Errol Morris facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Errol Morris
Errol Morris in New Jersey in 2008
Born	Errol Mark Morris (1948-02-05) February 5, 1948 (age 77) Hewlett, New York, U.S.
Education	University of Wisconsin–Madison (BA)
Occupation	Film director
Years active	1978–present
Notable work	Gates of Heaven, The Thin Blue Line, Fast, Cheap & Out of Control, The Fog of War
Spouse(s)	Julia Sheehan ​ (m. 1984)​
Children	Hamilton Morris

Errol Mark Morris (born February 5, 1948) is an American film director. He is famous for making documentaries that explore how people know what they know. He also invented a special camera setup called the Interrotron. In 2003, his film The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara won an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. His movie The Thin Blue Line is considered one of the greatest documentaries ever made. Morris often makes films about unusual and interesting topics. For example, Fast, Cheap & Out of Control tells the stories of an animal trainer, a topiary gardener, a robot scientist, and a naked mole-rat specialist.

Early Life and Education

Morris was born on February 5, 1948, in Hewlett, New York. His father passed away when Errol was two years old. His mother, who was a piano teacher, raised him. He had an older brother named Noel, who worked as a computer programmer. When he was a child, Morris had an eye condition. Because he refused to wear an eye patch, he has limited vision in one eye. This means he doesn't see things in 3D the way most people do.

In 10th grade, Morris went to The Putney School, a boarding school in Vermont. He started playing the cello and even spent a summer in France studying music. His teacher there was Nadia Boulanger, who also taught Philip Glass, who would later work with Morris. As a teenager, Morris loved reading the Oz books and watching a lot of television. He also enjoyed going to Saturday movies with his aunt, where he watched horror films like This Island Earth and Creature from the Black Lagoon.

College Years

Morris went to the University of Wisconsin–Madison and graduated in 1969 with a degree in history. After college, he worked small jobs, like selling cable television and writing term papers. He tried to get into different graduate schools by just showing up. He wasn't accepted at University of Oxford or Harvard University. However, he managed to get into Princeton University to study the history of science. He didn't have much background in this subject and found the physics classes boring. He also had disagreements with his advisor, which led to his short stay at Princeton.

In 1972, Morris left Princeton and enrolled at Berkeley to study philosophy. Again, he felt it wasn't the right fit for him. He later said that the philosophy program at Berkeley was "truly shocking" and that he had "very bad feelings about it."

Filmmaking Career

After leaving Berkeley, Morris spent a lot of time at the Pacific Film Archive. The director of the archive, Tom Luddy, remembered that Morris loved film noir movies.

Early Film Projects

In 1975, Morris visited Plainfield, Wisconsin, inspired by the movie Psycho. He interviewed Ed Gein, a person known for unusual activities, who was at a mental hospital. Morris planned to open Gein's mother's grave with German film director Werner Herzog to test a theory. Herzog arrived, but Morris changed his mind and wasn't there. Morris later returned to Plainfield and spent almost a year there, doing many interviews. He planned to write a book or make a film called Digging up the Past, but it wasn't finished at the time. In 2023, Morris mentioned he was working on a movie about Ed Gein.

Herzog later filmed parts of his movie Stroszek in Plainfield in 1976.

Morris received $2,000 from Herzog. He used this money to travel to Vernon, Florida. This town was known for a strange reason related to insurance. Morris's second documentary was about Vernon, Florida. However, he didn't mention the insurance stories because he received threats while researching. The town's residents were worried he would reveal their secrets.

After two weeks in Vernon, Morris went back to Berkeley. He started working on a story for a fictional movie. Then, he saw a newspaper headline that said, "450 Dead Pets Going to Napa Valley." Morris went to Napa Valley and started making his first feature film, Gates of Heaven, which came out in 1978.

Gates of Heaven was released in 1981. Film critic Roger Ebert really liked the movie. Morris returned to Vernon, Florida, in 1979 and 1980. He rented a house there and interviewed many people. His film Vernon, Florida was shown at the 1981 New York Film Festival. Newsweek magazine called it "a film as odd and mysterious as its subjects, and quite unforgettable."

After Vernon, Florida, Morris tried to get money for other projects. He also wrote scripts for movies, including some based on books by Stephen King. In 1984, Morris married Julia Sheehan, whom he had met in Wisconsin.

The Thin Blue Line and Other Films

The Thin Blue Line (1988) is a very important film. Many people believe it helped a man named Randall Adams get out of prison. He had been wrongly accused of murdering a police officer in 1976. Morris explained that the film asks if Adams committed the crime. But it also shows how a whole group of people believed a story that was completely wrong. His investigation helped reveal the truth.

The Thin Blue Line is one of the most praised documentaries ever. Many film critics in 1988 listed it as one of the best movies of the year. It won awards from the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics. Even though it was so popular, it wasn't nominated for an Oscar. This caused a small controversy because the Academy said it wasn't a "documentary" in their view. This was the first of Morris's films to have music by Philip Glass.

Morris wanted to make a film about Albert Einstein's brain. He was then asked to direct a documentary about Stephen Hawking's famous book, A Brief History of Time. Morris agreed, as he had studied the philosophy of science. His film, A Brief History of Time, is more about Stephen Hawking as a person than just his book. It includes interviews with Hawking, his friends, and family. It also uses computer animations and clips from movies. Morris said he was "very moved by Hawking as a man," calling him "immensely likable, perverse, funny...and yes, he's a genius."

Morris's film Fast, Cheap & Out of Control combines interviews with a wild animal trainer, a topiary gardener, a robot scientist, and a naked mole rat specialist. It also uses old film footage, cartoons, and movie clips. Roger Ebert said the film was about people trying to control things. Morris agreed, saying there was a "Frankenstein element" to it. He added that the stories were mysterious, sad, and funny, and touched on the idea of life ending. The film was praised by many critics as one of the best films of 1997.

In 2002, Morris was asked to make a short film for the 75th Academy Awards. He interviewed many different people, from Laura Bush to Iggy Pop to his own 15-year-old son. Morris was nominated for an Emmy for this short film. He later made another short film for the 79th Academy Awards in 2007, interviewing Oscar nominees about their experiences.

The Fog of War and Recent Films

In 2003, Morris won an Oscar for Best Documentary for The Fog of War. This film is about the life of Robert S. McNamara, who was the Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War. The film explores McNamara's character and how his experiences shaped his decisions during important events like the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War. Like The Thin Blue Line, The Fog of War used re-enactments. This was a technique that many people thought was not right for documentaries before Morris won the Oscar.

In 2010, Morris released a new documentary called Tabloid. It features interviews with Joyce McKinney, a former beauty queen. Since then, Morris has made other documentaries like The Unknown Known (2013), American Dharma (2018), and The Pigeon Tunnel (2023). These films involve interviews with important figures like Donald Rumsfeld, Steve Bannon, and John le Carré.

Commercials

Besides making documentaries, Errol Morris is also a very good director of television commercials. In 2002, he directed a series of ads for Apple Computer called the "Switch" campaign. These commercials showed people who used to use Windows talking about why they switched to Apple computers. One of these commercials, starring a high school student named Ellen Feiss, became very popular online.

Morris has directed hundreds of commercials for many different companies and products. These include Adidas, Citibank, Levi's, Nike, Toyota, and Volkswagen. You can find many of these commercials on his website.

In 2004, Morris directed another series of commercials. These featured Republicans who voted for Bush in 2000, explaining why they would vote for Kerry in 2004. It was hard to get these commercials on TV at first. A group called MoveOn PAC eventually paid to show some of them. Morris also wrote an article for The New York Times about these commercials.

In 2013, Morris said he had made about 1,000 commercials in his career. He continues to make them, including a campaign for Chipotle in 2019. In 2015, Morris made commercials for a medical technology company called Theranos and interviewed its founder, Elizabeth Holmes. Later, when the company faced problems, some people criticized Morris for seeming too impressed by Holmes. In a 2019 interview, Morris said he was still fascinated by her and wondered if she truly saw herself as a fraud.

Writings and Short Films

Morris has also written long articles for The New York Times website, exploring different topics. A collection of these articles, called Believing is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography, was published in 2011. In November 2011, Morris released a short documentary film called "The Umbrella Man" on The New York Times website. It featured Josiah "Tink" Thompson and was about the Kennedy assassination.

Style and Legacy

To help him interview people, Errol Morris invented a special machine called the Interrotron. This device allows Morris and the person he is interviewing to look directly at each other through the camera lens. He explained that normal Teleprompters are used to show text so people can read and look at the camera at the same time. Morris changed this by putting his own live video image on the Teleprompter. This way, he could talk to someone, and they could talk to him, while both were looking straight into the camera. This made the interviews feel more direct and personal.

Author Marsha McCreadie has compared Morris to Werner Herzog as filmmakers who have new and exciting ways of making documentaries.

Morris uses storytelling elements in his films. These include special lighting, music, and re-enactments (showing events again). Many older documentary filmmakers who followed the "cinema vérité" style did not like these artistic additions. Cinema vérité tries to show things exactly as they happened, without adding anything extra. While some older filmmakers didn't approve, younger filmmakers have embraced Morris's style. Re-enactments are now common in many modern documentaries.

Morris supports a "reflexive" style of documentary filmmaking. This means his films not only show real-world events but also make you think about how those events are being shown. He uses his films to explore social issues and real events, but also to comment on how reliable documentary filmmaking itself can be.

His unique style has even been made fun of in the comedy series Documentary Now, which creates fake documentaries.

Selected Filmography

Feature Films

Short Films

• Survivors (2008)
• They Were There (Documentary short) (2011)
• El Wingador (Documentary short) (2012)
• Three Short Films About Peace (2014)
• Leymah Gbowee: The Dream (Documentary short) (2014)

Television

• Errol Morris Interrotron Stories: Digging Up the Past (TV miniseries documentary) (1995)
• First Person (TV series documentary) (17 episodes) (2000)
• Op-Docs (TV series documentary trilogy)
  • The Umbrella Man about Umbrella man (JFK assassination) (2011)
  • November 22, 1963 (2013)
  • A Demon in the Freezer (2016)
• P.O.V. (executive producer) (2014–2016)
• It's Not Crazy, It's Sports (TV documentary series) (2015)
  • The Subterranean Stadium (TV movie) (2015)
  • The Streaker (TV movie) (2015)
  • The Heist (TV movie) (2015)
  • Most Valuable Whatever (TV movie) (2015)
  • Chrome (TV movie) (2015)
  • Being Mr. Met (TV movie) (2015)
• Zillow Hiram's Home (TV movie) (2016)
• Wormwood (miniseries) (2017)
• A Wilderness of Error (docuseries on FX) (2020)

Awards and Honors

Honorary Degrees

• Middlebury College, Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts (2010)
• Brandeis University, Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters (2011)
• University of Wisconsin–Madison, Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters (2013)