them, because it’s an hour and a half to set up, it’s a two- or three-hour interview, and then we have to break down [the equipment]. It’s really eating into their day. But they were all very generous. I think I ended up filming more than 85 interviews.”

The project gained stature when Gleckman successfully recruited actor Peter Coyote, who’s narrated 11 documentaries directed or produced by Burns, to narrate “Kennedy.”

After recording Coyote’s voiceover work in California during the summer of 2021, Gleckman edited a version of the documentary series that he presented in June 2022 to New York-based RadicalMedia, known for Oscar-winning documentary “Summer of Soul” and Netflix series “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman.”

With RadicalMedia on board as a producer, Gleckman pitched “Kennedy” to networks and streaming platforms. The History Channel, he said, immediately clicked as the correct partner.

“The biggest, most important thing is, they didn’t say, ‘OK, but here is what this needs to become. We need to take what you’ve done and change it,’” Gleckman said. “They said, ‘We love what you’ve done, and we want to work on it.’ I’m very grateful that I was able to continue my vision with this series. There wasn’t any kind of sacrifice to be made creatively.”

Time constraints, however, were an inevitable challenge. What Gleckman originally envisioned as a feature-length documentary film swelled to 14 hours of storytelling. He will deliver the official eight-hour version of “Kennedy” to the History Channel this month.

Music matters

Born Aug. 12, 2000, Gleckman is the son of Ari and Jennifer Gleckman and brother to sisters Ariana, 28, and Summer, 19.

In his early teens, Ashton Gleckman sang and played guitar in a rock band known as Rising Gravity Experience. The band recorded an album in Nashville, Tennessee.

“We thought for sure he was going to become the next Eddie Van Halen,” Jennifer Gleckman said.

Two movies released in November 2014 altered Ashton’s career path. After seeing “The Imitation Game” and hearing its score by Alexandre Desplat and seeing “Interstellar” and hearing its score by Hans Zimmer, Gleckman decided he wanted to compose music for films.

He refers to music as “the invisible character.”

“The great film composers I look up to, whether it’s Hans Zimmer or John Williams or James Newton Howard, they’re all storytellers,” Gleckman said. “They all tell stories with music and film.”

Gleckman attended Carmel High School through his sophomore year and then started working remotely for Bleeding Fingers Music, a collective of film and TV composers co-founded by Zimmer. Gleckman moved to Los Angeles at age 18 to work for Bleeding Fingers but soon returned to Indiana to pursue the do-it-yourself roles of writing, directing, editing and scoring documentaries.

“When you mix cinema with history—and also you don’t have $200 million to produce a ‘Lawrence of Arabia’-level, Ridley Scott-esque epic—documentary was a way for me to talk about and make films about things I really cared about,” Gleckman said.

Since 2014, Gleckman has analyzed music in film through a YouTube series titled “Behind the Score.” He describes the series as a great teacher in progress and setbacks, noting the disappointment that accompanies weeks of work on a video that attracts minimal views.

Today, Gleckman’s channel has 48,000 subscribers, and he broke through with a viral adaptation of Zimmer’s “Interstellar” work that’s been viewed more than 8 million times since its posting in 2022.

Around the time of Rising Gravity Experience and the birth of “Behind the Score,” Gleckman was a guitar and piano student of Indianapolis jazz musician Joel Tucker.

Although those lessons happened more or less a lifetime ago in Gleckman’s artistic arc, Tucker recalls the youngster’s budding interest in music for film.

“I specifically remember him being obsessed with the soundtrack to ‘Interstellar,’” Tucker said. “Obsession regarding a passion or creative project isn’t a bad thing in my opinion. I hadn’t seen the movie at the time, but after about the third or fourth time of him mentioning it, I watched it and really enjoyed the soundtrack.”

From Indiana to the world

Gleckman said his work isn’t limited by living someplace other than Los Angeles or New York. Through online meetings, he participates in real time when the visuals of “Kennedy” are being finalized in Austria and the sound is mixed in London.

“I travel to get the footage, and then I bring it back in a sack with me to Indiana,” Gleckman said. “I have it on all my hard drives, so I can be editing a History Channel series from my house in Carmel. That’s the world we live in.”

Consulting producer Haas said Gleckman’s maturity is on display during the final episode of “Kennedy,” which explores the president’s final day and his enduring legacy.

“I found his treatment of the assassination very moving and very respectful,” Haas said. “Others obviously have covered it in gory fashion. And Ashton did not do that. He found a way to present it honestly and in a moving way.”

“He really cares about the world,” Jennifer Gleckman said. “He really cares about people. He believes in his heart that his movies can make an impact. With ‘Kennedy,’ he’s trying to show younger generations what good leadership looks like because we need more people like that today.”

Gleckman is working on his next feature documentary, “Agent Number 9,” based on the life of former Secret Service agent Clint Hill.

The local support network for Gleckman includes High Alpha co-founder Eric Tobias and entertainment attorney Robert Meitus. Meitus is credited as a producer of “Kennedy,” while Tobias and his wife, Laura Tobias, are executive producers.

Another executive producer is Ben Park, retired CEO of Indianapolis-based American Health Network. Park has advised Gleckman since “We Shall Not Die Now,” winner of the audience choice award at the 2019 edition of the Heartland International Film Festival.

“When you talk to Ashton, you think he’s a normal bright kid,” Park said. “But as you get to know him, you realize he goes deep into whatever he goes into, and he ends up knowing a lot about it. If you have another job, you can’t keep up with him.”

Park predicted that “Kennedy” will be an early career highlight for Gleckman.

“He’s going to be successful,” Park said. “I don’t know exactly what he’ll be doing. It takes a lot to hold his attention. He may go a different direction than documentaries. But he’ll be successful, and I think he’s going to be a well-known film producer.”•