The Umbrella Man

DID ERROL MORRIS MAKE AN ANTI-JFK CONSPIRACY SHORT FILM?

Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Errol Morris (The Fog of War, Tabloid) has made this short film to commemorate 48th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It’s strange.

He’s focusing on The Umbrella Man, who mysteriously opened a black umbrella on a “beautiful day in the neighborhood” and cast a shadow of doubt over the whole “lone gunman” thing.

The filmmaker says that he’s not meaning to sway the audience one way or the other — he’s just interested that why, “after 48 years, are people still quarreling and quibbling about this case?”

He recruits Josiah Thompson, a Yale-educated Kierkegaard scholar turned private investigator to illustrate one said “quarrel.” The moral of this new short seems to be that the whole “umbrella man” conspiracy is actually a cautionary tale, that if you are faced with “a sinister fact” you will never “on your own” can think of all the thousands of various, non-sinister things it could instead be. So, simmer down. In general. About everything.

So, did Errol Morris just make the ultimate anti-conspiracy theory short? Are you convinced?

Animal