All these wonderful things

Josh Fox Prepping GASLAND Sequel, Still Fighting Off Gas Industry

[Photo by Karie Currid of the University of Missouri's Maneater student newspaper of Josh Fox speaking last year at the True/False Film Festival in Columbia, MO.]

Last June, as GASLAND was premiering (after months of stellar festival screenings) on HBO, we wrote about the emerging attacks on Josh Fox by allies of the natural gas industry.

When Fox was shortlisted and later nominated for an Academy Award for the film earlier this year, the attacks intensified, with gas industry front groups arguing that AMPAS should deny Fox his nomination because, according to them, the film was factually inaccurate.

Many filmmakers would be off to the next topic and issue the moment the Best Documentary Feature envelope is opened at the Kodak Theatre, but a new article in Rolling Stone by Alexander Zaitchik notes that Fox hasn't stopped his push to outlaw "fracking" and the industry hasn't stopped tracking his every move.

Since HBO picked up the rights to Gasland last June, fracking has come under a level of public scrutiny that the industry – encompassing hundreds of firms involved in drilling, refining, and transport – has spent the last decade trying to avoid. It’s easy to see why. The spotlight on fracking’s risks has seriously retarded the industry push to gain access to the entirety of the nation’s gas reserves. In statehouses around the country, momentum has been slowed and moratoriums proposed and instituted. The stage is set this year for especially raucous public showdowns in New York and Pennsylvania, which sit on the northern tip of the Marcellus Shale, a massive underground gas deposit extending from Southern Virginia to within spitting distance of the New York statehouse in Albany.

The deep politics of gas development will feature prominently in GASLAND's sequel, which Fox is currently shooting for an early 2012 release. It will include cameos from those at every level in the debate, including U.S. senators, small-town inspection officers, and petition-wielding parking-lot activists. “On the one side is a very powerful industry and their political and media allies,” says Fox. “But there are small groups of extremely dedicated activists fighting fracking in every state where it’s a threat. It’s incredibly inspiring to see these mini-labs in democracy in action.”

The article goes on to document some of the industry attacks, led by front group "Energy in Depth", that we wrote about last June.  It also details some of the attacks that have been lodged at Fox by government officials - those supposedly in place to protect the public from ecological dangers. 

Meanwhile, at Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood website, conservative docmaker Ann McElhinney has praise for GASLAND's technical prowess ("GASLAND is very pretty, the shots are artistic and the editing is slick and attractive. Josh Fox, the film’s director and narrator, has a soft laid back tone that is alluring and soothing. He can play the banjo and he does."), but claims that the detective work by Fox is lacking:

If he had done any investigation he would find there is no credible, independent evidence that shows fracking for natural gas poses any risk to human health.

But McElhinney, who made a counter-Gore docu a couple years ago called NOT EVIL JUST WRONG that had a premiere screening at IDFA, appears to have missed that the recent science is trending toward backing up some of Fox' GASLAND arguments.  As noted in Rolling Stone:

In April, scientists at Cornell published a study suggesting the methane released by drilling and refining gas could undermine the fuel’s credibility as a climate-friendly alternative to coal and oil. Another scientific study, conducted by a team at Duke University and published in a recent issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, officially linked gas drilling to the phenomenon of “flammable faucets”, in which enough gas seeps into the water system that household drinking water can be lit on fire with a match.

Alex Gibney Talks Creative Choices in CLIENT 9, How He Balances His Huge Slate and the Documentary Golden Age

Note - This is the third in a series of interviews with the filmmakers behind some of my favorite nonfiction features of 2010...

A few years ago, I started referring to Alex Gibney as "the hardest working man in documentary" - but these were back in the days when the man only had two films come out in the same year.  This year, it was nearly impossible to keep track of everything Gibney was doing - from his nonfiction take on Jack Abramoff to his segment of FREAKONOMICS to his HBO project, MY TRIP TO AL QAEDA, to his eagerly anticipated film on Lance Armstrong and his just-announced Sundance 2011 feature, MAGIC TRIP.

And in the midst of all that, the Oscar winner's take on disgraced, former New York governor Eliot Spitzer and the forces that may have helped bring about his fall.  I didn't see the film until a few weeks ago and I really took to it.  While Spitzer and his adversaries are crackling, great characters - and a sex scandal is always good for grabbing your attention - Gibney greatest success may be in laying bare the seeds of the global, financial meltdown in ways that are both entertaining and infuriating. 

We talked last week by phone about his latest film - including some of his somewhat controversial creative choices (including casting an actress as one of Spitzer's escorts and not revealing up front that she's actually an actress) as well as how he balances the huge slate of projects in front of him.  Caution - if you haven't seen the film or don't know anything about Spitzer's story, there are spoilers aplenty.

All these wonderful things:  I finally got to see CLIENT 9 and I really, really liked it and one of the things that I was particularly glad to see was that it upended my expectations going in, pretty much having everything to do with how another filmmaker might have handled it, whether it would be dwelling solely on the sexual nature of what helped to bring Eliot Spitzer down or setting him up to be some kind of saint.  I love that you make a strong argument that in some ways it wasn’t the sex scandal that did him in but the fact that he’d been so mean to so many people that there was really no one to stand up for him when the scandal came down.

Alex Gibney: That’s right.  That’s absolutely right.  It’s a funny kind of film, too, because you don’t come out of it with any easy – in a way it was kind of the fun of doing it, also – but you don’t come out of it with any easy conclusion about what to think.  I think that’s important, too, this intersection of public and private, how do we think about that?  And then, you’re right, it wasn’t just the sex.  Other people have had sex scandals and they’ve survived them.  But Spitzer was like Sherman, Sherman’s march to the sea, he left people in his wake, so not only was there no one to support him, but people were viciously and eagerly and gleefully trying to bring him down. 

ATWT: Yeah, I loved that you were able to get his adversaries in this story, which is something that I think we don’t often see in terms of truly getting both sides.  And if you want to think that he was brought down by quote, unquote big business or bad Republicans, you can, but these guys come across as such great, fully formed characters.

AG: Yeah, and I had a blast talking to those people and I was fascinated by them and I think I showed them in all their complexity.  And you can see how gleeful they are in taking him on, and also how much enmity they have.  But then you step back and well, wait a minute, here’s a guy that everybody’s jumping on because he had sex with a high priced escort – we never heard about that 500 million dollar heist conducted by AIG prior to the global financial meltdown.  That’s utterly escaped our notice.  It’s so funny to me because almost nobody mentions the audio tapes of the AIG people talking about a pretty big crime prior to the economic meltdown.  It’s sort of proof positive of exactly what was going on there.  (laughter)  But it’s always eclipsed by the sex.  There’s just no doubt.

RESTREPO's Tim Hetherington & Sebastian Junger on Their Unlikely Partnership and What They Learned From Each Other

Note - This is the first in a series of interviews with the directors of some of our favorite nonfiction films from 2010.

How to describe the journey that famed journalist and writer (The Perfect Storm) Sebastian Junger and noted photog and sometime documentary cinematographer (THE DEVIL CAME ON HORSEBACK) Tim Hetherington have been on the past few years?  First, they were put together, shotgun marriage-style by Vanity Fair to work in Afghanistan on assignment for the magazine, later realizing that they may indeed have the footage to make a documentary.  Then came surviving an edit, premiering and winning the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance (where it was described as a nonfiction HURT LOCKER) and now a whirlwind trip on the Oscar shortlist.

Earlier this year, I wrote briefly about seeing their film, RESTREPO, projected over a river in Kosovo, the sounds of machine gun fire echoing off the sides of the mountains and buildings.  What struck me then was the film's refusal to advance an overt political message, although it's not hard to finish the film with some sense of mission futility. 

We met a couple weeks ago as the duo were prepping to launch the DVD of RESPTREPO.  The conversation was lively and genuine – they are comfortable enough with one another to rib each other in front of another writer/filmmaker – and you get the sense that they’re still wondering just how they ended up here, in this situation, together.

All these wonderful things: How did you guys meet? Or how did this project come that you guys worked on it together?

Sebastian Junger: I convinced Vanity Fair to let me follow a platoon for a whole deployment and I needed a good person to work with, a photographer, but also someone who could shoot video, because I had this sort of crazy idea that, if I shot a lot of video, if we shot a lot of video, maybe we could make a documentary.  I just had no idea… It was an incredibly naïve thought, but luckily Tim sort of knew about that world and so, the first trip I was by myself – I was with another photographer that was a friend of mine, but essentially I was on my own – and the project really started on the second trip, when I went out there with Tim.  Tim and I immediately just synched up really well together, he saw the potential in the film and in the project and that was when the project really began.  Ultimately, he was put on the assignment by Vanity Fair.

Tim Hetherington: We met in the airport lounge in Heathrow.  He was changing planes and I was coming…

SJ: I talked with him on the phone and just asked him some questions because I knew how hard it was out there and I wanted to make sure he had his shit together and was fit.

ATWT: And did you guys have any idea that you would still – it’s a long journey to take together.

SJ: No, no. (laughter)

TH: (laughter) No, absolutely no idea.  Absolutely no idea. Yeah, everything just grew organically.  You know, as Sebastian points out, we got on really well straight away.  If we hadn’t got on well, we wouldn’t have been able to have done it.  You know what I mean?  Because the whole process is so super intense – not just being together in Afghanistan in very extreme situations but also being together in the edit, just making decisions together.  I mean, that really, in some ways, there were parts of the edit that really stretched our relationship in ways…

SJ: Yeah, it was hard.

The Latest from BIG RIVER MAN's John Maringouin: Viral Video of a Nearly Naked Woman at OKC TSA

John Maringouin, Cinema Eye nominee for BIG RIVER MAN and Spirit Award nominee for RUNNING STUMBLED, alerts us to his latest: a viral video he shot yesterday in Oklahoma City of a nearly naked woman in a wheelchair, stroking a poodle, being held by Oklahoma City airport's TSA forces.

Warning: this video is freaktastic.

 

2010 Film Fests (Part One): In Praise of Dokufest and Ashland

Before we dive in to the fall festival season, a look back at the festivals and films that have made this year so notable...

When we set out a couple years ago to try to rank the world’s best documentary film festivals, there were unintended consequences to this notion.  One was that the festivals themselves might care where they might fall on such a homemade list.  The other was that filmmakers – particularly those that were just starting out – would take such a list as some kind of fifth gospel.

Not that we hadn’t taken it seriously.  We had.  But we also knew that lists, as much as they might spur discussion and be insanely linkable, are fallible.

And so, when we ventured out to make a second edition of this list last winter, we tried to make it less fallible.  We asked more than 75 pros in the documentary world to weigh in on their choices.  But still, but still, this is not a perfect system, because we are not Arthur Frommer, and there were/are some festivals that we have yet to attend.  And thus the list is second hand.  A really, really strong second hand, but still…

Thus, when we were invited to a couple of the festivals on our list this year that we hadn’t before experienced, there was a strong sense of excitement and no small fear that perhaps we had led those young, nubile filmmakers astray.

Certainly, encouraging folks to make the trek to southern Kosovo, to the decidedly buzzed-about Dokufest in Prizren, programmed by the much beloved Veton Nurkollari, wasn’t exactly a slam dunk, no matter what our insiders had determined in December.  After all, it’s no easy feat to reach this cultural heritage spot in a country whose independence had just been recognized by the International Court of Justice a couple weeks prior to this week's fest in early August.  Flights into Pristina, Kosovo or even neighboring Skopje, Macedonia require a certain amount of finangling, and these are followed by mountainous roads populated by traffic and drivers that give aggressive a new reputation.

But aren’t the best festivals worth a little bit of effort?

And Dokufest is certainly that.  Artfully programmed by Nurkollari from the best of the international documentary scene, projected onto screens indoor and outdoor throughout the city, Dokufest is actually creating the very notion of cinema in southern Kosovo.  Because for the past decade-plus, since the brutal war that tore up this portion of the Balkans, there has been no cinema in Prizren, which is otherwise a town filled with culture, both ancient and youth. 

No cinema at all. 

The young people of Prizren – and they are legion (if you’re told once that the average age of Kosovars is 25, you’ll be told it 100 times – in fact, the Isreali-made advertisement that runs before the each of the screenings drums home the point: “Kosovo – The Young Europeans”) are, for the very first time, encountering cinema in their streets and in their town. 

And that cinema is documentary film.

And if that isn’t enough to give you a docu-boner, I don’t know what is.

The Natural Gas Industry Goes On the Attack Against Josh Fox's GASLAND

Perhaps the biggest documentary splash this past week was made by the television debut of one of the year's best and most important films, Josh Fox's GASLAND.  A screening one week ago on HBO, accompanied by a series of television appearances by Fox, brought wide, new attention to the dangers of hydraulic fracturing.  And this, in turn, brought out a swift response from natural gas interests.

In light of recent industry push-back against films as diverse as Joe Berlinger's CRUDE and Louie Psihoyos' THE COVE, it's probably no surprise that the natural gas companies and their allies have mounted their defenses so quickly and so strongly.  But the vastness and thoroughness of the attack on GASLAND, mounted by seemingly anonymous PR front groups, through comments sections, twitter feeds and direct media contacts, is still surprising.

More to the point, it suggests that Josh Fox has hit a real nerve.

There is probably no greater evidence to the threat GASLAND poses to unfettered natural gas exploration than the widespread, well-timed and sometimes obscenely personal attack that the natural gas industry launched against Josh Fox and his film last weekend.  Days before Fox's film was set to premiere, front groups for natural gas interests, led by the misnomered "Energy in Depth" (which touts the safety of hydraulic fracturing on its website and warns of the dangers of new regulations on the industry), sent a press release to media outlets that would supposedly "debunk" the claims in Fox' film.

One major complaint in Energy in Depth's "debunking" focuses on whether the federal government has ever regulated hydraulic fracturing.  Fox makes a point that the Bush administration's 2005 energy bill exempted "fracking" from federal regulatory and environmental protection laws.  EID says that fracking has never been regulated by the feds.  In truth - it's a distinction without a difference, whether fracking has been regulated previously does nothing to gut Fox' argument that the 2005 energy cemented this lack of regulation on the industry.

Writing about the topic in 2009, John Laurent-Tronche of the Fort Worth Business Press, summarizes the state of federal regulation and the Energy Policy Act of 2005.  His summary is nearly identical to the one that Fox provides in his film.

"The Safe Drinking Water Act was passed by Congress in 1974 to ensure a safe drinking water supply by regulating what can and cannot be injected into the ground. Previously the EPA was granted permission to regulate hydraulic fracturing. In 2005, however, its reach was cut short. At the behest of then-Vice President Dick Cheney, formerly a CEO of Halliburton Co., which developed hydraulic fracturing in 1949, the Safe Drinking Water Act was amended to exempt hydraulic fracturing from federal regulation through the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which specified that the definition of "underground injection" excludes the injection of fluids or propping agents. (The task force that drafted the fracing legislation was comprised of energy industry executives, according to a Washington Post report. Activists refer to the 2005 act as the "Halliburton loophole.")"

EID also alleges that Fox misrepresented the truth when he says in the film that environmentalist Theo Colborn had to use highly investigative means to determine which chemicals make up the "fracking fluid".  EID says that the information is out there for anyone who wants to google it.  But in Tronche's 2009 article, an EID spokesperson named Chris Tucker is quoted as saying nearly exactly what Fox says in GASLAND, the quote that EID now says is a misrepresentation.

Fox in GASLAND, as quoted by EID:

"“Because of the exemptions, fracking chemicals are considered proprietary"

EID's Chris Tucker in the 2009 Fort Worth Business Press article:

"State regulators don't know how much of each chemical is being used, however, due to proprietary restrictions, Tucker said."

If EID's distortions and misrepresentations (funny, isn't that what they're accusing Fox of?) aren't enough, they go for a series of smears on Fox personally, making sure to tell you that Fox is an "avant-garde...stage director" whose previous work has been in NYC's "Fringe Festival".  That sounds positively French. 

Did the NYPD Play a Role in the Death of Karen Schmeer?

Three days after the tragic death of documentary editor Karen Schmeer, the story is still reverberating through the media, in large part because of the senseless and newsworthy way in which she died.

It wasn't just a hit-and-run, it was a hit-and-run that involved petty criminals - shoplifters who grabbed over-the-counter allergy medicine (often used to make crystal meth).  And the early reaction seemed to uniformly condemn the perpetrators. 

But now, some are wondering if the NYPD is not, at least partially, to blame.  The NY Daily News posits differing accounts of the fatal crash:

"A police source said cops tried to pull over the suspects minutes before the crash, but they lost the car momentarily.

When they caught up with the vehicle, it had already struck Schmeer, as well as several other vehicles.

Witnesses at the scene painted a slightly different picture, saying they saw the car weaving in and out of traffic going north on Broadway with a squad car with lights and sirens blaring in hot pursuit."

The Livable Streets Initiative's Streetsblog posts today and references the contradictions, wondering "why officers would be engaged in a high-speed pursuit on the Upper West Side at dinner time on a Friday.":

"Schmeer's death marks the latest in a string of deadly crashes in which pursuing officers are suspected or known to be involved. Last spring, Streetsblog talked to several witnesses who said a car thief was fleeing police when he hit and killed 38-year-old Greenpoint mother Violetta Kryzak. The commanding officer of Brooklyn's 94th Precinct said the department had "no indication" that a pursuit occurred...

The list goes on, and the question remains: How can NYPD support its claim that it did nothing wrong when witnesses say otherwise?"

The Pre-Christmas Brief: THE COVE Leads the Laurels, LA DANSE Breaks Into the Top 20 and the Docs of Hopenhagen

We are winding down for the year and our posting over the next two weeks will be intermittent at best.  But we'll be back in the New Year with our look back on 2009, including our favorite films, nonfiction heroes and the issues that defined our community.

During the holidays, we will be twittering the important (and occasionally trivial) doc news (there will also be utterly incomprehensible nonsense), so if you aren't following us yet, now's as good a time to start as any.

But before we go...

Film critics are continuing to pile on the end-of-the-year honors, most recently with the Chicago Film Critics being the latest group to throw their hats in the ring for ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL, the St. Louis Film Critics going for CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY and the Florida Film Critics lining up for THE COVE.  Spreading the love a little bit further, those rapscallions at the Satellite Awards awarded their Best Documentary prize to EVERY LITTLE STEP.

We're keeping track of all of this year's major honors - from festival jury prizes to critics awards - on our 2009 Nonfiction Feature Honor Roll.  At the moment, THE COVE is way out in front with the most laurels, with substantial support from film critics groups proving the difference.  ANVIL, BURMA VJ and FOOD, INC. also have a strong showing.

Further signs that the year is almost done - the docs have nearly cleared out of the art houses as Oscar bait comes to town.  According to Box Office Mojo, the only feature documentary to make more than $3,000 total in North American theaters this weekend was Frederick Wiseman's LA DANSE: THE PARIS OPERA BALLET.  That film took in $27,500 on 25 screens this weekend for a total box office take to date of $342K.  That's enough to edge LA DANSE into the Top 20 Nonfiction Box Office for 2009, replacing UNMISTAKEN CHILD (which quietly doubled the take of FLOW to become the highest grossing doc yet for Oscilloscope Laboratories).

An interesting piece of box office trivia - THE COVE looks to end its theatrical run with a box office take of approximately $850K - nearly the exact same box office total for 2007's SHARKWATER.

The Monday Brief (a Day Later): Much Ado About Zenovich & POLANSKI, Big Weekends for CAPITALISM & MORE THAN A GAME

We were out on the road last week at film festivals in Maine and New York (more on that in a later post) during what seemed like a pretty momentous week on the indie film landscape.  And on Sunday night we were without wireless in the New York countryside, so apologies for delivering The Monday Brief a day late.

We start, naturally, with Michael Moore and his latest, CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY, which expanded from its successful limited engagement in New York and Los Angeles to nearly 1000 theaters, and true to his reputation as the world’s foremost documentarian, Moore scored pretty big in wide release, taking in over $4.4 million for the weekend.  In doing so, CAPITALISM becomes the third biggest nonfiction of the year (surpassing FOOD, INC. and SEPTEMBER ISSUE and lagging only Disney’s EARTH and JONAS BROTHERS 3D).

But with a per screen average of just under $5K (compared to SICKO's opening weekend average of $10K+, on half the screens), CAPITALISM will need strong word-of-mouth and a solid second weekend hold to match the $20M+ total box office take of his three most successful docs.

Still, while CAPITALISM's numbers may be modest for Moore, they still rank as highly successful for your average nonfiction film.

CAPITALISM was not the weekend’s only success story.  Kristopher Belman’s MORE THAN A GAME, retelling the historic high school basketball season of a team that would include future NBA all-star LeBron James, had one of the top doc debuts of the year.  It took in an average of $13K on 14 screens for an opening weekend cume of $182K, putting it just shy of the top 20 docs of the year.

And RJ Cutler’s THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE had another fine weekend in wide release, grossing $220K on 104 screens to bring its total to just shy of $3M. 

But while those three films were drawing folks to theaters this weekend, another film – just as was the case last week – was perhaps the week’s most talked about documentary: Marina Zenovich’s ROMAN POLANSKI: WANTED AND DESIRED continued to be in the news in the wake of Polanski’s arrest in Switzerland on 30-year old rape charges in the U.S.

Tokyo Film Fest Will Screen THE COVE as Dolphin Hunts Return

Seeming to bow to international pressure (or, in their words, "interest"), the Tokyo Film Festival announced today that they will screen Louie Psihoyos' THE COVE at their festival next month.  Previously, THE COVE filmmakers had launched a PR offensive against the Tokyo Fest (see here and here), arguing that the festival's environmental theme (which was also in place in 2008) nearly demanded the film's inclusion.

From the Hollywood Reporter:

"The Tokyo International Film Festival's news conference Wednesday was dominated by the announcement that THE COVE, previously rejected by the fest, has been included in the lineup.

TIFF chairman Tatsumi "Tom" Yoda said Wednesday that the documentary about dolphin hunting in Japan would screen at the festival but denied that the decision was down to external pressure, saying it was because of "great interest in the film from around the world."

Yoda declined to explain in further detail why the film had now been included after its initial rejection, saying that the festival didn't do so for other films and would maintain the same policy for THE COVE."

The news guarantees that THE COVE, which has been a box office disappointment in the US for distributor Roadside Attractions, stays in the media eye through October, when Oscar voters will be making their first decisions.