An Inconvenient Truth opens BIG

Eat your heart out, Michael Moore.  Stand aside and let a real teacher show you how it's done.

Al Gore. 

Teacher of the Year. 

Classroom:  The World. 

The film:  An Inconvenient Truth.  It's the best 80-minute lecture I've ever heard. 

And, incidentally, a very fine documentary. 

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No, it didn't change my life -- no movie has ever done that -- but it certainly made me think.

And it helped me understand the crisis of global warming.

It made me mad that the same type of spinmeisters who said in the 60s and 70s that you can't be sure that cigarette smoking will kill you ... have successfully convinced you that global warming is kind of a theory.

Actually, it's a fact.

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Did I mention that Al Gore is a really fine teacher?

That this film is his bully pulpit?

That he's been to the desert, and found his heart?

Our Arclight Theatre Emcee said:  "Introducing the man who would be king, and by god, I wish he was!" 

I belive that this message is the reason Al Gore was born -- to be the evangelist who explains the imminent danger to our planet called Global Warming.

He lays it out in terms that even a first-grader can understand.

Want more information?  Check out www.climatecrisis.com.

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If you want proof that Gore's film is going to flatten the box office competition -- which means you'd better go see it for yourself so you don't sound ignorant when people talk about it -- check out the excerpt below from Daily Variety. 

The good guys may have finally produced a documentary for the masses.

Remember. You.  Read it here.  First.

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During the second highest grossing Memorial Day frame ever, Al Gore's environmental docu "An Inconvenient Truth" also set several records, doing boffo biz in limited release.

"Truth" grossed a fantastic $365,787 at just four theaters in New York and L.A.; its $70,585 per play gross over three days is the highest average take for any pic this year, the highest average for any pic over Memorial Day weekend and the highest-ever average for a documentary.

Cume since its Wednesday opening is $489,336.

Paramount Classics will expand the heavily hyped Al Gore starrer to between 60 and 75 theaters in the top 10 markets next frame and continue to widen it throughout June.

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After my last blog entry, Drew Hatter, a friend of mine, sent me the following message:

Interesting, just saw a documentary on Thomas Edison last night. While the combustion engine was being refined into a mass producable consumer product in the automobile package Edisonwas experimenting with electric storage for use in cars.

He was not only experimenting, he invented a way to store enough electricity to drive a car some distance at about the speed combustion engines at the time were driving them.

When they showed a picture of the storage device Edison came up with (a simple bay of about twelve 12 volt batteries) next to a picture of the latest in electric storage devices for cars, they were identical. We have made no progress in storing electricity portably for the purposes of propelling an automobile in 100 years.

Phenomenal.

Crooked House

Yea.  I have arrived to tell thee a tale ... all the way from the century that produced Shakespeare, King James, and Queen Elizabeth I.

Okay, not really.

But wearing a costume for a day as part of my job wasn't the most boring thing I've ever done.

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For the past few months, I've encouraged my students to bring their favorite books to me to read.

I read them, and respond to them in class.

One of my students recently lent me a copy of Agatha Christie's Crooked House (1949).

Remember the old line from Mother Goose?

There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile.
He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse.
And they all lived together in a little crooked house.

It's a good story -- I went for breakfast to the 50s Cafe on Santa Monica today and zipped through the entire book.  Thought I'd share a paragraph or so on this blog.

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"What are murderers like?  Some of them" -- a faint rather melancholy smile showed on his face -- "have been thoroughly nice chaps."

I think I looked a little startled.

"Oh yes, they have," he said.  "Nice ordinary fellows like you and me -- or like that chap who went out just now -- Roger Leonides.  Murder, you see, is an amateur crime.  I'm speaking of course of the kind of murder you have in mind -- not gangster stuff.  One feels, very often, as though these nice ordinary chaps had been overtaken, as it were, by murder, almost accidentally.  They've been in a tight place, or they've wanted something very badly, money or a woman -- and they've killed to get it.  The brake that operates with most of us doesn't operate with them.

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More than one friend has strongly urged me to see the new documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.  Both said precisely the same thing to me:  "This movie has changed my life."

So I went online and checked it out.  I thought I'd share a paragraph from The New York Observer's Joseph Conason:

Indeed, Mr. Gore became a safe, easy target for every Republican politician and every right-wing commentator, who brandished Earth in the Balance as if it were The Communist Manifesto. “This is a book written by an extremist, and it's filled with extremism …. He wants to do away with the automobile as we know it today,” complained Jim Nicholson, then the Republican national chairman (and now the Secretary of Veterans Affairs). What was once the most controversial recommendation in Mr. Gore's book-phasing out that infernal combustion engine- is today the official objective of the Bush administration.

 

And, of course, the same hacks who shrieked back then about the damage this radical change would inflict on the American economy would surely praise President Bush for his farsighted leadership.

 

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I was talking to John Fohner -- a close friend of mine for 20 years -- about the situation.  He made an interesting suggestion:  "President Bush should form a new Manhattan Project.  Its mission could be to create an alternative to the internal combustion engine."

Wow!  Now that could restore Bush's standing in the polls.

Oh, wait.  That would take real leadership.

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On another subject...

If you like Cabernet Sauvignon, you might want to check out the Lapis Luna offering found at Whole Foods (2001 California). 

It's smooth -- "black cherry and earthy flavors with hints of oak."  The friend who shared a bottle with me tonight was impressed -- and she has excellent taste.  It's a real find.  Best of all, it's inexpensive.  Notice.  I didn't say cheap. 

And remember, you first read about it here.

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House Arrest really does work.  I emailed my revision of The French Inquisitor to my co-writer on Wednesday. 

Now he can feel guilty for awhile.

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I'm using this weekend to finish laying down the story for Crushed Gold, a short film I intend to direct this summer.

I'm hoping to have a five-minute pitch ready to share with my producer by Tuesday.

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On Monday evening, May 14, I went to see my cousin Linford Detweiler's band, Over the Rhine, in concert.

For about two hours, from 10 - 12 PM, about 250 people stood on the dance floor of the Knitting Factory in the middle of Hollywood, listening carefully to this unbelieveable band.

Karin's voice has really matured -- rich and luscious.  The music is powerful.  The band was tight.  Awesome.

The crowd was coolly dispassionate.  They stood there, individually or in groups.  Each seemed an island unto themselves, surrounded by an invisible wall.  No one touched or pushed each other.  Very civil.

Yet they were generous with their applause.  They kept pulling the band out for encores at the end.  The last song was the most intimate, and powerful.

I was able to see Linford and Karin briefly afterwards.  And the next morning, I had breakfast with Linford at the Best Western hotel in the Hollywood Hills.

You think you're the only one going through stuff.  You think you must be the only one who's had to make the transition from living within a conservative, religious family -- to living within the real world.

And then you find out that you're not alone.  It was a powerful moment for me.

Thanks, Linford, for being real.

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I've just discovered Grey's Anatomy.  And Carnivale.

Isn't DVD wonderful?

House Arrest

Yup.  That's Sir Knavely. 

He wasn't in the mood to model.  Kept mumbling about this gig not being in his contract. 

Too dang bad, buddy.

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The last two weekends, I've put myself on house arrest. 

I took a cue from my co-writer, who did the same thing when he couldn't seem to find the time to get the writing done.

It works pretty well.  I'm now on page 75 of this draft of The French Inquisitor. 

Sometimes I just need to cut myself off from my social life -- and unfortunately, this time around, that's included church (Sorry, PMC!) -- because otherwise, I'll never get around to getting my work done.

There are just too many things to do in Los Angeles -- if you don't stay focused.

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To deepen my understanding for another story I'm writing -- call it research -- I zipped through two television shows over the last month.

First, theentire first season of Desperate Housewives. 

What a great show:  strong characters, a potboiler mystery, real problems.  I recommend it.  You can find the first season on DVD.

Finally, the first season of Entourage. 

Interesting to see my world from another angle:  an actor's rise through the pitfalls and personal drama called Hollywood (a state of mind, not a physical location).

I'm hooked.

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I was talking to one of my close friends today, and I finally figured something out that's been bugging me for a year.

I haven't been able to understand why I get so annoyed by liberals.  And then I realized what it is.  It isn't liberals, per se, who annoy me.  I take some pretty liberal positions, myself.  What annoys me most is unrealistic idealism.

I'm essentially a pragmatic person.  I don't like to do something, nor do I believe in something, unless it's practical.  Fighting for hopeless causes are, in my opinion, a waste of time.  I don't like wasting time.  Thus, I don't argue for causes that I know are impossible to fulfill.

Does this make me a cynic?  No, I believe in going after my dreams, and I am.  But I'm not going after dreams that are guaranteed to be a waste of time.

It's one of the reasons I like the Homer Wells character in John Irving's The Cider House Rules.  It goes with my Mennonite background, I think.  To be of use to society.

If I fight for a cause, I plan carefully first.  There should be a chance of winning.  Gambling against impossible odds is not my cup of tea.