esrosedotblog

SUPERMEN

Today's film was the last segment of the second season of Errol Morris' "First Person" television series.

In maybe twenty episodes I have seen a fascinating collection of people telling their stories in a special way.

Morris interviews them through his device to insure full eye contact with the camera. They are looking at him but the optics make it so that they are looking at us. Not achievable without Morris' device. Try watching talking heads and notice.

The interviews are, of course, edited, and they are the product of an interaction with Morris himself who sort of talks from a distance from time to time.

Mostly it is the people. The effect is that they are talking to me.

How this makes a dramatic difference is a bit hard to equate but there is a difference, a presence, not achievable in other interview films I have seen.

He has also chosen exceptional people. Not exceptional in a traditional sense. These people are folks who have been there and done that which few of us are privileged to do. A few may not regard it as a privilege.

I have enjoyed this series very much.

Today, we had three relatively long pieces.

The first was a smart guy or, rather, a guy who has accumulated great knowledge for the purpose of being on the quiz show Millionaire. Since I don't understand the mechanics and have never seen the show I was a bit out of the loop technically but I did get the enormous ego of a guy like this (who got screwed a bit by the producers). He is an autodidact who works as a nude model, a bar bouncer and a stripper. He has a host of theories and ideas which he actually has carried out. He faked his way into high school senior classes four or five times. I lost count. He is probably a bit crazy. And he was fascinating.

The second guy was/is the chiefest pilot in the US or the world. He ran/runs the flight simulation school at which every pilot must refresh his learning annually. He chanced to be coming home on a flight where the DC10 lost all hydraulic systems. A virtually impossible situation. He went into the cockpit and assisted the pilots land the plane. We get a blow by blow of the long descent and trouble shooting including films of the final crash which he and 188 other people survived. Suspense. Real life. What are the chances that this guy would be on that plane. One, to help save an impossible situation and two, to study first hand the problem solving necessary to manually fly an "impossible" flight to a flat landing on an actual airfield.

The last guy is the highest IQ guy in the world. He tests at 210, the max. No one higher. And, he too, is a bouncer in a bar. He has worked out a thought system which has our survival built into it and no way to make it practical and work. A good talker. Also a little nuts. Moral. Don't be too smart. They will kick the shit out of you, which will make you so tough you can be a bouncer in the toughest bars in the world, and, the academics will have your ass for breakfast.

I could not sit through all this again although I did meet someone this week who has the entire series in their house on disc. I didn't ask if he ever watches. I have this idea that many of us, me included, by DVDs to have and then never watch them. How could we?

Here is to Errol Morris. He is working on some feature length pieces as I type. I am ready to see them.

Labels: films