“Crude” Does Well at the Box Office
September 13, 2009 by Stephen Kersey
Filed under Business
“Crude”, a documentary that chronicles the legal battle between Chevron and 30,000 residents in the rainforest of Eduador, did well at the box office this weekend. In fact, “Crude” had the highest per-screen average ($16,729) in the U.S. this weekend.
Kent Robertson, a spokesman for Chevron, said that “Crude” was “long on emortion and short on facts”. That statement enraged Joe Berlinger, the documentary’s director. In fact, Berlinger claims that Robertson made his comment without actually watching the documentary beforehand.
“Despite Chevron’s efforts to discredit the film, audiences made their voices heard this weekend,” said Berlinger. “Crude respects its viewers and allows people to make up their own minds about this story, and we are grateful that so many folks came out this weekend to do just that.”
Currently on RottenTomatoes.com, “Crude” has a rating of 91%. Counting just the supposed top critics, that percentage rises to 100%.
“Crude is already being called an Oscar contender in the press,” said Seymour Wishman, the president of the company that is distributing the documentary, “and if these box office numbers continue, the film will be on track to being one of the highest-grossing documentaries of the year.”
Will the Chevron documentary cause a backlash? (Image: Flickr)
Copied from the Amazon defense Coalition blog regarding Chevron’s spokesperson Kent Robertson:
Kent Robertson, Chevron’s chief spokesperson, in an interview with Steve Foley of the Minority Report April 22, 2008:
“An objective evaluation of the facts shows that Texaco Petroleum behaved responsibly in Ecuador”
Objective evaluations of the facts? Coming from the oil giant’s chief disinformer?
And Texaco acted responsibly?
Check out this 1988 Texaco memo entitled “Offer of Bribe to Auditors”: http://texacotoxico.org/eng/node/284
Or this 1972 Texaco memo entitled “Reporting of Environmental Incidents”: http://texacotoxico.org/eng/node/301
You be the judge.