The Benshi

The prestigious and esteemed Bulletin of Atomic Scientists — a journal that published the writings of Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer — decided to lower their standards and have me join a Roundtable Discussion on “The Political Distortion of Science.”

BULLETIN OF ATOMIC SCIENTISTS.  Rick Perry’s climate science defying comments in an early Republican Presidential debate prompted the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists to invite Roger Pielke, Jr., Robert Socolow and me to weigh in on “The Political Distortion of Science.”for the m

otherland

THE NON-DEFENSE OF SCIENCE

A couple of months ago, primarily in response to Rick Perry’s ridiculous comments about climate science, I was invited to join a Roundtable Discussion on the topic of, “The Political Distortion of Science,” by The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. It’s a publication I’ve known about for a long time because of their famous “Doomsday Clock,” which is a great and powerful simple representation of how close we are to global thermonuclear warfare. In the 1980’s, when we had a blustery actor as our President, the clock became a major media item, moving minute by minute closer to midnight as Reagan talked tough with the Soviets.

Joining the Roundtable are climate policy analysts Roger Pielke Jr. and Robert Socolow — impressive company for a guy like me who makes global warming comedies and movies about dodos. I know Roger and am a fan of his. I had a great time speaking in his graduate course last year at University of Colorado then was on a panel discussion with him at the Arctic Workshop in Winter Park. I haven’t met Robert Socolow, but certainly know his very important work along with Stephen Pacala on the “climate wedges“approach to solving our climate problems.

The Bulletin just completed posting our first round of essays and after reading what the other two wrote, I’m a little concerned this is going to turn out to be more of an agreement session than any sort of debate. At least for this first round all I can think to do is second pretty much all of what the other two guys have said. Roger talks about the importance of fairness and honesty in winning the trust of the public — I couldn’t agree more. And Robert discusses the importance of not letting science be talked about as “just another point of view.” That strikes a deep chord with me — there was an editorial written in my community by a local newspaper editor in relation to an environmental issue in which the editor argued that today, “scientists are no different from lawyers.” Grrrr … It still sticks in my craw. Just isn’t true. And Socolow does a nice job of explaining why.

Anyhow, if you get the chance I recommend you read all three essays, then stay tuned as there will be two further rounds in which we get to comment on what each other has said (though I just gave away what my first response is likely to be).

Listen my children and yee shall hear … the voice of Hollywood, emanating from deeeep in its bowels …

DREAM BREAKER. I get a lot of emails from science folks pitching their ideas to me for big Hollywood projects (as if I’m the right guy to talk to) or asking advice on how to turn their screenplay into a movie. I try to be nicer than the bastards who stomped on my dreams 20 years ago. But that said … Rodney was right (see below). And if you have any doubts, just read what this agent wrote to me last week. (but also keep in mind that after 20 years I’m still smiling — just look at the Oprah spot)

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IT’S A ROTTEN PLACE

The first year I was studying acting, one of the women in my class was cast in a movie with Rodney Dangerfield. I visited her on the set a bunch of times, filming just north of Los Angeles. Rodney (who would arrive stoned in his limo every morning and spend most of the day in his bathrobe with dark socks and street shoes) took a liking to her. In between takes he would wander over to her and say, “Get out now, kid, it’s a ROTTEN business!”

Truer words were never spoken. I’ve spent 20 years with one foot in Hollywood and one foot still in academia. It’s that second foot that enabled me to still laugh about all the rejection last spring when I filmed this little “Everyday Visionaries” spot for the Oprah Winfrey Network show, “Visionaries: Inside the Creative Mind.” They aired my spot this past Sunday night in the middle of the really, really good hour long segment they did about James Cameron. I strongly recommend you watch the entire show, as well as the previous episode about fashion designer Tom Ford which was equally outstanding.

But the best piece of commentary I’ve read in the past week comes from inside the belly of the beast — from a major Hollywood agent friend of mine who has been an agent with one of “the Big Three” agencies for more than a decade. I wrote to him last week pitching the idea of a biopic about an adventurer friend who has an amazing life story. Here’s what he wrote back (typos and all). It may seem dark and cynical. In fact, it IS dark and cynical. But if you’re one of those people (like I was 20 years ago) who often thinks, “Hollywood should do a movie about …” here’s the harsh, cold, ugly, unvarnished truth for you. Beware.

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Its like, there are so many stories out there that could go a thousand different ways, mostly they turn into a boring bio pics. that lose money. So to invest the money studios do, they want someone who they know can deliver (aaron Sorkin and David Fincher) and even then they tend to want it to be about Steve Jobs, which is the hot assignment right now or in the prior case Facebook.

If you have a lights out script that blows people’s mind, that isn’t about a subject with a failing track record(IE the middle east wars.) you may have a shot there too, but people better totally flip.

127 hours btw only grossed $60mil world wide. Not a lot for a global release
Hurtlocker grossed $50 mil world wide. Even less.

Its fine and well people in LA and NY like to talk about these movies over cocktails but in a world where it costs a mint just to market these pictures, they financially are damn tough.

If they are getting into something like that, they want it to be Social network that did $225M WW.

I shit you not, baring guys like [James] Cameron of which there are about 5-10 people with anywhere near that juice, almost every project is freaking existing IP driven stuff. Meaning Robocop remake, Fast and the furious 6, Transformers 4, Ouiji (based on the board game), Battleship (also based on the board game), Highlander remake, 2 snow white movies, Cinderella, a 300 sequel about Xerses, The Man from Uncle remake, Cannon ball run remake, The secret life of walter mitty remake. You would fucking laugh and then never try again in Hollywood if you saw the grid list of stuff out there, sometimes we just laugh.

We are along way from the 70’s and Chinatown. A long long way.

I’ll be giving a talk about the climate movement that will probably not win me any friends

The World Wildlife Fund turns 50 this year which they are celebrating with a symposium on conservation science. They’ve made the potentially embarrassing decision to invite me to speak about communicating environmental issues and I’ve decided to focus on climate. Yeeks!

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DUDE, WHERE’S MY CLIMATE MOVEMENT?

In 2004 the World Wildlife Fund sponsored a star-studded event that I put together at Raleigh Studios which we called simply Hollywood Ocean Night. It was a tremendous evening featuring celebrities in the audience including Dustin Hoffman and Ben Stiller (they were in the middle of shooting “Meet the Fockers“). There were just two speakers for the evening — the extremely charismatic pair of Dr. Jeremy Jackson (my Shifting Baselines co-founder who had also become a board member for WWF) and Dr. Daniel Pauly who is pretty much the greatest fisheries biologist alive today. Together they charmed and seduced the crowd with two short talks then a panel discussion during which Ben Stiller painfully asked whether we really need to give up eating shrimp (the simple answer 7 years later is nope, everybody’s plundering the oceans these days so don’t worry about it).

The talks were followed by a sustainable seafood reception. We also debuted 4 short films I wrote and directed with the Groundlings Improv Comedy Theater including the popular “No Seafood Grille 2050” (starring Wendi McLendon-Covey of “Reno 911!” and Mitch Silpa of my movie, “Sizzle“) and the “Senate Hearing on Coral Bleaching” (starring current comedy superstar Melissa McCarthy and her and “Bridesmaids” co-star, husband Ben Falcone) It was great night which was captured in this 5 minute video.

One of the most amazing and memorable aspects of the evening was that it turned out to be a living demonstration of the 4th chapter of my book, “Don’t Be So Unlikeable.” People ALWAYS bitch about “you can’t hit the audience with gloom and doom.” WRONG again. Jeremy and Daniel that night presented NOTHING but bad news, gloomy and doomy as possible. BUT … they delivered it with so much style, wit, humor, friendliness and we wrapped it all in an elegant package that EVERYONE thoroughly enjoyed themselves. I remember talking to people at the end as they were leaving, all with big smiles as they raved about what a great event it was. And even asked a few, “do you realize the entire event was nothing but bad news?” They just said, “yeah, what a bummer, it’s given me a lot to think about,” then left with smiles. That’s how you do it. Package the bad news in a likeable package and people won’t mind listening to it at all. (as opposed to having some overbearing Debbie Downer browbeating the audience about what “you people” have done).

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CAREFUL WHAT YOU DIDN’T WISH FOR

So now they’ve asked me to speak at their big 50th Anniversary celebration on Nov. 17 which will be held at National Geographic’s headquarters. It’s open to the public, but you need to make an RSVP. And as for what I’ll be talking about … well, just look at my title — the schedule is here.

Going to AGU in S.F.? We’re putting together a really fun event with two of my film school classmates on Tue. Dec. 6

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THE S FACTOR PANEL: Okay, we admit, it’s a cheesy title and video, by choice. But the three of us were film school classmates at U.S.C. (class of ’97) and this is going to be a lot of fun. Jason Ensler (the surprise filmmaker) is a long time director in Hollywood (currently producer and director of the popular TNT show, “Franklin and Bash“), Sean is a veteran screenwriter (horror flicks in the franchises of Halloween, The Crow, and a co-writer of the recent “Conan the Barbarian” remake), and me (a guy who dreams of being one of them). I’m really looking forward to it.

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SEND IN YOUR VIDEOS

We’ll be running a 3 hour workshop on the evening of Tuesday, Dec. 6 in San Francisco at the American Geophysical Union annual conference at the Moscone Convention Center. If you’re planning to attend the meeting, we want you to send us your video of 5 minutes or less. We’ll be choosing 10 of them, each of which will be “workshopped” (our cheesy catchall phrase for the promo video) meaning we’ll show your video to the audience, the three of us will be like American Idol judges, offering up our analysis of what is both good and what could use more work in the video, then we’ll moderate questions and answers with the filmmakers.

It will be an informal, low pressure event — more of a conversation than any sort of formal presentation. And I for one am REALLY looking forward to hearing what my other two panelists have to say — they are smart and creative guys with a great deal of experience.

EVERYONE IS INVITED TO ATTEND! Send in your videos by this Friday. For details visit: www.AGUsFactor.org

SEE YOU IN SAN FRANCISCO!!!

No gloating, just relief — the court system does work, and the efforts of a lot of very dedicated people have been upheld

WIPEOUT. The opponents to the Malibu Lagoon Restoration Project lost in court. It’s pretty much that simple. The project will go forward next June. Unless they come up with some other tactic.

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YOU PEOPLE AND YOUR “KNOWLEDGE”

For the past year I’ve been involved with this local issue of the restoration of the Malibu Lagoon. What drew me in was hearing the same sort of anti-science language you hear from climate skeptics — the same sort of “doubt casting” that Naomi Oreskes (in her excellent book with Erik Conway, “Merchants of Doubt”) and others have documented so well. I got so tired of hearing the distortions (speaking of which, I have an essay coming next week as part of a Roundtable Discussion in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists about the political distortion of science — stay tuned!) that last spring I made a simple 5 minute video addressing 5 “myths” put forward by the opponents of the project. There was also this very good piece in Outside Magazine.

I don’t want to weigh in on the motivations of the opponents — I know a lot of them feel very passionately about protecting the local wildlife from any harm. I only want to say that A LOT of very decent people worked very hard for over a decade doing the best they could in crafting this project. No one felt particularly great about the idea that part of the lagoon has to be dug up to improve the flow, but the science pointed in that direction. It was all set to begin last June until a local group suddenly began an 11th hour objection campaign and managed to get an injunction until they could have their lawsuit heard, which is what happened.

Today, in court in San Francisco, the judge basically threw their whole case out. End of story. Hopefully.

It was a good day for science and civility.

The climate movement needs to follow in Steve Jobs footsteps, go to India for 7 months, and see if they can grasp the concept of intuition.

THINK DIFFERENT. He did.

apple a day

THE GREAT SPIRITUAL ONES ALSO HAVE INTUITION

This past Sunday on “60 Minutes” they presented an in-depth look at the recently deceased Steve Jobs through the perspective of his biographer, former Time Magazine editor, Walter Isaacson. He told about one of the key experiences in the life of Jobs. He had been grinding away working at Atari, frustrated. Then he took a leave and spent seven months wandering across India looking for spiritual enlightenment. And he found it.

Isaacson says:

“And when he comes back he says, “The main thing I’ve learned is intuition, that the people of India are not just pure rational thinkers, that the great spiritual ones also have intuition. Likewise, the simplicities of Zen Buddhism, really informed his design sense. That notion that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

He got it. It’s 50% of what mass communication is about. Not knowing every single fact and detail and conveying it, but rather having the intuitive ability to distill it all down into it’s simplest elements.

The entire climate movement needs to take a seven month trip to India and see if they can get a clue about intuition cause they sure ain’t got it so far.

I have said this for a long time — you have to meet irrationality with irrationality. This is a PERFECT example.

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American environmentalists, take note. This is how you deal with people you deem irrational, in a likeable manner. You don’t yell at them red faced and accuse them of being guilty of crimes against humanity. You meet them with equal and opposite absurdity. Yes, using humor to deal with them may not seem like a perfect solution, but it’s better than the anger thing that simply doesn’t work and just makes people dislike you even more than the skeptic.

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LIGHTEN UP

Last year, I recommended that serious scientists and climate activists not engage in serious “debates” with climate skeptics. It just doesn’t make sense to say, “I think you are irrational, but now I’m going to try and use rational thinking to debate you.” If you think someone is irrational, then the thing to do is confront them with an equal and opposite irrational force, such as humor. And that’s exactly what these folks with this Borat piece have done, with a brilliant premise.

The world needs more of this. But unfortunately it seems to originate only with the British and Australians.

Imagine if reducing carbon emissions were somehow associated with a holiday. That’s what CDC has managed to do with their formerly-dull topic of “disaster preparedness” — they’ve now pegged it to Halloween, and things will never be the same

A DEADLY SERIOUS TOPIC FOR THIS HALLOWEEN. The CDC’s Zombie Preparedness Campaign may sound like a bunch of silliness, but in truth it’s as serious as the deadliest infectious diseases they study. This Halloween they are releasing a graphic novel about zombies and disaster preparation. Disaster preparedness is a difficult mission and deserving of resorting to any means necessary to make it happen — even if you have to stoop to employing a topic that makes other people think you’re just having fun. The folks behind this campaign are not doing it for fun. I know. I’ve spoken to them. It’s A LOT of work. But worth it.

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A 99% SUCCESS

This is another installment in our on-going observations of “Communication Brilliance In-progress.” I’ve written twice about the savvy of the small group at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta (here and here) who managed to take a topic that had become deeply institutionally entrenched as “hopelessly dull” (with the prevailing attitude of “you can’t get people motivated about a threat that isn’t present”) and through a little creativity and courage have converted $87 of effort into $3.4 million of free media exposure.

The juggernaut rolls on this morning with USAToday running a feature article on their front page about the next item in the campaign, a graphic novel for Halloween. Look at how good these people are. They only came up with the entire idea for this campaign in May. But no sooner did they conceive it than they moved it to the next level with appearances at Comic-con in NYC and Dragon Con in Atlanta. And now, in less than six months from inception have put together a graphic novel. They are hustling!

This is a true 99% total success. Not 100%. That would pretty much be impossible given the way the human brain is programmed. You just can’t please 100% of the people. Rarely has there ever been such an enormous public health mass communication success as this campaign (just look at the value/spending ratio of 3.4 million to 87, plus it won the prestigious Wow Innovation Award at the Platinum P.R. Awards), and yet … here’s a person I found commenting on a blog who hates them for having a little fun while others are suffering.

“I am so glad the CDC has its priorities straight. God knows being sure people are prepared for the ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE is more important than those of us who are sick and dying from M.E. (Myalgic Encepahlomyelitis). After all, we were just active and productive citizens adding our contributions to our nation and the world until we were struck down by this horrible disease. What are death and disease compared with BEING FUNNY?

If these CDC press guys such as David Daigle have time to talk about the dangers of zombies, one would think they would be able to help pursue the CDC’s defined goal of preventing the spread of disease, such as Myalgic Encephalomyeltitis.”

But “fun” is not what this campaign is about for the creators — it’s about using pre-existing pathways of mass communication to reach effectively the largest audience possible. And in that regard, this program is as deadly serious as the worst infectious diseases, which CDC spends the rest of their time combating.

To give them flak for having “fun” is like accusing a disaster relief team headed to Jamaica after a deadly hurricane of heading off on a tropical vacation. Same thing.

Bottom line, I feel sorry for this hater who clearly is living with some misery, but these CDC folks are the wrong target

Ah, the mind of the angry skeptic

THE ANGRY SKEPTIC. This guy doesn’t trust government. And he’s worried about his privacy. Which is what half of his emails say. As if his emails are somehow private.

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WORDS

I have a good friend — let’s call him Jim — with an older brother — let’s call him Tim — who is a major skeptic. He’s skeptical of climate change, of both parties of our government, of our President (big time), of basically any voice of authority or even compassion. He writes tons of emails to a group of about a dozen friends. We all endure his emails. Sometimes they are genuinely funny. Most of the time they consist of links to articles that espouse his mistrust of government. I keep putting up with them because I’m fascinated with these sorts of minds that are skeptical of everything. And because sometimes he’s genuinely funny.

One time I took the bait and wrote him a two page diatribe confronting his politics. I awaited his two page reply. All that came back, the next day, was an email that said, “Words.” Which I thought was beautiful.

So I wrote to Jim (the non-skeptic brother) the other day asking him what’s wrong with his brother. He sent this back, which I found to be an equally brilliant and perfect condensation of his poor brother’s life.

‘Tim is the guy on the outside of the football stadium watching the game on TV, complaining about how both teams are playing it,  saying he has the right way to play, what they are doing is wrong … all the inside moves and details … yet … he hates football, never threw one, and has never been to a game.”

And the actual context of this comment is that Tim had said in one of his group emails that he is “voting for Cain.” To which Jim had to point out that though he is now in his 60’s, Tim has never in his life voted.

Words.

It’s like reading the rule book first. If you read the Kristoff article you wouldn’t find yourself mystified by this image.

OH MY GOODNESS, WHAT A TRAGEDY! It’s called human nature. Learn a few things about storytelling and your life won’t be quite as filled with frustration and confusion.

kristoff waltz

READ THE RULE BOOK

This image is making the rounds on Facebook with lots of people agreeing with the punch line of, “The society we live in is really messed up.” Yeah, whatever.

If you understood the basic dynamics of how we perceive these things (largely through the telling of stories) — which you can get a good start on simply by committing to heart the simple principles laid out by Nicholas Kristof in his timeless Outside Magazine article — you wouldn’t be so amazed by this Facebook message.

It’s like watching a baseball game, not knowing the rules, and being baffled by the fact that, “Every time someone hits the ball they take off running — why is that?”

Read the rule book and you won’t be so confused.