Dan Mirvish is an award winning filmmaker and co-founder of the Slamdance Film Festival. His films include Omaha The Movie, Open House, Between Us, and Bernard and Huey. His new film is 18 ½, a Watergate thriller and dark comedy starring Willa Fitzgerald and John Magaro as a transcriptionist and reporter who find the infamous gap of tape in Richard Nixon’s White House recordings. Today Mirvish talks with Tom Knoblauch about the film’s thematic relevance to today, how his filmic influences, including mentor Robert Altman, played into its conception, and what the efficacy of political art is in today’s climate.