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recently viewed some videos by the late Christopher Hitchens (one below)author and commentator. Apparently he died 2011. Prescient remarks perhaps. He was against all religions. He makes remarks about the risk of losing the right to free speech.
See 17 second clip:
Trump liesLike claiming that Hilary Clinton is the most dangerous person on the planet, comparing the US situation to Germany before the Second World War is of course exaggeration.
But there might be some other reasons to be worried about American situation and it’s influence globally.
Sorry for my broken English.
HOWDY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU8VVbMjJCQ
>>>But there might be some other reasons
>>>to be worried about American situation
>>>and it’s influence globally.When Hillary confronted Trump in the debate, and Trump full-well admitted that he would have fired on a ship of Iranian sailors that were taunting American soldiers, nonchalantly doing something that could start a war, possibly a world war, everyone has cause to be worried.
This isn’t some fucking joke.
The Trump supporters need to wake up and realize they are playing with fire.
It’s also serious enough that I don’t care who I piss off with my views.
This is too important.And also, regardless of other weaker allies (as implied by your book of Clinton, Obama, Bush, etc.), Trump is the biggest fascist–ally of corporatism–there is. He wants to cut corporate tax rate in US from 35% to 15%, causing more monetary scarcity in the middle class. Giving more power to corporations via this and additional deregulation.
While he is no Adolf Hitler, he has a lot more in common with him than people realize, and folks need to be paying attention to the lessons of history.
S
First admits that he paid no taxes and that made him smart.
Then within an hour, denies he ever said it.Here’s the proof:
During the debate:
In the hour after the debate:
Apparently he thinks the American people are fucking idiots.
Hello Trump, you dumbass, that shit was live to 88 million people.Sorry but I’m not an American but anyway.
Is there something wrong with money-making?
HOWDY
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-ferguson/the-tragedy-of-hillary-cl_b_9218908.html
Charles Ferguson
Founder and President of Representational Pictures, Inc.; Director, Producer, Author, Former consultant to the White House
No matter who wins the Democratic nomination, it is now utterly clear that the Clinton team disastrously misjudged the American electorate. This is not an accident. It derives from the Clintons gradual evolution from idealists to hardened insiders, Americas decline into crony capitalism, and the Democratic establishments betrayal of its base, over the last forty years. In the most recent debate Hillary tried to pivot, and she might just pull it off, in image though not in reality.
Hillary Clinton started her political life as a reformer in an era when one could still be an ethical insider, and when American banking, politics, and academia had not yet been completely deformed by money. Her life since has been a succession of brutally hard lessons, compromises, and eventually betrayals. Some were her own fault, some were her husbands, while others came from the pressures and incentives generated by the growing corruption of Americas establishment over the last generation.
Hillary Clintons first compromise was her choice of husband. Bill Clintons brilliance, ambition, charm, and dishonesty showed early, and Hillary made many sacrifices for him – moving to Arkansas, becoming the lone female partner of the Rose law firm and joining Walmarts board of directors. She supported her family (Bill Clintons salary as Arkansas governor was under $40,000), tolerated her husbands tasteless infidelities, and helped plan his ascent to the White House.
The White House was brutal to both of them. They had no money. The Secret Service agents charged with protecting their lives had served Republicans for the previous twelve years; some were openly disdainful, even to the media. The Clintons also made avoidable errors, antagonizing the press and Congress unnecessarily. The first term was rough; the second, horrific. A Republican House of Representatives, a disgusting pig of a Special Prosecutor trolling through their private lives, Monica Lewinsky, impeachment, the Asian financial crisis, Bosnia, failed Mideast peace talks. His legal expenses were huge lawsuits by Paula Jones, the Special Prosecutors investigations, impeachment. When the Clintons left the White House, their net worth was something like negative $10 million.
One must feel enormous sympathy for Mrs. Clinton in these circumstances. However, one must also note several extremely disturbing trends dating from the same period trends which have intensified since. The Clinton Administration gave Wall Street everything it wanted, even when there were clear signs of danger. It repealed Glass-Steagall, stopped enforcing laws and regulations, pushed developing nations to open their financial markets to Wall Street, and banned the regulation of derivatives. Huge banking mergers went unchallenged, even when their legality was questionable and their economic benefits even more so. Capital gains taxes were sharply reduced.
Aggressive deregulation and lax enforcement continued even as abuses and crises mounted. Wall Street committed rampant fraud in promoting Internet stocks; nothing was done. The collapse of the Long Term Capital Management hedge fund signaled that derivatives did need to be regulated, but Larry Summers and Robert Rubin arrogantly overruled the chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The Asian financial crisis signaled clearly that finance was running amok; but the Clinton administration resisted reform.
And then there was money. The Clintons left the White House determined never to be at anyones mercy ever again. When Hillary Clinton ran for Senate in 2000, she made it clear that her husbands unqualified support was required. Aided by the President, Hillary Clinton raised more money than anyone ever had so much that Al Gores Presidential campaign was infuriated by the diversion of resources, which some feel may have cost Gore the Presidency. In January 2001, Bill Clinton pardoned four criminals in a New York Hasidic enclave whose one thousand residents had voted nearly unanimously for Hillary.
After leaving office, Bill Clinton embraced money-making with a vengeance, making speeches to nearly anyone who would pay. After Hillary left the State Department, she did the same thing. Following the 2008 financial crisis, both Clintons remained remarkably silent about Wall Street deregulation, reregulation, and, especially, about the question of criminal prosecution. When pressed on these matters, Bill Clinton was thoroughly dishonest. Several years ago, I conversed with him about the subject. When I asked about his deregulation of derivatives, he lied beautifully, claiming that he was forced into it against his will. Neither Bill nor Hillary ever called for criminal prosecutions or for breaking up the banks.
The Clintons were accepting reality. American business was becoming concentrated and ultra-powerful, and its money was flooding politics and academia. In banking, defense, telecommunications, drugs, energy, industrial food, and airlines, unchallenged mergers led to consolidation and enormous profits – profits only possible through deregulation and, frequently, criminal behavior. The financial crisis of 2008 was the most spectacular result, but there are many others, including the prices that Americans pay for health care, air travel, and even Internet access.
The Clintons are insiders now, their personal wealth of over $50 million derived nearly entirely from the wealthy and powerful. And it shows. Hillarys gradualism in health care carefully protects health-related industries. Her proposals for financial regulation do not include putting executives in jail, or confiscating the wealth they obtained by theft. Ironically, Bernie Sanders apparently feels that he must tread carefully here, because being fully direct about this issue would require criticizing President Obama. So Mrs. Clinton might just get away with pretending to be the reformer she once was.
But which she isnt anymore. She is imprisoned by the money, politics, husband, supporters, foundation, friends, privileges, and opportunities. It is hard to give up being an insider. The parties arent as good, you dont fly on private jets, you cant meet absolutely anyone you want, and you dont always win. But America might just be entering a new era of real social and economic upheaval, with demands for reform on a scale not seen since the Depression. And despite all her brilliance and experience, Mrs. Clinton is now on the wrong side. Not nearly as far over on the wrong side as Trump, Cruz, and reactionary Republicans, but on the wrong side nonetheless. And this is, in fact, a real tragedy.
Anybody that puts Trump and Cruz–the two worst candidates the Republican party has ever seen (or the general public for that matter), ahead of Hillary Clinton is living in a bubble of “extreme right-wing fantasy land”. The worst part is, is that many of things criticized in your article had to do with laws during the Clinton Presidency, which are passed by CONGRESS not the President, which for the last 6 of the 8 years he was in office, BOTH House and Senate were Republican-dominated.
It is a typical Republican strategy to wreck things, and then point the blame.
Unfortunately, it often works, because most are too stupid to investigate beyond what they are told.The real irony with the Trump “Make America Great Again” folks, is that currently both House and Senate of Congress are Republican-dominated, and 31 out of 50 state-governships are Republican. The only Democrat of consequence is Barack Obama. So If Trump’s followers really think that the people in control are taking the country in the wrong direction and they really want to “make America great again”, then they’d stop voting for Republicans, and Trump in particular. The only thing Congress had done in the past several years is take vacation days, give themselves pay raises, and shut down the government over debt ceiling raises they refuse to issue, after they themselves had passed budgets that include deficit spending.
Regulation is nice but the threat of prison focuses the mind. The noted expert, the ganster Al Capone once said “You can get much further in life with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone.”
-NIALL FERGUSON, The Ascent of MoneyFor those who might find what follows just slightly difficult to believe, I invite you to Google a phrase along the lines of “Jimmy Cayne helicopter Plaza Hotel bridge golf megalomaniac marijuana.”
-CHARLES FERGUSON, Predator Nation: Corporate Criminals, Political Corruption, and the Hijacking of AmericaWhen pressed on these matters, Bill Clinton was thoroughly dishonest. Several years ago, I conversed with him about the subject. When I asked about his deregulation of derivatives, he lied beautifully, claiming that he was forced into it against his will. Neither Bill nor Hillary ever called for criminal prosecutions or for breaking up the banks.
-http://forum.healingtaousa.com/general/message/27167/Clearly not (typical right-wing spin article), but of course very often these documentarists, to be themselves successful, have to behave sanctimoniously.
But here more important would be to consider how well one understands the real world.
In this respect ignorance also means that one doesn’t know enough about economics, econometrics, accounting, financial theory, banking, international business and law etc.
Sorry for my broken English.
HOWDY
http://www.indiewire.com/2015/09/charles-ferguson-explains-why-nobody-can-make-a-good-movie-about-hillary-clinton-58485/
Charles Ferguson Explains Why Nobody Can Make a Good Movie About Hillary Clinton
Charles Ferguson Explains Why Nobody Can Make a Good Movie About Hillary ClintonEric Kohn
Sep 8, 2015 10:17 am
Charles Ferguson has only made three movies, but has already conquered bigger issues than many filmmakers tackle in a lifetime. The former MIT scholar and internet entrepreneur first shifted gears to the documentary arena with No End in Sight, a searing look at the institutional forces behind the Iraq war, which he followed up with his Oscar-winning Inside Job, a breakdown of the factors behind the 2008 economic crisis. Then, for several years, he stumbled through troubled projects about Julian Assange and Hillary Clinton that never came to fruition.
Over the weekend, Ferguson cropped up at the Telluride Film Festival which he has attended for 20 years, long before he became a professional documentarian with a very different sort of exposé: Time to Choose, an alarming overview of various ways in which environmental neglect is having a direct impact on global society.
Pairing lush imagery with tragic stories of damaged lives, Ferguson develops a ruminative essay film that methodically explores the various factors involved in environmental problems. The use of coal, electricity, oil, deforestation and processed foods are all scrutinized as Ferguson scours the world for examples of health problems and climate decay. But these upsetting stories come paired with a galvanizing message, as Ferguson offers examples of environmentally-friendly solutions with the capacity to improve the situation. The movie ends by anticipating a December summit in Paris to discuss environmental regulations, making Time to Choose the first of Fergusons films to include a direct call to action.
Despite his obvious passion for the subject, Ferguson may never have made Time to Choose if his career had taken other directions in the aftermath of his Oscar win. At Tellurides Sheridan bar, Ferguson sat down with Indiewire before his Q&A to discuss those earlier challenges and explain how he shifted gears to focus on his latest work.
Its been five years since Inside Job. What have you been doing in all that time?
This film took up the last two years of my life. Before that, I was involved in one classic and one not-classic movie industry disaster.
Meaning?
I was hired by HBO to make a narrative feature about Julian Assange. That turned out to be this amazing movie industry clusterfuck. It was nobodys fault, it was everybodys fault. Get me drunk sometime and Ill tell you everything that happened.
In general terms, why did the Assange project fall apart?
There were three drafts of the script and it got worse with each one. So did the fights. Finally, everybody just kind of gave up.
So what did you next?
I made an agreement with CNN to make a documentary about Hillary Clinton. That was a very different disaster, but it was also an interesting learning experience about where the dynastic portions of American politics is now.
How did it go awry?
So I make the deal with CNN. Theyre great they give me enough money, they give me final cut. Then I start trying to make the movie, and I encounter a wall of silence the likes of which I have never encountered before. Nobody would talk to me. Nobody who knows the Clintons, nobody who likes the Clintons, nobody who hates the Clintons. At a certain point, the Clinton people got in touch with me directly and said, We really dont want you to make this movie. Go away.
This was after the deal was signed?
Yes. CNN wanted me to go with it. They had a very good intelligence service. They were aware of the film before the contract was signed. The day after it was signed, we got a call from Hillary Clintons press secretary, saying, Lets talk. We have a problem.
So after a little while, I went to the head of CNN and said, Look, theyre trying to make me go away. I think we should make a public announcement that were making a film to make it clear to them that were not going away. If theyre just being obstructionist, its not going to do any good.
So we did that. Well. [long pause] Twenty-four hours after this public announcement, the chairman of the Republican National Committee calls a press conference and announces that if the film goes forward, the Republicans will wipe out CNN from all presidential debates and presidential coverage. Twenty-four hours after that, a very senior person in the Democratic party did not call a press conference. They privately called a very senior person at CNN and said, Were not going to announce anything, but if this film goes forward, were going to do the same thing.
Wow. What did you make of that?
I thought, These people dont scare me; Im not going to let this stop me. I decided, Im going to fucking make this film. Well, I found out that I wasnt making the film. I could have done something purely out of archival footage, but even that was an issue, because they were putting pressure on the networks not to give us footage.
Could you have tried to make the movie without CNN?
I had a contract, but nevermind the contract. How am I going to make the film? No one will talk to me. Absolutely no one. Its not even clear that I can get the archival footage.
Would it be easier to make the movie now that Hillarys campaign has started?
Its going to be just as bad now for several reasons. Obviously, wanting to win the election is one of them, and both the Republicans and the Democrats thought I would be a problem for them from that point of view. The other thing is that many of those people want jobs in the Clinton Administration. If they disobey her by talking to me then they wont get those jobs. But only about 10 percent of those people are actually going to get jobs. So after the election, if she wins, once she announces her cabinet, then its going to be much easier to make a film.
Do you still want to do it?
I have an ambivalent feelings about its worth. I know a lot about the Clintons. Their story is interesting. He was always very manipulative. Always. But she was not. She started out as a very sincere, committed person. That remained true for quite a long time. There were some pressures and compromises when Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas and she went on the board of Walmart, which was somewhat questionable. But still, she was a very committed person until what they went through in the White House. Some of that is known, some of it is not. It changed her a lot.
So that would have been the narrative arc?
Yes. Someone did try to make a narrative about this and encountered the same problems.
Did you ever have a moment during this experience or while you were working on the Assange film where you thought, I won a fucking Oscar. Why is this so hard?
I wouldnt say I was shocked. I know a lot of people in the industry who have told me a lot of stories. Ive read a lot of classic books about movie industry screw-ups. I knew what could happen. Its just always different when it happens to you. One very clear lesson about the stories and the books is that a lot of these things just happen because its a crazy industry. In the case of the Julian Assange film, there were three people that I would have been happy to kill. But most of the people working on it were very well-intentioned. It was just group dynamics, timing, legal problems
In any case, now your filmography is three very different documentaries about institutional problems war, the economy and now the environment. How did you wind up shifting onto that third topic?
Its always important to me to have intellectual variety in my life in a number of different ways. My undergraduate degree is in mathematics and my Phd is in political science; I studied several different things quite seriously. The kind of education I got was very good, general-purpose capital equipment for a lot of things. Thats one thing I loved about making films: Every project can be different.
What was the starting point for the environmental focus in particular?
When I was an undergraduate a long time ago, I spent a year living in rural France. I was 19. This was the late seventies. The idea that you would go to a supermarket to buy food was ridiculous. No one would ever do that. The idea that you would buy something packaged or processed was weird. Nobody did that. The way you bought your food was that you went to the market that is, the place where all the farmers were four times a week. So Ive always had an affection for nature, agriculture, food, those kinds of things.
Charles Ferguson Explains Why Nobody Can Make a Good Movie About Hillary Clinton
Charles Ferguson Explains Why Nobody Can Make a Good Movie About Hillary ClintonEric Kohn
Sep 8, 2015 10:17 am
@erickohnWATCH: Clip From Charles Fergusons Telluride Doc Time to Choose
Charles Ferguson has only made three movies, but has already conquered bigger issues than many filmmakers tackle in a lifetime. The former MIT scholar and internet entrepreneur first shifted gears to the documentary arena with No End in Sight, a searing look at the institutional forces behind the Iraq war, which he followed up with his Oscar-winning Inside Job, a breakdown of the factors behind the 2008 economic crisis. Then, for several years, he stumbled through troubled projects about Julian Assange and Hillary Clinton that never came to fruition.
Over the weekend, Ferguson cropped up at the Telluride Film Festival which he has attended for 20 years, long before he became a professional documentarian with a very different sort of exposé: Time to Choose, an alarming overview of various ways in which environmental neglect is having a direct impact on global society.
Time to ChoosePairing lush imagery with tragic stories of damaged lives, Ferguson develops a ruminative essay film that methodically explores the various factors involved in environmental problems. The use of coal, electricity, oil, deforestation and processed foods are all scrutinized as Ferguson scours the world for examples of health problems and climate decay. But these upsetting stories come paired with a galvanizing message, as Ferguson offers examples of environmentally-friendly solutions with the capacity to improve the situation. The movie ends by anticipating a December summit in Paris to discuss environmental regulations, making Time to Choose the first of Fergusons films to include a direct call to action.
Despite his obvious passion for the subject, Ferguson may never have made Time to Choose if his career had taken other directions in the aftermath of his Oscar win. At Tellurides Sheridan bar, Ferguson sat down with Indiewire before his Q&A to discuss those earlier challenges and explain how he shifted gears to focus on his latest work.
Its been five years since Inside Job. What have you been doing in all that time?
This film took up the last two years of my life. Before that, I was involved in one classic and one not-classic movie industry disaster.
2011 Documentary WinnersMeaning?
I was hired by HBO to make a narrative feature about Julian Assange. That turned out to be this amazing movie industry clusterfuck. It was nobodys fault, it was everybodys fault. Get me drunk sometime and Ill tell you everything that happened.
In general terms, why did the Assange project fall apart?
There were three drafts of the script and it got worse with each one. So did the fights. Finally, everybody just kind of gave up.
So what did you next?
I made an agreement with CNN to make a documentary about Hillary Clinton. That was a very different disaster, but it was also an interesting learning experience about where the dynastic portions of American politics is now.
How did it go awry?
So I make the deal with CNN. Theyre great they give me enough money, they give me final cut. Then I start trying to make the movie, and I encounter a wall of silence the likes of which I have never encountered before. Nobody would talk to me. Nobody who knows the Clintons, nobody who likes the Clintons, nobody who hates the Clintons. At a certain point, the Clinton people got in touch with me directly and said, We really dont want you to make this movie. Go away.
This was after the deal was signed?
Yes. CNN wanted me to go with it. They had a very good intelligence service. They were aware of the film before the contract was signed. The day after it was signed, we got a call from Hillary Clintons press secretary, saying, Lets talk. We have a problem.
So after a little while, I went to the head of CNN and said, Look, theyre trying to make me go away. I think we should make a public announcement that were making a film to make it clear to them that were not going away. If theyre just being obstructionist, its not going to do any good.
So we did that. Well. [long pause] Twenty-four hours after this public announcement, the chairman of the Republican National Committee calls a press conference and announces that if the film goes forward, the Republicans will wipe out CNN from all presidential debates and presidential coverage. Twenty-four hours after that, a very senior person in the Democratic party did not call a press conference. They privately called a very senior person at CNN and said, Were not going to announce anything, but if this film goes forward, were going to do the same thing.
Wow. What did you make of that?
I thought, These people dont scare me; Im not going to let this stop me. I decided, Im going to fucking make this film. Well, I found out that I wasnt making the film. I could have done something purely out of archival footage, but even that was an issue, because they were putting pressure on the networks not to give us footage.
Could you have tried to make the movie without CNN?
I had a contract, but nevermind the contract. How am I going to make the film? No one will talk to me. Absolutely no one. Its not even clear that I can get the archival footage.
Would it be easier to make the movie now that Hillarys campaign has started?
Its going to be just as bad now for several reasons. Obviously, wanting to win the election is one of them, and both the Republicans and the Democrats thought I would be a problem for them from that point of view. The other thing is that many of those people want jobs in the Clinton Administration. If they disobey her by talking to me then they wont get those jobs. But only about 10 percent of those people are actually going to get jobs. So after the election, if she wins, once she announces her cabinet, then its going to be much easier to make a film.
Do you still want to do it?
I have an ambivalent feelings about its worth. I know a lot about the Clintons. Their story is interesting. He was always very manipulative. Always. But she was not. She started out as a very sincere, committed person. That remained true for quite a long time. There were some pressures and compromises when Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas and she went on the board of Walmart, which was somewhat questionable. But still, she was a very committed person until what they went through in the White House. Some of that is known, some of it is not. It changed her a lot.
So that would have been the narrative arc?
Yes. Someone did try to make a narrative about this and encountered the same problems.
Did you ever have a moment during this experience or while you were working on the Assange film where you thought, I won a fucking Oscar. Why is this so hard?
I wouldnt say I was shocked. I know a lot of people in the industry who have told me a lot of stories. Ive read a lot of classic books about movie industry screw-ups. I knew what could happen. Its just always different when it happens to you. One very clear lesson about the stories and the books is that a lot of these things just happen because its a crazy industry. In the case of the Julian Assange film, there were three people that I would have been happy to kill. But most of the people working on it were very well-intentioned. It was just group dynamics, timing, legal problems
In any case, now your filmography is three very different documentaries about institutional problems war, the economy and now the environment. How did you wind up shifting onto that third topic?
Its always important to me to have intellectual variety in my life in a number of different ways. My undergraduate degree is in mathematics and my Phd is in political science; I studied several different things quite seriously. The kind of education I got was very good, general-purpose capital equipment for a lot of things. Thats one thing I loved about making films: Every project can be different.
What was the starting point for the environmental focus in particular?
When I was an undergraduate a long time ago, I spent a year living in rural France. I was 19. This was the late seventies. The idea that you would go to a supermarket to buy food was ridiculous. No one would ever do that. The idea that you would buy something packaged or processed was weird. Nobody did that. The way you bought your food was that you went to the market that is, the place where all the farmers were four times a week. So Ive always had an affection for nature, agriculture, food, those kinds of things.
An Inconvenient TruthLike everybody else, I saw An Inconvenient Truth and thought, This is a really awful problem and theres nothing I can do about it. Then around two years ago, I ran into a guy who said, Actually, this is a totally solvable problem. People dont understand this, but solar power has come along way and so has wind power. We dont have to just sit around and wait for this to kill us. So that led me to start looking into this. I learned a lot about the problem and the solution.
Its a huge topic, but your film is divided up into three chapters. How did you start to narrow it down?
The scope of the issue was a surprise to me. When I was stimulated to start looking, I realized fairly quickly this was much larger, more complicated but also much richer and more interesting set of issues. In the process of making this film, it really blew my mind. Various friends in the environmental world had told me about the effects of the palm oil industry on deforestation. But theres nothing anyone can tell you that compares to what you can see. That was totally transformative for me.
In what sense?
Charles Ferguson Explains Why Nobody Can Make a Good Movie About Hillary Clinton
Charles Ferguson Explains Why Nobody Can Make a Good Movie About Hillary ClintonEric Kohn
Sep 8, 2015 10:17 am
@erickohnWATCH: Clip From Charles Fergusons Telluride Doc Time to Choose
Charles Ferguson has only made three movies, but has already conquered bigger issues than many filmmakers tackle in a lifetime. The former MIT scholar and internet entrepreneur first shifted gears to the documentary arena with No End in Sight, a searing look at the institutional forces behind the Iraq war, which he followed up with his Oscar-winning Inside Job, a breakdown of the factors behind the 2008 economic crisis. Then, for several years, he stumbled through troubled projects about Julian Assange and Hillary Clinton that never came to fruition.
Over the weekend, Ferguson cropped up at the Telluride Film Festival which he has attended for 20 years, long before he became a professional documentarian with a very different sort of exposé: Time to Choose, an alarming overview of various ways in which environmental neglect is having a direct impact on global society.
Time to ChoosePairing lush imagery with tragic stories of damaged lives, Ferguson develops a ruminative essay film that methodically explores the various factors involved in environmental problems. The use of coal, electricity, oil, deforestation and processed foods are all scrutinized as Ferguson scours the world for examples of health problems and climate decay. But these upsetting stories come paired with a galvanizing message, as Ferguson offers examples of environmentally-friendly solutions with the capacity to improve the situation. The movie ends by anticipating a December summit in Paris to discuss environmental regulations, making Time to Choose the first of Fergusons films to include a direct call to action.
Despite his obvious passion for the subject, Ferguson may never have made Time to Choose if his career had taken other directions in the aftermath of his Oscar win. At Tellurides Sheridan bar, Ferguson sat down with Indiewire before his Q&A to discuss those earlier challenges and explain how he shifted gears to focus on his latest work.
Its been five years since Inside Job. What have you been doing in all that time?
This film took up the last two years of my life. Before that, I was involved in one classic and one not-classic movie industry disaster.
2011 Documentary WinnersMeaning?
I was hired by HBO to make a narrative feature about Julian Assange. That turned out to be this amazing movie industry clusterfuck. It was nobodys fault, it was everybodys fault. Get me drunk sometime and Ill tell you everything that happened.
In general terms, why did the Assange project fall apart?
There were three drafts of the script and it got worse with each one. So did the fights. Finally, everybody just kind of gave up.
So what did you next?
I made an agreement with CNN to make a documentary about Hillary Clinton. That was a very different disaster, but it was also an interesting learning experience about where the dynastic portions of American politics is now.
How did it go awry?
So I make the deal with CNN. Theyre great they give me enough money, they give me final cut. Then I start trying to make the movie, and I encounter a wall of silence the likes of which I have never encountered before. Nobody would talk to me. Nobody who knows the Clintons, nobody who likes the Clintons, nobody who hates the Clintons. At a certain point, the Clinton people got in touch with me directly and said, We really dont want you to make this movie. Go away.
This was after the deal was signed?
Yes. CNN wanted me to go with it. They had a very good intelligence service. They were aware of the film before the contract was signed. The day after it was signed, we got a call from Hillary Clintons press secretary, saying, Lets talk. We have a problem.
So after a little while, I went to the head of CNN and said, Look, theyre trying to make me go away. I think we should make a public announcement that were making a film to make it clear to them that were not going away. If theyre just being obstructionist, its not going to do any good.
So we did that. Well. [long pause] Twenty-four hours after this public announcement, the chairman of the Republican National Committee calls a press conference and announces that if the film goes forward, the Republicans will wipe out CNN from all presidential debates and presidential coverage. Twenty-four hours after that, a very senior person in the Democratic party did not call a press conference. They privately called a very senior person at CNN and said, Were not going to announce anything, but if this film goes forward, were going to do the same thing.
Wow. What did you make of that?
I thought, These people dont scare me; Im not going to let this stop me. I decided, Im going to fucking make this film. Well, I found out that I wasnt making the film. I could have done something purely out of archival footage, but even that was an issue, because they were putting pressure on the networks not to give us footage.
Could you have tried to make the movie without CNN?
I had a contract, but nevermind the contract. How am I going to make the film? No one will talk to me. Absolutely no one. Its not even clear that I can get the archival footage.
Would it be easier to make the movie now that Hillarys campaign has started?
Its going to be just as bad now for several reasons. Obviously, wanting to win the election is one of them, and both the Republicans and the Democrats thought I would be a problem for them from that point of view. The other thing is that many of those people want jobs in the Clinton Administration. If they disobey her by talking to me then they wont get those jobs. But only about 10 percent of those people are actually going to get jobs. So after the election, if she wins, once she announces her cabinet, then its going to be much easier to make a film.
Do you still want to do it?
I have an ambivalent feelings about its worth. I know a lot about the Clintons. Their story is interesting. He was always very manipulative. Always. But she was not. She started out as a very sincere, committed person. That remained true for quite a long time. There were some pressures and compromises when Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas and she went on the board of Walmart, which was somewhat questionable. But still, she was a very committed person until what they went through in the White House. Some of that is known, some of it is not. It changed her a lot.
So that would have been the narrative arc?
Yes. Someone did try to make a narrative about this and encountered the same problems.
Did you ever have a moment during this experience or while you were working on the Assange film where you thought, I won a fucking Oscar. Why is this so hard?
I wouldnt say I was shocked. I know a lot of people in the industry who have told me a lot of stories. Ive read a lot of classic books about movie industry screw-ups. I knew what could happen. Its just always different when it happens to you. One very clear lesson about the stories and the books is that a lot of these things just happen because its a crazy industry. In the case of the Julian Assange film, there were three people that I would have been happy to kill. But most of the people working on it were very well-intentioned. It was just group dynamics, timing, legal problems
In any case, now your filmography is three very different documentaries about institutional problems war, the economy and now the environment. How did you wind up shifting onto that third topic?
Its always important to me to have intellectual variety in my life in a number of different ways. My undergraduate degree is in mathematics and my Phd is in political science; I studied several different things quite seriously. The kind of education I got was very good, general-purpose capital equipment for a lot of things. Thats one thing I loved about making films: Every project can be different.
What was the starting point for the environmental focus in particular?
When I was an undergraduate a long time ago, I spent a year living in rural France. I was 19. This was the late seventies. The idea that you would go to a supermarket to buy food was ridiculous. No one would ever do that. The idea that you would buy something packaged or processed was weird. Nobody did that. The way you bought your food was that you went to the market that is, the place where all the farmers were four times a week. So Ive always had an affection for nature, agriculture, food, those kinds of things.
An Inconvenient TruthLike everybody else, I saw An Inconvenient Truth and thought, This is a really awful problem and theres nothing I can do about it. Then around two years ago, I ran into a guy who said, Actually, this is a totally solvable problem. People dont understand this, but solar power has come along way and so has wind power. We dont have to just sit around and wait for this to kill us. So that led me to start looking into this. I learned a lot about the problem and the solution.
Its a huge topic, but your film is divided up into three chapters. How did you start to narrow it down?
The scope of the issue was a surprise to me. When I was stimulated to start looking, I realized fairly quickly this was much larger, more complicated but also much richer and more interesting set of issues. In the process of making this film, it really blew my mind. Various friends in the environmental world had told me about the effects of the palm oil industry on deforestation. But theres nothing anyone can tell you that compares to what you can see. That was totally transformative for me.
In what sense?
The nation of Indonesia is intrinsically beautiful 3,000 islands, very complicated. It is also one of the darkest, most corrupt, violent, horrific places on earth. If youve seen Josh Oppenheimers films [The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence], it really is like that. And its being destroyed at a very high rate unless this stops, in another 10 or 15 years, it will be gone. The whole country will be gone. Someone can tell you this many square miles are being deforested, but you have to see it. It is unimaginable. The smoke from the fires is so dense that we could not get in there for four days because all of the airports in the region were closed. When we finally found an open one and flew, conditions were very bad. No pilot in the United States would take off in those conditions. Visibility was less than a quarter mile. We flew for hours. When you see the vastness of the destruction, it never ends.
Nearly a decade has passed since An Inconvenient Truth. Why do you think environmental messages still struggle to reach people?
Until very recently, people couldnt do anything. If its all pessimism, people just tune out. The other thing is that there are enormous public organizations associated with this problem its a global, abstract, long-term collective thing. I wanted to show something that is in fact true: This same long-term, global, abstract problem also causes immediate problems. If we could get away from that, we could really benefit the world right now. Have I succeeded? I dont know.
What can people do?
Many things. The answer isnt the same if youre in Indonesia, China, Brazil or here. Its different if youre a mayor of a city or running a business. But theres a lot that you can do.
Lets say youre just somebody who saw the movie at the Telluride Film Festival the typical Telluride customer who might be upper middle class, but not some hugely influential public figure.
It depends on the details, but you can put solar panels on your house, use LED light bulbs, get a hybrid or electric car. If you can afford a Tesla, theyre incredible cars. The sticker price is high, but you save several thousands of dollar per year on gasoline.
Plus, as you note in the film, theyre very cool.
Theyre incredibly cool. The first car that Tesla made was a convertible, which is an absurdly cool car. To have a car like that goes really fast and is incredibly fun to drive and is also good for the planet thats cool.
But it sounds like real change can only happen once these technologies are even cheaper.
Were getting very close to that point. Of course, oil companies are fighting it. Theyre going to lose, but the problem is that they may not lose fast enough. We need to deal with this soon. When you talk to scientific people about the impact if we dont fix this, its going to get really scary.
Do you feel as though awareness has shifted in any substantial way?
Some of the immediate problems are themselves getting noticed. For example, air pollution and food problems in China. Chinese people are obsessed with this. When I went back twice for this film, I hadnt been for about five years. I was stunned. The air in Beijing isnt as bad as Indonesia but its really bad. I would say five percent of pedestrians in Beijing wear masks. And it keeps getting worse. Its all over the media in China. Everyone is obsessed whether they can raise their child in this, will it kill them, is the food safe. The political leadership actually has to worry about this.
The movie closes by anticipating a gathering of world leaders in Paris this December to discuss environmental policies. What do you think will happen there?
Id like to know. Whatever happens with commercial distribution, were already arranging for a number of screenings in Paris before and during the conference and also other screenings for various political leaderships.
Do you see any hope on the horizon?
People do seem to be moderately optimistic that for the first time well actually make some progress. It wont be perfect or definitive. Its not like well get a treaty this December and then we can all walk away. But people do think theres a good shot at getting to the first step. Part of the reason for that is that people who understand these things are really getting scared. This isnt 50 years ago. We have really serious problems now. Beyond the necessity for it, theres the opportunity we actually can do something about this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_MK9w5vnhw
Charles Ferguson Explains Why Nobody Can Make a Good Movie About Hillary Clinton
Eric Kohn
Sep 8, 2015 10:17 am
Charles Ferguson has only made three movies, but has already conquered bigger issues than many filmmakers tackle in a lifetime. The former MIT scholar and internet entrepreneur first shifted gears to the documentary arena with No End in Sight, a searing look at the institutional forces behind the Iraq war, which he followed up with his Oscar-winning Inside Job, a breakdown of the factors behind the 2008 economic crisis. Then, for several years, he stumbled through troubled projects about Julian Assange and Hillary Clinton that never came to fruition.
Over the weekend, Ferguson cropped up at the Telluride Film Festival which he has attended for 20 years, long before he became a professional documentarian with a very different sort of exposé: Time to Choose, an alarming overview of various ways in which environmental neglect is having a direct impact on global society.
Pairing lush imagery with tragic stories of damaged lives, Ferguson develops a ruminative essay film that methodically explores the various factors involved in environmental problems. The use of coal, electricity, oil, deforestation and processed foods are all scrutinized as Ferguson scours the world for examples of health problems and climate decay. But these upsetting stories come paired with a galvanizing message, as Ferguson offers examples of environmentally-friendly solutions with the capacity to improve the situation. The movie ends by anticipating a December summit in Paris to discuss environmental regulations, making Time to Choose the first of Fergusons films to include a direct call to action.
Despite his obvious passion for the subject, Ferguson may never have made Time to Choose if his career had taken other directions in the aftermath of his Oscar win. At Tellurides Sheridan bar, Ferguson sat down with Indiewire before his Q&A to discuss those earlier challenges and explain how he shifted gears to focus on his latest work.
Its been five years since Inside Job. What have you been doing in all that time?
This film took up the last two years of my life. Before that, I was involved in one classic and one not-classic movie industry disaster.
Meaning?
I was hired by HBO to make a narrative feature about Julian Assange. That turned out to be this amazing movie industry clusterfuck. It was nobodys fault, it was everybodys fault. Get me drunk sometime and Ill tell you everything that happened.
In general terms, why did the Assange project fall apart?
There were three drafts of the script and it got worse with each one. So did the fights. Finally, everybody just kind of gave up.
So what did you next?
I made an agreement with CNN to make a documentary about Hillary Clinton. That was a very different disaster, but it was also an interesting learning experience about where the dynastic portions of American politics is now.
How did it go awry?
So I make the deal with CNN. Theyre great they give me enough money, they give me final cut. Then I start trying to make the movie, and I encounter a wall of silence the likes of which I have never encountered before. Nobody would talk to me. Nobody who knows the Clintons, nobody who likes the Clintons, nobody who hates the Clintons. At a certain point, the Clinton people got in touch with me directly and said, We really dont want you to make this movie. Go away.
This was after the deal was signed?
Yes. CNN wanted me to go with it. They had a very good intelligence service. They were aware of the film before the contract was signed. The day after it was signed, we got a call from Hillary Clintons press secretary, saying, Lets talk. We have a problem.
So after a little while, I went to the head of CNN and said, Look, theyre trying to make me go away. I think we should make a public announcement that were making a film to make it clear to them that were not going away. If theyre just being obstructionist, its not going to do any good.
So we did that. Well. [long pause] Twenty-four hours after this public announcement, the chairman of the Republican National Committee calls a press conference and announces that if the film goes forward, the Republicans will wipe out CNN from all presidential debates and presidential coverage. Twenty-four hours after that, a very senior person in the Democratic party did not call a press conference. They privately called a very senior person at CNN and said, Were not going to announce anything, but if this film goes forward, were going to do the same thing.
Wow. What did you make of that?
I thought, These people dont scare me; Im not going to let this stop me. I decided, Im going to fucking make this film. Well, I found out that I wasnt making the film. I could have done something purely out of archival footage, but even that was an issue, because they were putting pressure on the networks not to give us footage.
Could you have tried to make the movie without CNN?
I had a contract, but nevermind the contract. How am I going to make the film? No one will talk to me. Absolutely no one. Its not even clear that I can get the archival footage.
Would it be easier to make the movie now that Hillarys campaign has started?
Its going to be just as bad now for several reasons. Obviously, wanting to win the election is one of them, and both the Republicans and the Democrats thought I would be a problem for them from that point of view. The other thing is that many of those people want jobs in the Clinton Administration. If they disobey her by talking to me then they wont get those jobs. But only about 10 percent of those people are actually going to get jobs. So after the election, if she wins, once she announces her cabinet, then its going to be much easier to make a film.
Do you still want to do it?
I have an ambivalent feelings about its worth. I know a lot about the Clintons. Their story is interesting. He was always very manipulative. Always. But she was not. She started out as a very sincere, committed person. That remained true for quite a long time. There were some pressures and compromises when Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas and she went on the board of Walmart, which was somewhat questionable. But still, she was a very committed person until what they went through in the White House. Some of that is known, some of it is not. It changed her a lot.
So that would have been the narrative arc?
Yes. Someone did try to make a narrative about this and encountered the same problems.
Did you ever have a moment during this experience or while you were working on the Assange film where you thought, I won a fucking Oscar. Why is this so hard?
I wouldnt say I was shocked. I know a lot of people in the industry who have told me a lot of stories. Ive read a lot of classic books about movie industry screw-ups. I knew what could happen. Its just always different when it happens to you. One very clear lesson about the stories and the books is that a lot of these things just happen because its a crazy industry. In the case of the Julian Assange film, there were three people that I would have been happy to kill. But most of the people working on it were very well-intentioned. It was just group dynamics, timing, legal problems
In any case, now your filmography is three very different documentaries about institutional problems war, the economy and now the environment. How did you wind up shifting onto that third topic?
Its always important to me to have intellectual variety in my life in a number of different ways. My undergraduate degree is in mathematics and my Phd is in political science; I studied several different things quite seriously. The kind of education I got was very good, general-purpose capital equipment for a lot of things. Thats one thing I loved about making films: Every project can be different.
What was the starting point for the environmental focus in particular?
When I was an undergraduate a long time ago, I spent a year living in rural France. I was 19. This was the late seventies. The idea that you would go to a supermarket to buy food was ridiculous. No one would ever do that. The idea that you would buy something packaged or processed was weird. Nobody did that. The way you bought your food was that you went to the market that is, the place where all the farmers were four times a week. So Ive always had an affection for nature, agriculture, food, those kinds of things.
Like everybody else, I saw An Inconvenient Truth and thought, This is a really awful problem and theres nothing I can do about it. Then around two years ago, I ran into a guy who said, Actually, this is a totally solvable problem. People dont understand this, but solar power has come along way and so has wind power. We dont have to just sit around and wait for this to kill us. So that led me to start looking into this. I learned a lot about the problem and the solution.
Its a huge topic, but your film is divided up into three chapters. How did you start to narrow it down?
The scope of the issue was a surprise to me. When I was stimulated to start looking, I realized fairly quickly this was much larger, more complicated but also much richer and more interesting set of issues. In the process of making this film, it really blew my mind. Various friends in the environmental world had told me about the effects of the palm oil industry on deforestation. But theres nothing anyone can tell you that compares to what you can see. That was totally transformative for me.
In what sense?
The nation of Indonesia is intrinsically beautiful 3,000 islands, very complicated. It is also one of the darkest, most corrupt, violent, horrific places on earth. If youve seen Josh Oppenheimers films [The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence], it really is like that. And its being destroyed at a very high rate unless this stops, in another 10 or 15 years, it will be gone. The whole country will be gone. Someone can tell you this many square miles are being deforested, but you have to see it. It is unimaginable. The smoke from the fires is so dense that we could not get in there for four days because all of the airports in the region were closed. When we finally found an open one and flew, conditions were very bad. No pilot in the United States would take off in those conditions. Visibility was less than a quarter mile. We flew for hours. When you see the vastness of the destruction, it never ends.
Nearly a decade has passed since An Inconvenient Truth. Why do you think environmental messages still struggle to reach people?
Until very recently, people couldnt do anything. If its all pessimism, people just tune out. The other thing is that there are enormous public organizations associated with this problem its a global, abstract, long-term collective thing. I wanted to show something that is in fact true: This same long-term, global, abstract problem also causes immediate problems. If we could get away from that, we could really benefit the world right now. Have I succeeded? I dont know.
What can people do?
Many things. The answer isnt the same if youre in Indonesia, China, Brazil or here. Its different if youre a mayor of a city or running a business. But theres a lot that you can do.
Lets say youre just somebody who saw the movie at the Telluride Film Festival the typical Telluride customer who might be upper middle class, but not some hugely influential public figure.
It depends on the details, but you can put solar panels on your house, use LED light bulbs, get a hybrid or electric car. If you can afford a Tesla, theyre incredible cars. The sticker price is high, but you save several thousands of dollar per year on gasoline.
Plus, as you note in the film, theyre very cool.
Theyre incredibly cool. The first car that Tesla made was a convertible, which is an absurdly cool car. To have a car like that goes really fast and is incredibly fun to drive and is also good for the planet thats cool.
But it sounds like real change can only happen once these technologies are even cheaper.
Were getting very close to that point. Of course, oil companies are fighting it. Theyre going to lose, but the problem is that they may not lose fast enough. We need to deal with this soon. When you talk to scientific people about the impact if we dont fix this, its going to get really scary.
Do you feel as though awareness has shifted in any substantial way?
Some of the immediate problems are themselves getting noticed. For example, air pollution and food problems in China. Chinese people are obsessed with this. When I went back twice for this film, I hadnt been for about five years. I was stunned. The air in Beijing isnt as bad as Indonesia but its really bad. I would say five percent of pedestrians in Beijing wear masks. And it keeps getting worse. Its all over the media in China. Everyone is obsessed whether they can raise their child in this, will it kill them, is the food safe. The political leadership actually has to worry about this.
The movie closes by anticipating a gathering of world leaders in Paris this December to discuss environmental policies. What do you think will happen there?
Id like to know. Whatever happens with commercial distribution, were already arranging for a number of screenings in Paris before and during the conference and also other screenings for various political leaderships.
Do you see any hope on the horizon?
People do seem to be moderately optimistic that for the first time well actually make some progress. It wont be perfect or definitive. Its not like well get a treaty this December and then we can all walk away. But people do think theres a good shot at getting to the first step. Part of the reason for that is that people who understand these things are really getting scared. This isnt 50 years ago. We have really serious problems now. Beyond the necessity for it, theres the opportunity we actually can do something about this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsrtB5lp60s
So we did that. Well. Twenty-four hours after this public announcement, the chairman of the Republican National Committee calls a press conference and announces that if the film goes forward, the Republicans will wipe out CNN from all presidential debates and presidential coverage. Twenty-four hours after that, a very senior person in the Democratic party did not call a press conference. They privately called a very senior person at CNN and said, Were not going to announce anything, but if this film goes forward, were going to do the same thing.
-http://forum.healingtaousa.com/general/message/27171/Donald Trump’s views on immigration are getting attention from other Republican presidential hopefuls as well as the press. Senator Lindsay Graham said “We have to reject this demagoguery,” and Governor Rick Perry called Trump’s rhetoric “a toxic mix of demagoguery and nonsense.” Trump responded to Perry’s comment on Twitter with: “He doesn’t understand what the word demagoguery means.”
-http://www.merriam-webster.com/news-trend-watch/demagoguery-2015-07-17Sorry for my broken English
The sad case with this kind of elections is that most of the voters anyway decide with their affections.
HOWDY
In this respect ignorance also means that one doesn’t know enough about economics, accounting, financial theory, banking, international business and law, econometrics, etc.
-http://forum.healingtaousa.com/general/message/27170/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSLEGafuEd4
>>>When pressed on these matters, Bill Clinton
>>>was thoroughly dishonest. Several years ago,
>>>I conversed with him about the subject.
>>>When I asked about his deregulation of
>>>derivatives, he lied beautifully, claiming
>>>that he was forced into it against his will.
>>>Neither Bill nor Hillary ever called for
>>>criminal prosecutions or for breaking
>>>up the banks.
>>>-http://forum.healingtaousa.com/general/message/27167/>>>Clearly not (typical right-wing spin article),
>>>but of course very often these documentarists,
>>>to be themselves successful, have to behave
>>>sanctimoniously.You don’t understand American politics or American government, a somewhat forgivable flaw since you don’t actually live here. But let me clue you in and give you more detail than I gave in my previous post. It is CONGRESS that creates laws, not the President. Congress–both houses–were Republican-dominant, the opposition party to Bill Clinton. So “deregulation of derivatives” was not Bill Clinton, but CONGRESS. Congress drafts the laws, drafts changes in laws, votes on them, and passes them. Only power President has is whether to let it become law or VETO. And even under veto, Congress can still vote again and pass with 2/3 vote without President consent. Since Bill Clinton was from the opposing party (Democrat), Congress was not going to let him make ANY changes HE wanted (by passing bills/laws that he suggested), unless he compromised and agreed to some that Congress passed. Remember it is Congress that has the most power in US, not the President. I was alive as an adult during Bill Clinton’s presidency, and I actually remember what happened, not somebody’s spin from an article (like this Charles Ferguson crap). As an example, Bill Clinton wanted Congress to pass some legislation that would increase taxes on the wealthy (capital-gains tax in particular), which the Republican Congress didn’t want to pass or even vote on. So he had to agree to some things that they wanted which he disliked, so they would agree to do some things he wanted. The only other option–which no President wants to do–is to veto or threaten to veto every Congressional bill that passes his desk, but if a President tries this, then in response Congress refuses to vote on anything the President wants, locks up the whole government and nothing can get done. Well that’s not entirely true, because Congress can get pissed at the President’s refusal to compromise, and then with enough of them upset, they can just get 2/3 vote on everything, passing laws and changing regulations without President involvement. Thus Congress can effectively neuter the President and make him completely incapable of doing anything, if the President is unwilling to compromise and agree to pass some things that he doesn’t like.
So Bill Clinton’s comment “I was forced into it”, is entirely accurate.
To cast the blame on Bill Clinton, when it was Congress, and then to say he was lying, is right-wing spin.Moreover, yes it is true that neither Bill nor Hillary called for criminal prosecutions or breaking up banks, but neither did any of the Republicans either. It’s not something unique to Bill and Hillary. Both Democrat and Republican ignored this, except for people on the far left of the Democratic party, people like today’s Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders (an Independent who caucused with the Democrats). They are the only ones that actually rally against the big banks and corporate power. I personally would pick Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders any day over Hillary if they were options, but without those options Hillary is far better of a candidate than Mr. Trump (or Ted Cruz when he was running as was mentioned) any day of the week. To say that Trump or Cruz is better is more right-wing spin. They are the most extreme neo-conservative far-right candidates that the country has ever seen (former a fascist/nationalist, and latter a Tea Partier/Christian Fundamentalist now out of the race)
I could go sentence-by-sentence and explain why it is right-wing spin and “not documentary”, but it is a thorough chore that I don’t care to do.
But one has to wonder why some guy who lives in Finland (c_howdy) and doesn’t even live in the US, is acting as a shill for the extreme right-wing propaganda machine of the US.
BTW: People who claim they are making “documentaries” often have an agenda. They often like to paint themselves as some kind of hero that is telling people “the real story”, when this is a clever ruse to program people into believing certain things by the way they make their “documentary”.
Note: I’m not even going to address your recent article in this link or your others articles/videos in other links, Charles Ferguson has already disqualified himself in the previous article you posted as providing information worth reading. For me anyway.
S
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