Al Gore's global warming documentary,
An Inconvenient Truth, opens on May 24th in New York and LA, and in June everywhere else.
Click here for a list of theaters and dates.
I saw the film in January at the Sundance Film Festival. The entire audience was blown away. It is a great film: powerful, moving, and scary. You can see the amazing trailer for the film here.
I am writing to encourage all Kossacks to pledge to see the movie opening weekend.
Why should you pledge to see it? Not just because it is an amazing and powerful film.
Yesterday Al Gore announced that he is starting a new global warming awareness organization. The startup funding for the organization will be enabled by the film's success. Your ticket purchase will go to a great cause.
From the
Wall Street Journal today:
The group, which yesterday adopted the name Alliance for Climate Protection, plans to use advertising and grass-roots organizing to try to raise awareness, particularly among labor groups, hunters, evangelicals and conservatives in general.
The effort, still in the planning stages, will look "like a political campaign," predicts Lee M. Thomas, who ran the Environmental Protection Agency during President Ronald Reagan's second term and has agreed to be a board member.
Conceived by environmental leaders, the group will have board members spanning the political spectrum. In addition to Mr. Thomas, the board includes former Clinton EPA chief Carol Browner and, according to a person familiar with the matter, Brent Scowcroft, a former Republican national-security adviser. Mr. Scowcroft was traveling and couldn't be reached to confirm his participation.
The group believes that stopping global warming will require fundamental changes to energy policy, such as higher fuel-efficiency standards for automobiles, and that such changes will come about only if the public demands them. "For the public to demand that change, we need to get the facts in front of the public more effectively than we have," Mr. Thomas says.
Initial funding for the effort will come from projects run by Mr. Gore, which include "An Inconvenient Truth," a film documentary starring Mr. Gore slated for release by Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Classics unit ahead of Memorial Day weekend in New York and Los Angeles.
...
According to people familiar with the arrangements, Paramount Classics will donate $500,000 to the new group and also give a percentage of the film's earnings.
As you probably know, the success of a film is judged primarily by the amount it takes in during its opening weekend. As you may not know, theater operators and the studios decide how long a film will play in theaters based on its opening weekend box office numbers.
If this film does great business opening weekend, the media will be filled with stories about Gore's success and more people will be able to see the film and get educated.
If this film has a disappointing opening weekend, the media will jump on it as a sign that Al's message isn't popular and nobody cares about global warming, and the film will fade quickly.
The media has always liked to beat up Al Gore. We can't let them; we have to make the film a blow-out success.
PLEASE PLEDGE TO SEE THE FILM.
The film is already generating positive press, but momentum on the pledges will generate more. Bring your friends to the opening weekend, both those who already care about the issue and those who are skeptical.
This film will change minds. And with your help, the strong funding provided by the movie and the subsequent Inconvenient Truth book will allow the Alliance for Climate Protection to change even more minds.