“I NEED a tighter ass, tighter ass,” the cameraman says. He and his crew are in a Senate office building in Washington DC, setting up to record an interview. The cameraman is trying to get the lighting right, but the sound man, standing in for the interviewer Randy Olson, is too laid back to make a convincing scientist. Until he clenches, that is, and in a perfect professorial voice intones, “My name is Dr Olson.” The goofy scene epitomises the central question of the movie: why can’t scientists learn to chill out?
recently opened at a run of film festivals across the US. This excellent, thoughtful comedy should be required viewing for those who take global climate change seriously, those who don’t, and the scientists who are trying to reach out to both.
is a scientist turned film-maker. He’s certainly no climate-change denier, but the earnest, science-heavy documentary he’s supposedly shooting is a foil for the real film: a funny, chaotic mockumentary that pokes fun at scientists’ inability to communicate with the public. In it, Olson inhabits the character of a pompous, uptight scientist trying to make a straight documentary about global warming, which is quickly revealed to be a quixotic pursuit in an industry that cares about celebrity hosts, not data points.
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Sizzle, the real film, is populated by stereotypes: the keepin’-it-real African American film crew; the ditzy gay producers; the dull, data-obsessed scientists; the fact-deprived environmentalist; and the slightly wacko global warming sceptics. Olson, the producers and the crew are acting. The rest, however, are real people, and their unscripted, true-to-stereotype behaviour drives the film’s humour.
All the laughs add up to a serious point: if climate scientists want the world to take their warnings more seriously, they need to unclench a bit. You might think that in our media-savvy world this message would have permeated the scientific ranks by now. You’d be wrong. In his previous documentary, Flock of Dodos, Olson, a Harvard-trained evolutionary biologist, committed the heresy of having a laugh at his scientific colleagues’ inability to convince a sceptical public that evolution is real. Olson took more heat from scientists than he did from creationists, despite the film being a strong defence of evolution.
“Climate scientists need to learn to unclench a bit”
Sizzle is already rankling with reviewers, who seem to get neither the joke nor the serious point. As it is shown on the festival circuit, though, something remarkable is happening. Audiences are actually laughing during a film about global warming, maybe even coming away feeling energised to take action, rather than leaving depressed. Climate-change sceptics will probably chuckle too, even as they complain that the film perpetuates the “mainstream view”. And the climate scientists themselves? Many will fume that climate science isn’t a joke, that Olson overplays the hurricane Katrina card, that the film glosses over scientific subtleties and that opportunities to stick it to the sceptics are missed.
It is precisely that humour, and that willingness to resist harshly criticising opponents, that makes Sizzle work. Scientists too often believe, as Olson’s character puts it, that “the only solution is to use what always works, which is data”. Having data is crucial, and abandoning scientific objectivity would be a huge blunder. The biggest mistake, as Sizzle makes amusingly clear and real life makes tragically so, is assuming that data and logic alone will motivate people into action.
The debate over global warming has become a battle for hearts and minds, with scientists too often fighting only for the latter. It is that mentality which prevents the staid “Dr Olson” from connecting with his everyman crew, some of whom think that global warming is a scam. But with his crew dozing off during a run-through of the film-within-the-film, and his charming, real-life 83-year-old mother commiserating – “I felt like I was back in prison,” says the sound man; “I felt like I was back talking to his father,” she retorts – “Dr Olson” finally learns to lighten up, and become just plain Randy. That’s when his message finally starts to hit home.