Written as a Film Note for Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Shane Black, the writer and director of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, was the original Hollywood screenwriting fairy tale. At the age of 24, in 1985, he sold his first screenplay for a quarter of a million dollars and in the process invented a certain kind action film that defined Hollywood in the late 80s and early 90s.

That first film was Lethal Weapon. It transformed Mel Gibson from Mad Max to a true k faced a lot of resentment and backlash within the industry over the high price tag of that script combined with its critical and box office failure. At the same time, there was a perceived competition over becoming the “highest paid screenwriter in Hollywood” with writers such as Joe Eszterhas. Also, his talents as a writer were not very highly regarded among some of his peers since Black had stuck to writing action films for the most part of his career. Read More »

An Inconvenient Truth is a fantastic film. I saw it this past weekend and would encourage everyone to see it- take friends, families and especially that special skeptic you know. To quote Roger Ebert

In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to.

Interesting Facts

1. It is based on a presentation Al Gore has been giving since 1989.
2. Paramount Classics has committed 5% of their domestic theatrical gross for their film, An Inconvenient Truth, with a minimum guarantee of $500,000 to be donated to a new bipartisan climate effort, Alliance for Climate Protection.
3. The presentation was switched from easels and charts to Apple’s Keynote and a Powerbook after Gore’s wife Tipper said, “Well, Mr. Information Superhighway, why don’t you put your slides on your computer?”.
4. The film was produced and financed by eBay billionaire and philanthropist Jeff Skoll.
5. Al Gore sits on the board of Apple.
6. Jeff Skoll’s Participant Productions funds films with a social message and commercial potential. Past hits: Syriana, North Country and Murderball.
7. The director of An Inconvenient Truth, Davis Guggenheim, is married to Elizabeth Shue (_Back to the Future_ sequels, Karate Kid, Adventures in Babysitting, City of Angels).
8. Gore’s 1992 book Earth in the Balance became the first book written by a sitting US senator to make the New York Times bestseller list since John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage.
9. The film barely mentions the current president or the party in power.
10. On Gore, Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf said “...as the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore’s contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time.”
11. Michael Shermer, founder of the Skeptics Society and regular writer for Scientific American, recently admitted in an article for Sci Am that Al Gore’s presentation, among other things, turned him from a global warming skeptic in to someone who knows it is true.
12. Gore, along with David Blood, run an investment company called Generation Investment Management that makes investments based on long-term economic, environmental, social and geopolitical challenges. The duo’s names together form “Blood and Gore”.
13. Gore is also Chairman of Current TV, a national youth television channel that has ties with Google.
14. In response to the film’s publicity, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (which accepts donations from ExxonMobil, Amoco and other honorable oil companies) released two advertisements that mischaracterize scientific research – one of the ads claims that the glaciers of Greenland are actually thickening. Partially true, some parts of Greenland are thickening- but that’s like saying that one end of the Titanic went up as the other sank. Other parts of Greenland are clearly melting.
15. This past week, Gore has claimed that he has no presidential aspirations but only time will tell.