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Home Audio S6E1: Errol Morris

Michael Bierut, Jessica Helfand|Audio

February 26, 2019

S6E1: Errol Morris

Errol Morris is a filmmaker whose documentaries include Gates of Heaven, The Thin Blue Line, and, most recently, American Dharma, a movie about Trump advisor Stephen K. Bannon. He has also made more than a thousand television commercials.

Morris, who has worked as a private investigator, says that the truth you seek can be elusive:

We love a kind of plus and minus, good and evil, black and white universe, without shades of grey. Ambiguity is frightening. It means that our grip on the world is uncertain and incomplete.

And yet I love it. I love the whole idea of grappling with uncertainty. As a great believer in truth, I often say: There’s no guarantee. It doesn’t come with a certification.… The most frustrating investigations are investigations where you feel tantalizingly close to a conclusion but you can’t get all of the way there.

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By Michael Bierut & Jessica Helfand

Jessica Helfand, a founding editor of Design Observer, is an award-winning graphic designer and writer and a former contributing editor and columnist for Print, Communications Arts and Eye magazines. A member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale and a recent laureate of the Art Director’s Hall of Fame, Helfand received her B.A. and her M.F.A. from Yale University where she has taught since 1994.

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