Watch ‘The Umbrella Man,’ a Short by Errol Morris on the JFK Assassination and the Danger of Jumping to Conclusions
Posted on Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011 by Russ Fischer
What a treasure we have in Errol Morris. This year he already gave us Tabloid, a tremendously entertaining documentary that presents a wild, lurid story and uses it to sift for, if not factual truth, at least the perception of truth from a specific perspective. Truth and perspective have been two of the driving forces for Morris’ entire career as a documentarian, with both explored in detail through essays the filmmaker writes on a semi-regular basis for the New York Times.
The latest film from Morris is a six-minute short made for the New York Times. The Umbrella Man is a short interview with Josiah Thompson, a Kierkegaard scholar who also wrote Six Seconds in Dallas, the key book that argues for a three-gunman explanation for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
But this isn’t some conspiracy theory story. Quite the opposite, in fact. It is, as Thompson says, a cautionary tale, about the dangers of looking for evil where it might not exist. Read More »
