Errol Morris

You are currently browsing articles tagged Errol Morris.

“Mr. Rumsfeld Can’t Code”

January 24, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld responds to a question as he defends President Bush's proposed $439.3 billion defense budget for 2007 during his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2006. Beyond budget matters, Rumsfeld told the panel that the U.S. military must continue to change in order to defend the nation against enemy terrorists who could acquire a nuclear weapon or launch a chemical attack against a major U.S. city. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) Original Filename: RUMSFELD_DCSA106.jpg

Strategy would not seem to be Donald Rumsfeld’s strong suit.

Despite that, the former Dubya Defense Secretary marshaled his forces and created an app for a strategic video game called “Churchill Solitaire,” based on actual card game played incessantly during WWII by the British Prime Minister. If you’re picturing an ill-tempered, computer-illiterate senior barking orders into a Dictaphone, then you’ve already figured out Rumsfeld’s creative process. At least tens of thousands of people were not needlessly killed during the making of the app.

From Julian E. Barnes at the Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Rumsfeld can’t code. He doesn’t much even use a computer. But he guided his young digitally minded associates who assembled the videogame with the same method he used to rule the Pentagon—a flurry of memos called snowflakes.

As a result, “Churchill Solitaire” is likely the only videogame developed by an 83-year-old man using a Dictaphone to record memos for the programmers.

At the Pentagon, Mr. Rumsfeld was known for not mincing words with his memos. Age hasn’t mellowed him.

“We need to do a better job on these later versions. They just get new glitches,” reads one note from Mr. Rumsfeld. “[W]e ought to find some way we can achieve steady improvement instead of simply making new glitches.”

Other notes were arguably more constructive, if still sharply worded.

“Instead of capturing history, it is getting a bit artsy,” he wrote in one snowflake in which he suggested ways to make the game better evoke Churchill—including scenes from World War II and quotes from the prime minister, changes that made it into the final game.•

______________________

“One of the strangest interviews I’ve ever done.”

Tags: , ,

“When I Was Interviewing Killers Years Ago, I Enjoyed Talking To Them”

March 3, 2015 in Excerpts, Film | Permalink

I would just as soon watch work by Errol Morris as by any living filmmaker. His big-screen documentaries and episodes of his former Bravo show First Person are as perceptive about human psychology as a piece of art can be. I’ve learned so much from Morris and his Interrotron about how we piece together a reality, a consciousness, in an effort to navigate a scary world, and how often deception of self is at its core. Years ago, I interviewed him, and he had a slow, plodding manner, a tortoise who could win the race despite appearances. Two excerpts from Alex Pappademas’ insightful new Grantland Q&A with the documentarian: one about the empathy he feels for his subjects no matter how objectionable they are and the other about how this ability to understand others causes him criticism.

______________________________

Grantland:

Adams was a convicted murderer when you met him. You seem to be drawn to the type of person other people hate. It’s as if there’s something about the psychology of widely despised people that fascinates you.

Errol Morris:

Absolutely. I’ve never heard anyone put it quite that way, but it’s absolutely true. I like pariahs. There are endless examples of them. Randall Adams was a cold-blooded cop killer, labeled a psychopath. Fred Leuchter in Mr. Death — an electric-chair repairman who coincidentally happens to be a Holocaust denier.

Grantland:

And then Robert McNamara and Donald Rumsfeld.

Errol Morris:

McNamara, Rumsfeld, probably Joyce McKinney.

Grantland:

Who’s maybe not as widely and famously despised …

Errol Morris:

Not famously despised, but adjourned, discredited, acquainted with grief. A woman of sorrows. So, yeah. I do like that. I can’t deny it.

Grantland:

Do you have to like the person, as well? In most cases, I get the impression that you do — that it isn’t hard for you to get to a place of comfort with these subjects.

Errol Morris:

No. When I was interviewing killers years ago, I enjoyed talking to them. I enjoyed being with them. I wasn’t there to moralize with them or temporize with them, I was there to talk to them. And I think that’s still true. Rumsfeld pushed it, I have to say.

Grantland:

Just your capacity for …

Errol Morris:

Empathy. Yeah.

______________________________

Grantland:

It’s interesting, though, because while you’ve generally fared pretty well with critics over the years, whenever Fog of War or The Unknown Known were negatively reviewed, it was always for that reason. Especially Rumsfeld — you got a lot of flak for somehow letting him get away. People seemed disappointed that you didn’t grab him by the lapels and shake him, rhetorically speaking.

Errol Morris:

I think there’s a whole group of people who would’ve loved for me to get out of my chair and to hit him with a cinder block, which I was not going to do. Y’know, it’s really interesting, because they made that whole movie — a horrendous movie, I think — about the Nixon-Frost interviews, and of course they changed it to make it more dramatic and more confrontational. But I think — and I could be just making excuses for myself — that there’s a portrait that emerges [in The Unknown Known] that’s very different and far more interesting than the portrait you would’ve gotten by having him walk off the set or repeatedly refuse to answer questions, which is what would’ve happened. There’s something about his manner that reveals to me much about the man. A refusal to engage stuff with any meaning is really frightening, and I think that’s part of who he is. There’s a whole class of people who love to push people around but don’t love to think about stuff carefully. Maybe it’s a different talent.•

Tags: ,

“I Discovered This Immense, Amazing World”

November 19, 2013 in Film, Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

In 2010, the last year of Benoit Mandelbrot’s life, Errol Morris pointed his Interrotron at the mathematician who recognized patterns in nature that nobody else did and gave us fractals. Morris himself often deals in fractals, chipping away pieces of his subject’s minds that perfectly represent the greater self. (Thanks Browser.)

Tags: ,

“Words Become For Rumsfeld His Own Way To Regain Control Over Reality And History”

September 9, 2013 in Excerpts, Film, Politics | Permalink

Fat-necked babyhead Karl Rove spent a good part of Sunday excoriating the President for inching backwards from his line in the sand on Syria, but I’m glad Obama retreated if only a little. I know he doesn’t want a Rwanda to happen on his watch, but it’s difficult to bomb a country into a safer place. Not impossible, but difficult. Obama did what responsible adults do when they feel emotions getting the best of them: They doubt. And then perhaps they proceed or maybe they realize that strength isn’t only in being inflexible, the way JFK did after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Khrushchev sure seemed forceful when banging his shoe on a table, but even if he won a day or two with bluster, he didn’t win the history books. Certitude alone doesn’t do that.

Doubt was in short supply when Rove’s candidate, President George W. Bush, was in office. He and his inner circle knew that Iraq had WMDs, and there was no bending their spines of steel. So many people died because they had no doubt. In Errol Morris’ new Donald Rumsfeld documentary, the former Secretary of Defense still doesn’t question his decisions. From Gregg Kilday’s Hollywood Reporter interview with Morris about Rumsfeld’s desire to own the narrative even though the facts say he got owned:

“Hollywood Reporter:

You eventually interviewed him for 33 hours.

Errol Morris:

Over 11 separate days, four separate trips to Boston. We filmed in a studio in Allston over the course of a little bit more than a year.

Hollywood Reporter:

And you had him read his memos as part of the interview?

Errol Morris:

Yes, the memos are memos that he shared with us. I don’t believe they were ever available before we started talking with him. I sometimes describe it as a kind of history from the inside out rather than the other way around. What was so fascinating and still is fascinating about the memos is that they came from [various] periods, whether it was the Ford Administration or his role as an ambassador-at-large in the Middle East during the Reagan Administration and during his tenure as secretary of defense for George W. Bush. They also reflect how he wants other people to see him. They are complex. It gives some kind of insight into what he was thinking, how he wanted to present himself to others, how he wanted to present himself to history. I think there are a lot of complicated things going on that fascinated me and still fascinate me. For a lot of people when you make a movie, you’re supposed to come away with definite answers about things. I’m not sure that is my M.O. In fact, I’m pretty sure it is not.

Hollywood Reporter:

He seems strangely obsessed with the definition of words.

Errol Morris:

I’ll tell you how I interpret it. When we think of words and the definition of words, I immediately think of George Orwell because he wrote so extensively about it. Orwell was obsessed with language and how language could be used to manipulate people. But I don’t think that’s what’s going on here. It’s something stranger. Words become for Rumsfeld his own way to regain control over reality and history as he feels it slipping away. I’m not sure I’m even characterizing it correctly either, but there’s something strange and powerful about it. If somehow he gets the right word or the right definition of words, everything will be OK. America will win the war in Iraq, the insurgents will vanish. It’s all a problem of vocabulary.”

Tags: , ,

“We Have Discussed Iraq On A Number Of Occasions”

August 29, 2013 in Film, Politics, Videos | Permalink

Here’s the first trailer from the new Errol Morris doc about Donald Rumsfeld.

Tags: ,

“It Doesn’t Matter What’s In My Head. It Matters What That Physical Connection Is.”

September 12, 2012 in Photography, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

At Public Books, Lawrence Weschler and Errol Morris discuss the latter’s obsession with the meaning of photographs, most recently 1855 pictures of the Crimean War taken by Roger Fenton. An excerpt:

“Errol Morris: 

It seems to me that we’ve forgotten a very important fact about photography. That photographs are physically connected to the world. And part of the study of photography has to be recapturing, recovering, that physical connection with the world in which they were taken. Something which has rarely been part of the enterprise of studying photographs. Take a photograph of Einstein, for instance. The point is, it doesn’t matter who I think it’s a photograph of. What matters is, was Einstein in front of the lens of the camera? That man. Was that man in front of the lens of the camera? Is there a physical connection between the image on that photographic plate or the digital device, whatever, and the man standing there? It doesn’t matter what’s in my head. It matters what that physical connection is.

Lawrence Weschler: 

What actually happened. But the question remains, why do you care? Or rather, why do you care so much? Because I think you really do care.

Errol Morris: 

Ultimately, why do people care about reference? Because… let’s put it this way. If you care what our connection is to the world around us, then you care about basic questions. Questions of truth. Questions of reference. Questions of identity. Basic philosophical questions. So go back to the [Roger] Fenton photographs for a moment. I want to know what I’m looking at. I think photographs have a kind of subversive character. They make us think we know what we’re looking at. I may not know what I’m looking at, even under the best of circumstances here and now. But I have all this context available to me. I know you’re Ren Weschler. I’ve met you before. We actually are friends. And I have this whole context of the world around me. But photographs do something tricky. They decontextualize things. They rip images out of the world and as a result we are free to think whatever we want about them.”

Tags: , ,

“It’s An Attractive Casket, Really. Certainly Not For Everybody.”

August 6, 2012 in Film, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

I caught this promo recently while watching ESPN Classics. It took about three seconds before it was clear that it was directed by Errol Morris.

Tags:

“The iBrain Can Collect Data In Real Time In A Person’s Own Bed”

April 4, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

From “A Little Device Trying to Read Your Thoughts,” David Ewing Duncan’s New York Times article about Stephen Hawking adopting the iBrain:

“Already surrounded by machines that allow him, painstakingly, to communicate, the physicist Stephen Hawking last summer donned what looked like a rakish black headband that held a feather-light device the size of a small matchbox.

Called the iBrain, this simple-looking contraption is part of an experiment that aims to allow Dr. Hawking — long paralyzed by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease — to communicate by merely thinking.

The iBrain is part of a new generation of portable neural devices and algorithms intended to monitor and diagnose conditions like sleep apnea, depression and autism. Invented by a team led by Philip Low, a 32-year-old neuroscientist who is chief executive of NeuroVigil, a company based in San Diego, the iBrain is gaining attention as a possible alternative to expensive sleep labs that use rubber and plastic caps riddled with dozens of electrodes and usually require a patient to stay overnight.

‘The iBrain can collect data in real time in a person’s own bed, or when they’re watching TV, or doing just about anything,’ Dr. Low said.”

••••••••••

Main title music by Philip Glass for Errol Morris’ 1991 Hawking film:

Tags: , , , ,

“The Voice Is One Of The Unique Things That Defines Stephen In My Opinion”

January 8, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

"It wouldn't be Stephen's voice any more" (Image by Errol Morris.)

From “The Man Who Saves Stephen Hawking’s Voice,” a New Scientist Q&A conducted by Catherine de Lange with the phsyicist’s personal technician, Sam Blackburn, who is soon leaving his post:

“Stephen’s voice is very distinctive, but you say there might be a problem retaining it?
I guess the most interesting thing in my office is a little grey box, which contains the only copy we have of Stephen’s hardware voice synthesiser. The card inside dates back to the 1980s and this particular one contains Stephen’s voice. There’s a processor on it which has a unique program that turns text into speech that sounds like Stephen’s, and we have only two of these cards. The company that made them went bankrupt and nobody knows how it works any more. I am trying to reverse engineer it, which is quite tricky.

Can’t you update it with a new synthesiser?
No. It has to sound exactly the same. The voice is one of the unique things that defines Stephen in my opinion. He could easily change to a voice that was clearer, perhaps more soothing to listen to – less robotic sounding – but it wouldn’t be Stephen’s voice any more.”

••••••••••

“Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”:

Tags: , , ,

“Once Upon A Time There Was A Little Princess”

July 12, 2011 in Film, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Errol Morris’ new film, Tabloid, opens this Friday.

••••••••••

Official trailer:

Morris discusses Tabloid in 2010 at Toronto:

More Errol Morris posts:

Tags:

“We Said, ‘Where’s Electronic Mail? That Would Be So Cool.'”

June 21, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Errol Morris, the Tolstoy of bloggers, uses his New York Times Opinionator space to tell the story of investigating whether his late brother, Noel, had a role in the creation of email alongside MIT programmer Tom Van Vleck. It’s a two-part marathon (here and here) and quite fascinating. It all apparently started with a simple 1965  memo. An excerpt:

“TOM VAN VLECK: In 1965, at the beginning of the year, there was a bunch of stuff going on with the time-sharing system that Noel and I were users of. We were working for the political science department. And the system programmers wrote a programming staff note memo that proposed the creation of a mail command. But people proposed things in programming staff notes that never got implemented. And well, we thought the idea of electronic mail was a great idea. We said, “Where’s electronic mail? That would be so cool.” And they said, “Oh, there’s no time to write that. It’s not important.” And we said, “Well, can we write it?” And we did. And then it became part of the system.

••••••••••

Completely unrelated: Errol Morris reveals his five favorite films.

More Errol Morris posts:

Tags: , ,

“He Was Under The Deeply Misguided Impression That Rubbing One’s Face With Lemon Juice Rendered It Invisible To Video Cameras”

April 7, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

"But I wore the juice." (Image by Paoletta S.)

Idiocy is annoying but repeated idiocy is galling beyond belief. Why don’t we learn from our mistakes? Why do we repeat them? Perhaps we’re too stupid to know that we’re stupid? Errol Morris looks at this conundrum on his Times blog in the extravagantly titled 2010 post, “The Anosognosic’s Dilemma: Something’s Wrong but You’ll Never Know What It Is.” An excerpt:

“David Dunning, a Cornell professor of social psychology, was perusing the 1996 World Almanac.  In a section called “Offbeat News Stories” he found a tantalizingly brief account of a series of bank robberies committed in Pittsburgh the previous year.  From there, it was an easy matter to track the case to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, specifically to an article by Michael A. Fuoco:

ARREST IN BANK ROBBERY,
SUSPECT’S TV PICTURE SPURS TIPS

At 5 feet 6 inches and about 270 pounds, bank robbery suspect McArthur Wheeler isn’t the type of person who fades into the woodwork.  So it was no surprise that he was recognized by informants, who tipped detectives to his whereabouts after his picture was telecast Wednesday night during the Pittsburgh Crime Stoppers Inc. segment of the 11 o’clock news.

At 12:10 a.m. yesterday, less than an hour after the broadcast, he was arrested at 202 S. Fairmont St., Lincoln-Lemington.  Wheeler, 45, of Versailles Street, McKeesport, was wanted in [connection with] bank robberies on Jan. 6 at the Fidelity Savings Bank in Brighton Heights and at the Mellon Bank in Swissvale. In both robberies, police said, Wheeler was accompanied by Clifton Earl Johnson, 43, who was arrested Jan. 12.

Wheeler had walked into two Pittsburgh banks and attempted to rob them in broad daylight.  What made the case peculiar is that he made no visible attempt at disguise.  The surveillance tapes were key to his arrest.  There he is with a gun, standing in front of a teller demanding money.  Yet, when arrested, Wheeler was completely disbelieving.  ‘But I wore the juice,’ he said.  Apparently, he was under the deeply misguided impression that rubbing one’s face with lemon juice rendered it invisible to video cameras.

In a follow-up article, Fuoco spoke to several Pittsburgh police detectives who had been involved in Wheeler’s arrest.  Commander Ronald Freeman assured Fuoco that Wheeler had not gone into ‘this thing’ blindly but had performed a variety of tests prior to the robbery.  Sergeant Wally Long provided additional details — ‘although Wheeler reported the lemon juice was burning his face and his eyes, and he was having trouble (seeing) and had to squint, he had tested the theory, and it seemed to work.’  He had snapped a Polaroid picture of himself and wasn’t anywhere to be found in the image.  It was like a version of Where’s Waldo with no Waldo.  Long tried to come up with an explanation of why there was no image on the Polaroid.  He came up with three possibilities:

(a) the film was bad;

(b) Wheeler hadn’t adjusted the camera correctly; or

(c) Wheeler had pointed the camera away from his face at the critical moment when he snapped the photo.

As Dunning read through the article, a thought washed over him, an epiphany.  If Wheeler was too stupid to be a bank robber, perhaps he was also too stupid to know that he was too stupid to be a bank robber — that is, his stupidity protected him from an awareness of his own stupidity.”

••••••••••

A Morris commercial for Miller beer:

Tags: , , ,

Some Movies Errol Morris Never Got To Make

March 14, 2011 in Excerpts, Film, Urban Studies | Permalink

"'Weirdo,' about the breeding of a giant chicken." (Image by Daniel Postellon.)

From Mark Singer’s 1989 New Yorker profile of the documentarian:

“Among the nonfiction movies that Errol Morris has at one time or another been eager to make but has temporarily abandoned for lack of investor enthusiasm are Ablaze! (or Fire from Heaven), an examination of the phenomenon of spontaneous human combustion; Whatever Happened to Einstein’s Brain? (portions of the cerebellum and the cerebral cortex are thought to be in the possession of a doctor in North Carolina, other parts are floating around here and there); Road, the story of one man’s attempt to build across northern Minnesota an interstate highway that no one else wanted; Insanity Inside Out, based on the book of the same tide, by Kenneth Donaldson, a man who, in his forties, was wrongly committed by his parents to a mental hospital and got stuck there for fifteen years; Weirdo, about the breeding of a giant chicken; The Wizard of Wendover, about Robert K. Golka and his laser-induced fireball experiments in Utah; and a perusal of Yap, a South Pacific island where stone money is the traditional currency.” (Thanks Longform.)

Tags: ,

“I Shouldn’t Just Be A Nude Model Or Bouncer–I Should Be Doing Physics And Math”

February 21, 2011 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Here is the amazing Rick Rosner episode of Errol Morris’ sensational First Person TV series. Rosner is a waiter, stripper and nude model with a genius IQ, who had an unfortunate experience on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

Tags: ,

Classic DVD: Fast, Cheap & Out Of Control (1997)

January 18, 2011 in Film, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Made in the wake of the chaos theory entering into public consciousnes, Errol Morris’ unorthodox 1997 documentary focuses on a quartet of men in disparate professions–a wild-animal trainer, a topiary gardener, a mole-rat specialist and a roboticist–trying in their own way to do what the chaos theorists were also attempting to accomplish–find the underlying sense of unity in ostensible disorder.

Gardener George Mendonςa uses his hedge clippers to transform bushes into leafy elephants, giraffes and bears. These painstaking creations take years to grow and can be undone by one severe rainstorm or snowfall. “You’re fighting the elements,” he says, “trying to get them to do what you want them to do. It’s a constant battle.” Also battling is zoologist Raymond A. Mendez, who puzzles over how to create a secure captivity for African mole-rats, whose teeth can chew through concrete. MIT robot scientist Rodney Brooks has to somehow make machines obey his wishes, realizing that every success he enjoys may be helping silicon-based life eventually supplant carbon-based humans.

While these three men eagerly face their challenges and are largely willing to embrace the future, lion trainer Dave Hoover isn’t quite so cheerful about the the old guard being lost in the shuffle of new ideas: The chaos he faces isn’t only that unpredictable, maned creature in the cage with him, but also a more sophisticated world that isn’t quite so awed by a traveling circus. He pines for his mentor, Clyde Beatty, the legendary animal trainer, and the simpler days when the big top was greeted with a sense of wonder because people weren’t as connected to information and one another. Hoover knows that the accepted order has been undone, disproved and abandoned, to never return. New order, if it exists, must be discovered, and it may never be as grand.•

Tags: , , , ,

Small, Strange & Forgotten Films: Gates Of Heaven (1978)

November 15, 2010 in Film, Urban Studies | Permalink

"Trooper is the kind of dog who didn't have other dogs to relate to. He lived with adult human beings."

Errol Morris’ first great character study was his very first feature, the seriously peculiar and penetrating 1978 documentary, Gates of Heaven. The movie examines a California pet cemetery with 450 deceased residents and the many off-center human characters who have buried their beloved there.

Floyd McClure is the proprietor of the Foothill Memorial Gardens pet cemetery in San Francisco. He loved his late collie and hated the local rendering plant, so he followed his heart and built a final reward for dogs, cats, horses, hamsters, frogs, etc. While McClure has a great affection for animals, he hasn’t a great mind for numbers and is forced to sell his business to the Lamberts family, who transfer the deceased to a property in Napa. The movie is at its best once the Lamberts take over, as the father and two sons aren’t driven by love but by ambition, lessons learned from motivational speakers and familial rivalry. Interestingly, they do just as good a job for their clients as McClure did.

Against the backdrop of this transition, Morris interviews the eccentrics who have buried their loved ones with the honor that most people reserve for parents, siblings and spouses. At first these folks may seem nutty, but you gradually come to realize the important role the pets played for them, how they often filled a void that human love failed to occupy. The whole enterprise could have been a set-up to gawk and laugh at crazies and there are funny moments, but Morris ultimately has as much respect for his two-legged subjects as they have for their late, four-legged friends. (Currently on sale for $3.98 on Amazon and available for rent at Netflix and other outlets.)

More Film Posts:

Tags: , ,

A Bouncer In Birmingham Hit Robert Lee In The Face With A Crescent Wrench Five Times

April 30, 2010 in Misc. | Permalink

The great kottke.org pointed me in the direction of a TV ad that genius filmmaker Errol Morris has identified as the best commercial he’s ever seen. It’s a local spot for Alabama proprietor Robert Lee’s Cullman Liquidation Center, which sells used mobile homes. It was created by Rhett & Link, the North Carolina-based multimedia comedy duo comprised of Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal. I don’t know how many double-wides the commercial has moved off the lot, but it certainly is attention-grabbing. And the family members seem ready-made for their own reality show.

Tags: , , ,