An Inconvenient Truth Gets the Rebuttal Doc Treatment
Filed under: Documentary, Independent, Politics, Michael Moore, Harry Potter, Remakes and Sequels, Cinematical Indie
What if you could make your own film presenting your take on the Harry Potter character (someone in Georgia might be interested) or your opinion of what should have happened in X-Men: The Last Stand (comic book geeks everywhere wish they could)? Unfortunately, most fictional films involve intellectual properties and copyrights and other things that (legally) cannot be messed with by just anyone. The same isn't true for documentaries, which tend to present facts or deal with truth, concepts that people don't regularly own or control. These facts and truths are often debatable, though, and can be argued or debunked via other documentary films. Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 was answered with Alan Peterson's Fahrenhype 9/11. Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me led to both Bowling for Morgan and Me and Mickey D. Robert Greenwald's Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price was responded to with Ron Galloway's Why Wal-Mart Works: And Why that Drives Some People C-r-a-z-y.
The latest rebuttal doc is aimed at Al Gore's claims in An Inconvenient Truth. Steven Hayward has begun work on An Inconvenient Truth ... Or Convenient Fiction?, a documentary that will be formatted in the same way as Davis Guggenheim's award-winning doc on global warming. Hayward, like Gore, will present his own thoughts on the issue through a similar lecture and slide show. But he isn't going to disagree with global warming altogether, just specific points that Gore supposedly got wrong.
In his presentation, which is apparently shorter than Gore's, Hayward addresses the parts his adversary got right. "Much of what Vice President Gore says about climate change is correct," he says. "The planet is warming; human beings are playing a substantial role in that warming."
The argument then is with the issue of catastrophic emergency and alarm. Some things Hayward says aren't backed up by science include the consensus of human affect on global warming, the consensus on ice cap and glacier melting, and the predictions that the sea level will rise a cataclysmic rate and depth.
Hayward admits that his film won't be as popular as Guggenheim/Gore's, but he's hoping to at least provide for some alternative in the debate.
For more on Steven Hayward's thoughts on the environmental issues, you can check out an interview with him published in the National Review.
As for rebuttals to fictional films, let's see someone out there make a pro-diamond response to Blood Diamond or a Kazakhstani answer to Borat. Is Clint Eastwood the only filmmaker who knows how to represent both sides himself?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
12-15-2006 @ 10:37PM
Elrond Hobbert said...
I'd love to see a pie chart showing the actual number of viewers of the response docs compared to the originals. Hint- know anyone who saw "fahrenhype" or whatever? So ham fisted...
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12-16-2006 @ 3:47AM
Charlie said...
So how long does it take for a rebuttal-rebuttal film to come out? Does Gore now make a Yes-it-is film to this no-its-not?
As for me, I've not been able to actually see evidence myself since it takes pouring through tomes of climate date (all of which has variance) to come to any conclusion. So all we people with jobs have to do is listen to a variety of "experts" expound on their theory.
I do believe that our way of doing things is wrong and that we need to establish a stasis with the planet, at least until we get interstellar travel licked. The problem is that America (despite popular belief) is not the worst polluter. We are just the only ones dedicated to tracking it accurately.
China and India are going to continue with an industrial age philosophy and a modern output potential combined with a population density America has never seen. THAT is the looming problem!
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1-01-2007 @ 4:08PM
Boover said...
There is also other avenues of rebuttal, like fiction. Check out the book 'State of Fear' by Michael Crichton, who weaves tons of data into a good yarn. Or talk shows. Oprah had a segment with Gore opining, then a scientist asking legitimate questions about some of his planks (most of which I understood from Crichton's book), and then back to Al....., but I was quickly disappointed when he just poo pooed the questions as coming from just another lackey of big corp.
It was then that I realized - have there been any publicized debates on this? 100% of all similar discourse I have seen ends in pro GW responding that way, never a factual back & forth. Perhaps we deserve more than parthian shots.
What I'd also like to see is a documentary on how politicos, big business, the media and Hollywood have stood the most to gain from (over?)hyping GW. These guys are reaping big-time on a rich harvest of alarmed sheeple.
A hundred years ago our knowledge about the how the earth works could be measured as a molecule in the pacific ocean. We're now up to maybe 2. Time to start saving the world crowing about how much we know?
Of course, I could be wrong.
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2-28-2007 @ 10:47PM
Joe Gaffney said...
I always find it interesting that the Clinton/Gore administration never brought the Kyoto Accord to the Senate for ratification. That's what you're supposed to do with a treaty, not turn it into a religion!
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