Mature film aficionados anticipated a new era; restoring all the old thrills and chills dampened by so many years and so many fireballs. The documentary approach with its long and proven history was seen anew as a technique filled with unexplored potential. That is - until Al Gore came along.

Many will point to the 1999 film The Blair Witch Project as the start of this new era. Perhaps it did awaken interest. Although a rather amateurish production, it had people wondering if the events were real - a minor version of the success of The War of the Worlds radio broadcast. In this 1938 classic, using a news broadcast format pretending a Martian attack was real evoked mass hysteria and literally frightened some listeners to death.

The effectiveness of using non-fictional presentation formats in fictional work seems apparent to me even in romantic comedies such as When Harry Met Sally. The appearance of couples, out of context from the main action and time sequence, providing commentary on their life experiences and insight into the movie’s theme was quite entertaining. We can even reach back through the days of Shakespeare, back as far as ancient story-telling around open fires on dark nights. The re-telling of adventures, great events, and heroic deeds are still with us thousands of years later in classic literature. Some of these stories, no matter how distorted in the telling, had some grain of truth - or at least an apparent plausibility; and the search for Atlantis continues even today.

I have been less impressed with “investigations” into the government “cover-up” of UFO sightings, complete with documentary film coverage of alien autopsies, than with what the Sci-Fi Channel did with ghost stories. It’s an old ploy of course - eye witness accounts - Ghost Buster scientists telling us that new dimensions are being hypothesized - that science is only the open mind - but surprisingly it still works; even on an old dog like me. What better explanation is there for poor special effects and lack of compelling evidence than that ghosts are in fact very difficult to film.

What the makers of such films must understand is very basic. In order to experience the intended effect, we must suspend our disbelief. I do not, after all, believe in ghosts. In order to get a single chill up my spine I must, at least momentarily, ignore or bypass the fact that what I am witnessing is fake. The documentary approach takes on that issue directly by first connecting with anything that I can believe and then hitting me with a zinger while I’m in the believer mode. It is much easier of course when the audience has no expertise in the subject. Despite my actual disbelief, or perhaps more because of it, I am not an expert in the investigation of ghostly apparitions.

The opportunity to exploit the technique fell in Al Gore’s lap. When Bill Clinton was about to become president, he asked what the first questions were that citizens wanted answered. He promised to answer truthfully. His public responded; Is Elvis alive and is there secret (Area 51) UFO evidence? Luckily for Al, they did not ask for the truth about the state of the environment and the earth’s impending doom. After losing the election in 2000, Al Gore tapped friends at Columbia to help him begin the promotional effort: Al Gore plays investigative journalist.

The explanation went like this: Al Gore has been in politics many years - yes, that’s true. I believe that. As a politician, he got a lot of experience dealing with reporters - well, yeah. Therefore, Al Gore is an eminently qualified investigative journalist who should be on the faculty of Columbia teaching journalism. I know it probably doesn’t have the intended effect the way I’ve written it; but do you recall when it happened - did you feel the “zinger” at the end? Did you suspend your disbelief? Are you suspending it now in thinking of Al Gore as an eminently qualified climatologist who represents the majority of scientists on climate issues?

Film producers with sincere concerns about the future of entertainment would not have been as irresponsible as Al Gore. Pushing the “documentary” purely as a propaganda tool in theaters has damaged the credibility of the technique - perhaps irreparably. Real independent scientists have lined up to explain that - at the very least - the “science” in Al Gore’s environmental disaster film is “poor science.” 30,000 signed a petition in Oregon to basically make the point that Al Gore is full of shit. Books have been written in opposition and more are on the way. The High Court in London ruled the film could not be shown in schools without characterizing it as political propaganda and pointing out at least 11 major flaws. It may be generations before anyone can believe, even in real documentaries. As a movie lover, I’m ticked.

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