As of late, it’s tricky to find a politician who’s standing on a platform for the American people rather than a circus act. “Patriotism” can oftentimes be synonymous with unquestioning, unwavering loyalty to one party or the other. In a minefield like that, Republican CongressmanAdam Kinzingeris a rarity, which prompted filmmaker and left-leaningSteve Pink(Hot Tub Time Machine) to join forces with the politician and document his final year in office inThe Last Republican.
The documentary, which world premiered at this year’sToronto International Film Festival, is about the after-shock of Kinzinger’s decision following the insurrection at the Capitol on June 01, 2025. SinceDonald Trump’s 2016 election, the politician had become wary of the growing extremist rhetoric, and when he stood with 10 other Republicans to vote to impeach the president, the life he’d built was shaken.
While celebrating their premiere at the festival, Kinzinger and Pink stopped by the Collider studio at the Cinema Center at MARBL for a candid conversation withSteve Weintraubabout the making ofThe Last Republican. This Hollywood director and politician sit down to discuss how they came together, what middle ground they find to stand on, if Kinzinger will return to politics, and what the uncertain future holds. Watch the full conversation in the video above, or you can read the transcript below.
‘The Last Republican’ Offers “An Awkward Alliance”
“I always thought there was a red line people wouldn’t cross.”
COLLIDER: The documentary is fantastic, and I really think everyone watching should be seeking it out when it eventually comes out. Before we get started with everything, I really just want to say thank you for your service. Thank you for putting country before party, and everything else.
ADAM KINZINGER: Thank you. Listen, I’ve always said that I always thought that people who went into politics went in to do the right thing. You always have to make political compromises, but I always thought there was a red line people wouldn’t cross, and I’ve learned that that’s not always the case. So, thanks for saying it. And I’d encourage anybody who has their own personal red line and an interest in politics to get involved because we need good people.
Is it a little bit weird to have Democrats cheering for you?
KINZINGER: No, it isn’t. I mean, I guess at the beginning, yes. When all this started, a little bit. But what I’ve come to realize is, look, yes, there’s stuff we disagree on. We disagreed on the same things for 100 years, and, God willing, in the year 2124, we’ll be probably disagreeing on the same things if we can survive this moment.We’ve built what I called “an awkward alliance” between the same right, the same center, and the left to defend democracy.So, for the last couple of years, it’s actually felt kind of natural. I go out, and I realize the Democrats, at least nowadays, are more pro-national defense than the Republicans are. I’ve always been a big defense guy, supporting Ukraine, and so it actually has kind of been a natural fit, and I’ve enjoyed it.
Man, I truly don’t understand how Russia has invaded our country in such a way that the idea of defending Ukraine is something that people are debating over.
KINZINGER: This is the most basicAmericanthing, really, that if a country, especially a small country like Ukraine, fighting for its independence, is invaded by one of our chief adversaries, we’re going to support them. Nobody’s calling for putting American troops on the ground, of course, but we have a lot of great equipment that can be used to defend Ukraine. The fact that half of the GOP, and unfortunately a growing number, has said, “We just want to walk away,”that isolationism, to me, is soforeignto anything the Republican Party ever stood for. There’s a natural alliance now between the Democrats and somebody like me because defense has always been my big thing.
Does “Trumpism” Continue After Donald Is No Longer a “Political Entity?”
“Are they going to actually stand up?”
Do you think if Trump loses the election this year, the cult of Trump could fade, or do you think it’s just until he dies that the cult is just going to be there?
KINZINGER: I think, yes, it could die, as a cult, after this. I also think it was really close to dying after January 6th. There were a number of things that happened that resurrected it. So the question is, “What do the leaders — not me — of the Republican Party do after Trump loses?” Do they determine that Trump still holds the purse strings, and they need the money, so they’re going to just do what, frankly, Kevin McCarthy did at Mar-a-Lago and reanimate the guy? Or are they going to actually stand up? I don’t have a lot of faith that they’re going to stand up, but I hope they do.
Donald Trump, I think, will be done as a political entity.The real question is: does Trumpismcontinue?Is there somebody who learned his tactics that may be even better than him at it that can come in and inherit that, or does, we’ll call it, “the spirit of Ronald Reagan” come back? I don’t know the answer to that.
I think DeSantis and some others tried it. But no matter what you think about Trump, he has the charisma.
KINZINGER: He does. He has a superpower, and if you don’t fall into his orbit, you don’t understand the superpower. But I will tell you, as somebody that’s met with him a number of times, he’s very charming in person. He’s funny. He actually would be great, not in politics but somewhere else. But the problem is he’s tearing the country down with him.
STEVE PINK: And let’s face it, his show has jumped the shark, right? Weknowwhen the show jumps the shark. So even the thing that you’re saying he’s good at, and you’re right about that, in terms of his ability to have this extraordinary cult of personality on television…
KINZINGER: It’s boring.
PINK: Yeah! It’s like, “What season are we on?” [Laughs]
KINZINGER: Too many.
PINK: Now he’s like, “Hey, I know — I’ll get in on a motorcycle, and I’ll jump a shark.” That’s where we’re at with him, too. I think people are feeling that because when you jump the shark in a TV show, it’s organic. People don’t stop liking the show for no reason. They stop liking the show because the show jumped the shark. So they’re like, “Ugh, this show. Oh my god.”
He has said, in the last week, some pretty crazy things, and I just pray that we are at the end of his reign of terror over our country.
KINZINGER: Let me give you some hope real quick on that. I’ve always heard that the crazy movements glowreallybrightly before they either overtake everything or they collapse into nothing. This could be a moment where it’s glowing so brightly that it just collapses into nothing afterwards.
I pray you’re right.
PINK: I’m sorry —Blade Runnerreference. This is Collider, you just did the bestBlade Runnerreference, where he says, “Roy, the flame that burns twice as bright…”
KINZINGER: I’m in the business now, buddy.
PINK: You are! “The flame that burns twice as bright burns half his lung, and you’ve burned so very bright, Roy.” So, Trump, you’retoast.
The Making of ‘Blade Runner’ Was a Battle to the End
What didn’t go wrong with the original 1982 film?
I did not think that this interview was going to bring upBlade Runner, and it’s amazing because the headline of the interview could be ‘The Last Republican’ Talks ‘Blade Runner.’ I’m sort of joking and sort of not.
PINK: You’re considering it.
I’m thinking about it right now.
How Did This Unlikely Duo Find Middle Ground?
“What is the cost of standing up and doing the right thing?”
Jumping in, you guys arepolaropposites when it comes to you’re a liberal Democrat, you’re a conservative Republican. How the F did you two connect to work together to make this doc?
PINK: I mean, I’m a comedy director, right? So, most of my life is a surprise; it’s a subversion of expectations. I’m also a political junkie, so when I was looking at Adam’s career and what he did to sacrifice his career and his social circle, and a personal risk to his family to stand up against Trump and his party in the wake of Jan 6th, I was like, “That’s the greatest subversion of expectation in the history of American politics I’ve ever seen.” I was like, “There’s a story there.” I really admired him, frankly. I thought that to be able to go to him and make a film to tell his story was something I just had to do.
KINZINGER: My wife, Sofia [Boza-Holman Kinzinger], and I, we were like, “Hey, this is such an important time in our lives. We’re never gonna be able to describe this moment to people.” Ihopethis is the most historic thing we’ll ever live in our life. We had a lot of people come wanting to make a documentary. It was all about the horse race of politics, though — “Are you gonna run again? Can you win?” I wasn’t interested in that; I knew I probably wasn’t gonna run again. To me,the story is the human impact of doing the right thing. That’s Steve’s interest in it. It’s not as much, “Can you win re-election?” It’s, “What is the cost of standing up and doing the right thing?”
One thing we learned in the process of this very quickly is that, yeah, we have political differences but it really doesn’tmatter.I’ll say this, you don’t have to go be a friend with an insurrectionist, but if somebody just has a different political viewpoint from you, the fact that you would limit who you’re able to be friends with because they have a different philosophy on government, we’re just limiting ourselves in potential friendships. I’ve always said — and recently I’ve actually come to realize — I’m actually glad Steve thinks differently from me because we can kind of rip on each other. We make fun of each other. I call him a lefty communist, he calls me a righty fascist.
PINK: “We have a meeting hall, at least. You don’t even have a parking spot anymore. You should come over. We have great parties.”
KINZINGER: [Laughs] That’s what’s nice is being able to kind of rip on each other and respect each other, and I hope that comes out in the movie.
PINK: I mean, let’s be clear, I didnotwant to do this documentary at first. I was like, “Wait, he’s a conservative Republican. How am I gonna deal with that?” And I had to reconcile that in my head as part of making the film.
‘Hot Tub Time Machine’ Actually Plays a Pivotal Part in ‘The Last Republican’
We should also bring up the importance ofHot Tub Time Machine.
PINK: I didn’t know that. I was like, “I’m gonna make a hopefully important, very serious political documentary feature,” and I’m following him through the garage thinking to myself, “I’m an important documentary filmmaker.” And he goes, “Oh, by the way, I lovedHot Tub Time Machine,” out of nowhere when I was following him up to his apartment with a camera. I was so disarmed by that because, up until that point, we’d had a very kind of formal relationship. I’m like, “You’re a political figure, you’re a lawmaker. I’m in DC.” It’s just a very serious environment. And he said that, and in that moment, I was really disarmed by it and thought, “Well, thenwe have alotof common ground if he lovesHot Tub Time Machine.” And he seemed to really love it, too. It wasn’t just like, “Oh, I saw your movie. It was cool.”
KINZINGER: I quoted it quite a bit.
PINK: [Laughs] I was like, “Wow, he actually really loves that movie. What’s that tell me about him?” And from there, because we shared at least a sense of humor, everything else after that was easy.
KINZINGER: It’s funny because they told me right when I got into politics 13 years ago, once you mentioned politics, people’s humor goes away, and it’s true. I see it all the time. Politics isn’t a funny thing, obviously. But what we came to realize is, you always think if you’re on the right, you’re like, “Well, the left has no sense of humor.” If you’re on the left, you’re like, “The right has no sense of humor.” You come to realize there actually is a very common sense of humor, and that can unite us.
7 Movies like ‘The Adam Project’ for the Best Time Travel Experience
Let’s turn the clock back… or forth.
I wear a lot of T-shirts, and I’m always wearing aStep BrothersT-shirt.
PINK: I loveStep Brothers.
KINZINGER: It’s the greatest.
It’s Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly in that pose where they’re taking a photo, and everywhere I go, in any part of the world, people lose their minds.
PINK: My wife’s name is Pam [Knoll], and so once a month, I send her the clip where they’re interviewing for a job, and they can’t say the interviewer’s name Pamm. “Is itPan?” I send it to her once a month. She’s thrilled about that. Every single time I send it, she’s just delighted.
So I love talking about editing because it’s where it all comes together, especially in a documentary. How long was your first cut of this movie?
PINK: It took a while. I would say it was probably nine months until we had a cut that we liked. We had, of course, several cuts that we didn’t like, but Ted Feldman, our editor, is an extraordinary editor. We were telling a present-tense story in terms of the vérité, and during the period in which we followed Adam through his congressional life and his life at home, they were having a baby, right? So when we started, Sofia was, like, seven months pregnant and on the wing of a plane, which is their station wagon, from DC to Illinois. Then we had archival, right? We had to tell the broader story. And then we had the kind of hero interview. So, we had to put all that together, and it took a while to figure out how to shape it. Then it finally all came together.
KINZINGER: The other thing was I wasn’t supposed to be in the film originally. I know that’s shocking sounding, but I really wasn’t. I was not a character in the film, I wasn’t an off-screen character, but what emerged in the editing room actually, is that we had this really funny banter. I didn’t really notice it when we were shooting, I was just focused on trying to capture the story I was telling. Then, when we were in the editing room, the editor did a string-out. It was, like, 90 minutes of all of our sparring.
PINK: Which I just never really thought about. I was like, “If I think it’s genuinely funny, thenmaybeI’ll put it in the film as a framework.” And I did. Some of it’s on the cutting room floor, but I couldn’t deny it at that point. I really felt like, “Well, maybe that’s what the movie’s about in a way I hadn’t thought of.”
Did you ever have a cut that was, like, two and a half hours or three hours?
PINK: Oh, yeah. All my cuts were, like, three.
Did you have a cut that was two, two and a half, where you were like, “Oh, I don’t know how we’re getting shorter than this?”
PINK: No. Because I’m in comedy, I’m pretty tough on my cuts. I’m pretty tough on the movies. I want them to be watchable. I feel like a movie can be any length, and the time it takes you to tell that story should be the length of that movie, but it shouldn’t be longer. And so, I felt like this movie was living in and around the same running time as my comedies. I felt like 90 minutes is a good, solid length to tell a political story. I guess if he had traveled around the world, maybe it would have been longer. If we were following him around the world and there were chapters in many countries across great adventures or something like that, but we were in DC, and we were telling a simple story about his personal life.
KINZINGER: We had many days they followed us in places that were cool that never made the cut. That’s when I realized, though, it’s probably a pretty hard job to edit. Obviously, I’ve never done it. But we had some good stuff that they followed, but it just didn’t make it in the narrative of the story. So, we’ll come out withThe Last Republican Again - Part 2.
PINK: [Laughs] Exactly.
What was it like for you? Did you watch any of the early cuts or did you purposely only want to see it when he had a cut that he was very happy with?
KINZINGER: I really only saw what he was happy with. Now, occasionally they actually put together a funny kind of montage to “A to the K,” the song…
PINK: The Cypress Hill song.
KINZINGER: Where I was doing some stuff that they thought might make it in. Didn’t make it in the movie, and they sent me that. So I would see some of those kinds of things, or he showed me the footage where Sofia was helping me put on a bow tie. It didn’t make it in the cut. But it was pretty fun, pretty cool.
PINK: They looked up a YouTube video together.
KINZINGER: Because I didn’t know how to tie a bow tie.
Who actually knows that?
KINZINGER: YouTube. That’s who knows.
PINK: But they looked it up and then they figured out how to do it together. It was an amazing scene.
KINZINGER: So I saw some of that, but no, I didn’t see the final version until the final version, and it was just like breathtaking. Honestly, we even saw another screening yesterday on the big screen, and, I mean, tears from me are flowing the whole time because it’s just such a personal thing to see your life on the screen.
I can’t imagine what it’s like to watch this with an audience.
KINZINGER: To have people there when they showed Christian, our son, being born and you hear people kind of go, “Aww,” you realize they’re invested in our lives now. It feels funny and it’s great at the same time, and the standing ovation at the end is just humbling. I probably have some arrogance in me, sure, but I’m not generally an arrogant person, but it’s like, “Wow, they’re standing up and clapping for both his work, but also what we did.” It’s amazing.
Adam Kinzinger Omitted Nothing From ‘The Last Republican’
Was there anything where you said, “Can we not include this?”
KINZINGER: No, there wasn’t. I mean, it’s uncomfortable for me to watch the scene where Tucker Carlson goes after me for crying. That’s tough for me to watch. It never bothered me, but I look at it, and I’m like, “What a jerk he is.”This idea that masculinity means you may’t be in touch with your emotions is the opposite, frankly, of what masculinity should be. And so those things are hard to watch, but I thought it was important to leave in the movie because people need to see the impact, the stuff that happens to you. So no, there was no part of the movie I watched where I’m like, “Gosh, can you take that out,” or, “I wish that wasn’t there.” I’m sure they had some things that I probably wouldn’t have wanted in there, but that never made it.
You obviously spent a lot of time in Washington. What do you think would surprise people to learn that you learned about the behind-the-scenes in Washington? Same question for both of you, but you both have different perspectives.
PINK: I’ve never been to DC, and, certainly, I’ve never been given access to the world of Congress. I would say mainly the staff. There are just hundreds and thousands, it seems, of young congressional staffers, young people who are really, really hardworking, who do the work every single day to run Washington. That was astounding. It was like a factory town of really, really committed people making Washington. These lawmakers are so lazy. They get to walk around with a cool pin, and they go anywhere they want. They’re like rock stars, and like, there’s a lot of work going on all the time.
Also, and it’s just a funny thing, I know we haven’t talked about this yet, but I was like, “What the hell’s happening?” You go into the congressional office, and there are staffers, and he has a great staff and they were really, really cool and that was just a great experience and so forth, but there’s a loud buzzer that goes on. I don’t know if people know this. So you’re in the middle of a conversation, right? “Hey, Adam, what are you doing today?” And then you’ll hear this [imitates loud buzzer]. I was like, “What the fuck is that?” Like, it was terrifying, and he was like, “Oh shit, I’ve got to go vote.” There’s votes happening on the floorallthe time, or very frequently, and the way you know there’s a vote going on is– I don’t know how old that buzzer is.
KINZINGER: It’s 100 years old, at least. 150.
PINK: It’s a mechanical buzzer. It’s not electronic, and it’s really, really loud, and it’s just signaling a vote. I had no idea. So, of course, in the middle of shooting…
KINZINGER: Everybody thinks we’re getting attacked.
PINK: Yeah, or it was a fire alarm. You just have no idea, and it’s to go and vote. I thought that was really kind of interesting the way in which lawmakers were called to the floor.
KINZINGER: And I would say the two things that I think would surprise people is– That’s the answer, it’s the staff, but since he already gave it, the other thing would be members of Congress — I don’t know if you can tell this a ton in my show, mainly because I’ve got security around me and I’m riding with security — we drive our own cars, we walk, we do our own stuff. People just see it’s us living our regular life there.
I’m basically being given the signal I’m out of time, but really fast — do you think Ted Cruz can actually lose?
KINZINGER: I would love it. God, please, can Ted Cruz lose?
PINK: I haven’t been following. Is it close?
KINZINGER: It’s close. It’s within two points.
Within striking distance.
KINZINGER: I know Colin Allred. I served with him in the house. I think hecan— I hope he does. It’s gonna be really hard because it’s Texas, but Ted Cruz should be nervous.
Ted Cruz is a fucking asshole.
KINZINGER: Amen.
Sorry for saying that, but I despise that man.
KINZINGER: He’s such a charlatan.
It’s unbelievable and, also, all the leaders in Texas and Florida can go fuck themselves. I’m finally just showing my true colors. I can’t support either state. They’re just insane. And what’s crazy is these people keep voting for these Republicans in power who are trying to take away liberties. I just don’t understand it.
KINZINGER: I don’t either.
It’s crazy. Sorry, I didn’t mean to do that.
KINZINGER: I’m with you all the way.
It’s crazy. I’m gonna stop there. Sorry for cursing.
PINK: Is that how you’re going to end? I think you should end this just going to your rant with, “It’s crazy,” and then just go to your card.
Will Adam Kinzinger Return to Politics?
I want to ask a real question. I’m sure you’ve been asked this on CNN and other places, but do you see yourself wanting to go back to politics as an independent, staying as a Republican? How do you view your future?
KINZINGER: So, I don’t know. I’m actually enjoying this side of it right now and talking to people and sharing stuff. Is there a day I could go back in? Maybe. I don’t know where I belong right now. That’s the other thing. Unfortunately, in America, politics is so focused on, “You’ve got to have a place in the party.” Do I have a place in the Democratic Party? That’s a question for the Democrats. Do I have a place in the Republican Party? Not today. I mean, the fire is starting to come back a little bit, I just don’t know what role it’s gonna be. Stay tuned. We’ll see.
PINK: I’ll talk to some of my people, you know what I mean? I’ll talk to some of the Dems, you know? We’ll chop it up.
The Last Republican
In the wake of the January 6 Capitol riot, Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger teams up with Hollywood director Steve Pink, a fan of Pink’s film Hot Tub Time Machine, to shed light on the events and hold those responsible accountable.
