telluride_booklet

tell_about
_Errol
Morris
tell_structure
_tribute
tell_stories
_gates
of
heavean
_the
thin
blue
line
_vernon,
florida
_the
unknown
known
_tabloid
_mr. death
_fast,
cheap &
out of
control
_the
fog of
war

“Listening to
what people were
saying wasn’t even
important. But it was
important to look as
if you were listening
to what people were
saying. Actually,
listening to what
people are saying, to
me, interferes with
looking as if you were
listening to what
people are saying.”

“A movie is like a tip of an iceberg,
in a way, because so little of what
you do in connection with making a
movie actually gets into the movie.
Almost everything gets left behind.”
“A movie is like a tip of an iceberg,
in a way, because so little of what
you do in connection with making a
movie actually gets into the movie.
Almost everything gets left behind.”

I like the idea of
making films about
ostensibly absolutely
nothing. I like the
irrelevant, the
tangential, the
sidebar excursion
to nowhere that
suddenly becomes
revelatory. That’s
what all my movies
are about. That and
the idea that we’re
in possession of
certainty, truth,
infallible knowledge,
when actually we’re
just a bunch of apes
running around.
My films are about
people who think
they’re connected to
something, although
they’re really not.

“I think an interview, properly
considered, should be an investigation.
You shouldn’t know what the interview
will yield. Otherwise, why do it at all?”
“My advice to all
interviewers is: Shut up
and listen. It’s harder
than it sounds.”

“Nothing is so obvious that it’s obvious.”

“But I can say what interests me
about documentary is the fact
that you don’t know how the story
ends at the onset - that you are
investigating, with a camera, and
the story emerges as you go along.”

“Photographs can
reveal something to
us, and they can also
conceal things.”

Name_____Errol Morris
about
Film Director
Born_____February 5, 1948
Where____Hewlett, NY
Age______67
Children_Hamilton Morris
TV shows_First Person
Book_____A Wilderness of Error
Book_____Believing Is Seeing
About
Roger Ebert has said, “After
twenty years of reviewing films,
I haven’t found another filmmaker
who intrigues me more…Errol
Morris is like a magician, and as
great a filmmaker as Hitchcock or
Fellini.”
Morris’ films have won many
awards, including an Academy
Award for Best Documentary
Feature, an Emmy, the Grand
Jury Prize at Sundance Film
Festival, the Silver Bear at
Berlin International Film
Festival, the Golden Horse at
the Taiwan International Film
Festival and the Edgar from the
Mystery Writers of America. His
documentaries have repeatedly
appeared on many ten best lists
and have been honored by the
National Society of Film Critics
and the National Board of Review.
His work has been the subject
of a full retrospective at the
Museum of Modern Art in New York
in 1999. Roger Ebert, in fact,
has placed Morris’ first feature
Gates of Heaven on his list of
the 10 Best Films of All Time.
In his latest film, The Unknown
Known (April 4, 2014), Morris
explores the long political
history and the worldview of
Donald Rumsfeld, as the two-time
former secretary of defense
himself describes it. Through
dozens of hours of interview
footage and thousands of
Rumsfeld’s memos (many of which
have never before been released),
Morris puts on display the

Errol Morris
dizzying, Carrollian illogic
used by members of the Bush
administration to justify war in
Iraq. Morris’s latest book, A
Wilderness of Error: The Trial
of Jeffrey MacDonald was released
September, 2012 (Paperback:
January, 2014). A New York Times
bestseller, the book examines the
nature of evidence and proof in
the notorious MacDonald murders.
His previous book, Believing
is Seeing: Observations on the
Mysteries of Photography, was
also a New York Times bestseller
and a New York Times notable book
of 2011.
Morris has directed over 1000
television commercials, including
campaigns for Apple, Citibank,
Cisco Systems, Intel, American
Express, Nike, Target, General
Motors, Levis and Miller High
Life. Morris also directed
short films for the 2002 and
2007 Academy Awards as well as
for charitable and political
organizations such as Stand Up
to Cancer and Moveon.org. In
2011 he directed They Were There,
a film to commemorate IBM’s
Centennial. In 2000-2001, Morris
directed two seasons of the
television series, First Person.
Morris has received five
fellowships from the National
Endowment for the Arts, a
Guggenheim Fellowship and a
MacArthur Fellowship. In 2007, he
was inducted into the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences. He
is a graduate of the University
of Wisconsin-Madison and was a
graduate student at Princeton
University and the University of
California-Berkeley.
“What’s great about
documentary, and
this should always be
remembered, is not
that documentary
has to be made this
way, or it’s a rule, a
documentary rule
that can’t be broken.
But I can say what
interests me about
documentary is the
fact that you don’t
know how the story
ends at the onset.”

structure
LEARN MORRIS’ PHILOSOPHY ON
DOCUMENTARY FILM
Part detective, part philosopher,
part poet, part iconoclast,
Errol Morris is one of the
most important and influential
non-fiction filmmakers of his
generation. Like such documentary
masters as Jean Rouch and
Frederick Wiseman, Morris delves
into vexing philosophical
issues of death, identity,
and society. But, unlike many
other non-fiction filmmakers,
REVEAL THE TRUTH
Errol Morris’ films will be
represented through a thoughtful
selection of archival material,
annotated scripts, photography,
costumes, cameras and equipment,
set models, original promotional
materials, and props. The interdisciplinary
tribute draws
attention to Morris’ fixation
with historical research and
his visionary adaptations of
influences from the fine arts,
Morris challenges the very
presumptions of the documentary
by incorporating multiple points
of view and giving his works a
stylistic polish usually reserved
for mainstream fiction films.
His movies have largely achieved
great critical success, and
he has received a Guggenheim
fellowship and a MacArthur
Foundation “genius” grant.
design, and architecture, and
enables visitors to experience
the cinematic journey of one
of the great artists of the
twentieth century. The exhibition
also includes sections dedicated
to projects that were never
completed, as well as to the
special effects (visual and
auditory) developed by Morris and
his team.

Gates of Heaven_1978
stories
This classic documentary by Errol
Morris showcases workers in the
animal burial industry while
dealing with heavier existential
questions regarding mortality
and the afterlife. The first
pet mortician featured is Floyd
“Mac” McClure, who believes that
a graceful burial is as important
for pets as it is for people. The
film chronicles his struggles
to keep his niche business
afloat, and interviews several
of his associates and one of his
competitors, the manager of a
rendering plant.
Lucille & Dan sitting in front of the
Interrotron for the interview
The Thin Blue Line_1988
One night in November 1976,
after his car breaks down on a
road outside Dallas, Randall
Dale Adams accepts a ride from
teenager David Harris. Harris
is driving a stolen vehicle
and, later that night, when
Dallas police officer Robert
Wood pulls the car over to check
its headlights, he is shot and
killed. A jury believes Adams is
the killer, but Errol Morris’
classic documentary explores role
of Harris’ perjured testimony,
misleading witness accounts and
police misconduct in the verdict.
Lucille & Dan sitting in front of the
Interrotron for the interview
Vernon, Florida_1982
Eccentric inhabitants of a small
Southern town share anecdotes and
opinions.
Lucille & Dan sitting in front of the
Interrotron for the interview

A Brief History of Time_1991
The Fog of War_2003
Featuring Stephen Hawking
The Unknown Known_2013
Donald Rumsfeld discusses his
political career, from his days
as a congressman to planning the
invasion of Iraq.
In part an adaptation of
cosmologist Stephen Hawking’s
popular book about his theories
of the universe, this documentary
also shows Hawking’s daily life
as he deals with ALS that renders
him virtually immobile and
unable to speak without the use
of computer. Hawking’s friends,
family, former classmates and
peers are interviewed about
not only his theories but the
man himself. Director Errol
Morris uses creative graphics to
visually illustrate Hawking’s
complex ideas.
Mr. Death_1999
Errol Morris investigates the
case of a man who became an
authority on capital punishment,
but was discredited when he got
involved on the wrong side of a
court case.
Former corporate whiz kid
Robert McNamara was the
controversial Secretary of
Defense in the Kennedy and
Johnson administrations, during
the height of the Vietnam War.
This Academy Award-winning
documentary, augmented by
archival footage, gives the
conflicted McNamara a platform on
which he attempts to confront his
and the U.S. government’s actions
in Southeast Asia in light of the
horrors of modern warfare, the
end of ideology and the punitive
judgment of history.
Features Robert S. McNamara the Secretary of
Defence for the US
Features Robert S. McNamara the Secretary of
Defence for the US
Tabloid_2010
One of America’s top documentary
filmmakers, Errol Morris, turns
his attention to the outrageous
and nearly unbelievable story
of Joyce McKinney. She’s a
former Miss Wyoming beauty
queen who gained a great deal of
notoriety after being accused
of kidnapping a young Mormon
missionary, restraining him in
chains and raping him in England
in 1977. The unbalanced McKinney
is interviewed extensively,
particularly about her ambition
to write a memoir telling her
side of the tale.
Fast, Cheap & Out of Control_1977
In this documentary by Errol
Morris, four men with unique
vocations are interviewed.
Robot by MIT robot scientist Rodney Brooks
There’s Dave Hoover, a lion
tamer; George Mendonça, a topiary
gardener; Ray Mendez, a hairless
mole rat expert; and Rodney
Brooks, a robotics designer.
Using a special camera called the
Interrotron, each of these men is
able to talk about his obsession
seemingly directly to audience,
while Morris inter-cuts the
interviews with stock footage and
movie clips that are used to draw
connections between them all.
Standard Operation Procedure_2008
Investigating the infamous Abu
Ghraib scandal, Errol Morris
interviews American guards and
Iraqi prisoners who were at the
military jail before images of
prisoner torture emerged in
2004. One female guard, who
posed alongside fallen Iraqis in
notorious images, tells Morris
that her crimes were inspired by
her love for another soldier.
Features Robert S. McNamara the Secretary of
Defence for the US

THEY SAY
SEING IS
BELIEVING, BUT THE
OPPOSITE
IS TRUE.
BELIEVING
IS SEEING.