Gasland - A Fairy Tale - Shepstone Management Company

Gasland - A Fairy Tale
Gasland, the movie, by Josh Fox, is appearing everywhere these days and receiving praise from all the usual suspects; the NIMBY’s who want nothing near themselves, the eliBsts who move to the area to subsBtute their consciences for ours and the environmental fanaBcs who put trees ahead of people. Fox is the “badboy wunderkind director of the InternaBonal WOW Company” according to the Playgoer blog.” The “bad boy” descripBon is well earned. Fox has been involved in some preKy far out stuff. His Interna,onal WOW Company is evasively self-­‐described as follows:
“Founded in 1996 by a group of theatre and dance arBsts from Thailand, Indonesia, Japan, and the US, InternaBonal WOW Company has created over 40 new plays, consistently lauded as ambiBous, invenBve, and visually stunning. The company develops works that posiBon community and culture in an internaBonal context and redefine the dramaBc event in the changing landscape of globalizaBon. Over the past 8 years, InternaBonal WOW has become a pioneer of internaBonal theatre exchange, incorporaBng performance methods from the East and West, and forging an interdisciplinary training for actors."
What does all this mean? Well, apparently, it means producBons such as Limitless Joy, described on the Fox website as “A dance-­‐theater epic focusing on the origins of our species’ voracious desire.” A New York Times theater review enBtled “ApocalypBc VigneKes, Violent Yet InBmate,” said it was “limitless, all right... a muddled three-­‐hour epic ... of surrealisBc, o_en wordless, visions, some lighthearted, some sensual … When a trapdoor opens, so many fresh-­‐faced actors, in various states of undress, emerge that it reminds you of a clown car.” Fox and friends promoted Bcket sales by saying “InternaBonal WOW invites you to … a massive tomato fight where audience members are encouraged to throw their own tomatoes; to underwater scenes where dancers covered in chocolate pudding narrowly escape from shadow-­‐
puppet sharks.” Fun for all!
Fox also produced Memorial Day, a film he describes, in an interview with the Cinevegas.com blog, as being “all built into the holiday – I didn’t think this stuff up – Memorial Day weekend is a war holiday and it’s also the ‘unofficial’ beginning of summer … At first that seems like a contradicBon but really it’s a symbiosis … The film is about wild abandon … we have stressed the patrioBc/
soldiering part of it, which leaves us in a mess of violent emoBons—sexual and bloody – Memorial Day becomes a day to hit the beach and get rocked and throw up on your date. Or strip in front of a camera, etc. … (which I have no problem with. I love all of that stuff with people ripping their clothes off in public. Hooray for more open sexuality).”
Film Journal Interna:onal describes the movie as an “unpleasant concocBon aKempBng to link soldiers on a drunken, sex-­‐filled holiday beach leave with their horrific, sadisBc behavior at an Abu Ghraib-­‐like Iraqi prison is literally nauseaBng, no thanks to camerawork gone wild.” It further notes “there’s no story. Instead, the film is bifurcated into two equally unwatchable parts. Part one has a wild bunch of young men and women drinking, cursing, bragging, maBng, bashing, talking real dirty and abusing others at a beach resort, apparently as they film themselves home-­‐movie-­‐style. There’s an abrupt changeover to part two, wherein we rediscover these lovelies as American soldiers in the Iraq War, as they put Iraqi prison capBves through the demeaning rituals familiar from the Abu Ghraib reportage and visuals.”
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Gasland - A Fairy Tale
Revealingly, in his comments on the Cinevegas.com blog, Fox says “Everything in the film was planned, every scene was either scripted or outlined beforehand – but everything really happened, because it was real, in a sense, we were immersed in that reality.” This noBon that fake is real is, of course, what totally pervades Gasland and makes it the fairy tale it is.
That Gasland is fakery is evident from his interview with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, where he begins by staBng he got involved because he was offered $100,000 by a gas company to sign a lease for his 19.5 acre property in Milanville, Pennsylvania. Although he later corrects himself to say it was actually his father’s land, he lets stand the claim he was offered what was over $5,000 per acre to sign, when every record of other such transacBons indicates the highest price received by anyone signing leases in this area was slightly over half that amount or about $2,500. In a PBS interview he says it was $4,750 per acre, so maybe he was off a bit with Stewart. Regardless, Fox’s father was one tough negoBator. Or, was this a case of wishing for $5,000 per acre and not gerng it? To ask the quesBon is to answer it. Fox is immersed in imaginaBon, not reality.
Fox also claims a 75-­‐mile stretch of the Delaware River will receive some 50,000 gas wells. How so? Well, of course, no one knows -­‐ he simply asserts it. But, we know where the Delaware River begins in Hancock, NY and approximately where the Marcellus Shale with recoverable gas ends, somewhere near Lackawaxen, PA. This is a distance of roughly 40 miles, not 75. Even if we include every bit of the watershed above this point, it amounts to a grand total of about 2,000 square miles of Marcellus Shale territory. If each well uBlizes an average of 160 acres (four wells per square mile are typical in Marcellus Shale) this would support 8,000 wells, not 50,000, assuming every inch of the basin were drilled, which will clearly not happen. Raising the number to eight wells per square mile (an industry goal for prime areas) sBll yields, under the most opBmisBc scenario conceivable, only one-­‐fourth the total number of wells Fox suggests, making a mockery of his asserBon. But, then again, perhaps he is immersed in a different reality, a new sort of math where 2 + 2 magically yields 50,000.
2
+2
50,000
New
Math
Fox further asserts the Delaware River has been “protected” from gas drilling since 1972, never indicaBng exactly what he was talking about, but suggesBng the Upper Delaware Scenic and RecreaBonal River designaBon (made in 1979) prohibited gas drilling, which is anything but true. Indeed, the River Management Plan specifically provides for “oil & gas fields” in both Scenic and RecreaBonal river segments. The Land and Water Use Guidelines, moreover, state “new major oil and gas transmission lines and refining/producBon faciliBes for other than local service will not be located within the river corridor excep,ng for individual wells (subject to condi,onal use review), lines constructed from individual customers or wells. This does not prohibit maintenance of exisBng faciliBes or the loca,on of new lines within exis,ng rights-­‐of-­‐
way.” So much for Fox’s legal interpretaBons, which, once gain, demonstrate a disconnect with reality and immersion in imaginaBon.
And, then there is that famous flaming faucet hyped in every movie trailer and poliBcally correct television interview about Gasland. Viewers are startled when water from a faucet seems to burn and, Page 2
Gasland - A Fairy Tale
of course, natural gas drilling and fracking of wells is blamed. But, a thoughxul observer might ask if this had occurred prior to drilling and whether there are other explanaBons. The answer, in both cases, is YES. Methane is common in water supplies in many regions of the country, including the Dimock area of Pennsylvania and the Colorado town where Fox filmed this episode. It is o_en found in shallow geologic formaBons and finds its way to the surface, yielding faucets that flame if someone lights them and even the occasional explosion. Indeed, the very place where Fox filmed one of these episodes had been invesBgated before he filmed and the State of Colorado found “naturally occurring biogenic methane gas in the well and no impact from O&G (oil and gas) operaBons.” Another invesBgaBon of another Fox-­‐
depicted water source supposedly impacted by gas drilling found “there are no indicaBons of oil & gas related impacts to water well.” The Hancock Herald newspaper (Hancock, NY) also did an interview with a local well driller acBve in the Northern Tier of Pennsylvania where Dimock (another rallying cry from Fox) is located. This story notes “drillers fi_y years ago o_en found that they could flare matches at the faucets. According to Francis Tully, near Clifford, in Susquehanna County, ‘nearly every well in the area’ has natural gas.” The website Shale Country includes a video of Phyllis Berry, a local woman, talking about her experience with flaming faucets and glasses of water and staBng “there has been methane in the water for years,” long before any gas drilling. Like the charlatan salesman from some old movie, Fox arrogantly dismisses this evidence of his nonsense as a “typical industry smear tacBc” conveniently resorBng to the ad hominem aKack when he has no factual rebuKal. He creates an industry bogeyman to avoid confronBng the reality of local people who know the truth. He imagines he is the truth, being, as he is, “immersed in reality.” Fox and his friends also engage in speculaBon as a way to distract others from reality. A rambling and incoherent 38-­‐page tome intended to answer the challenges to Gasland’s authenBcity was prepared by a collecBon of anB-­‐drilling advocates that includes arBsts James Barth and Barbara Arrindell (a researcher for the movie who also happens to be a founder of the Damascus CiBzens for Sustainability). This report is replete with “could of’s.” SBll, even this document, reports in the case of the Colorado wells “officials have determined that at least nine of those contaminaBon cases are not drilling related; they are likely the result of a water well intersecBng with gas underground.” It then suggests the tenth case “remains a mystery,” but notes state officials say it “is best characterized as an isolated circumstance," that cannot be said to be “coming from somebody's gas well." This is an affirmaBon Fox was correct? Hardly!
GASLAND - The Fairy Tale
“immersed in reality” and
“reason(ing) the possibilities”
It get’s worse when, a_er several paragraphs of speculaBng how fracking could affect water supplies thousands of feet above, it is admiKed “In most cases, the study couldn't pinpoint the exact pathway the contaminants had used to travel a mile and a half up into the drinking water aquifer. So Thyne (the source of speculaBon) could only reason the possibiliBes.” This must be what Fox means by “immersion Page 3
Gasland - A Fairy Tale
in reality.” You get an expert to speculate what might happen or did happen and then call this speculaBon a fact. Some people might say “reasoning the possibiliBes” is nothing more than guessing and they’d be correct.
Problems such as this pervade Gasland. One only has to read Gasland Debunked to see them. Moreover, when defending yourself takes 38 pages of gobbledegook that has to be qualified with statements about how your expert had to “reason the possibiliBes,” you know you’re in deep trouble with the facts. Too many people like Phyllis Berry and Francis Tully know the truth. But who is behind this effort to convert Fox from the “badboy wunderkind director” into the innocent filmmaker who was shocked by what he learned and became determined to crusade against the evil empire? Well, we learn from the film credits and an arBcle at LoHudson.com that actress Debra Winger was “deeply involved” with Gasland. She owns a home in Fremont Center, NY. The arBcle states “Josh Fox, the director and star of ‘Gasland,’ contacted the actress for advice, and she jumped at the chance to become involved in gerng Fox's message to a wider audience. She even consulted with her friend and "Legal Eagles" co-­‐star Robert Redford, since Redford has been successful in warding off gas drillers in Utah.” Robert Redford, of course, is the founder of the Sundance Film FesBval that gave Gasland an award. The fairy tale that is Gasland takes shape.
And, who showed up the HBO screening of Gasland in ManhaKan? Well, not only Debra Winger, but also Senior AKorney Kate Sinding of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the force behind the Catskill Mountainkeeper, where NRDC founder John Adam’s son Ramsey is the ExecuBve Director. Ramsey also appeared at the gala June 17 screening. Robert Redford is an NRDC Trustees. So is John Adams, who earned $640,188 in compensaBon in 2005 , as NRDC’s President. He serves, too, on the Boards of the Catskill Mountainkeeper and Delaware Riverkeeper, all these organizaBons having relaBonships and overlapping memberships. Gasland has been aggressively promoted by each.
Environmental hysteria is apparently very profitable. It allows its purveyors to make huge salaries dwarfing those of ordinary residents of the region, while also presenBng themselves as the righteous and selfless coming to the rescue of those residents. Meanwhile, the bad boy director Fox gets new found respect, tons of free publicity and a chance to hob-­‐nob with the rich and famous. As the Playgoer blog notes; “what does a downtown director have to do to get on naBonal TV? Make an HBO muckraking documentary, of course!” That’s what Gasland is all about; fame, money and presBge for a very few people who travel in small circles under different names. The losers are the local residents looking for the economic opportuniBes that responsible natural gas drilling might deliver. But, for Fox and friends that’s irrelevant, because it’s all about them.
“What does a downtown director have to
do to get on national TV? Make an HBO
muckraking documentary, of course!”
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