Errol Morris (born February 5, 1948 in Hewlett, New York) is an American Academy Award winning documentary film director. His documentaries are almost invariably recieved with widespread critical acclaim, and the Guardian listed him as number seven in their list of the world's 40 best directors. [1]. His work is characterized by an intense intimacy. At times this intimacy is humorous, leading some critics to accuse Morris of ridiculing his subjects. The humor of his films, however, generaly arrizes from the ways in which his subjects contradict themselves or other each other. Perhaps the most distinctive stylistic feature of an Errol Morris film is the use of his own invention, the Interrortron. The name "Interrortron" was coined by Morris' wife, Julia Sheehan, who, according to Morris, "liked the name because it combined two important concepts — terror and interview." [2] The device is similar to a teleprompter: Errol and his subject each sit facing a camera. The image of each person's face is then projected onto the lense of the other's camera. Instead of looking at a blank lense, then, both Morris and his subject are looking directly at a human face. The feeling of the monologues that Errol captures on film is human and conversational in way that is usually impossible when a person is talking directly to a blank camera lense. Errol has said of the Interrortron, ". . .the beauty of it is that it lets people do what they do best, namely watch TV." [3]
Morris gained fame after the release of The Thin Blue Line, a film arguing that a man convicted of murder in Dallas County, Texas had been convicted wrongfully; the film was submitted as evidence to secure the retrial leading to the man's eventual release. Before his career as a film-maker, Morris was a graduate student at Princeton University and later a Phd candidate at UC Berkeley. Morris left school shortly before finishing his studies, however, to make Gates of Heaven. Morris also spent some years as a private investigator.
He won the Academy Award for Documentary Feature in 2004 for The Fog of War, a life and times of Vietnam-era Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.
In December 2001, the United States' National Film Preservation Foundation announced that Morris' The Thin Blue Line would be one of the 25 films selected that year for preservation in the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress, bringing the total at the time to 325.
In 2002, Morris directed a series of television ads for Apple Computer as part of a "Switch" campaign. In July 2004, Morris agreed to direct a series of ads for the liberal advocacy group MoveOn PAC.
Films by Errol Morris
Morris also had a television show, First Person , with shorter weekly documentary films.
Films about Errol Morris
- Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe
- A Brief History of Errol Morris
External links
Last updated: 08-15-2005 08:57:14
Last updated: 10-29-2005 02:13:46
