1. Errol Morris
Curious is the word that comes to mind when I read or think about Errol Morris. No
doubt that he is somewhat of a character, but it is his intractable curiosity that makes him
great. His record suggests that although quite intelligent, he has at times lacked the drive
or ambition to complete things. He tried to talk his way into several prestigious graduate
programs after graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a degree in
History. Turned down by Harvard and Yale, he gained entrance to Princeton where he
enjoyed a brief sojourn studying the history of physics.
He left Princeton and ended up at University of California at Berkeley pursuing a PhD in
Philosophy. As his disenchantment with Philosophy grew he became more of a regular at
the Pacific Film Archive, where he was recognized as a film noir enthusiast. Inspired by
the film Psycho he visited Plainfield, Wisconsin in 1975.
While in Wisconsin he had many interviews with Ed Gein, an infamous serial killer. He
and Werner Herzog made plans to return to Plainfield the next summer and dig up Gein’s
mother testing the theory that Gein himself had already dug her up. Morris had plans for
a film or a book and the next year conducted many interviews. He never completed the
project. Herzog then challenged him with a $2000 cash gift. Morris used the money to go
to Vernon, Florida otherwise known as Nub City. This name came from a particular form
of insurance fraud in which the city’s residents engaged. They deliberately amputated a
limb to collect the insurance payment. In this way they created a city of well to do
citizens with nubs instead of healthy limbs.
Morris’ second documentary movie was about the town of Vernon, but it made no
mention of the insurance scam and the nickname of “Nub City.” While working on a film
that he had tentatively named Nub City, he read a headline in the SF Chronicle that said,
“450 DEAD PETS GONG TO NAPA VALLEY.” Morris immediately left for Napa and
began working on the film that would become his first feature, Gates of Heaven.

2. Werner Herzog promised to cook and eat his shoe if Morris completed the project. This
to inspire and challenge Morris whom Herzog viewed as incapable of following through
on projects that he had conceived. Les Blank made a documentary film of the pubic shoe
eating.
Morris became interested in Dr. James Grigson who was a psychiatrist living in Texas
who made a comfortable living testifying for the prosecution that defendants who were
guilty were likely to commit violent crimes in their future if not put to death. His
vigorous testimony had earned him the name “Dr. Death.” Through and because of
Grigson, Morris met the subject of his next film, Randall Dale Adams.
At about this time Morris had been working as a private investigator for a well know
agency that specialized in Wall Street Cases. Bringing together his investigative skills
and his obsessions with murder, narration, and epistemology, Morris went to work on the
Randall Adams case in earnest. Eventually Adams was found innocent and released from
death row. The film that Morris had made, The Thin Blue Line,” was popularly accepted
as the force behind getting his subject out of prison.
Morris said of the film that it was two movies grafted together. The first was the film
about “did he do it or not.” The second and on a much different level was an essay on
false history. (Italics added) The film was very positively received making many critics
top ten lists from 1988. It won documentary of the year from the New York Film Critics
Circle and the National Society of Film Critics.

3. Morris career as filmmaker and director has grown and prospered over the years. One of
his more recent films was Standard Operating Procedure, a film about the abuses of Abu
Ghraib prison. His latest short film is about the man who was the only one with an open
umbrella at the site of the Kennedy assassination in November 1963. Over time he has
made many short commercial spots. Some have been for political candidates, others
strictly commercial.
In 2004, Morris won the Oscar for Best Documentary for his film about the life and
career of Robert S. McNamara, famous for being one of the major proponents and
architects of the Vietnam War. McNamara’s complex characteristics, and his conflicts
with General Curtis LeMay were brought out. How these interacted to produce his
responses to the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam issues were carefully presented
helping with understanding how McNamara became the historical Secretary of Defense
that he was.
Roger Ebert has said, "After twenty years of reviewing films, I haven't found another
filmmaker who intrigues me more...Errol Morris is like a magician, and as great a
filmmaker as Hitchcock or Fellini." Recently, the Guardian listed him as one of the ten
most important film directors in the world.
Morris has for several years been writing about the verisimilitude of photographs. These
essays of analysis have been published in the New York Times and can be found on that
paper’s web site. They are of particular interest to those who engage in thinking or
writing about photography. Recently a number of these essays were collected and
published as a book entitled Believing is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of
Photography. When it became apparent that there were two photos of Fenton’s Valley of
Death, Morris went to the extreme of visiting the Crimea and finding the road in the
photo. After much study he concluded that it actually made little difference and trying to
discern which photo was a bit of a fool’s errand.
In the photo shown below, there is one with many cannon balls and the other has none in
the roadway. It has always been the story that Fenton paid soldiers to collect unexploded
cannon balls and place them in the road. In the other the road is obviously cleared, which
is the real photo and which is the “posed” one? Does it actually make a difference?
Morris decided it did not.
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4. For his interviews Errol has developed and refined a device called The Interrotron, a
device similar to a teleprompter. Errol and the subject each sit facing a camera. The
image of each person’s face is then projected onto a two-way mirror positioned in front
of the lens of the other’s camera., so instead of looking at the blank lens, each person is
looking directly at a human face. Morris believes that the machine helps to explore the
relationship between "monologue and language, and how people present themselves to
camera, and express themselves to camera.
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6. In an Op-Ed piece in the NYTimes in July 2008, Morris deals with the issue of the
“digitally altered photograph.” The photo in question is: “A picture that purports to show
four missiles being fired rather than the three shown in other photographs of the
launching. Are we to infer that no missiles were launched? Or just three? Or maybe only
two? Take several steps back. Are we being tricked into thinking that Iran is a bigger
threat than it is?”
Morris asks how this controversy became international news. He asks if we are on the

7. brink of another war? He recalls the bellicose posturing and the photographs that led us to
war in Iraq. And he recalls Colin Powell displaying photographs of Iraq showing
incontrovertible evidence of WMD. We now know that this was false. According to
Morris, “We don’t need advanced digital tools to mislead, to misdirect or to confuse. All
we need is a willingness to uncritically believe.” Morris continues, “The alteration of
photos for propaganda purposes has been with us as long as photography itself; it is not
an invention of the digital age. But while digitally altered photographs can easily fool the
eye, they often leave telltale footprints that allow them to be unmasked as forgeries.” The
low quality Photoshop-ing is shown in the second image above.
As stated earlier, the alteration of photos for propaganda purposes has been with us as
long as photography itself. It certainly does not require Photoshop skills or digital

8. photography. In the series shown above, Stalin is accompanied by three officials, then
two, then one, as they successively fall out of favor and are cropped and airbrushed into
non-existence. (In the end, in a painting based on the photograph, he stands alone.) We
understand Stalin’s intentions by removing comrades, but what is the purpose of these
Iranian missile photographs? They are clearly altered. The question remains: Why, and to
what end?
There is the same question re: the missiles photos from the government of Iran. Morris
closes his essay: “The photographs tell us little about the real threat of Iran. The danger
here is not in three missiles versus four. We do not understand the intentions behind the
photograph — real or digitally manipulated. Is it a threat? A warning? Or a bluff? All we
really know about the photograph is that the government of Iran wanted to get the
attention of the world, and it succeeded.”
There are other materials on his web site that might have special application in teaching a
class of photography students. The editorials are all plainly written and speak to
important topics. There are links to trailers or excerpts of each of his movies, which are
enjoyable and might lead some to actually view the full movie. Book reviews and reports
of failed projects are also present.
There are four characteristics that make Errol Morris the successful intellectual and critic
that he is. Exposure to people of his sort is important to students, especially today in the
time of instant access to tid-bits of information—I confess, I got most of these “facts”
from Wikipedia.
Errol Morris is first and foremost curious about both people and the world they inhabit.
Secondly he is committed. He traveled to the Crimea to visit the road shown in Fenton’s
photo “the Valley of Death” in hopes of resolving which of the several photographs was
the “photo.” Third, he is creative; and fourth, he is intelligent. He thinks about things he
sees or hears. He often makes a plan to pursue it. He writes well. His prose is uncluttered.
I find his website interesting and useful. I recommend it.