Over the past months, CFACT’s Marc Morano has been working his (cold and probably two sizes too small) heart out to drum up press for his film Climate Hustle, a response to the Merchants of Doubt movie. He’s been plastering sycophantic “reviews,” mainly from deniers featured in the film, all over Climate Depot instead of the usual aggregation of denial news.
Last night was the big night: the movie’s one-night-only showing hosted by a specialty distribution company. This means that it will likely be impossible to gauge ticket sales or have any quantifiable metric of success (or failure). Sadly, then, we’ll never know whether or not the film surpasses the one it’s ripping off (Merchants of Doubt). However, we can be pretty confident it won’t hold a candle to the Academy Award-winning movie it’s claiming to be the denier’s version of (An Inconvenient Truth). As of Monday afternoon, though, with only the audience at the Paris premier having seen the movie, it already has a Rotten Tomatoes audience score of 67%, with 68 user ratings.
If Climate Hustle is not a direct rip-off of Merchants, it is clearly a homage. The Merchants movie uses a magician, sometimes playing card tricks, to illustrate how spin-doctors like Morano distract and deceive the public. Morano’s Hustle uses the classic playing card scam of three-card Monte as its “I’m rubber, you’re glue” attempt to turn the Merchants message on its head.
Unsurprisingly, none of the fawning reviews bring up this obvious parallel in their write-ups. Reviews by parties not involved are either focused on the nonexistent Palin vs Nye debate or critical of the climate denier’s con-job. That there are any negative stories is a feat in and of itself because, as Graham Readfearn reports, Morano hasn’t exactly been welcoming to non-deniers, save for one- Randy Olson. Somehow Olson was allowed to see the film, and his read-out is a little less glowing than the reviews from participants. Olson referred to the film, billed by Morano as a fun and funny counter to An Inconvenient Truth (albeit just ten years late), as “very amateurish,” “not very watchable” and simply “not good film making.”
Sounds like it probably won’t be winning any Oscars. But that’s probably not what Morano is after. Instead, it’s obvious that this is just the latest attempt to confuse the public about the validity of climate science with the same old conspiracy theories we’ve heard for years. Meaning it’s not the public, but those foolish enough to pay for tickets that are getting hustled.
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