Loose Change

This month the Village Voice reviewed a number of made-for-the-Internet movies about 9/11 in tandem with the opening of Oliver Stone’s “World Trade Center.” One film stands out:

22-year-old director Dylan Avery of Oneonta, New York, has emerged as the hot young star of the skeptic set with his 2005 ‘tude-filled feature Loose Change. Avery claims in a recent Vanity Fair profile that he’s received over 50,000 orders for the Loose Change DVD and over 10 million viewings online, and says he’s in talks with a number of studios to release an updated cut of the film on September 11, 2006. His name frequently pops up in Technorati’s daily list of most searched-for keywords, and his MySpace profile boasts over 3,500 friends. By mainstream media standards, Loose Change remains ultra–low budget, but with Avery’s casual, no-nonsense voiceover, tight editing, and hip-hop DJ’d score, it’s by far the most accomplished and accessible example of 9-11 Truth cinema, though not free of the questionable fact-sourcing practiced by its peers (most egregious: “According to Wikipedia . . . “).

As an amateur film reviewer with a keen interest in “diy” (do it yourself) productions, I made a mental note to myself to watch “Loose Change.” I also wanted see what this “movement” amounts to, even though I have very deep aversions to any sort of conspiracy theory. It has even reached the point where I am ready to argue that Lee Harvey Oswald was really a commie after all. Remember that famous picture of him with a rifle in one hand and the Trotskyist Militant newspaper in the other? Maybe his true intention was to shoot anybody who refused to take out a subscription, an urge I had to suppress when I was assigned the thankless task of heading up sub drives for this sectarian newspaper more than 30 years ago.

After watching “Loose Change,” which is narrated by Dylan Avery, I can safely report that there are bigger wastes of time than this 81½ minute shoestring effort. For example, any chunk of prime time TV on a weekday night will contain far more lies and far less entertainment. The film’s main appeal is its visually dramatic presentation of material that would ordinarily be a crushing bore to read. With its nonstop parade of mysterious inconsistencies, you are reminded of a typical “X Files” episode. All that is missing is some kind of death bed confession of the kind so often delivered to Mulder and Scully: “Yes, agents, I am the very same Count Zdanko who discovered the secret of eternal life 8 centuries ago. I must eat the pulsating heart of a virgin every Halloween.” Too bad you don’t get the same sort of thing in “Loose Change”: “Yes, Dylan Avery, it was I Donald Rumsfeld who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks. I only did it because of the need to re-elect George W. Bush in 2004 and to test the efficacy of my new mobile army.”

My enjoyment was only spoiled by the kind of plot inconsistencies that have forced me to walk out of numerous Hollywood movies over the years, like Michael Cimino’s “The Deer Hunter.” I had to hold back an urge to scream at the screen as I was walking out of the theater in 1978, “Asshole, it was the NLF that was forced to play Russian Roulette, not American GI’s.”

This happened first when “Loose Change” was looking at the damage done to the Pentagon, which it concludes could have not been done by a Boeing 757 jet plane. Rather, it argues that it was hit by a Cruise Missile like the one that hit Slobodan Milosevic’s party headquarters in 1999. Well, my initial reaction to this was to nod my head and say, “Good one!”–whoever did it. One would only hope that there are a whole slew of terrorists in the USA similarly armed. I can even give them a list of targets.

After a moment or two, logic returned to me and I began to ponder deeper into this speculation on missing planes, which makes the charge of inconsistencies in the official version pale by comparison. We are sure that a plane left Washington DC on the morning of September 11, 2001 with 64 people on board. We are also sure it has not been heard from ever since. So if Flight 77 was not involved in the Pentagon crash, where did it go? Area 51 in Nevada, next to the UFO’s? One of the people on board was Barbara Olson, a conservative commentator who often appeared on CNN and was the wife of U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson. Okay, maybe he was in on the plot himself. She was a conservative who appeared on CNN and was married to a Bush appointee. But what about Mari-Rae Sopper of Santa Barbara, California, the women’s gymnastics coach at the University of California at Santa Barbara? Is she being kept captive along with the other 63 passengers by operatives sworn to secrecy? This would not even get past a writer’s session on “The X-Files”.

When I consider this kind of thing, the Marxist side of my brain shuts down and the novelist side kicks in. This is a plot that makes “Silence of the Lambs” seem practically fact-based by comparison. How do you keep 64 people clothed and fed for the rest of their lives without a huge commitment in personnel of the sort that would inevitably lead at least one person to spill the beans. After all, if there is one thing we have learned over the past 3 years, it is that the Bush Administration generates “whistle blowers” like no other in the past half-century.

The same thing happens with Flight 93, which according to the official version crashed over Pennsylvania. We are assured by “Loose Change” that the plane landed safely in Cleveland that day, where one supposes the 40 passengers were shepherded away to the safe house that contained the Flight 77 passengers. Right. Sure.

Basically, what keeps this “movement”–such as it is–alive is a rafter of inconsistencies that were never really answered in an authoritative manner by officialdom. Is there a precedent for this? Of course, the same thing happened with the assassination of JFK. The Warren Commission has as many lapses and flaws as the 9/11 commission report. That’s the way it goes. In an age marked by mediocrity at the highest levels, the failure of the government to deliver the goods should surprise nobody. Indeed, the very failure of the government to stop the 9/11 attackers is symptomatic of the same incompetence.

Dylan Avery was an 18 year old high school senior on September 11, 2001. After inadequate grades kept him out of the film school department at Purchase College, he decided to strike out on his own. He started out with the intention of making a fictional film, but decided to make a documentary after being convinced that the conspiracy theorists were correct.

All I can say is that this is a waste of obvious talent. During the Vietnam War, people a bit older and a bit more politically experienced than Dylan Avery made documentaries like “Hearts and Minds.” Such a film put forward the true history leading up to the war and the terrible inhumanity being visited on the Vietnamese people. It was part of a vast antiwar movement that used a variety of means–including art and film–to put an end to the imperialist ambitions of the American government. There is a burning need for such a film today. The American people need to be informed about the history of Anglo-American imperialism in the area, from Lawrence of Arabia to the “Great Race” of the 19^th century that pitted one imperial power against another to control Afghanistan. They need to be informed about the power of the oil companies to influence foreign policy and to work with the CIA to subvert governments that are seen as insufficiently pliant. Given the tensions over Venezuela and Iran today, there is no greater calling for a young radical film-maker than this.

UPDATES:

Loose Change debates Popular Mechanics

Skeptic reviews 9/11 conspiracy theories

Diana Johnstone article in Counterpunch