If you want to know the true story about why gasoline prices are
$4.25 per gallon, check out the gripping new documentary GasHole when it comes
to your movie theatre, hopefully this Fall. Two creative
actor/directors, Scott Roberts and Jeremy Wagener, are the force behind
this amazing flick that’s opening in New York and LA in October, and
San Francisco on September 9th. They’re hoping for a
national run too.
GasHole’s great review in Variety
talks about how the director/producer combo have been showing the film
all summer to sellout crowds across the country with the help of clean
air groups. Variety says: "Infuriating….Hard Hitting…GASHOLE
stands to rise in direct proportion to gas costs." This film puts all
the pieces together, including the
story of Shell Oil tried to demolish its valuable Bakersfield refinery
before a few of us, including Senator Boxer and former Attorney General
Bill Lockyer, got involved to keep the refinery running. The new owner
Flying J has even pumped up the refinery’s capacity.
Here’s the Variety review. Let’s hope the GasHole debate becomes front and center in the presidential debates soon.
GasHole
(Documentary)
By ROB NELSONA Film Racket release of a Braint Media/JK production. Produced by
Jeremy Wagener, Scott D. Roberts. Executive producers, Kevin Lange,
Fred Sharif, Edward J. Rossi, Kathy Alcaraz. Co-producer, Jessica Moon
Wagener. Directed, written, edited by Jeremy Wagener, Scott D. Roberts.
With: Joshua Jackson, Curtis Wright, Sherwood Boehlert, Anna Eshoo, Jamie Court, Mark Brinkerhoff, Les Manns, Brian Pauwels.
Narrator: Peter Gallagher.
As paying at the pump gets pricier by the day, the well-timed "GasHole"
fuels driving concerns about Big Oil greed, domestic dependence on
foreign crude, the global economy, and, not least, the environment.
Alternatively powered by public-domain footage as well as talking heads
and voiceover narration, the shrewdly produced and principled docu has
compelled Republican filmmakers Jeremy Wagener and Scott D. Roberts to
take their self-distributed show on the road, ironically or not, with
stops in U.S. cities skedded through summer’s end. Pic’s value stands
to rise in direct proportion to gas costs, which show little sign of
decreasing soon.
Film opens in historical mode with archival proclamations from
Presidents Nixon, Ford and Carter, the last of whom, circa 1980,
presciently identifies the "clear and present danger" of U.S. addiction
to Mideast pipelines. There will be blood, pic asserts, whenever
there’s oil, drawing evidence not just from the current war in Iraq but
also from the mysterious demises of early veggie-oil fan Rudolf Diesel
and vapor-engine pioneer Tom Ogle, who got 100 miles to the gallon in
the Lone Star state before turning up dead of an unlikely drug
overdose. (Current oil executives unsurprisingly declined to speak on
camera about these or any other matters.)Conspiracy theorizing, though, is kept to a relative minimum as
contempo interviewees — from economic historian Les Manns to
"biodiesel fuel consumer" and "Dawson’s Creek" alum Joshua Jackson —
help sketch the century-old rapacity of Standard Oil and the
increasingly incestuous relations between auto and oil industries.
Coming across as a George Clooney-in-training, Jackson smartly
acknowledges Big Oil’s basic moneymaking agenda while accusing
price-gouging corporations of exploiting working people and doing undue
damage to both environment and economy.Some of the pic’s points register as obvious and infuriating at once;
hardest-hitting are the passages that point to oil execs’ use of 9/11
and Hurricane Katrina to post record profits, and to their strategies,
twice defended before Congress, of reducing domestic refinery capacity
by way of pumping up revenue.Despite Peter Gallagher’s occasionally sputtering narration ("How did
things get to be like this?"), the vehicle runs smoother than 2006’s
wobbly investigation "Who Killed the Electric Car?" Docu, albeit
pro-biodiesel, avoids entering the ethanol debate in earnest,
preferring to suggest that any alternative to wanton petrol-guzzling
bears consideration. So, too, "GasHole" surprises by drawing quotes
from the bipartisan pool, even excerpting President Bush’s 2006 call to
reduce oil imports from Mideast. Footage of outraged consumers waving
placards that read "Oil $$ Out of Congress" won’t likely delight all
viewers, however.Blown up from DV, the 35mm print making current rounds looks light on
color, but not enough to dull pic’s timely message. Other tech credits,
including snippets of illustrative animation, are no more than adequate.