Gasland (2010)

So, this was one of the two documentaries from this year's Oscars that I didn't see during my big push.  It was sitting at the top of my queue for ages with that sad little epithet of "Very Long Wait" after its name.  I guess Netflix only had one copy.

This movie was fucking terrifying.  Let me get that out of the way right now.  Only terrifying things are scored with banjo music.  I am a paranoid little monkey on my best day and seeing shit like this just ratchets up my panic meter. 

People could set their water on fire.  WATER. ON. FIRE.

Not to say that this documentary deserved to win the Oscar.  Hell no.  The narrator is boring as fuck, the editing looks like it was done by an epileptic ferret and the pacing is slow.  Also, I am not one of those peacenik, nature-loving hippies so most of the message was kind of lost on me.  I don't so much care about pristine natural beauty.  I'm aware that we need it and I'm sure the planet would look weird without it, I just can't bring myself to be enthusiastic about it.

However, I am painfully aware of the need for clean drinking water.  And I don't like things that fuck with that.  This movie is basically Erin Brockovich 2:  Fracking Boogaloo.  Josh Fox, monotone narrator/documentarian, gets interested in underground natural gas wells after a drilling company offers him almost $100K for the mineral rights on his property.  He embarks on a journey to discover what the hell that entails that takes him across the country and all the way to Congress subcommittee meetings.  He meets people that have developed brain lesions (!!!) from exposure to toxic chemicals, people whose houses have exploded from leaked natural gas, and people whose water turns to goddamn plastic when you heat it, or just fucking catches on fire.

Now there has been a big push in probably the last ten years about not drinking so much bottled water, because of the amount of waste it produces, the gas it takes to haul it everywhere, and the petroleum products it takes to make the plastic in the bottles and all those people harp about how we have the Clean Water Act and the Water Quality Act that allows us to have clean, filtered, non-toxic water right in our homes.  And I was a big fan of that.  Mostly because I'm lazy and I don't want to have to drive to the store every time I want to get a freaking drink of water or make tea. 

Now it's like "pay out the ass for bottled water for the rest of your life" or "take the risk of getting holes in your brain by drinking tap".  We're all gonna end up in a post-apocalyptic desert world like Tank Girl.

Maybe that's not such a bad thing after all....

I CHANGED MY MIND!!!!