eugene jarecki Tagged Articles at Cinematical
'Why We Fight' Director to Helm HBO Vietnam Film
Filed under: Documentary », Distribution », HBO Films », Cinematical Indie », War »
I was just re-watching Eugene Jarecki's terrific documentary Why We Fight the other day and wondering, "man, how did this not win an Oscar?" Both its ineligibility and the strength of the 2006 feature documentary category aside, it's a really great visual essay on the problems of the U.S. military -- particularly the allowance for the military industrial complex to grow so large -- since the mid-20th century. If you've never seen it, you should. It'll bring you up to speed right up to the Iraq War (and feel free to make it an informative double feature by following it up with Charles Ferguson's No End in Sight).For his next feature, Jarecki is sticking to the subject of war, though he's going back and focusing on Vietnam, specifically the evacuation of U.S. troops from Saigon in 1975 (maybe it can parallel an exit from Iraq? huh? maybe?). He and screenwriter Jesse Wigutow (It Runs in the Family) are basing the doc, titled Irreparable Harm, on former CIA agent Frank Snepp's book "Irreparable Harm: A Firsthand Account of How One Agent Took on the CIA in an Epic Battle Over Free Speech," which details the author's struggle with the federal government after he published his Saigon evacuation document, "Decent Interval."
Jarecki's film, which is being produced for HBO Films, will be more about Snepp than on the history, and hopefully that won't get him in trouble with the feds too. Also, here's hoping that Irreparable Harm at least makes Jarecki eligible to be nominated for the Oscar he deserves.
A Bunch of Directors Get Into 'Freakonomics'
Filed under: Documentary », Independent », Deals »
Economy is everywhere. It's in the classrooms, through the world, and even on the bookshelves. If you haven't read Steven D. Levitt and and Stephen J. Dubner's bestselling pop culture economy book, Freakonomics, you've probably at least heard of it, or have spotted the apple-orange cover to the right. After making the waves in the reader world, using economics to discuss mundane and controversial topics, Variety reports that an excellent collection of popular documentary directors are coming together to film a doc based on the book.Under producers Chad Troutwine (Paris je t'aime) and Seth Gordon (The King of Kong), Freakonomics will bring together Super Size Me's Morgan Spurlock, Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing from Jesus Camp, Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room), My Country My Country's Laura Poitras, Eugene Jarecki of Why We Fight, and finally Jehane Noujaim (Control Room) -- each of whom will film a section of the book. Most of the directors are still finalizing topics, but Gibney is said to be filming a segment on cheating teachers and sumo wrestlers, while Jarecki will tackle one of the most controversial segments -- that a drop in crime can be attributed to Roe v. Wade. But it's not just politics under the microscope -- other issues covered in the book include Adam Vinatieri's football career as a field goal kicker.
Each segment will be 15 minutes long, and will then come together into a feature-length documentary that includes an intro and interstitials from Gordon. Producer Troutwine says: "I stalked the authors for a year because I saw cinematic appeal to the book as soon as I read it. It showed that conventional wisdom should always be tested and never trusted, and that is what documentaries are all about." Are you ready to get freaky with economics?
Review: Why We Fight
Filed under: Documentary », Sony Classics », Theatrical Reviews », Politics »
What an anti-climax. Why We Fight premiered exactly a year ago at the Sundance Film festival, walked off with the festival's Documentary Grand Prize (over audience favorites The Aristocrats and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room), and was soon after snatched up by Sony's indie arm for domestic distribution. Think about how different the world looked in January of 2005: this was pre-Cindy Sheehan; pre-Valerie Plane/Judy Miller/Scooter Libby; pre-Katrina. The whole WMD charade had already been pretty much debunked, but the Bush administration didn't seem to be losing any collective sleep over ...well, much of anything. The time was ripe, last winter, for the Republican establishment to get hit with a classy, even-handed counter-point. So it's baffling that SPC bought Eugene Jarecki's film – the classiest, most even-handed contrapuntal maneuver in years – only to wait this long to release it. If it had hit screens last winter, Why We Fight would have at least felt a half-step ahead of the zeitgeist; this winter, it actually feels somewhat unnecessary.
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