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![]() Gashole The film's central problem is lying, first by omission and then, later, and in at least one deeply and polemically telling case, by straight-up misrepresentation. In the first case (the first 20+ minutes), the filmmaker's tell the story of Tom Ogle who, they claim, invented the "vapor" carburetor during America's energy shortage in the 1970s. Ogle, Roberts and Wegener claim (based on an incredibly naive interview with a geriatric "witness"), made an incredible technological breakthrough that would allow standard combustion-engine automobiles get 200 miles per gallon. The "breakthrough" is glorified by the neat trick of animating in three dimensions a 2D patent office drawing. The problem is that Ogles' 1970s patent (if there was one) is one of many hundreds that claim to make "dramatic increases in fuel efficiency," according to William D. Siuru in a newcarbuyers.com article called "200 MPR Carburetor: Suppressed Technology or Urban Legend?" Not only is Ogles' patent one of hundreds making similar claims, but his exact story is already old by the 1970s. It goes like this: loner-outsider makes a significant technical innovation; makes a proud display of proof of concept resulting in immediate public acceptance of same (by, for instance, driving with "unbiased" companions X distance on Y amount of fuel); is subsequently offered membership in the multi-millionaires' club if he will but exclusively sell and then won't share his knowledge; then mysteriously dies (or, more rarely, disappears) when the genius moves to share his knowledge with the masses. According to urban-myth busters Snopes, and other sources, this particular story first appears in 1922. In the 1930s, the most famous vapor carb case features Charles Pogue, a Canadian inventor. Why don't Roberts and Wegener at least mention these observations and facts? Well, because, they are busy innovating a new kind of "documentary" that is as old as the hills. It's called snake oil and, as I watched this film, I wondered many times if it weren't disinformation hired for and propagated by the oil companies themselves. On the surface, that's a nutty, conspiratorial idea. After all, Gashole The oil companies are indeed hated, and thought to be price-fixing bastards who ruin our vacations by making it too expensive to drive. Gas is actually when of the lesser items in most household budgets but, because we are bad at math and emotionally susceptible to the price of gas because we have to have it, we'll actually drive miles out of the way to save a few cents per gallon. In the process, we'll have spent more than we saved but we feel better. PR firms capitalize on our emotions and get us to focus on things that we feel we should have control of -- like how much we spend on gas. The problem is, while certainly raking in lots of dough on gasoline, oil companies make vastly more on fuel for industrial purposes, including the manufacture of plastics (see Plastic Planet In Gashole The film's writers (Roberts and Wegener) mask their extraordinarily shallow research with well-documented methods of signifying truth, e.g. historical footage and, when no other proof is available, still photos that illustrate the narrator's and interviewees' points. Roberts and Wegener, though, who also claim editorial responsibility for this mess, use only stock images widely available on the 'net and which are only rarely illustrative of the matter under discussion. Like hacks everywhere, the filmmakers deploy statistics to their own advantage. In one scene deep in the muddle, Gashole Why would this pair of filmmakers engage in such transparently stupid narrative if they weren't trying to pull the wool over our eyes? The film is outrageously dismissive of fact and narrative structure, and is full of truly ugly stock footage that in no way serves the shambling story the writers may (or may not) be trying to tell. Whether this is just crappy filmmaking or some sort of bad PR move on the oil companies' part, it's a shame that Cinema Libre, a great distribution company that releases lots of cool stuff, fell for this piece of crap. |
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