Chevron goes after filmmaker’s outtakes
Chevron and ‘Crude’s’ Joe Berlinger locked in a legal battle
As an appeals process begins over a judge’s ruling that director Joe Berlinger surrender outtakes to Chevron, documentarians worry about the chilling effect such action could have on other filmmakers.
In one of Hollywood’s most gripping legal thrillers, Chevron Corp. is trying to obtain 600 hours of outtakes from a documentary film focused on oil industry environmental practices in Ecuador, sparking a court battle that has attracted the attention of 1st Amendment lawyers, top filmmakers, show business unions and a corporation that says it was defamed in another nonfiction film.
For 17 years, the San Ramon, Calif.-based energy giant has fought a class-action lawsuit in Ecuador that could cost it up to $27 billion in damages and cleanup costs. Lawyers for Chevron are convinced that the environmental contamination litigation is tainted, alleging that an expert was not impartial, a report was fabricated and a judge was bribed. When Chevron saw director Joe Berlinger’s 2009 documentary “Crude,” a behind-the-scenes look at the lawsuit, the company believed it had found cinematic proof of misconduct — and demanded to see everything else Berlinger discovered in the three years he spent making the film.
Some documentarians say Chevron’s action against Berlinger, the focus of an oral argument Wednesday before the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York, is part of a movement to marginalize nonfiction filmmakers by subjects unhappy over how they have been depicted.
Chevron and Dole Food Co. argue that some of today’s documentarians, who like Michael Moore increasingly use their cameras more for dogmatic activism than neutral reporting, are mouthpieces for plaintiffs’ lawyers, and should not necessarily enjoy all of the legal protections afforded most journalists against turning over unused material such as notes and outtakes.
Watch Amazon Crude on 60 Minutes regarding the damage Chevron has done.
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