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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Errol Morris Recommended

14:53 / 05.10.01

See any film you can by the documentary maker Errol Morris. Fast, Cheap and Out of Control is my favorite, but I also loved The Thin Blue Line, The Gates of Heaven and Doctor Death.

Morris has an incredible way of presenting information, juxtaposing seemingly unrelated images, music and voiceovers to create a complex viewpoint.

15:01 / 05.10.01

That would be "MR. Death," subtitled "The Rise and Fall of Fred Leuchter, Jr."

Also highly recommended: "A Brief History of Time," which manages to be a condensation of Stephen Hawking's book of the same name and a Hawking bio all in one.

It's subtle, but one of the things that makes Morris' documentaries so unique is the way his subjects relate to the camera. That's through use of a device he invented called the Interrotron... quote:At the simplest level, the Interrotron allows subjects to look directly into the lens of the film camera, instead of off to one side at an interviewer. Essentially a series of modified TelePrompTers, the Interrotron bounces a live image of Morris onto a half-silvered glass plate in front of the interview subject, just as the director addresses a similar video image of his subject. In the same way, interviewees respond to an image of Morris that floats directly in line with the camera. The result is "the birth of true first-person cinema," as subject and interviewer stare each other down the central axis of the lens.The man's own website here.

15:00 / 06.10.01

Morris has an incredible way of presenting information, juxtaposing seemingly unrelated images, music and voiceovers to create a complex viewpoint.

Yeah, I was watching "Fast, Cheap & Out of Control" and a friend just happened to walk by the TV & said "No shit!! 'Go-Bots'!!" The thing was, the images were coming through so fast & disparate that I didn't even notice.

Yo, Chuck Duck, you forgot about "Vernon, Florida". The reason Morris went down there (the 'there' in question being Vernon, FLA, USA) is because it was called "Stumpsvillle", due to the fact that it had the highest percent in the nation of people shooting themselves in the foot &/or leg. Nobody in the town would agree to talk about that, but anything else was OK. Just ask Grant & Kali, the South can be a bizarre & fucked-up place. And now you can view it from the safety of your own home in....."Vernon, Florida"

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