What A Way To Go
Tonight we traveled to Blue Heron Farm for a preview of Tim Bennett and Sally Erickson's upcoming movie, What A Way to Go.
It was an intriguing collection of people, thirty to forty by my count, gathered on a screen porch on a hot August night with fans a-whirring.
Part fundraiser, part feedback session, part preview, it was a remarkable evening. We took the boys along, and they were the only children in the audience. We find that happens a lot.
Most of the biodiesel demographic that we hang with are childless—either too young and unsettled, or too perturbed by the state of the world to procreate. And the children of tonight’s crowd have mostly grown up and moved away.
From the brief preview, I was blown away by What A Way To Go. Tim fuses childhood footage with animation, stills, and archival footage to throw a tremendous punch. He takes the perspective of the Average Joe, raised in a typical Michigan family with security and traditional values, who starts daydreaming at the drive thru about the world ending in a nuclear strike, and who goes on to contemplate environmental degradation, and the state of the world as he finds it.
I had to depart early to help get the boys to bed, and my only feedback was that environmental “doom and gloom” is well covered, and that we need solutions. I’m not sure the filmmakers care about that, which is fine—it’s their film.
But that is a general complaint of mine about the current body of literature that I have encountered. Tim started the preview with a nod and a wink to the cannon of literature that informs his work—and I have read a bunch of the titles that he referenced. My complaint is that there are many books that are long on “doom and gloom,” and pack their solutions into a quick last chapter. Jared Diamond does this in Collapse. It’s an amazing analysis of the downfall of past civilizations, but the solutions he offers for us to stem our own collapse are quick, cryptic, and largely non-existent. Ross Gelbspan, and Jeremy Rifkin are guilty of the same charge. It’s not good enough to enumerate all of the human caused world problems for the first 7/8 of the book, and conclude with “we need to switch to clean renewable energy” in the conclusion.
How we make the switch is the key. I have found that the little things, like having to lift a 45 pound carboy, and pour it successfully into the Dodge, inform my thinking about successful energy transitions.
On the way home we talked out loud about whether or not it is better to insulate children from problems, or include them. Tami tends to insulate. I tend to be wide open. So the boys get both. At the same time, the boys are perpetually offering ideas and solutions that fry my mind. Unencumbered by education, their suggestions for societal/mechanical/industrial change can be remarkable. While it is true that their old man spent most of his life frittering away precious hydrocarbons, oblivious to the consequences of his actions, they may have a chance of really getting it.
In some ways What A Way To Go is a similar message. My guess is that Tim’s drive thru days are behind him. And now he is making a remarkable movie.
Posted by Lyle at August 20, 2005 10:41 PM
