[Illustration by JAY BEVENOUR]

In honor of the Pixies kicking off their Doolittle tour at the Tower next Tuesday, we got Black Francis/Frank Black/Charles Kittredge Thompson III on the horn to break down the 21-year-old classic for us track by track. Look for it later this week on a Phawker near you!

RELATED: Burying The Hatchet With Black Francis

 

EDITOR’S NOTE: Huffington Post blogger Beau Friedlander posted a largely thoughtful summation of the culture wars and ended with a modest proposal: $100,000 for a sex tape that would end Glenn Beck’s career. HuffPo editors spiked the post after a few hours, and after and initial round of indignation, he issued an apology to Beck. Friedlander is no stranger to controversey, previously he helmed failed liberal talk radio network Air America and back in the 90s published  the manifesto of Ted Kaczynski, aka The Unabomber. In the interest of free speech and people being able to read the post en total and make up their own minds whether the line was crossed, we repost the post that started it all in its entirety:

BY BEAU FRIEDLANDER Rupert Murdoch and the Koch brothers are happy to throw money at the rising tide of right wing lunacy. Breitbart offered $100,000 for JournoList, the email listserve that brought down WaPo blogger Dave Weigel this June.

Why did they do it? Because they stand to make a lot of money off the anti-black president movement, and they are rich enough to imprint their beliefs on the American sheeple.

High net worth progressive Democrats don’t do this as much, perhaps because they’re not typically in cahoots with Boeing or Monsanto or Halliburton, et al. Also, there are fewer anti-communist, religious crackpots on the left.

Before we get to the reward money, a little “Tea Baggers for Beginners.”

In cultural terms, the original neoconservatives who birthed the baggers were way more frightened by the Broadway musical “Hair” than the film “Rosemary’s Baby” (both from 1968). A mock ad might go like this: “Afraid your daughter might hook up with a black guy (or the nation may choose one to be president)? Have a problem with that homosexual and or promiscuous son or daughter? Does your son need a haircut? Do you often find biblical characters charred into your toast? Then do we have the movement for you!”

A certain breed of brilliant liberal started the neocon movement in reaction to the civil rights movement and the counterculture. They believed in a social order that benefited the wealthiest Americans in unimaginable ways, and they benefited by lending considerable brainpower to the cause. It seemed to these first neocons that the counterculture’s open society might reveal that the emperor had no clothes. They were tasked with obviating that eventuality, and were paid handsomely. Ironically, these anti-communists stole Marx’s opium (i.e., religion) and distributed a far more potent version (evangelical, ultra-orthodox) for free.

(No such thing on the left.)

Enter Glenn Beck, the farce part of the intellectual tragedy sired by the neocon founding fathers Irving Kristol and his historical sidekick Norman Podhoretz.

Beck touts religion, because he says the battle for America’s soul is at stake. It is all about morality, propriety, and doing what’s right. But Beck’s conception of religion is all about control. He replaces God with an ersatz myth about self-reliance and a position of moral superiority spun in ways that magically seem to privilege the few at the expense of many (this includes the anti-Middle East / Islam thinking that led to the war in oil-rich Iraq), etc.

Glenn Beck talks about what’s right a lot. Propriety comes from the same root as property, and that does seem to be the issue. As the culture changed in the 60s, so did neighborhoods. This was the heyday of blockbusting and race-baiting. We are in similar territory with a black president right now. His successful campaign is proof positive that the counterculture prevailed over the conservative movement. And the neocons are mad as hell about that.

Glenn Beck is also a Mormon. It matters. His religion typifies the noble lie that the neocons originally set out to defend against the counterculture–Archie Bunker’s America–where a woman’s place was in the home and with baby, and an African American’s place was in a ghetto. (Mormons revere women much like Hindis do the cow, and they didn’t accept African Americans in their ranks at all till 1978–draw whatever inferences you like).

The new conservatives are true believers in the “One Right Way”, and Democrats only rarely agree on the one best way to go. But we can all agree that Fox News is a bad influence on America.

It is time to pop the tea baggers’ favorite balloon (so what if it will be replaced by another?), and with that in mind I hereby offer to negotiate a $100,000 payday to the person who will come forward with a sex tape or phone records or anything else that succeeds in removing Glenn Beck from the public eye forever. I am not offering the cash myself, but I will broker the deal and/or raise the money for what you bring to the table. (And it better be good.)

If you have the goods, or if you want to contribute to a slush fund to buy more takedowns (probably not tax deductible), please contact me at: glennbecksextape@gmail.com. [via HERE]

Atlantic City, 5:59 PM Saturday Night by JEFF FUSCO

DAILY RECORD: SEASIDE HEIGHTS — A woman allegedly assaulted by private security employed by MTV’s “Jersey Shore” is suing MTV’s parent company, Viacom, the reality show’s production company, 495 Productions, and the entire cast for the assault and on racketeering charges, according to court papers.The documents allege that four private security guards tossed J.P. to the ground last September after she and several friends got in a heated verbal argument with Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi. During the course of the argument, four unidentified bodyguards pushed J.P. to the ground, according to the court documents. J.P.’s chin was gashed and she now has a permanent scar, Lavernge said. The alleged assault occurred on the night documented by Episode 108, “One Shot.” During that episode, Stephen Izzo, 26, of Berkeley, was knocked unconscious by cast member Ronald Ortiz, 25, of The Bronx, N.Y. Izzo went to court earlier this year in an unsuccessful attempt to block the release of the DVD box set of the show’s first season. A judge, however, allowed Izzo to proceed with a lawsuit against MTV and the show’s producers, also on the racketeering charges. A warrant was recently issued for Izzo’s arrest because he failed to attend a hearing in Superior Court in Toms River on unrelated drug and assault charges. Ortiz was arrested earlier this month because he did not pay several traffic tickets in North Jersey. MORE

“The Wilderness Downtown,” an interactive film by Chris Milk featuring “We Used To Wait” from Arcade Fire’s new album The Suburbs can be experienced now at HERE. Taking its name from a lyric from the aforementioned song–”so when the lights cut out, I was lost, standing in the wilderness downtown”–”The Wilderness Downtown” exemplifies the Google “Chrome Experience” and HTML5 technology, cueing the opening of multiple browser windows, visually incorporating viewers’ childhood addresses (if they are available via Google Street View) , allowing the viewers to write and share messages to their younger selves and more.  Choreographed windows, interactive flocking, custom rendered maps, real-time compositing, procedural drawing, 3D canvas rendering… this Chrome Experiment has them all. “The Wilderness Downtown” is an interactive interpretation of Arcade Fire’s song “We Used To Wait” and was built entirely with the latest open web technologies, including HTML5 video, audio, and canvas. MORE

FRESH AIR

“[Jimmie Dale Gilmore’s] voice would make even Hank Williams cry,” Nicholas Dawidoff once wrote in The New York Times Magazine. Gilmore, a singer from West Texas, writes songs that would be described as alternative country. But he sings honky-tonk country classics on his album Come on Back , which he discussed in a 2005 interview with Terry Gross. The album, a tribute to Gilmore’s late father, contains versions of his father’s favorite songs like “Walkin’ the Floor Over You” and “Pick Me Up on Your Way Down.” “[Pick Me Up] represents an entire style that I really associate with [my father],” explained Gilmore. “It’s honky-tonk dance music … and it is one particular [song] he really loved. I have this one memory of him with his head tossed back and his eyes closed just grinning when this song came on.” In addition to his solo albums, Gilmore records with the band The Flatlanders, which includes Gilmore’s fellow West Texas musicians Joe Ely and Butch Hancock. He played the character Smokey in the 1998 movie, The Big Lebowski.

ALSO,  Patsy Cline’s career really only lasted three years — and the complete recorded output from that career lasts two hours and ten minutes — but her importance is out of proportion to those numbers. She was born Virginia Patterson Hensley in 1932 to parents living in the hills of West Virginia, and was performing as a teenager under the name Ginnie Hensley. In 1953, she married Gerald Cline, a construction worker. A year later, she signed a contract with Four Star Records, which was mostly a vehicle for recording songs from its owner’s publishing house. 4 Star put out 18 songs of the 51 she cut for them, and only one charted. The recording of “Walking After Midnight” is actually a remake of the original, which, like all her other 4 Star records, was hard-core country. These recordings were made at Owen Bradley’s famous Nashville studio, Bradley’s Barn, where Decca’s country recordings were made. The minute her 4 Star contract expired in 1960, she signed with Decca, and Bradley saw a chance to record a great pop talent. For her first record, “I Fall To Pieces,” he found a song by Hank Cochran and Harlan Howard, two of the best writers in town. The instrumentation on “I Fall To Pieces” (which included steel guitar by Ben Keith, who later worked with Neil Young) was country, but her phrasing definitely wasn’t. The song shot to No. 1 on the country charts early in 1961 and got to No. 12 on the pop charts. Bradley’s intuition was correct, so he started looking for jazzier numbers from his songwriting acquaintances. A young Texan friend of Cochran’s came up with one — called “Crazy” — which did even better. Until “Crazy” hit No. 1 on the country charts and No. 9 on the pop charts, Willie Nelson was considered a bit too eccentric for Nashville’s tastes, but the song established him and his career took off. MORE

RADIO TIMES

In November 2008, the election of Barack Obama was supposed to usher in a new age of hope, optimism, and postpartisan politics. Instead it provoked unparalleled anger on the far right that eventually twisted important national discussions and pushed ideas from the conservative fringe into the mainstream media. In the ensuing months, countless pollsters and reporters have tried to understand the heart of this mob that appeared so suddenly, but none of them has successfully accounted for the hard-right movement’s rapid growth or explained the hidden connections between its parts. Until now.  In this gripping exposÉ, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Will Bunch reveals the secrets behind the crusade against Obama, exploring how forces like radical militia groups, the Tea Party, pro-gun zealots, and Glenn Beck have combined old-fashioned populist outrage with digital-age phobias to produce a wave of resentment that many have ridden straight to the bank. Pulling back the curtain on the paranoid politics of a new generation, Bunch shows how events such as the election of America’s first African-American president, the economic recession, the rise of social networking, and the phenomenon of Glenn Beck have created a dangerous political moment that poses legitimate risks to democracy in America. From conspiracy theorists to secessionists, birthers to “independent” Tea Partiers, Bunch illuminates the ties among this new array of groups. Going beyond easy caricature, he strips away layers of rhetoric to reveal politicians like Paul Broun, who, as one of the most extreme members of Congress, works as hard for right-wing ideologues as he does for his economically battered constituents, and groups like the Oath Keepers, a fast-growing, ultraradical organization that spreads unsubstantiated fears of Obama confiscating guns and placing U.S. citizens in concentration camps. In addition, Bunch exposes the opportunists who have embraced a new brand of apocalyptic fearmongering, which has made them millions but has also led to the widespread paranoia that has helped fuel a rise in antigovernment violence. The end result shows the true stakes of this political perfect storm, demonstrating how the anger of the far right now threatens to consume America. Powerful, shocking, and thought-provoking, The Backlash is a controversial look at where our democracy is—and where it may be heading.

WORLD CAFE

The New Pornographers is overflowing with talented musicians. You’ve got Dan Bejar and his Destroyer persona, the inimitable Neko Case, and the burgeoning Kathryn Calder. But the unifying thread throughout the band’s five albums has been lead vocalist and chief songwriter Carl “A.C.” Newman. David Dye catches up with Newman in this session of World Cafe, and the band performs songs from its new album, Together, at the Trocadero Theatre in Philadelphia.

NATIONAL HURRICANE SERVICE: This graphic shows an approximate representation of coastal areas under a hurricane warning (red), hurricane watch (pink), tropical storm warning (blue) and tropical storm watch (yellow). The orange circle indicates the current position of the center of the tropical cyclone. The black line, when selected, and dots show the National Hurricane Center (NHC) forecast track of the center at the times indicated. The dot indicating the forecast center location will be black if the cyclone is forecast to be tropical and will be white with a black outline if the cyclone is forecast to be extratropical. If only an L is displayed, then the system is forecast to be a remnant low. The letter inside the dot indicates the NHC’s forecast intensity for that time. MORE

BY MIKE WOLVERTON SPORTS GUY I hadn’t been to the Mann since the mid-80s. I was in high school and they had a sweet system going to promote underage drinking. Any time there was a show, beyond the fences in a semi-wooded area of which I have only the fuzziest recollection, there would be kegs set up. How many? Twenty, fifty, a thousand, who knew? But it was beer paradise for thirsty 16 year-olds who otherwise had to take their chances and trek to that “special” distributor in Springfield that (almost) never carded. Outside of the Mann, you’d just pick a keg that seemed mostly full, pay $5 for a cup and start pounding. I don’t know who the keg providers were (23 year-olds out to make a buck?), but no one cared. I must have gone to 25 “shows” in this manner, and sometimes you could just barely hear snatches of the music. Randomly, the only performer I specifically remember is Steve Winwood. Does this still happen at the Mann?

I strongly suspect it was not happening Sunday afternoon, when I made my return to the Mann, 24 summers later. I wasn’t there for beer or rock n’ roll — I had my wife, plus my five- and three-year-old sons on hand to see Yo Gabba Gabba! Live. If you are unfamiliar with this program, it’s pretty much the coolest kids show around, starring five costumed “creatures” and hosted by loveable, orange-clad, 85-pound DJ Lance Rock (Lance Robertson, pictured below right). It’s earned an older following as well, due to some big-name guests and trippy sets and costumes (Dare I invoke Sid and Marty Krofft here? Brobee definitely has a Sigmund and the Sea Monsters thing going). Yo Gabba Gabba! has featured musical guests like The Aquabats, The Shins, Weezer, Jimmy Eat World, Devo, The Killers, Flaming Lips, members of The Roots, and MGMT, Of Montreal, Hot Hot Heat,  and The Ting Tings as well as plenty of other celebrity guest stars. I wasn’t expecting any particular star power on Sunday, but I was much more excited for the show than I would have been if we were there to see Mickey Mouse Clubhouse or Handy Manny.

I wasn’t planning to write a review, and thus didn’t take notes; please forgive any omissions. Here’s what I remember. The show started with a live version of the TV intro, which I had hoped for because it’s a great number. Out came the characters:

MUNO: “He’s tall and friendly”. (And shaped like a dildo)
FOOFA: “She’s pink and happy”. (I can’t get into Foofa)
BROBEE: “The little green one”. (With long, thin crazy arms)
TOODIE: “She likes to have fun”. (Don’t we all)
PLEX: “A magic robot”. (I wish I had a magic robot friend)

Judging by merchandise sightings, Brobee seems to be the most popular character. Or maybe they only sell a Brobee version of the backpacks. I sure wasn’t going to get anywhere near the merchandise counter, no matter how curious I was. That’s a lose/lose scenario. As far as my kids know, there’s no such thing as a merchandise counter.

The show consists mainly of singing with a big chunk of dancing. Early on, they did their strong “Peek-a-boo” number, probably the catchiest tune of the day (it’s either that or “Good Bye, See Ya Later”). On the car ride home, I sang the chorus of the Peek-a-boo song at least three times, evilly trying to plant it in my wife’s head. There was a pretty loud rock song with a band (Steel Train) that didn’t go over too well in my section. In fact, for the first fifteen minutes, Torin, who is five, had his fingers stuck in his ears. Note to self: earplugs next time. But Reilly, who is three, was eating it up. Bouncing to the music, dancing when he was asked to get up and dance, big smile on his face. He likes to dance. Torin doesn’t like to dance and wasn’t feeling well; he’d thrown up the day before. So he was a little down. I took him for a walk to pick up a water and a soft pretzel.

The highlight event of the First Act was the balloon drop…four big, long bags of balloons unleashed from overhead. There were a lot of balloons, so it wasn’t cutthroat like a foul ball at a Phillies game. It was actually mostly civil. I was able to secure what I thought was the proper number of balloons (one per child), but unfortunately found out that the balloons that had fallen to us were not the right color. At least where Torin was concerned, the white one was not good, as he required a blue one. Moping, he went so far as to say that he liked “every color that there is in the whole world except white” (forget for a moment that until this year, the kid’s favorite color was white; there is no point in arguing this).

We made it to intermission, which for a few minutes was a “We’ll be right back” screen and music. Which was fine. Then came the low point of the day, when two people (presumably interns) in t-shirts came out on stage to engage in some interactive dance, something called the Bunnyhop, which was truly cringeworthy. Then a video you could barely hear but that did include the words “knucklehead” and “dork”, which are virtually curse words given the audience. Finally, before this pair left the stage, the girl asks the guy, “Have I ever given you a ride in my Kia Sorrento?” Ahem, can you guess who sponsors the tour? My immediate thought was, “You guys just spent ten minutes out here trying to lower our guard just so you could shill for Kia?” One good thing did happen during the intermission. Reilly allowed his red balloon to drift away, back into the “box seats” behind ours. I went to retrieve it, and the seats were empty, with the probable inhabitants standing just outside. I grabbed the red one…and saw a blue one off in the corner. There were no obvious signs of seat occupation or balloon ownership, and I decided that Finders/Keepers Rules were in effect. Blue balloon problem solved! Torin was pretty excited and perked up for the first time since we’d arrived. Not three minutes later I was startled by the loud clap of a nearby balloon pop, and turning to my left my worst fears were confirmed…the remnants of a busted blue balloon draped limply over his fingers. I looked at his face and I knew it was on – tears were coming and they were coming hard. It had been building since we’d arrived, there was no stopping it, and the blue balloon tragedy was the perfect trigger. My wife and I exchanged the look that said, “I’d like to laugh right here, I can barely contain myself, but we musn’t, don’t want to laugh at the poor kid’s pain”. He got over it eventually.

The Second Act was pretty tame. There was a “bubble” song with big bubble machines cranking out the good stuff, it must have been a blast in the first five rows where all the bubble machines were. But the rest of the crowd was left sitting there, thinking, “It must be fun up there.” Then there was a painful bit with costumed food dancing around — there was a chicken leg, slice of cheese, green beans. Weak.  Act Two was rescued, sort of, by the appearance of Yo Gabba Gabba regular Biz Markie, who led a beatboxing beat-along. He also had a handful of kids come onstage to beatbox with him and a few of these were hilarious. It was a fun segment, but ol’ Biz was with us less than ten minutes. He is stealing money on this tour!

The show ended, and we all went home. The red balloon popped on the way out of the Mann, but Reilly took it in stride. Afterwards, the kids showed more interest in why certain cars were parked the way they were than in the show they’d seen. Par for the course. But I know Reilly had fun. Personally, I felt just a little disappointed. DJ Lance Rock did not quite have the stage presence that I assumed he would. He wasn’t bad, he was into it, but the free and easy enthusiasm wasn’t there. Plex gets credit for best character performance. If I’d paid $50 per ticket I may have felt aggrieved, but as I paid $0 per ticket and only the outrageous $15 parking, it was a good value. My wife’s final assessment: “I couldn’t take the dildo seriously.”

‘Ben Franklin, Love Park, 8/25 by JEFF FUSCO

RELATED: What The Hell Happened To Old City?

ASSOCIATED PRESS: A Pennsylvania couple secretly videotaped a Roman Catholic priest having sex with their then-17-year-old daughter in the basement of their home and are now suing, saying he got her pregnant. The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Berks County Court, alleges that the Rev. Luis A. Bonilla Margarito carried on a sexual relationship with the teen while he was the chaplain of Reading Central Catholic High School and she was a senior there. The girl’s parents became suspicious and installed a camera in their basement, where Bonilla and the teen were spending large amounts of time. The camera recorded the couple having sex in November, after she had graduated, according to the suit. Bonilla and the teen are now evidently living with each other. Yesterday, an Associated Press reporter knocked on the door of the apartment in Norristown where Bonilla now lives. A woman answered, and she identified herself as the teen named in the lawsuit filed by her parents. She declined to comment, and would not get Bonilla to come to the door. But David Weldon, a maintenance man at the apartment complex, said the couple moved in together two or three months ago, and that she had the baby about six weeks ago. MORE

GLENN GREENWALD: Virtually every Fox News/right-wing-talk-radio controversy relies on scaring economically anxious white Americans into ignoring the prime cause of their economic insecurity — plundering by Wall Street bankers, abetted by the government they own — and focusing instead on some manufactured menace from powerless racial and ethnic minorities:  black people preventing them from voting (New Black Panthers), stealing their elections (ACORN), and treating them unequally (Shirley Sherrod and Eric Holder’s Justice Department); Muslims who want to conquer their country and celebrate over their Christian corpses (the Triumphalist Ground Zero Mosque); invading, marauding Latino armies coming to steal their property and rape their women while their Marxist allies in Government (led by a black Muslim President) disarm the white victims.  Matt Taibbi, in lamenting the takeover of the GOP by the most riled-up of these factions — the Tea Partiers — recounts just some of the lowlights here. MORE

RELATED: Glenn Beck is smitten with Alveda King, a fundamentalist Christian and outspoken foe of gay rights and abortion — and niece of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. She will speak Saturday at Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally on the Mall, which falls on the 47th anniversary of her late uncle’s March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Recent appearances on Beck’s Fox News show have catapulted King into the conservative limelight, and she has compared Tea Partiers to civil rights marchers, “speaking out with courage and conviction peacefully for what is right.” Her statements have garnered her increasing press attention, and she was even included by Keith Olbermann in a recent “Worst Persons in the World” segment for calling gay marriage “genocide.” MORE

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MESRINE: KILLER INSTINCT (2008, directed by Jean-François Richet, 113 minutes, France)

BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC

The first of a two-part robbing, shooting and killing jamboree, Mesrine: Killer Instinct is a dazzling vehicle for French superstar Vincent Cassel, Cassel burst into the scene in 1995 as the violent ghetto youth Vinz in the controversial La Haine and has shown himself to be surprisingly flexible in French productions and Hollywood films, appearing in Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Twelve and Thirteen and even providing a voice in Shrek. Like Bogart he has a face that can seem simultaneously handsome and homely and standing over six feet tall Cassel can bring a palpable sense of brooding menace.

All making him a natural to play Mesrine, a sort of French Dillinger who captured the public imagination with a series of bank robberies, kidnappings and four (count ‘em!) prison breaks in the 1960’s and 70’s. The script co-written by director Jean-François Richet (with Abdel Raoulf Dafri who wrote the acclaimed A Prophet) gives us little in psychological motivation (he does yell at his dad for being a Vichy collaborator in WW2) and instead paints Mesrine as a guy who has stripped himself clean of moral concerns. His sole reason for being on earth seems to be to cause mayhem and collect the rewards, and film’s strategy is much the same. If you’re looking for some “crime doesn’t pay” moralizing you come to the wrong film; this chapter of Mesrine seeks to seduce you with the vicarious thrill of channeling your inner criminal.

Director Richet doesn’t bog things down with a lots of backstory or convoluted plotting, Mesrine instead plows its snarling anti-hero through a series of well-staged robberies, killings and jailbreaks. Early on Mesrine works for an older thug named Guido. Played by a surprisingly grizzled Gerald Depardieu, the now sixty-something actor makes a perfect curdled father figure for the loose cannon Mesrine. You might find their relationship almost touching but then again relationships isn’t what Mesrine does best.

There are fleeting alliances, including a prostitute who becomes his partner played by Cécile de France. They escape to Canada and join up with a member of the Quebec separatist movement, busting out and later back in to prison in a bravura sequence near the end this first installment. There’s little here we haven’t seen before, Mesrine seems particularly similar to the crime films of Michael Mann (especially Heat and Public Enemies although I’d argue it is more successful than either) yet Cassel’s vicious performance elevates the action the way only a true movie star can.

Mesrine is an unusually episodic feature and unlike many critics, I haven’t seen the second half (due to arrive next week, Mesrine: Public Enemy #1) , where Mesrine is dragged back to France by authorities. I’m not sure that I like these long intermissions between chapters but Cassel’s visceral, physical performance has left me revved up for whatever nasty business is next.

DAILY BEAST: “I was in London last fall when President Obama was paying his three-hour and 45-minute visit to New Orleans—slightly less time than it took to play the Super Bowl game,” Shearer tells me. “He referred to the flooding—in passing—as ‘a natural disaster.’ I just hit the roof. I went, ‘OK, blogs and radio and all the other things I’ve been doing clearly aren’t enough. I know what the next step is.’ And it was this.” “This” is The Big Uneasy, Shearer’s powerful documentary about the real culprit in the disaster that befell New Orleans five years ago—the Army Corps of Engineers. As Shearer abundantly demonstrates in his movie—which premieres August 30 in a one-night-only showing at 160-odd theaters nationwide—it was the Corps’ vast carelessness that caused the city’s levees to rupture amid the storm, sending the swelling waters of the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain rushing into residential neighborhoods, destroying thousands of houses and killing hundreds of people. And it would have been preventable, Shearer says, if the Corps had done its job. The documentary—which features voice-over work by Shearer’s fellow New Orleanean, Brad Pitt, as well as an appearance by resident John Goodman—is a meticulous study of what went wrong, and why, guided by a team of independent scientists and engineers who investigated the levee failures in the immediate aftermath of the storm.[…] Shearer says that beyond Obama’s provoking aside about natural disasters, he made the film “because the story hadn’t been told nationally in great detail or with the necessary potency. I think the reason for that is suggested by a quote I got from a respected news anchor. When I asked why viewers of that broadcast were, some months along, still ignorant of the reason why the city flooded, the reply was, ‘We just think the emotional stories are more compelling for our audience.’” I point out to Shearer—who is usually not so tactful when it comes to foolishness in the media—that he seems to be protecting the errant newscaster by not supplying his or her name. “I am indeed,” he agrees. “I may need to be on that broadcast to promote the movie.” MORE