the umbrella man

 

Or… sometimes a pipe is just a pipe.

I’ve long had an admiration for errol morris, a filmmaker who seems to just keep getting better (I hate him too!) – his The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara was (and is) just a marvel.

But his writing for the NYT is what really put me in awe of the man.  Through a series of writings (I think they’re eventually going into a book) he looked at the unexamined or the things that everyone takes for granted, and then proceeds to tear assumptions into little bits, or to reveal something really extraordinary behind the scenes.  This is what I try to do, but I’m definitely not in his league.

Time passes.  I don’t generally watch the NYT video stuff, but something about the title of the featured one struck me as interesting (“the umbrella man”), and when I looked, there he was again, with a little 5 minute short piece.

I highly recommend this little mini-documentary (which may look longer, but the incredibly long and humorous credits for the bit run for about a minute.)

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/11/21/opinion/100000001183275/the-umbrella-man.html

dan