Ellen Gray: Ex-Philly pol Sam Katz creates pilot for history film

PHILADELPHIA: THE GREAT EXPERIMENT. 7:30 p.m. tomorrow, 6ABC.

DOCUMENTARY filmmakers don't often come from the world of politics, but maybe they should.

Because to listen to Sam Katz describe his latest campaign - to film a seven-part, multiplatform series on the history of Philadelphia - is to realize that what the three-time mayoral candidate, longtime businessman and new chairman of the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority, sees as his third act doesn't sound all that different from his second: trying to stir up interest among his fellow Philadelphians, one community group at a time.

And asking for money.

As founder of History Making Productions, Katz, 61, who's working with a team that includes his son, Phil, 28, said that he began showing excerpts to small groups a couple of years ago and estimates that in the past six months, he's screened the presentation pilot of the project they're calling "Philadelphia: The Great Experiment" about a hundred times, mostly to local audiences of "150 and less."

Last week, there was an invitation-only premiere at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre, and tomorrow night, Katz hopes to reach a much larger audience as 6ABC pre-empts "Wheel of Fortune" to air the film in a presentation hosted by news anchor Jim Gardner.

Directed by Mark Moskowitz ("Stone Reader") - who filmed the spot for Mayor Nutter's campaign that featured the candidate's daughter, Olivia - and narrated by Michael Boatman ("The Good Wife"), the 28-minute film makes a lively argument - by documentary standards - for Katz's dream of a series on the scale of those that have been done on New York, Chicago and other cities.

And there's not a tricorn hat in sight.

"Probably no city in America, including Boston, has as much history as Philadelphia," Katz said last week, "and yet the history of Philadelphia is completely forgotten in deference to, you know, one hot month in 1776."

So when he and his team decided to make a pilot for the proposed series, "we were definitively not going to do 1776," he said.