Attacking the Messenger: Smearing Gasland Producer Josh Fox

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Attacking the Messenger: Smearing "Gasland" Producer Josh Fox
by Steve Horn
prwatch.org
March 30, 2011 - 1:23pm

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Gasland, a documentary film that exposes the dangers accompanying methane gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale region, has been mercilessly attacked by Big Oil since the film was released during the summer of 2010. The attacks have only escalated both in intensity and volume as the film has grown in popularity and acclaim, reaching their peak when it was announced that the film was a candidate for Best Documentary at the 2011 Academy Awards.

While most of the spin has centered around factual misinformation about fracking, utilizing the prototypical Big Oil, Big Lies playbook tactic, Big Oil has now raised the stakes. In lieu of lying about how "environmentally friendly" the fracking process is, they have shifted to the propagandist's last resort: shooting the messenger.

Ted Borawski, a geologist who is the Chief of the Minerals Section in the Bureau of Forestry, in the Pennsylvania State Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR), likened Fox's movie to the work of the late Nazi Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels. He stated, "Joseph Goebbels would have been proud. He would have given him the Nazi Award. That, in my opinion, was a beautiful piece of propaganda."

There are a few problems with this proposition.

First, Fox's work, unlike that of Goebbels, is meant to save lives, not lead to a massive genocide campaign. If one were being honest, he or she would argue that Borawski, the man who is being paid to protect citizens and not the pocketbooks of Big Oil, is putting citizens in peril -- all credible scientific evidence shows that.

Second, the comments are borderline anti-Semitic, as Josh Fox is Jewish and his father, Michael Fox's family, is rife with victims of the Holocaust. Michael Fox said, "So many of my relatives perished in the Holocaust, I spent many years overcoming the devastation. I needed to revive my hope that there were good people, and that kindness and justice could prevail in the world. To have my son called a Nazi after what happened to our family, when what he did was to raise the alarm about the poisoning of our water, is heartrending. It highlights how quickly and callously some forget man's inhumanity towards man, resorting to cruel name calling and hatred when they have no other resources to justify their untenable and greedy positions."

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), not particularly known for its principled stands, particularly as it pertains to the Israel-Palestine conflict, got it right this time. They weighed in, stating, "It is our understanding that Mr. Fox's film raises health, environmental and human rights concerns with a gas drilling practice called hydraulic fracturing," Barry Morrison, Eastern Pennsylvania-Delaware Regional Director of the ADL wrote to Borawski. "While debate on this topic can be vigorous and robust we would hope that the dialogue, especially from state officials, would be respectful and civilized."

Fox has called on Borawski to be fired, while Republican Governor Tom Corbett, a major patron of Big Oil during the 2010 campaign, as well as Borawski, have pleaded the Fifth on this one and remained silent in the face of controversy.

And so it goes -- the environmental degradation proceeds just as quickly as the Big Oil propaganda machine. On this issue, Big Oil is quickly approaching crisis management mode status -- it's a matter of when at this point, and not if.

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Sparks Fly Over 'Gasland' Drilling Documentary
by National Public Radio
Heard on Talk of the Nation
February 24, 2011 1:00 PM ET

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Filmmaker Josh Fox visited families across the U.S. while fliming Gasland. In some homes, the tap water was so contaminated that it could be lighted on fire.
Courtesy of International WOW Company/HBO

In 2008, filmmaker Josh Fox received a $100,000 offer to lease his 19 acres in northeastern Pennsylvania for drilling by the booming natural gas industry.

Fox promptly responded with a decisive "no thanks." Then he set off on a road trip across 24 states to investigate the environmental impact of natural gas drilling on local communities.

Along the way, Fox met dozens of families who say they have developed health problems after leasing their land for hydraulic fracturing, a type of natural gas drilling also known as "fracking."

Fox's resulting documentary, Gasland, questions the industry's portrayal of natural gas as a clean energy source. The film has drawn harsh criticism from the oil and gas industry, and Energy In Depth, a coalition of U.S. oil and natural gas producers, charges Fox with alternating "between misstating and outright ignoring basic and verifiable facts."

"I stand by the film 100 percent," Fox tells NPR's Neal Conan. "The purpose of this is to try to create a controversy or to create doubt on what is a very sincere and honest project that's been thoroughly researched and vetted."

Fox won't speculate if the Gasland controversy will influence its chances for the Oscar for best documentary, but he questions the wisdom of the natural gas industry's response to the film. "I think that it's created a lot of attention, and I think that was ... unwise for them to do."

And today we conclude our series on the films nominated for best feature-length documentary at the Oscars.

"Gasland" focuses on natural gas and questions the industry's portrayal of this fuel as clean energy. In particular, filmmaker Josh Fox focuses on the costs and hazards of a drilling process called hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking.

(Soundbite of movie, "Gasland")

Mr. JOSH FOX (Director, "Gasland"): They started out West - New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Wyoming, Oklahoma; and in the South - Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama; 450,000 wells times 18 times one to seven million gallons, something like 40 trillion gallons of water. All of it infused with the 596 chemicals in the fracking fluid. And now they're coming east.

CONAN: If you've seen the movie and have questions, give us a call. 800-989-8255. Email us: talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation at our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.

Josh Fox joins us now from NPR West in Culver City. Welcome to the program. Congratulations on the nomination.

Mr. FOX: Thanks a lot. It's great to be here.

CONAN: And as you, I'm sure, know better than I, "Gasland" is probably the most controversial of the nominated documentaries. A group connected to the natural gas industry sent a letter to the Academy that says your picture is so full of unsubstantiated claims and factual errors, they shouldn't even consider it.

Mr. FOX: Well, the gas industry has been attacking us for over a year, as they've been doing to almost everyone who's reporting on the situation. What you have here is the largest onshore natural gas drilling campaign in domestic history. And this is causing thousands of contamination incidents, water contamination, air pollution, a health crisis.

And what's happening now, and the reason why I got involved with this, is because it's coming east. They're proposing hundreds of thousands gas wells across New York and Pennsylvania, including in the New York City watershed and the watershed that provides water to southern New Jersey and Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and other major cities, calling this the Saudi Arabia of natural gas.

And what the gas industry has to do is convince people to lease their land -and there's usually cash offer for a signing bonus and a percentage of the gas that they pull out - in order to turn their area into an industrial drilling zone. So you know, what - this is, I think, a tough sell for the natural gas industry. But they have been ramming this project through in 34 states. And it's causing a lot of havoc and a lot of people getting severe environmental damage, health damage, property value damage.

And so natural gas is promoting itself as this clean fuel source. But the untold story which we go into in "Gasland," and it's a trip all across the America, is that this form of drilling, onshore, is incredibly problematic and it's inherently contaminating. And, you know, it's a proposition - I don't know how many people would want to live in the oil fields of Saudi Arabia. But certainly, you know, that is what is on the table here for huge areas of New York State, 50 percent of New York State, three quarters of Pennsylvania.

CONAN: And you raised a lot of questions about hazards. Obviously there are a lot of people who disagree with you and not all of them who work for the natural gas industry.

Mr. FOX: Well, I don't know. I've heard principally that the criticism is coming from the natural gas industry and their PR machine. They have issued a smear campaign, a misinformation campaign against the film. I stand behind the film 100 percent. We've published all of our research and our facts. Not all of it, but a good rebuttal to all of their attacks, at our website, gaslandthemovie.com, and people can look at it. They say outrageous things.

You know, the gas industry has been exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act, which is the act that monitors an underground injection of toxic chemicals. And this form of drilling, fracking, injects toxic chemicals underneath the ground. But in 2005, the Bush-Cheney administration, in their energy bill passed by the U.S. Congress, exempted fracking from that law specifically. And when that happened, then you see the drilling explode all across the United States, because these companies no longer have to report the chemicals and the toxins. And these are neurotoxins and carcinogens that are actually going into the water table and being injected by the millions of gallons to do this fracking process. So they come out and say, well, we're not exempt from Safe Drinking Water Act, even though you can actually just look up the law.

And I think that the purpose of this is to try to create a controversy or to create doubt on what is a very sincere and honest project that's been thoroughly researched and vetted, you know, to take potshots at it. Because this is what they do.

CONAN: Do you think that's helped the film's chances or hurt it?

Mr. FOX: Well, I don't know. It's hard to say. I mean I think that it has created a lot of attention. And I think that was unwise for them to do, especially when we have the facts and the science on our side. And they've just been shown lying to Congress. They were injecting diesel fuel - diesel directly into the ground. And they initially told the U.S. Congress, no, we're not doing that. And they told the EPA, no, we're not doing that. And lo and behold, Henry Waxman's investigation finds that they are doing it. And they say, oh well, we didn't really break the law, we just broke out handshake agreement with you.

This is the kind of industry that we're dealing with. It's very bullying. It's very aggressive. So I think, to a degree what it's doing, not only creating, you know, more publicity for the film, but it's also showing their tactics, which is that they're completely in denial of these thousands of cases of contamination across the country. They continue to promote this as a great thing, as a boon for, you know, the places where they're proposing the drillings, there's no possible risk to water supply, even though Mayor Bloomberg issued a report just last year that said this was a catastrophic risk to the New York City watershed. And they are very, very powerful and they like to push people around.

CONAN: We're talking with Josh Fox. He is the director of "Gasland," one of the five films nominated for this year's Oscar for best feature length documentary. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, coming to you from NPR News.

And let's get Al on the line. Al's with us from White County in Arkansas.

AL (Caller): Yes. I'm calling just to say thank you, Josh, for your film, for your help, because we are ground zero down here. No one has been listening.

Mr. FOX: Yeah.

AL: They started really intensively - well, they started buying up mineral rights back in 2007, 2008. And a lot of us didn't know what was going on. And then they, you know, they got permission to drill. And a lot of people in our area have lost their wells. Their wells have gone bad.

CONAN: You mean, their water wells?

AL: Their water wells, their drinking water. And we called the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality. No one - well, they said they were going to investigate but they were short on staff, short on inspectors. We called the governor's office. We called our former senator, Mrs. Lincoln, Senator Prior -no one would listen. But Josh visit - Josh came to Arkansas. He came to Clinton last summer and showed the film, and then he was in Little Rock, and suddenly everything changed.

There's been a bill introduced in the Arkansas legislature, a landowner's bill of rights. There's a disclosure provision to make the companies disclose what kind of chemicals they're injecting into the water. It's in committee right now, but it's - Josh, thank you for your...

Mr. FOX: Well, I really appreciate your comments. And I'm actually going to be in Arkansas doing a speech at Hendrix University right after the Academy Awards. I'm looking forward to it. I have great friends down in Arkansas. It's one of the places that I visited first. And you can see their footage on the "GasLand" DVD. There's some of it in the film.

Just an incredible instance of water contamination. We hear this same story over and over again. The state departments of Environmental Protection, Environmental Quality, are overwhelmed. What they've done is they've exempted this form of drilling from all the federal legislation - the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, so that in many ways the EPA doesn't have laws to enforce.

And I was down in Washington, D.C. last week, holding a press conference. I called on President Obama for a national moratorium on this form of drilling, because this is the same story that you're hearing over and over and over again in these states, Arkansas and New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, Colorado, Wyoming. It's going on all across the nation.

Were actually encouraging people to write to President Obama on Oscar night their details about that on the "GasLand" Facebook page, so people can take a look at that, because this is an extreme situation. There's been a bill introduced in Congress called the FRAC Act, which would re-regulate the process under the Safe Drinking Water Act, because these states are overwhelmed, that we do need federal a federal - ground level regulation for this, the very basic minimum of it.

CONAN: Get another caller on the line. This is Timothy(ph), Timothy calling from Casper, Wyoming.

TIMOTHY (Caller): How are you?

CONAN: Very well, thanks.

TIMOTHY: I just have a comment. (Technical difficulties) but I used to work in the natural gas for Halliburton. And I have a hard time understanding why everybody says that fracking is a very polluting process, because I worked in the (unintelligible) department (unintelligible) isolation. And all the freshwater reserves, all in Wyoming, we always (unintelligible) I believe it was 500 feet below the water, and that was 1,500 feet, so at most maybe 5,000 feet down would be the water supply.

And all the natural gas we were drilling into was all down about 10,000 feet deep. And all the production zones and all the water zones were all completely sealed in cement, and then there's thousands of feet of hard formation between where they were fracking the water and everything like that. So I just kind of wanted to say that, and I'll go ahead and pop off the air here.

CONAN: All right, Timothy, thank you.

Mr. FOX: I really appreciate that, actually. You know, there - the shale layers and the other layers that they're fracking are far below the water table. The problem seems to be that there's this massive failure rate of wells. And a massive failure rate, to me, is between two and five percent, which is what the industry admits. You don't come in with one well. You come in with 100 wells.

So if you have a failure rate of two and five percent, you have contamination incidents in a large percentage that can contaminate each of them up to 10, 20 square miles, which is what we saw in Pennsylvania. Some say it's the casings that are failing. Others say that there are natural fractures under the ground, which lead all the way up to the surface, so that the ground is actually porous, especially in areas where there are mountains.

Here's what we're asking for - we're asking for an investigation. In Pavillion, Wyoming, which is right next to Casper, which is one of the places we cover in the film, you're seeing evidence of fracking fluids and these chemicals that are being used in people's water wells. EPA has investigated that. Twenty out of 44 water wells surveyed showed these chemicals in the water. We also know that from Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission and Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, somehow the gas is migrating.

But here's the thing. The industry has been successful in blocking all of the investigations into this form of drilling since it really exploded.

The EPA is currently investigating, but the industry is not happy about that. So we don't know exactly all the ways in which the process is going wrong. We just know that there are number of ways that it can go wrong and it has been going wrong.

CONAN: Josh Fox, thanks very much and good luck to you.

Mr. FOX: All right. Thanks very much.

CONAN: John Fox, director of the Oscar-nominated documentary "GasLand," with us from NPR West in Culver City. You can view the trailer for the film at our website. That's at npr.org, click on TALK OF THE NATION. Our interviews with all of the other filmmakers nominated for best documentary feature are also there, both from this year and last year. We're not going to tell you who won last year. It was "The Cove."

Copyright © 2011 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at http://www.npr.org for further information.

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Gasland II's Luddite Slander Of 'Fracking' Is The Latest Technophobe Attack On Progress
by Alex Epstein
Forbes.com
Guest commentary curated by Forbes Opinion. Avik Roy, Opinion Editor.
Jul 19, 2013, 08:00 am

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Imagine some of America’s best minds created a technological breakthrough that could pull us out of recession, lower every American’s cost of living, revitalize dead industries, and lead to employment opportunities for millions. How would we react?

Unfortunately, history tells us that technological breakthroughs often face hysterical opposition. Technophobes opposed the automobile. They opposed the radio. They opposed the computer.

And now they’re opposing today’s most exciting technological breakthrough, shale energy technology—aka “fracking.”

Their spokesman is Josh Fox. And July 8th, to worldwide fanfare, HBO broadcast his latest manifesto, Gasland, Part II.

Gasland, Part II is a direct continuation of the original Gasland, which famously featured footage of a Pennsylvania man lighting his water on fire—a phenomenon that, unknown to many, is a frequent natural occurrence.

Both movies follow a similar three-part formula. First, Fox tells a sad story about a family undergoing a problem, usually with their drinking water—“When we turn on the tap, the water reeks of hydrocarbons and chemicals,” says John Fenton of Pavillion, Wyoming. Then, Fox blames it on the oil and gas industry using “fracking”--without exploring any alternative explanations, such as the fact that methane and other substances often naturally seep into groundwater. Finally, Fox concludes that fracking, and really all oil and gas drilling, should be illegal--as if any technology that can be misused should be outlawed.

This is a blueprint for opposing any technology. For example, Fox could make Carland, which could show car crashes and then blame all of them on “Big Auto.” Then it could argue that because car crashes are possible, we don’t need cars.

In fact, Fox could make a far more alarming movie than Gasland based on supposedly risk-free solar and wind technology. Imagine seeing the following scene, described in this article by a British reporter visiting a wind-power mining operation, in a film called Wasteland.

...an apocalyptic sight greets us: a giant, secret toxic dump, made bigger by every wind turbine we build.

The lake instantly assaults your senses. Stand on the black crust for just seconds and your eyes water and a powerful, acrid stench fills your lungs.

For hours after our visit, my stomach lurched and my head throbbed. We were there for only one hour, but those who live in Mr Yan’s village of Dalahai, and other villages around, breathe in the same poison every day.

Here’s the truth about groundwater. Every technology uses raw materials that must be mined from the ground--any time we drill or mine or dig underground, whether to drill for oil or to mine for the materials in solar panels, groundwater can be compromised. Of all the things you can do underground, fracking is the least likely to impact groundwater, because it takes place thousands of feet away from groundwater. As President Obama’s former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson acknowledged, there is no “proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water. . . .”

If something goes wrong at a fracked oil or gas well, it almost certainly has nothing to do with fracking. This has been explained in the many, many factual refutations of Gasland’s claims--see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here,here.) And the valuable industry research organization Energy in Depth has already systematically refuted Gasland II here.

So why single out fracking? Because technophobia thrives on unfamiliar, unknown terms like “fracking.” If Fox had opposed “drilling,” he wouldn’t have gotten very far, because the public knows that while accidents can happen while drilling, drilling itself is a vital human activity.

Supporters of Gasland would argue that Fox is not against new energy technology, and in fact champions “renewable” energy technology like solar and wind. But not only does he ignore the “dirtiness” of these technologies, he ignores their greatest problem: they are utter failures at producing cheap, plentiful, reliable energy that life and progress require. The reasons why have been well-understood for decades. Because sunlight and wind are low-density energy, they require vast land and material resources to capture. And worse, because sunlight and wind are unreliable energy, they always need a backup, which is almost always fossil fuels.

Think of solar and wind like unproductive, unreliable employees; you can take on a few of them in your company without going bankrupt, but they always cost you a lot of money and they never help you make progress.

If Josh Fox was a true believer in the power of solar and wind technology to improve human life, he would advocate open competition. But he, along with his new ally in the film, Stanford environmentalist Mark Jacobson, want to outlaw the best technologies on the promise that they will somehow make the worst technologies work.

He expresses no acknowledgement whatsoever of the upside to fracking technology and no acknowledgement of the downside of restricting, let alone outlawing it. Like the technophobes of the past, with new technologies it sees only problems but not solutions. And this is a shame, because the truth is that America is becoming Gasland--and that’s an amazingly good thing.

They say you can’t squeeze blood from a turnip, but shale energy technology can get oceans of precious oil and natural gas out of once-useless rock. The “fracking” in shale energy technology uses water and sand to fracture shale rock, creating cracks that oil can flow through. It has been used (safely) for over 60 years on conventional oil and gas deposits in over 1 million frac jobs. Now, more advanced versions are being applied to shale around the country, with incredible results. In North Dakota, the once unknown Bakken shale formation has become the foundation of America’s greatest economic boom, which drove the state’s unemployment rate down to 3.2%.

And there is so much potential to expand. California is home to the Monterey Shale, which is four times larger than the Bakken. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that it contains 15 billion barrels of recoverable oil, or 630 billion gallons. That’s an almost unimaginable amount of oil for getting to work, for family vacations, for life-saving medical devices—and studies estimate that it can create job opportunities in the millions.

Those of us who have jobs can easily forget what a new, well-paying job means to a family. It means saving for college instead of falling deeper into debt. It means enjoying a comfortable life, not anxiously living on the edge. It means optimism, not despair.

Unfortunately, our fellow citizens may be deprived of this opportunity, thanks to widespread miseducation about shale oil technology, led by Josh Fox.

When we look 10 or 20 years down the road, will we be the nation that embraced technology and brought prosperity to all, or the state that rejected technology and deprived millions of our fellow citizens the opportunity for a better life? It’s time to get behind shale energy technology. It’s time to embrace being Gasland.

Alex Epstein, an energy philosopher, debater, and communications consultant, is Founder and President of the Center for Industrial Progress and head of the I Love Fossil Fuels Campaign.

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Tribeca: ‘Gasland’ Director Josh Fox Clears Up Some Nasty Rumors About Himself and Promises Audiences “Bigger and Better Explosions” In His Sequel
by Indiewire
Apr 23, 2013 12:16 pm

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Josh Fox’s 2010 Oscar-nominated documentary “Gasland” compellingly exposed the damaging impact of a form of natural gas drilling called hydraulic fracturing, otherwise known as fracking, on small town America. Framed by Fox’s wry perspective, the movie clearly demonstrated how fracking and the oil companies responsible for it endanger the safety of anyone living within its vicinity. “Gasland” contained damning evidence but apparently not enough to instigate much change, because now Fox has completed “Gasland Part II,” which ably demonstrates the deleterious environmental ramifications of fracking on a much larger scale. Below, Fox talks about his project, which recently premiered at the currently underway Tribeca Film Festival.

About my film: “Gasland Part II” is a sequel to “Gasland,” but don’t worry, you don’t have to have seen the first one to be right with it. It tells the story of another layer of contamination due to fracking, not the water or the air–our government. Every oil & gas dollar is toxic to our democracy.

Q. Anything about yourself you’d like cleared up?

A. No one ever asks me about myself, they just want to know about fracking. According to the oil and gas industry and their proponents I am a communist, terrorist, nazi, Russian sympathizing, anti-American, arsonist, extremist. Their smear campaign would have you believe that I took money from Hugo Chavez, the Wind industry, Valdimir Putin, etc. and that my films misrepresent the oil and gas industry, which, of course, never has any problems with water contamination, air pollution, spills, or toxic industrialization and is just a great neighbor to everyone on earth and doesn’t cause climate change or any other kind of future apocalypse. Also according to them, I burned down a building on my own property, and pro-drilling officials have publicly compared “Gasland,” the first film in this series, to the work of Goebbels. You may also be advised that screenings of my film, “Gasland,” in Pennsylvania were listed as Eco-terrorist events in PA Homeland Security bulletins. Of course, none of those things are true. I’m just a guy who lives in the upper Delaware River Basin, the watershed for 16 million people including New York City. I also sometimes live in Brooklyn. I’m just trying to stop fracking, a horrendously contaminating industrial process that is currently occupying huge areas in 34 states in the U.S. and has now spread to 32 countries world wide. I’ve investigated the crisis of fracking on 5 continents for the past 5 years. Also I play the banjo. If you haven’t heard about all of this yet, or especially if you have, come and watch “Gasland Part II.” I’m gonna play the Star Spangled Banner on the banjo at the end of the Q and A. Every time. I promise.

Q. What else do you want audiences to know about your film?

A. It’s a sequel, so it has bigger and better explosions.

But more than that it gives a picture of where we are now, in the U.S. and worldwide of the state of extreme energy development. We can continue to frack the world with all the ensuing chaos of water and air contamination, health problems and the dismantling of our democratic process, or we can start to make new choices about where we get our energy. The film will lay out those choices clearly. As Calvin Tillman, the Mayor of Dish Texas says so poignantly in the film “Once you know, you can’t not know.”

Q. What was your biggest hurdle to overcome in getting this made?

A. When I first started, no one knew anything about fracking. Now it’s a household word. The biggest challenge was in trying to tell the story of fracking that you don’t know.

The other huge challenge here was choosing what to include from incredible testimonies coming from all of the families depicted in the film. Thousands upon thousands of people across America and many more across the globe are suffering at the hands of the oil and gas industry. It’s a huge story that demands the utmost attention. We tried our best to serve that with humor and the deepest respect.

Q. Fave docs?

A. I love the documentary work of the Maysles Brothers. I love how Koyaanistqatsi captures the conflict between nature and industrial civilization. Those films inspire me. Godard’s use of percussive rhythms in his editing. I love documentary because it’s alive. “When you get blue, and you’ve lost all your dreams, there’s nothing like a campfire and a can of beans.”- Tom Waits.

Q. So what comes next?

A. Gonna get out there and keep fighting the oil and gas industry. “Gasland Part II” will have a cross country grassroots engagement campaign similar to the first film. I’m really looking forward to touring with the film and bringing the movie to the grassroots organizations that are fighting fracking all over the country. HBO has been really amazing in that they see the potential of this kind of distribution model — a TV premiere running along side of a grassroots tour. We will be organizing house parties for people to watch in coordination with Americans Against Fracking, Environmental Working Group and many other grassroots orgs.

[Eric Kohn contributed to this article.]

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The Truth Has Changed by John Fox Will Play the Town Hall
by BWW News Desk (broadwayworld.com)
Jul. 12, 2018

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The Truth Has Changed, a new theater work performed by Emmy winner and Oscar and Drama Desk Award-nominated filmmaker, playwright, and activist Josh Fox (Gasland), will play New York's Town Hall on September 11, 2018 at 7:30pm. Initially commissioned by HBO, The Truth Has Changed is a solo monologue tracing the arc of American political life from 9/11 to the Trump era. The piece, which will be filmed as part of a feature film for release in 2019, traces Josh's experiences as a first responder during 9/11, his groundbreaking reporting on fracking, his eye-opening eco-flights over the Gulf of Mexico during the BP oil spill, Hurricane Sandy, the massive rallies during the 2016 election and the Democratic Convention, Standing Rock, and beyond.

Josh's first book, The Truth Has Changed, with introduction by Bill McKibben, will be published by Seven Stories Press on September 11, 2018. Signed first editions will be available at a 25% discount, for purchase in advance when purchasing tickets to the show and at The Town Hall the night of the event.

Golden Globe winner and NOLA resident Alex Ebert of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes has penned the score for this theatrical piece, adding an immediate emotional musical impact to the work.

The Truth Has Changed is written and performed by Josh Fox, directed by Ron Russell, features original music by Alex Ebert (aka Edward Sharpe), dramaturgy by Morgan Jenness, project advising by Nathan Lemoine, Susan Barnes, Kyle Cadotte, and Bonnie Sue Stein, and is produced by International Wow Company, GOH Productions, and Barrow Street Productions.

The Truth Has Changed offers both a warning and a way forward for our besieged democracy.

The water has changed. The climate has changed. The rules have changed. There's toxic data everywhere. How do we know what's true?

As the Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning filmmaker behind Gasland, the film that started the anti-fracking movement worldwide, Josh Fox was the subject of a $100 million smear campaign by the oil and gas industry. This campaign of misinformation and slander was run by people we have heard quite a bit about in recent times: Steve Bannon, Andrew Breitbart, James O'Keefe and others. And what Steve Bannon did to Josh from 2010 to 2015, he did to the whole American electorate in 2016. Josh Fox was the beta test for the types of propaganda for which the gang that created Cambridge Analytica is now known worldwide.

And Fox tells his story in an uncompromising way like never before.

The project was commissioned by legendary documentary producer Sheila Nevins for HBO as a solo performance to inspire action on climate change, fracking and democracy. In the face of the advance of fracking and fracked gas power plants across the USA, the work has become more relevant day by day.

Tickets are priced at $24.50 - $64.50 (premiums also available), and are on sale at The Town Hall Box Office at 143 West 43rd Street, New York, NY or on TicketMaster.com. The Truth Has Changed runs 2 hours 20 minutes with an intermission.

For further information about this performance and the national tour, please visit thetruthhaschangedtour.com

For further information about the book, please visit http://www.sevenstories.com.

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CAP UCLA Announces 2018–19 Season Addition: Josh Fox’s ‘The Truth Has Changed’. New Theater Work by Emmy-winning Filmmaker
by Center for the Art of Performance UCLA
October 27, 2018 at Royce Hall

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“Entertaining, funny, insightful and important." —Tim Robbins

“Tremendous! Absolutely riveting. A brilliant, brilliant performance. A fabulous journalist.”
—Harvey Wasserman, KPFK

UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance (CAP UCLA) presents Emmy-winning and Oscar and Drama Desk Award-nominated filmmaker, playwright and activist Josh Fox (Gasland) in a filmed live solo performance of his new theater work, The Truth Has Changed, ahead of the U.S. midterm elections on Saturday, Oct. 27 at 8 p.m. at Royce Hall. Tickets for $29–$59 are available now at cap.ucla.edu, 310-825-2101, Ticketmaster and the UCLA Central Ticket Office.

Tracing the arc of American politics from 9/11 to Trump, Fox tells an intimate and damning personal story of our world in crisis in his riveting monologue, The Truth Has Changed, a companion to his upcoming book and film of the same title. Fox has been an active eyewitness to history from his work as a first responder during 9/11 to his groundbreaking reporting on fracking, the Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill, Hurricane Sandy, the 2016 U.S. presidential election and Democratic National Convention, Standing Rock and beyond.

“The water has changed. The climate has changed. The rules have changed. There's toxic data everywhere,” said Fox. “How do we know what's true?”

Through his complex, funny and dramatic storytelling, Fox delivers a first-person account of the dizzy and confusing landscape in which he became a witness to systemic corruption on an unprecedented scale and the alarming shift towards authoritarianism in U.S. politics. Golden Globe winner and New Orleans resident Alex Ebert, of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, has penned the score for the performance, adding an immediate emotional musical impact to the work.

The Truth Has Changed is written and performed by Josh Fox, directed by Ron Russell, features original music by Alex Ebert (aka Edward Sharpe), dramaturgy by Morgan Jenness, project advising by Nathan Lemoine, Susan Barnes, Kyle Cadotte and Bonnie Sue Stein, and is produced by International WOW Company, GOH Productions, and Barrow Street Productions.

Fox has written, directed and narrated four feature-length documentaries confronting the fossil fuel industry, climate destruction and rampant globalization. He is best-known as the Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning filmmaker of Gasland, which started the anti-fracking movement worldwide and resulted in his becoming the target of a $100 million smear campaign by the oil and gas industry. This campaign of misinformation and slander was run by Steve Bannon, Andrew Breitbart, James O’Keefe and others.

Fox is the only journalist ever arrested in Congress for doing journalism. Hailed by The New York Times as “one of the most adventurous impresarios,” Criterion noted “there are few filmmakers who epitomize the idea of the democratization of cinema in the digital age more than one Josh Fox.”

The project was initially commissioned by legendary documentary producer Sheila Nevins for HBO as a solo performance to inspire action on climate change, fracking and democracy. The Truth Has Changed will be recorded as part of a feature film for release in 2019. Coinciding with the book publication on September 11, an extended national tour will kick off at New York City’s Town Hall, which will also be broadcast. In The Truth Has Changed, Fox recounts his amazing tale in a heartfelt, uncompromising manner that offers both a warning and a way forward for our besieged democracy. Special post show discussions and events to follow the performance.

CAP UCLA’s upcoming programs include Elizabeth Gilbert and Cheryl Strayed in Conversation (Dec. 2, Royce Hall), A Thousand Thoughts: A Live Documentary with the Kronos Quartet written and directed by Sam Green and Joe Bini (Dec. 7, The Theatre at Ace Hotel DTLA), Viet Thanh Nguyen and Luis Alberto Urrea in Conversation (Jan. 17, Royce Hall) and Jesmyn Ward and Mitchell Jackson in Conversation (Feb. 7, Royce Hall).

CALENDAR EDITORS, PLEASE NOTE:
CAP UCLA presents
Josh Fox: The Truth Has Changed
Saturday, Oct. 27 at 8 p.m.
Royce Hall, UCLA
10745 Dickson Court, Los Angeles, CA 90095

Program: Ahead of the U.S. midterm elections, CAP UCLA welcomes Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning filmmaker and activist Josh Fox (Gasland) with his new theater work, The Truth Has Changed, a filmed live solo performance based on his book of the same title that traces the arc of American politics from 9/11 to Trump. As a first responder during 9/11 to his groundbreaking reporting on fracking, the BP oil spill, Hurricane Sandy, the 2016 U.S presidential election and Democratic National Convention, Standing Rock and beyond, Fox has been an active eyewitness to history. In The Truth Has Changed, Fox recounts his amazing tale in a heartfelt and uncompromising manner that offers both a warning and a way forward for our besieged democracy. Special post show discussions and events to follow the performance.

Tickets:
Single tickets: $29–$59
Online: cap.ucla.edu
UCLA Central Ticket Office: 310-825-2101, Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Royce Hall box office: open 90 minutes prior to the event start time.

Credits:
The Truth Has Changed
Written and Performed by Josh Fox
Directed by Ron Russell
Original Music by Alex Ebert (aka Edward Sharpe)
Dramaturgy by Morgan Jenness
Project Advising by Nathan Lemoine, Susan Barnes, Kyle Cadotte and Bonnie Sue Stein
Produced by International WOW Company, GOH Productions and Barrow Street Productions

Artist website: The Truth Has Changed Tour

ABOUT JOSH FOX

Josh Fox made “fracking” a household word with his debut documentary Gasland, which premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and was awarded the Special Jury Prize for Documentary. In June 2010, it premiered on HBO to an audience of four million homes and was also viewed by more than 250,000 audience members during a subsequent 250-city grassroots tour. In 2011, the film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary and won an Emmy Award for Best Non-Fiction Director. Gasland Part II premiered on HBO in July 2013, and won the 2013 Environmental Media Association award for Best Documentary, Best Film at the Wild and Scenic Film Festival and the Hell Yeah Prize from Cinema Eye Honors. Fox’s other films include the award-winning How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can't Change and AWAKE, a Dream of Standing Rock.

Fox is the founder and producing artistic director of the International WOW Company, which has produced over 40 new plays to consistent rave reviews. The New York Times calls him "one of the most adventurous impresarios of the New York avant-garde" and Time Out NY said Fox is "one of downtown's most audacious auteurs." He has toured to 500-plus American cities to speak with people about climate change and the proliferation of fossil fuel extraction, raising awareness at the grassroots.

Fox has appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Real Time with Bill Maher, CBS World News Tonight, The Colbert Report, The Diane Rehm Show, NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered, Last Call with Carson Daly, All In with Chris Hayes, Democracy Now and many other national broadcasts. He has been covered in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and Time magazine, among other publications. He lives in New York City and New Orleans. Fox's first book, The Truth Has Changed, with an introduction by author and environmentalist Bill McKibben, will be published by Seven Stories Press on September 11, 2018.

ABOUT CAP UCLA

UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance (CAP UCLA) is dedicated to the advancement of the contemporary performing arts in all disciplines — dance, music, spoken word and theater, as well as emerging digital, collaborative and cross-platforms — by leading artists from around the globe. Part of UCLA’s School of the Arts and Architecture, CAP UCLA curates and facilitates direct exposure to artists who are creating extraordinary works of art and fosters a vibrant learning community both on and off the UCLA campus. The organization invests in the creative process by providing artists with financial backing and time to experiment and expand their practices through strategic partnerships and collaborations. As an influential voice within the local, national and global arts communities, CAP UCLA connects this generation to the next in order to preserve a living archive of our culture. CAP UCLA is also a safe harbor where cultural expression and artistic exploration can thrive, giving audiences the opportunity to experience real life through characters and stories on stage, and giving artists an avenue to challenge assumptions and advance new ways of seeing and understanding the world we live in now.

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PRESS REVIEW TICKETS/PHOTO PASSES/INTERVIEW REQUESTS: Contact Holly Wallace at hawallace@arts.ucla.edu, 310-206-8744.

IMAGES: Available by request or register for download at cap.ucla.edu/pressimages. Photo courtesy of International WOW Company.