If you can stand to skip the debate, head over to Studio on the Square for Indie Memphis Film Festival’s presentation of the documentary feature “Johnny Cash’s America,” which screens at 7 p.m.

Co-produced and directed by Memphis’ own Robert Gordon, the film features interviews with the likes of Bob Dylan, Al Gore, Loretta Lynn, Merle Haggard, Sheryl Crow, Jon Langford of the Mekons, producer Jim Dickinson, Memphis musician Amy LaVere, Ozzy Osbourne and Snoop Dogg.

According to CA film critic John Beifuss, Gordon, 47, author of such music books as “It Came from Memphis,” and Morgan Neville, 41, conceived the Cash film last year, “just as the primaries were heating up,” Gordon said.

Wrote Beifuss in yesterday’s paper: The filmmaking partners — whose previous documentary collaborations include “Muddy Waters Can’t Be Satisfied,” “Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story” and “Shakespeare Was a Big George Jones Fan: ‘Cowboy’ Jack Clement’s Home Movies” — were discussing “the divided nation,” Gordon said.

“We were talking about how rare it is to find a unifier, and we sort of naturally started talking about musicians who transcended music, and we started talking about Cash, and we realized that people who couldn’t agree with each other on anything else agreed in their respect for Johnny Cash.”

Shooting on the film began in March, and the production was relatively smooth. “Johnny Cash opens doors,” Gordon said.

“We wanted this to air before the (presidential) election, during ‘election fever,’” he continued. “We wanted to draw from people opinions about why Cash could appeal to all people; and we wanted to draw from that notions of what it takes to unite people in general.

“Cash was never partisan, but he was always political. Cash never hid his foibles. His life from the early years seemed to be marked by trouble, but instead of trying to hide that trouble, he foregrounded it and used it as a transformative element in his life and art.”

After some more special showings in other cities, the movie — a co-production of Sony, A&E Television, the Cash estate and Neville’s Tremolo Productions company — screens at 8 p.m. Oct. 23 on A&E’s Bio Channel, with encores later in the week. A Sony Legacy DVD of the film that includes a companion 19-track CD will be released Oct. 28.

For more on the project, go here.