Videogum » Errol Morris

So Yeah, The Guy From This Week’s Obsessed Is A Professional Crazy Person

Lindsay Robertson — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 13:08:32 +0000

The first comment on yesterday’s Obsessed recap concerned one of the episode’s two subjects, Rick, who, commenter ElBomb noted, is named Rick Rosner and has “a documented history of doing stupid crap to get attention.” His claims of being the smartest man on earth have landed him a Domino’s commercial and multiple appearances on talk shows like Jimmy Kimmel Live and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?. There is indeed a long documentation of Rosner’s stunts, but I couldn’t find anything more compelling than his 2000 appearance on Errol Morris’s documentary TV show First Person, in which he describes his obsession with scars, being too smart for Harvard, and putting himself on a diet of lettuce and dog biscuits, which gave him hemorrhoids so bad he had to wear a maxi pad. Um, yeah, so basically this guy is just trying to make a living as a professional crazy person.

Um, There’s A New Errol Morris Adult Diaper Commercial

Lindsay Robertson — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 13:03:36 +0000

No, really. Do not adjust the settings on your computer monitor: this is a new commercial for Depend undergarments directed by the best documentary filmmaker in the world, Errol Morris, and featuring his unique style and literal and figurative voice:

Errol Morris has been helping to finance his amazing movies with commercial-directing work for many years, but I like to think of a Depend undergarments commercial as the ultimate “fuck you” to any lingering indie-doc snobs (heh!) who would begrudge their heroes an honest living. As my dearly missed (for one more day) co-editor Gabe Delahaye would say: “I have no problem with this.” Well, except for the fact that the difference between men and women that matters as far as Depend undergarments are concerned has less to do with highway merging and more with pee-pee holes being in different places, but Errol Morris is a classy man, so I can see why he went another way. Oh yeah, also? It’s fun to watch this and imagine that “merging” means “peeing.” (Via AdGabber, though they focused on the commercial’s content and didn’t seem to notice Errol Morris is a totally famous director. Hmph. Get it together, world.)

Crash 2: Get Off My Country!

Lindsay Robertson — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 13:04:57 +0000

The trailer for Crossing Over, starring Harrison Ford, Ashley Judd, and our collective cognitive dissonance about immigration:

You know what I want to ask myself instead of asking myself why so many risk so much to come to this country? I want to ask why the people already in this country are so stupid that instead of watching DOCUMENTARIES, which they almost never watch, they fall all over these fictionalized, simpled-down, melodramatic fairy tales that ostensibly explore gray areas while remaining as black and white as an Aesop’s Fable. Actually, no, Aesop was subtle and clever. I don’t want a Hollywood movie to ask me to ask myself something, I want Errol Morris to ask real people things until I’m forced to ask myself on my own. ERROL MORRIS FOR PRESIDENT (Of Movies.)

Operation Watch This: Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe

Gabe — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 12:55:49 +0000

The filmmaker Werner Herzog is the kind of guy who says “talk shows are going to kill us,” which is kind of an anti-populist mindset that I can’t totally buy into, because at talk shows only really exist because people want them to (i.e. watch them), and while you can make lots of arguments for how society has taught people to want things that are bad for them, it’s no longer true that people don’t have access to an alternative. At this point, with the stratification of culture across television, radio, cinema, and the internet, you really don’t have to buy into anything if you don’t want to, and I think that the “shoot your television” crowd are on the losing end of philosophical relevance. THAT BEING SAID, Werner Herzog is a winner, and in the late ’70s he told his friend Errol Morris that if he ever finished his film (which turned into the great Gates of Heaven), he would eat his shoe. And he did. And documentarian Les Blank made a film about it. And watch it.

“I have survived so many Kentucky Fried Chicken so it won’t do harm to me,” indeed.