The PBS series Independent Lens will feature the documentary Paul Conrad: Drawing Fire on November 7 at 10 pm as part of the documentary series' salute to politics and journalism during the month of November.

Paul Conrad is now a freelance political cartoonist, but spent the majority of his career as a political cartoonist for the Los Angeles Times. Before joining the Times he drew for the Denver Post after graduating from the University of Iowa where he started drawing political cartoons for the school newspaper, The Daily Iowan. Conrad drew his scathing cartoons through eleven presidencies, starting with Harry S. Truman and continuing to the present day. Ostensibly a liberal, he had no desire to adhere to the party line, and, while his favorite targets were the likes of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, he would also occasionally upset people on the left with his opinionated drawings, and attacked Clinton for what he considered selling out the Democratic party.

The special mixes interviews with the Pulitzer prize-winning Conrad, his friends, family and colleagues with a surfeit of his cartoons that covered some of the most tumultuous times in recent history, from Vietnam and Watergate to 9/11 and the current conflict in Iraq. It's a wonderful piece of film making about an outspoken man who does what every artist strives to do: create images that convey what is impossible to express in words.