Osakatomebaby

I just discovered that he released a new film entitled The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara.

Agonies! There is not a chance I will be able to see it. Morris has an astounding ability to elicit from his subjects while totally obscuring his own interaction with them, so it's both alarming and thrilling to know that he has not edited out his own questioning of McNamara--giving us the opportunity to see him at work.

Yes I guess my bias shines through since I'm more interested in the documentarian than his subject matter which is astoundingly short-sighted of me, especially in this context. But then, I can't see it so I don't want to start speculating about the content and anyway, US Military history is not my strong suit. (I'd appreciate good book recommendations. I have plenty of time to read before I get access to this thing).

I have a twisted amateur obsession with his work for other reasons, and every time I hear the soundtrack from Fast, Cheap & Out of Control used as background music on This American Life (or anything else for that matter) I get a little thrill. Once when I was having a really rotten time, I swore off all fiction. In fact, I couldn't have sat through five minutes of the stuff. I started plowing through the documentary sections at Vulcan and I Love Video. It was that kind of mood. After devouring Morris and his worshippers (is that a metaphor? but it's too weird to delete) and a SXSW film festival later I was ready to face the fictional world again--mainly because no one could live up to his style of ironic documentary filmmaking (he's more of less the father of the genre).

I don't know if I could give up fiction for a world of Errol Morrises, but it would certainly be tempting.