Errata is a web journal written by Robert Davis who has neither spent a night in a ghost town nor pulled a turnip from the earth. He doesn't even know if turnips grow in the ground. Perhaps on trees, like candy corn. Therefore, Errata is a non-commercial project.

Observation #1: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious."

Observation #2: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious" at the top of your lungs. Bring your eyebrows together before you say it. Effective!

Observation #3: Same for books. Even at libraries.

There is a prize for people who correctly guess the thing about Metropolis, Nevada.

Except where the text specifically states otherwise, Errata's vagaries are indicated vaguely and its authors are indistinct in the traditional way of the Internet, except where the authors lay claim to their work. In some cases Robert Davis lays claim to work that is not his own but has been abandoned like so many ghost towns. Except where held presently, fistfuls of dirt are suspended via dispersal, or dispersed via suspension (in the air), and thus their dissolution is their transcendence, or their transcendence is their dissolution. And yet our eyes tear, and our vision is impaired, demonstrating for the umpteenth time that one entity's gain is another's fit of sneezes. Except where indicated, storms shall outlive the clay upon which they rain, unless storms are improperly delimited by their clouds, which dissolve, rather than by their inevitable return. Thus the clay loses, unless the clay is said to own the storm, to use it to make itself heavy, to make itself cling to white garments, refuse dispersal, cake upon the facades of abandoned buildings, and sit like Man [sic] upon the earth where it is pelted by a storm that it owns. In which case the clay still loses, if you ask us.

Some of the above is legally binding and should be considered a mental contract between Errata and those upon whom it acts. The bit about the prize should be considered an overstatement insofar as prizes differ from dirt and prize dispersal differs from dirt dispersal. Please recall that ownership is a weight and, therefore, hope that you do not win the prize.

One day Errata or its representatives will call upon you for a favor. It is expected that you will hop-to without delay.

You may contact Robert Davis by email unless it's about the rock that was thrown in anger. The rock is more properly called a clod. Why do you continue to raise the topic?

8 November 2003

Headlines

It's ripped-from-the-headlines week at your local theater. Playing in many cities this week:

Elephant, Gus Van Sant's fictionalized account of the Columbine school shootings;

Shattered Glass, a movie based on the period at The New Republic during which reporter Stephen Glass fabricated entire stories;

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, a documentary made inside the presidential palace during the coup that temporarily ousted Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez;

and Bus 174, a documentary about a bus hijacking in Rio De Janeiro.

All four of these movies are riveting. All four are important. Each one essentially tells the story behind the news and, in many ways, the story of the news: where it comes from, what influences it, and how it breaks down. Bus 174 and The Revolution show how the news media itself becomes a part of the story. The bus-jacking in Rio happened in broad daylight with a hundred local news reporters swarming the bus and capturing the hours-long standoff on tape. The documentary is exceptionally well organized and explores the story from several angles, in depth.

Like me, you may have read about the coup in Venezuela quickly in the newspaper and then forgotten it, but it comes alive in The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, a documentary that's both a success and a failure. It succeeds at being in the right place at the right time and showing how the opposition to Chavez used the media to sway public opinion, but it's as biased a piece of journalism as what it criticizes.

Shattered Glass is fascinating, as tales of deception often are, and is again valuable for showing what the opinion shapers of the world look like: driven, competitive, and so darn young. And look at how much trust we put in them. Stephen Glass wrote fiction for the New Republic, inventing characters, companies, and events. Problem is, he sold it to everyone, including his bosses, as fact. Unfortunately, the movie offers very little analysis of the situtation, content in blaming one guy (yes, he deserves it) and a simple flaw in fact-checking standards. But this has happened to such high-profile news outlets that maybe more depth would be useful. Still, it's a completely absorbing tale.

Of course, if analysis is what I want, am I being inconsistent when I think that Elephant is one of the most thought-provoking movies of the year despite the fact that it avoids any attempt to analyze its subject, school shootings? While Elephant isn't directly about the media as the other three movies are, what lurks beneath every second is our collective desire to understand simply and definitively why such shootings happen. This movie's rigid sampling of details implies that the whole thing is far too complex for television to analyze.

I hated the idea of this movie from the moment I heard about it. Gus Van Sant has flipped his lid again, I thought. This movie does not need to be made, I thought. Nothing good can come of this. But I was wrong. This movie did need to be made, and you need to see it. More importantly, you need to talk about it afterward. Give me a call or something.

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