LAT: Warmer Al Gore finds a new stump (film at Sundance Festival)

[DeepModem Mom]

Warmer Al Gore finds a new stump
Former vice president asserts his global warming warnings in a documentary.
By Tina Daunt, Times Staff Writer


....To borrow a cliché from the Hollywood marketing playbook, the new global warming documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" stars the former vice president as you've never seen him before.

Al Gore wheeling his own suitcase through airports, taking off his shoes and emptying his pockets at security. Al Gore firing up crowds with his one-man PowerPoint presentation show on arctic melt rates, devastating heat waves and dangerous changes in ocean currents.

Al Gore cracking jokes, reflecting candidly on his own foibles.

The failed presidential candidate doesn't immediately come to mind as the kind of charismatic star Hollywood might turn to to dramatize a pet cause. But his quest caught the attention of a group of filmmakers — among them "Pulp Fiction" producer Lawrence Bender — who have translated it to the screen in a documentary slated to premiere Tuesday at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

Although the 90-minute documentary might not sell out the multiplexes, the screening has sold out at Sundance and Gore's appearances around the country are drawing throngs. Last week at Vanderbilt University in Gore's hometown of Nashville, 1,100 people filled a large auditorium, with 300 turned away by fire marshals....


http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/cl-et-gore18jan18,0,883893.story?coll=la-tot-promo&track=widget

[Brundle_Fly]

1. WHOOO HOOOO

[Viva_La_Revolution]

2. I saw him in Portland. So many people were being turned away...

he did a second speech. :)

[PDX Bara]

9. I did too

The slide show was excellent. It was so heartbreaking to see Mt. Kilimanjaro nearly naked.

[alfredo]

10. I spent many days looking at that mountain

I was going to climb the mountain while in Tanzania, but I didn't have enough time left on my visa.

Here's a grainy shot of the mountain I took while there in 1969. This was from the south. I was staying in the town of Moshie Tanzania. It dominates the countryside. You have to be there to really see how big it is. Moshie is on a rise so there is a vast valley between it and the mountain. I never thought that I would see the day that the snow would leave its peak.

[Canuckistanian]

3. What? Not the "Angry Al Gore"?

Good for him! :thumbsup:

[0rganism]

5. Or the "stiff wooden Al Gore"...

...or the "reinventing himself daily with a new necktie" Al Gore...

...or any of the other chimeric Al Gores the "liberal" newsmedia chose to use as smears for the REAL Al Gore, who is turning out to be quite the ex-VP.

[Mabus]

4. I knew about Laurie David's involvement

but I didn't know people like "Pulp Fiction" producer Lawrence Bender and Jeff Skoll's Participant Productions were also involved. Wow.

[farmboxer]

6. I have always liked President Gore

CNN has proven they are extremely biased against President Gore. They know he won in 2000, yet they refused to report it.

[Democat]

7. Imagine Al Gore as our president!

How can anyone not have sympathy for this man who won and then had the presidency stolen from him?

[lapfog_1]

8. You know... when the whole CA recall election came about...

I was wishing (and even wrote Mr. Gore a letter) that he would re-locate to CA (we have lax residency requirements) and put his name on the list of candidates (not that Gray Davis deserved to be recalled, but I knew that it would happen, it was just a question of who would replace him). For his platform, I wanted Al Gore to propose a radical energy policy for CA, that we would re-regulate it, that we would float a very large bond measure ($150 Billion) to develop a distributed solar electric system, and we would re-engineer the grid to be much more de-centralized, upgrade the grids carrying efficiency by a huge amount, and explore a number of electrical storage systems, including distributed flywheels, pumping water uphill, and underground storage of pressurized gases (air). All with the single aim of make CA completely self sufficient in electric generation and vastly reduce the amount of greenhouse gases emitted. And, oh yeah, give more tax breaks to those that reduce consumption by employing more energy efficient appliances and lighting.

Silly dream...

Still, I wish he had originally been from this state, he might have at least considered the option.

Gov of CA (especially a net electricity exporting CA) might be nearly as important as being what he was really elected to be... our President.

BTW, having been in a few meetings with him back when he was VP... I can tell you that he is very articulate and knowledgeable about a huge range of subjects... and a really nice guy who is not "full of himself"... certainly not like the arrogant assholes we got instead.

[Lisa]

11. they're using the airport search anecdotes? That's awesome!

I knew that this film was going to be a good hard look at global warming, but I wasn't expecting wicked satire as well! I'll have to change my view from "anticipation" to "really, really looking forward to seeing this". I might just have to go to the States to see it!