Election 2008: Al Gore – Movie Maker or Comeback Kid?

Al Gore has a movie coming out. You know, Al Gore, remember him? He was Vice President for eight years and then let George Bush steal the country away from his sane, if not feeble hands, as he ran away with his tail between his legs. After the complete social meltdown that was the 2000 election, Gore kind of disappeared. He put on about hundred pounds and grew a beard. For all anyone knew, he had moved out to the woods like the kid in “My Side of the Mountain” and become a falconer. But, alas, that wasn’t the case. The man who invented the internet was plotting, scheming, and getting his science on.

He sat down and wrote a book about global warming called “Earth in the Balance”. I don’t know much about this book, but it seems to be a lot stranger than anyone could have imagined a book by Al Gore could be. I’ve read reviews that declare the book is actually about Gore’s idea of God and not global warming (but maybe these are the same things).

It’s easy for one to think that this whole global warming platform is just a really good way to veil the fact that this Al Gore, alive and well in the national spotlight. Al Gore couldn’t just reemerge one day and say, “hey, I think I’m going to run for President again.” That shit would never fly. People would likely throw tomatoes at him and make hollow, mocking comments like, “where’s your beard, Gore-boy?”

I actually don’t think that would have ever happened, but Al Gore would never of had a shot at winning his party’s nomination if he didn’t come equipped with a, I don’t know, a feature length film. Al Gore is the equivalent of a clown at a third graders birthday party. He’s got candy and bunch of balloon animals (he can even make a giraffe); and, more importantly, just for a little while, everyone forgets he’s a stupid clown because he’s entertaining.

An Inconvenient Truth is Al Gore’s giraffe balloon animal. Let me clarify something, I could be dead wrong about all this; maybe it’s not just smoke and mirrors. Gore might actually care about humanity and the state of our planet, who knows. It’s just that he has picked a Very Convenient Moment to come public with all this “information”. Supposedly, or according to Tipper Gore, he’s been hoarding a slideshow of material proving his theory of global warming.

Now, last time I checked, Gore is not a scientist. He’s been a politician since he was 28. And the early perception of this movie is that it has the feel of a campaign film. Gore adamantly denies this claim. “Audiences don’t see the movie as political,” Gore says. “Paramount did a number of focus group screenings, and that was very clear.”

So there you have it. Al Gore believes in global warming but he also believes in focus groups. The ballot on Gore is definitely still out, and it remains unclear if this new career move is an excuse to get an old one going again or just the whacked out hobby of a shadowy former politician.

If it’s any consolation, I hear that Gore has optioned the rights to produce Rush Hour 4.