Errol Morris

Errol Mark Morris (born February 5, 1948) is an

American film director known for documentaries that Errol Morris
interrogate the epistemology of their subjects, and the
invention of the Interrotron. In 2003, his The Fog of
War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S.
McNamara won the Academy Award for Best
Documentary Feature.[1] His film The Thin Blue Line
placed fifth on a Sight & Sound poll of the greatest
documentaries ever made.[2] Morris is known for
making films about unusual subjects; Fast, Cheap &
Out of Control interweaves the stories of an animal
trainer, a topiary gardener, a robot scientist, and a
naked mole-rat specialist.[3]

Early life and education

Morris was born on February 5, 1948, into a Jewish
Morris in Morristown, New Jersey in 2008
family in Hewlett, New York.[4] His father died when
Born Errol Mark Morris
he was two and he was raised by his mother, a piano
February 5, 1948
teacher.[4] He had one older brother, Noel, who was a
Hewlett, New York, U.S.
computer programmer.[5] After being treated for
strabismus in childhood, Morris refused to wear an eye Education University of Wisconsin–
patch. As a consequence, he has limited sight in one Madison (BA)
eye and lacks normal stereoscopic vision.[6] Occupation Film director
Years active 1978–present
In the 10th grade, Morris attended The Putney School,
a boarding school in Vermont. He began playing the Notable work Gates of Heaven, The Thin
cello, spending a summer in France studying music Blue Line, Fast, Cheap & Out of
under the acclaimed Nadia Boulanger, who also taught Control, The Fog of War

Morris's future collaborator Philip Glass. Describing Spouse Julia Sheehan ​(m. 1984)​
Morris as a teenager, Mark Singer wrote that he "read Children Hamilton Morris
with a passion the 14-odd Oz books, watched a lot of Website ErrolMorris.com (http://errolmorr
television, and on a regular basis went with a doting is.com)
but not quite right maiden aunt ('I guess you'd have to
say that Aunt Roz was somewhat demented') to
Saturday matinées, where he saw such films as This Island Earth and Creature from the Black Lagoon—
horror movies that, viewed again 30 years later, still seem scary to him."[7]

College
Morris attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison, graduating in 1969 with a Bachelor of Arts in
history. For a brief time, Morris held small jobs, first as a cable-television salesman, and then as a term-
paper writer. His unorthodox approach to applying for graduate school included "trying to get accepted at
different graduate schools just by showing up on their doorstep."[7] Having unsuccessfully approached
both the University of Oxford and Harvard University, Morris was able to talk his way into Princeton
University, where he began studying the history of science, a topic in which he had "absolutely no
background." His concentration was in the history of physics, and he was bored and unsuccessful in the
prerequisite physics classes he had to take. This, together with his antagonistic relationship with his
advisor Thomas Kuhn ('You won't even look through my telescope.' And his response was 'Errol, it's not a
telescope, it's a kaleidoscope.')[7] ensured that his stay at Princeton would be short.

Morris left Princeton in 1972, enrolling at Berkeley as a doctoral student in philosophy. At Berkeley, he
once again found that he was not well-suited to his subject. "Berkeley was just a world of pedants. It was
truly shocking. I spent two or three years in the philosophy program. I have very bad feelings about it",
he later said.[7]

Career
After leaving UC Berkeley, he became a regular at the Pacific Film Archive. As Tom Luddy, the director
of the archive at the time, later remembered: "He was a film noir nut. He claimed we weren't showing the
real film noir. So I challenged him to write the program notes. Then, there was his habit of sneaking into
the films and denying that he was sneaking in. I told him if he was sneaking in he should at least admit he
was doing it."[7]

Unfinished project on Ed Gein

Inspired by Hitchcock's Psycho, Morris visited Plainfield, Wisconsin in 1975, where he conducted
multiple interviews with Ed Gein, the infamous body snatcher who resided at Mendota State Hospital in
Madison. He later made plans with German film director Werner Herzog, whom Tom Luddy had
introduced to Morris, to return in the summer of 1975 to secretly open the grave of Gein's mother to test
their theory that Gein himself had already dug her up. Herzog arrived on schedule, but Morris had second
thoughts and was not there. Herzog did not open the grave. Morris later returned to Plainfield, this time
staying for almost a year, conducting hundreds of hours of interviews. Despite this, his plans to either
write a book or make a film (which he would call Digging up the Past) were left unfinished at the time. In
an October 2023 interview with Letterboxd, Morris mentioned that he has since returned to the project,
saying "I started rewatching Psycho, because I’m making a movie about Ed Gein."[8]

In the fall of 1976, Herzog visited Plainfield again, this time to shoot part of his film Stroszek.[9]

First films
Morris accepted $2,000 from Herzog and used it to take a trip to Vernon, Florida. Vernon was nicknamed
"Nub City" because its residents participated in a particularly gruesome form of insurance fraud in which
they deliberately amputated a limb to collect the insurance money. Morris's second documentary was
about the town and bore its name, although it made no mention of Vernon as "Nub City", but instead
explored other idiosyncrasies of the town's residents. Morris made this omission because he received
death threats while doing research; the town's residents were afraid that Morris would reveal their
secret.[7]

After spending two weeks in Vernon, Morris returned to Berkeley and began working on a script for a
work of fiction that he called Nub City. After a few unproductive months, he happened upon a headline in
the San Francisco Chronicle that read, "450 Dead Pets Going to Napa Valley." Morris left for Napa
Valley and began working on the film that would become his first feature, Gates of Heaven, which
premiered in 1978. Herzog had said he would eat his shoe if Morris completed the documentary. After the
film premiered, Herzog publicly followed through on the bet by cooking and eating his shoe, which was
documented in the short film Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe by Les Blank.[7]

Gates of Heaven was given a limited release in the spring of 1981. Roger Ebert was a champion of the
film, including it on his ballot in the 1992 Sight & Sound critics' poll.[10] Morris returned to Vernon in
1979 and again in 1980, renting a house in town and conducting interviews with the town's citizens.
Vernon, Florida premiered at the 1981 New York Film Festival. Newsweek called it, "a film as odd and
mysterious as its subjects, and quite unforgettable." The film, like Gates of Heaven, suffered from poor
distribution. It was released on video in 1987, and DVD in 2005.

After finishing Vernon, Florida, Morris tried to get funding for a variety of projects. The Road story was
about an interstate highway in Minnesota; one project was about Robert Golka, the creator of laser-
induced fireballs in Utah; and another story was about Centralia, Pennsylvania, the coal town in which an
inextinguishable subterranean fire ignited in 1962. He eventually got funding in 1983 to write a script
about John and Jim Pardue, Missouri bank robbers who had killed their father and grandmother and
robbed five banks. Morris's pitch went, "The great bank-robbery sprees always take place at a time when
something is going wrong in the country. Bonnie and Clyde were apolitical, but it's impossible to imagine
them without the Depression as a backdrop. The Pardue brothers were apolitical, but it's impossible to
imagine them without Vietnam."[7] Morris wanted Tom Waits and Mickey Rourke to play the brothers,
and he wrote the script, but the project eventually failed. Morris worked on writing scripts for various
other projects, including a pair of ill-fated Stephen King adaptations.

In 1984, Morris married Julia Sheehan, whom he had met in Wisconsin while researching Ed Gein and
other serial killers. He would later recall an early conversation with Julia: "I was talking to a mass
murderer but I was thinking of you," he said, and instantly regretted it, afraid that it might not have
sounded as affectionate as he had wished. But Julia was actually flattered: "I thought, really, that was one
of the nicest things anyone ever said to me. It was hard to go out with other guys after that."[7]

The Thin Blue Line

In 1985, Morris became interested in Dr. James Grigson, a psychiatrist in Dallas. Under Texas law, the
death penalty can only be issued if the jury is convinced that the defendant is not only guilty, but will
commit further violent crimes in the future if he is not put to death. Grigson had spent 15 years testifying
for such cases, and he almost invariably gave the same damning testimony, often saying that it is "one
hundred per cent certain" that the defendant would kill again.[11] This led to Grigson being nicknamed
"Dr. Death."[12] Through Grigson, Morris met the subject of his next film, 36-year-old Randall Dale
Adams.[13]
Adams was serving a life sentence that had been commuted from a death sentence on a legal technicality
for the 1976 murder of Robert Wood, a Dallas police officer. Adams told Morris that he had been framed,
and that David Harris, who was present at the time of the murder and was the principal witness for the
prosecution, had in fact killed Wood. Morris began researching the case because it related to Dr. Grigson.
He was at first unconvinced of Adams's innocence. After reading the transcripts of the trial and meeting
David Harris at a bar, however, Morris was no longer so sure.

At the time, Morris had been making a living as a private investigator for a well-known private detective
agency that specialized in Wall Street cases. Bringing together his talents as an investigator and his
obsessions with murder, narration, and epistemology, Morris went to work on the case in earnest.
Unedited interviews in which the prosecution's witnesses systematically contradicted themselves were
used as testimony in Adams's 1986 habeas corpus hearing to determine if he would receive a new trial.
David Harris famously confessed, in a roundabout manner, to killing Wood.

Although Adams was finally found innocent after years of being processed by the legal system, the judge
in the habeas corpus hearing officially stated that, "much could be said about those videotape interviews,
but nothing that would have any bearing on the matter before this court." Regardless, The Thin Blue Line,
as Morris's film would be called, was popularly accepted as the main force behind getting its subject,
Randall Adams, out of prison. As Morris said of the film, "The Thin Blue Line is two movies grafted
together. On one simple level is the question, Did he do it, or didn't he? And on another level, The Thin
Blue Line, properly considered, is an essay on false history. A whole group of people, literally everyone,
believed a version of the world that was entirely wrong, and my accidental investigation of the story
provided a different version of what happened."[14]

The Thin Blue Line ranks among the most critically acclaimed documentaries ever made. According to a
survey by The Washington Post, the film made dozens of critics' top ten lists for 1988, more than any
other film that year. It won the documentary of the year award from both the New York Film Critics
Circle and the National Society of Film Critics. Despite its widespread acclaim, it was not nominated for
an Oscar, which created a small scandal regarding the nomination practices of the academy. The academy
cited the film's genre of "non-fiction", arguing that it was not actually a documentary. It was the first of
Morris's films to be scored by Philip Glass.

A Brief History of Time and Fast Cheap & Out of Control

Morris wanted to make a film about Albert Einstein's brain and approached Amblin Entertainment about
it. Gordon Freeman had acquired the rights to Stephen Hawking's bestseller A Brief History of Time and
Steven Spielberg suggested Morris direct it. After reading Hawking's book, Morris agreed to direct a
documentary adaptation of it, having studied the philosophy of science at Princeton. Morris's film A Brief
History of Time is less an adaptation of Hawking's book than a portrait of the scientist. It combines
interviews with Hawking, his colleagues and his family with computer animations and clips from movies
like Disney's The Black Hole. Morris said he was "very moved by Hawking as a man", calling him
"immensely likable, perverse, funny...and yes, he's a genius."[15]

Morris's Fast, Cheap & Out of Control interweaves interviews with a wild animal trainer, a topiary
gardener, a robot scientist and a naked mole rat specialist with stock footage, cartoons and clips from film
serials. Roger Ebert said of it, "If I had to describe it, I'd say it's about people who are trying to control
things - to take upon themselves the mantle of God." Morris agreed there was a "Frankenstein element",
adding "They're all involved in some very odd inquiry about life. It sounds horribly pretentious laid out
that way, but there's something mysterious in each of the stories, something melancholy as well as funny.
And there's an edge of mortality. For the end of the movie I showed the gardener clipping the top of his
camel, clipping in a heavenly light, and then walking away in the rain. You know that this garden is not
going to last much longer than the gardener's lifetime."[3] The film was scored by Caleb Sampson of the
Alloy Orchestra and photographed by Robert Richardson. Morris dedicated the film to his mother and
stepfather, who had recently died. It was named by several critics as one of the best films of 1997.[16]

In 2002, Morris was commissioned to make a short film[17] for the 75th Academy Awards. He was hired
based on his advertising resume, not his career as a director of feature-length documentaries. Those
interviewed ranged from Laura Bush to Iggy Pop to Kenneth Arrow to Morris's 15-year-old son
Hamilton. Morris was nominated for an Emmy for this short film. He considered editing this footage into
a feature-length film, focusing[18] on Donald Trump discussing Citizen Kane (this segment was later
released on the second issue of Wholphin). Morris went on to make a second short for the 79th Academy
Awards in 2007, this time interviewing the various nominees and asking them about their Oscar
experiences.[19]

The Fog of War and later films

In 2003, Morris won the Oscar for Best Documentary for The Fog of War, a film about the career of
Robert S. McNamara, the Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War under Presidents John F.
Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. In the haunting opening about McNamara's relationship with U.S.
General Curtis LeMay during World War II, Morris brings out complexities in the character of
McNamara, which shaped McNamara's positions in the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War. Like
his earlier documentary, The Thin Blue Line, The Fog of War included extensive use of re-enactments, a
technique which many had believed was inappropriate for documentaries prior to his Oscar win.

In early 2010, a new Morris documentary was submitted to several film festivals, including Toronto
International Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival, and Telluride Film Festival.[20] The film, Tabloid,[21]
features interviews with Joyce McKinney, a former Miss Wyoming, who was convicted in absentia for
the kidnap and indecent assault of a Mormon missionary in England during 1977.

Subsequently, Morris has made documentaries such as The Unknown Known (2013), American Dharma
(2018), and The Pigeon Tunnel (2023), revolving around interviews conducted with Donald Rumsfeld,
Steve Bannon, and John le Carré, respectively.

Commercials
Although Morris has achieved fame as a documentary filmmaker, he is also an accomplished director of
television commercials. In 2002, Morris directed a series of television ads for Apple Computer as part of
a popular "Switch" campaign. The commercials featured ex-Windows users discussing their various bad
experiences that motivated their own personal switches to Macintosh. One commercial in the series,
starring Ellen Feiss, a high-schooler friend of his son Hamilton Morris, became an Internet meme. Morris
has directed hundreds of commercials for various companies and products, including Adidas, AIG, Cisco
Systems, Citibank, Kimberly-Clark's Depend brand, Levi's, Miller High Life, Nike, PBS, The Quaker
Oats Company, Southern Comfort, EA Sports, Toyota and Volkswagen. Many of these commercials are
available on his website.[22]
In July 2004, Morris directed another series of commercials in the style of the "Switch" ads. This
campaign featured Republicans who voted for Bush in the 2000 election giving their personal reasons for
voting for Kerry in 2004. Upon completing more than 50 commercials, Morris had difficulty getting them
on the air. Eventually, the liberal advocacy group MoveOn PAC paid to air a few of the commercials.
Morris also wrote an editorial[23] for The New York Times discussing the commercials and Kerry's losing
campaign.

In late 2004, Morris directed a series of noteworthy commercials for Sharp Electronics. The commercials
enigmatically depicted various scenes from what appeared to be a short narrative that climaxed with a car
crashing into a swimming pool. Each commercial showed a slightly different perspective on the events,
and each ended with a cryptic weblink. The weblink was to a fake webpage advertising a prize offered to
anyone who could discover the secret location of some valuable urns. It was in fact an alternate reality
game. The original commercials can be found on Morris's website.[24]

Morris directed a series of commercials for Reebok that featured six prominent National Football League
(NFL) players. The 30-second promotional videos were aired during the 2006 NFL season.[25]

In 2013, Morris stated that he has made around 1,000 commercials during his career.[26] Since then he has
continued in the field, including a 2019 campaign for Chipotle.[27]

In 2015, Morris made commercials for medical technology firm Theranos, and interviewed its founder,
Elizabeth Holmes. After the company fell in disgrace, Morris was criticized by The Telegraph for
seeming "captivated" by Holmes, and for contributing to Holmes' mythical persona as a visionary.[28] In a
2019 New Yorker interview, Morris reflected, "To me, what really is interesting about Elizabeth
[Holmes] ... did she really see herself as a fraud? Was it calculation? I have a hard time squaring that with
my own experience. Could I have been self-deceived, delusional? You betcha. I'm no different than the
next guy. I'd like to think I'm a little different. But I'm still fascinated by her."[29]

Writings and documentary shorts

Morris has also written long-form journalism, exploring different areas of interest and published on The
New York Times website.[30] A collection of these essays, titled Believing is Seeing: Observations on the
Mysteries of Photography, was published by Penguin Press on September 1, 2011. In November 2011,
Morris premiered a documentary short titled "The Umbrella Man"—featuring Josiah "Tink" Thompson—
about the Kennedy assassination on The New York Times website.[31]

In 2012, Morris published his second book, A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald,
about Jeffrey MacDonald, the Green Beret physician convicted of killing his wife and two daughters on
February 17, 1970. Morris first became interested in the case in the early 1990s and believes that
MacDonald is not guilty after undertaking extensive research.[32] Morris explained in a July 2013
interview, prior to the reopening of the case: "What happened here is wrong. It's wrong to convict a man
under these circumstances. And if I can help correct that, I will be a happy camper."[26] He now states
that he does not believe that Macdonald is guilty, but thinks it possible that Macdonald is guilty.[33]

Style and legacy

To conduct interviews, Morris invented a machine, called the Interrotron, which allows the interviewer
and his subject to make eye-contact with each other while both staring through the camera lens itself. He
explains the device as follows:

Teleprompters are used to project an image on a two-way mirror. Politicians and newscasters
use them so that they can read text and look into the lens of the camera at the same time. What
interests me is that nobody thought of using them for anything other than to display text: read a
speech or read the news and look into the lens of the camera. I changed that. I put my face on
the Teleprompter or, strictly speaking, my live video image. For the first time, I could be talking
to someone, and they could be talking to me and at the same time looking directly into the lens
of the camera. Now, there was no looking off slightly to the side. No more faux first person.
This was the true first person.[34]

Author Marsha McCreadie, in her book Documentary Superstars: How Today's Filmmakers Are
Reinventing the Form, had paired Morris with Werner Herzog as practitioners and visionaries in their
approach in documentary filmmaking.[35]

Morris employs the use of narrative elements within his films. These include but are not limited to:
stylized lighting, musical score, and re-enactment. The use of these elements is rejected by many
documentary filmmakers who followed the cinema vérité style of the previous generations. Cinema vérité
is characterized by its rejection of artistic additions to documentary film. While Morris faced backlash
from many of the older-era filmmakers, his style has been embraced by the younger generations of
filmmakers, as the use of re-enactment is present in many contemporary documentary films.

Morris advocates the reflexive style of documentary filmmaking. In Bill Nichols's book Introduction to
Documentary he states that reflexive documentary "[speaks] not only about the historical world but about
the problems and issues of representing it as well." Morris uses his films not only to portray social issues
and non-fiction events but also to comment on the reliability of documentary making itself.[36]

His style has been spoofed in the mockumentary series Documentary Now.[37]

Even when interviewing controversial figures, Morris does not generally believe in adversarial
interviews:

I don't really believe in adversarial interviews. I don't think you learn very much. You create a
theater, a gladiatorial theater, which may be satisfying to an audience, but if the goal is to learn
something that you don't know, that's not the way to go about doing it. In fact, it's the way to
destroy the possibility of ever hearing anything interesting or new. .... the most interesting and
most revealing comments have come not as a result of a question at all, but having set up a
situation where people actually want to talk to you, and want to reveal something to you.[38]

Filmography

Feature films
 Gates of Heaven (1978)
Vernon, Florida (1981)
The Thin Blue Line (1988)
The Dark Wind (1991), fiction movie
A Brief History of Time (1991)
Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (1997) [39]
Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (1999)
The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (2003)
Standard Operating Procedure (2008)
Tabloid (2010)
The Act of Killing (executive producer) (2012)
The Unknown Known (2013)
The Look of Silence (executive producer) (2014)
Happy Father's Day (video) (2015)
Uncle Nick (executive producer) (2015)
The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman's Portrait Photography (2016)
National Bird (executive producer) (2016)
American Dharma (2018)
Enemies of the State (executive producer) (2020)
My Psychedelic Love Story (2020)
The Pigeon Tunnel (2023)
Tune Out the Noise (2024)
Separated (2024)

Short films
Survivors (2008)
They Were There (Documentary short) (2011)[40]
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)[41]

November 22, 1963 (2013)
A Demon in the Freezer (2016)[42]
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)

Accolades
Gates of Heaven (1978) was long featured on Roger Ebert's list (http://rogerebert.suntimes.
com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19971109/REVIEWS08/401010320/1023) Archived (https://
web.archive.org/web/20051226155137/http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?
AID=%2F19971109%2FREVIEWS08%2F401010320%2F1023) 2005-12-26 at the Wayback
Machine of the ten greatest films ever made.
Golden Horse for Best Foreign Film at the Taiwan International Film Festival for The Thin
Blue Line (1988)
New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics Best Documentary for
The Thin Blue Line (1988)
Washington Post Best Film of the Year for The Thin Blue Line (1988)
Edgar Award for Best Motion Picture, from the Mystery Writers of America, for The Thin Blue
Line (1989)
Guggenheim Fellowship (1989)
MacArthur Fellowship (1989)
Emmy for Best Commercial for PBS commercial "Photobooth (http://www.errolmorris.com/co
mmercials/pbs/pbs_photobooth.html)" (2001)
In December 2001, the United States' National Film Preservation Foundation announced
that Morris's The Thin Blue Line would be one of the 25 films selected that year for
preservation in the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress, bringing the total at the
time to 325.
2002 International Documentary Association list of the 20 all-time best documentaries: The
Thin Blue Line (#2), Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (#14)[43]
Best Documentary of the Year awards for The Fog of War (2003): the National Board of
Review, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the Chicago Film Critics, and the
Washington D.C. Area Film Critics.
In 2003, The Guardian put him seventh in its list of the world's 40 best active directors.[44]
Academy Award for Documentary Feature The Fog of War (2004)
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2007)[45]
Jury Grand Prix Silver Bear at the 2008 Berlin International Film Festival for Standard
Operating Procedure
Columbia Journalism Award (2013)
In 2019, The Fog of War was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the
National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[46]

Honorary degrees
Middlebury College, Hon. D.F.A. (2010)
 Brandeis University, Hon. D.H.L. (2011)
University of Wisconsin–Madison, Hon. D.H.L. (2013)

Bibliography

Books
Morris, Errol (2011). Believing Is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography.
New York: Penguin Press. ISBN 978-0143124252.
A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald (Penguin Press, 4 September 2012)
The Ashtray (Or the Man Who Denied Reality) (University of Chicago Press, 2018)

Articles
Morris, Errol (April 20, 2015). "What photography can't prove" (https://time.com/3814981/trut
h-and-consequences-in-north-charleston/). United States. Crime. Time. Vol. 185, no. 14
(South Pacific ed.). p. 23.

References
1. Dutka, Elaine (March 1, 2004). " 'Fog of War' lifts Morris to his first Oscar victory" (https://ww
w.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-mar-01-et-elaine1-story.html). Los Angeles Times.
Retrieved December 20, 2022.
2. James, Nick (September 2014). "The Greatest Documentaries of All Time" (https://www2.bfi.
org.uk/sight-sound-magazine/greatest-docs). Sight & Sound. Vol. 24, no. 9. British Film
Institute. Retrieved December 20, 2022.
3. Ebert, Roger (November 9, 1997). "Way out and in control" (https://www.rogerebert.com/rog
er-ebert/way-out-and-in-control). Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved December 20, 2022.
4. Shapiro, Laurie Gwen (September 21, 2012). "Into Wilderness of Errol" (https://forward.com/
schmooze/163179/into-wilderness-of-errol/). The Jewish Daily Forward. Retrieved
December 20, 2022.
5. Berman, Benjamin; Errol, Morris (June 17, 2011). "Errol Morris: Did My Brother Invent E-
Mail With Tom Van Vleck?" (https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/
06/20/opinion/20110620-who-invented-email.html). The New York Times. Retrieved
December 20, 2022.
6. Schulz, Kathryn (September 4, 2011). "Errol Morris Looks for the Truth in Photography" (http
s://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/books/review/believing-is-seeing-by-errol-morris-book-revi
ew.html). The New York Times. Retrieved December 20, 2022.
7. Singer, Mark (February 2, 1989). "Predilections" (http://www.errolmorris.com/content/profile/
singer_predilections.html). The New Yorker. Errol Moriss. Archived (https://web.archive.org/
web/20240112224404/http://www.errolmorris.com/content/profile/singer_predilections.html)
from the original on January 12, 2024.
8. Kemp, Ella (October 20, 2023). "Feel Bad Inc: Errol Morris on true crime, real horror and
ridiculous habits" (https://letterboxd.com/journal/the-pigeon-tunnel-errol-morris-life-in-film-int
erview/). Journal. Letterboxd. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20231116184804/http
s://letterboxd.com/journal/the-pigeon-tunnel-errol-morris-life-in-film-interview/) from the
original on November 16, 2023. Retrieved November 16, 2023.
 9. "1976 Flashback: Werner Herzog and Errol Morris Plot to Dig Up Ed Gein's Mother's Grave"
(https://www.austinfilm.org/2016/10/1976-flashback-werner-herzog-errol-morris-plot-to-dig-u
p-ed-geins-mothers-grave/). Austin Film Society. October 24, 2016.
10. Ebert, Roger (April 1, 1991). "Ten Greatest Films of All Time" (https://www.rogerebert.com/ro
ger-ebert/ten-greatest-films-of-all-time). Chicago Sun-Times. Archived (https://web.archive.o
rg/web/20200605174332/https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/ten-greatest-films-of-all-ti
me) from the original on June 5, 2020. Retrieved July 30, 2022.
11. Gillespie, Pat (June 14, 2004). "Expert psychiatric witness was nicknamed Dr. Death" (http://
docs.newsbank.com/g/GooglePM/DM/lib00375,103386EA575FCA6A.html). The Dallas
Morning News. Retrieved March 21, 2009.
12. "Groups Expel Psychiatrist Known for Murder Cases; Witness nicknamed 'Dr. Death' says
license won't be affected by allegations" (https://web.archive.org/web/20090307034749/htt
p://ccadp.org/DrDeath.htm). The Dallas Morning News. July 26, 1995. Archived from the
original (http://www.ccadp.org/DrDeath.htm) on March 7, 2009. Retrieved March 21, 2009.
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lib00154,101B1DBE87233DDC.html). Fort Worth Star-Telegram. March 31, 2004. Retrieved
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14. "BOMB Magazine — Errol Morris by Margot Livesey" (http://bombsite.com/issues/69/article
s/2258).
15. Errol Morris on Meeting Stephen Hawking (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7FBb_B5J5
c), March 21, 2014, retrieved December 20, 2022
16. Moorhead, M. V. (November 13, 1997). "Of Mole Rats and Men" (https://www.phoenixnewti
mes.com/film/of-mole-rats-and-men-6422668). Phoenix New Times.
17. "Errol Morris: Short Films" (http://www.errolmorris.com/content/shortfilms/oscarmovie.html).
18. "Errolmorris.com" (http://www.errolmorris.com/content/aborted/projects_donald.html).
19. "Errol Morris's Oscar Short Film: 2002 Oscars" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEsoSR
2npes). YouTube. September 11, 2014.
20. "TIFF unveils 2010 docs: Bruce Springsteen, Errol Morris and Werner Herzog in 3D" (https://
archive.today/20120708034453/http://arts.nationalpost.com/2010/08/04/bruce-springsteen-e
rrol-morris-and-werner-herzog-in-3-d-as-tiff-unveils-2010-docs/). National Post. August 4,
2010. Archived from the original (http://arts.nationalpost.com/2010/08/04/bruce-springsteen-
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21. "New Details on Errol Morris' Next Documentary, TABLOID" (http://www.collider.com/2010/0
3/30/new-details-on-errol-morris-next-documentary-tabloid/). Collider.
22. "Errol Morris: Commercials" (http://www.errolmorris.com/commercials.html).
23. "Errol Morris: Editorial" (http://www.errolmorris.com/content/editorial/nytimes105.html).
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25. Jane Levere (July 24, 2006). "Football Calls, and Reebok Responds" (https://www.nytimes.c
om/2006/07/24/business/media/24adco.html). The New York Times. Retrieved
September 28, 2013.
26. FastTheLatestNews (July 12, 2013). "The controversial case of Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald" (http
s://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yd7ltZIqFs) (Video upload). YouTube. Google, Inc.
Archived (https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211211/5yd7ltZIqFs) from the original
on December 11, 2021. Retrieved September 28, 2013.
27. Oster, Erik (February 13, 2019). "Errol Morris Takes Viewers 'Behind the Foil' at Chipotle" (ht
tps://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/errol-morris-takes-viewers-behind-the-foil-at-chipotl
e/). Retrieved January 2, 2022.
28. Goldsbrough, Susannah (January 4, 2022). "How an Oscar-winning documentary-maker
helped create the Elizabeth Holmes myth" (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/oscar-winnin
g-documentary-maker-helped-create-elizabeth-holmes/). The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235 (h
ttps://search.worldcat.org/issn/0307-1235). Retrieved December 20, 2022.
29. Gross, Daniel A. " 'The World Is, of Course, Insane': An Interview with Errol Morris" (https://w
ww.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/the-world-is-of-course-insane-errol-mor
ris-interview). The New Yorker. Retrieved February 1, 2020.
30. "The New York Times" (https://web.archive.org/web/20100817052951/http://opinionator.blog
s.nytimes.com/category/errol-morris/). Archived from the original (http://opinionator.blogs.nyt
imes.com/category/errol-morris/) on August 17, 2010. Retrieved August 30, 2010.
31. Errol Morris (November 21, 2011). "The Umbrella Man" (https://www.nytimes.com/video/201
1/11/21/opinion/100000001183275/the-umbrella-man.html). The New York Times. Retrieved
September 28, 2013.
32. Jesse Kornbluth (September 4, 2012). "A Jury Said Jeffrey MacDonald Killed His Wife and
Kids. So Did '60 Minutes' and a Bestseller. 40 Years Later, Errol Morris Counters With 500
Pages of Awkward Questions" (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jesse-kornbluth/a-jury-said-jef
frey-macdo_b_1852292.html). The Huffington Post. Retrieved September 28, 2013.
33. Miller, Laura (October 3, 2020). "Errol Morris Responds to the Wilderness of Error Finale" (ht
tps://slate.com/culture/2020/10/wilderness-of-error-finale-ending-errol-morris-interview.html).
Slate Magazine. Retrieved October 30, 2020.
34. Rothman, William, ed. (2009). Three Documentary Filmmakers: Errol Morris, Ross
McElwee, Jean Rouch (https://archive.org/details/threedocumentary00roth_626). Albany:
SUNY Press. pp. 3 (https://archive.org/details/threedocumentary00roth_626/page/n10)–4.
ISBN 9781438425016.
35. "Doc Stars: Personality-Driven Nonfiction|International Documentary Association" (https://w
ww.documentary.org/column/doc-stars-personality-driven-nonfiction). January 5, 2010.
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YouTube" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjEhCcU8jbw). YouTube. September 11,
2015.
38. "Stay Tuned Transcript: Bannon & The F You Presidency (with Errol Morris)" (https://cafe.co
m/stay-tuned-transcript-bannon-the-f-you-presidency-with-errol-morris/). CAFE. November
7, 2019. Retrieved November 13, 2019.
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channel" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFukiQOvDYs). YouTube. August 11, 2010.
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ps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrhDaAmn5Uw) Jan 20, 2011
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42. Nordine, Michael (May 17, 2016). "Errol Morris' New Short Documentary 'A Demon in the
Freezer' Reveals Smallpox Concerns — Watch" (http://www.indiewire.com/article/errol-morri
s-a-demon-in-the-freezer-smallpox-documentary-20160517). IndieWire. Retrieved
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archive.org/web/20080213002531/http://www.lib.cwu.edu/media/intnationaldoc20.htm).
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44. "40 Best Directors" (http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/page/0,11456,1082823,00.html). The
Guardian. London. Retrieved May 2, 2010.
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mbers/ChapterB.pdf) (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved June 3,
2011.
46. Chow, Andrew R. (December 11, 2019). "See the 25 New Additions to the National Film
Registry, From Purple Rain to Clerks" (https://time.com/5747503/national-film-registry-2019-
additions/). Time. New York, NY. Retrieved December 11, 2019.
External links
Official website (http://www.errolmorris.com/)
Errol Morris (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001554/) at IMDb
Errol Morris (https://charlierose.com/videos/1390) on Charlie Rose
Errol Morris discusses his career on the 7th Avenue Project radio show (http://7thavenueproj
ect.com/post/29494340948/errol-morris-confidential-part1)
Errol Morris (https://www.nytimes.com/topic/person/errol-morris) collected news and
commentary at The New York Times
Errol Morris (https://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/errol_morris) at Rotten Tomatoes
Errol Morris (https://web.archive.org/web/20110715031043/http://www.allrovi.com/name/erro
l-morris-p103562) (Jonathan Crow, Allmovie)
Errol Morris (https://web.archive.org/web/20060922114812/http://www.greencine.com/articl
e?action=view&articleID=81) (Nina Rehfeld, GreenCine)
Voices on Antisemitism Interview with Errol Morris (https://web.archive.org/web/2007122611
5908/http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/antisemitism/voices/transcript/?content=
20070816) from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Werner Herzog in conversation with Errol Morris (https://www.thebeliever.net/an-interview-wi
th-werner-herzog/) (The Believer)
The Unknown Known: Errol Morris's New Doc Tackles Unrepentant Iraq War Architect
Donald Rumsfeld (http://www.democracynow.org/2014/3/27/the_unknown_known_errol_mor
ris_new), a video interview on Democracy Now!
Bannon & The F You Presidency (with Errol Morris) (https://cafe.com/bannon-the-f-you-presi
dency-with-errol-morris/) (Stay Tuned with Preet)

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