Name	The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara
Caption	Theatrical release poster
Starring	Robert McNamara
Director	Errol Morris
Cinematography	Robert Chappell (interviews) Peter Donahue
Producer	Errol Morris Michael Williams Julie Ahlberg
Music	Philip Glass
Distributor	Sony Pictures Classics
Released
Runtime	95 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara is a 2003 American documentary film about the life and times of former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara. The film was directed by Errol Morris and the original score is by Philip Glass.

The title is a reference to the military phrase fog of war, a concept of battlefield uncertainty during the fighting. It won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary Feature. It was screened out of competition at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival.

Concept

Using archival footage, United States Cabinet conversation recordings, and an interview of the eighty-five-year-old Robert McNamara, as a former Secretary of Defense, The Fog of War depicts his life, from his birth during the First World War remembering the time American troops returned from Europe, to working as a WWII Whiz Kid military officer, to being the Ford Motor Company's president, to his being employed as Secretary of Defense and the Cuban Missile Crisis, to managing the American Vietnam War, as defense secretary for presidents Kennedy and Johnson — emphasizing the war's brutality under their regimes, and how he was hired as secretary of defense, despite limited military experience.

In a 2004 appearance at U.C. Berkeley, Errol Morris said his inspiration for the documentary derived from McNamara's book (with James G. Blight), (2001). Morris interviewed McNamara for some twenty hours; the two-hour documentary comprises eleven lessons from In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (1995). He posits, discourses upon, and propounds the lessons in the interview that is The Fog of War. Moreover, at the U.C. Berkeley event, McNamara disagreed with Morris's interpretations in The Fog of War, yet, on completion, McNamara supplemented the original eleven lessons with an additional ten lessons; they are in The Fog of War DVD.

When asked to apply the eleven lessons from In Retrospect to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, McNamara refused, arguing that ex-secretaries of defense must not comment upon the incumbent defense secretary's policies. He suggested other people could apply the eleven lessons to the war in Iraq, but that he would not, noting that the lessons are generally about war, not a specific war.

R.S. McNamara's eleven lessons of war

# Empathize with your enemy # Rationality will not save us # There's something beyond one's self # Maximize efficiency # Proportionality should be a guideline in war # Get the data # Belief and seeing are often both wrong # Be prepared to re-examine your reasoning # In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil # Never say never # You can't change human nature

Ten additional lessons from R.S. McNamara

These supplement the documentary; they are in the DVD's special features.

# The human race will not eliminate war in this century, but we can reduce the brutality of war—the level of killing—by adhering to the principles of a "Just War," in particular to the principle of "proportionality." # The indefinite combinations of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will lead to the destruction of nations. # We [the U.S.A.] are the most powerful nation in the world—economically, politically, and militarily—and we are likely to remain so for decades ahead. But we are not omniscient. If we cannot persuade other nations with similar interests and similar values of the merits of the proposed use of that power, we should not proceed unilaterally except in the unlikely requirement to defend directly the continental U.S., Alaska and Hawaii. # Moral principles are often ambiguous guides to foreign policy and defense policy, but surely we can agree that we should establish as a major goal of U.S. foreign policy and, indeed, of foreign policy across the globe: the avoidance, in this century of the carnage—160 million dead—caused by conflict in the 20th century. # We, the richest nation in the world, have failed in our responsibility to our own poor and to the disadvantaged across the world to help them advance their welfare in the most fundamental terms of nutrition, literacy, health and employment. # Corporate executives must recognize there is no contradiction between a soft heart and a hard head. Of course, they have responsibilities to stockholders, but they also have responsibilities to their employees, their customers and to society as a whole. # President Kennedy believed a primary responsibility of a president—indeed the primary responsibility of a president—is to keep the nation out of war, if at all possible. # War is a blunt instrument by which to settle disputes between or within nations, and economic sanctions are rarely effective. Therefore, we should build a system of jurisprudence based on the International Court—that the U.S. has refused to support—which would hold individuals responsible for crimes against humanity. # If we are to deal effectively with terrorists across the globe, we must develop a sense of empathy—I don't mean "sympathy," but rather "understanding"—to counter their attacks on us and the Western World. # One of the greatest dangers we face today is the risk that terrorists will obtain access to weapons of mass destruction as a result of the breakdown of the Non-Proliferation Regime. We in the U.S. are contributing to that breakdown.

Eleven lessons from the Vietnam War

The documentary's lessons-learned concept is McNamara's eleven-lesson list of (1995).

# We misjudged then — and we have since — the geopolitical intentions of our adversaries … and we exaggerated the dangers to the United States of their actions. # We viewed the people and leaders of South Vietnam in terms of our own experience … We totally misjudged the political forces within the country. # We underestimated the power of nationalism to motivate a people to fight and die for their beliefs and values. # Our misjudgments of friend and foe, alike, reflected our profound ignorance of the history, culture, and politics of the people in the area, and the personalities and habits of their leaders. # We failed then — and have since — to recognize the limitations of modern, high-technology military equipment, forces, and doctrine. We failed, as well, to adapt our military tactics to the task of winning the hearts and minds of people from a totally different culture. # We failed to draw Congress and the American people into a full and frank discussion and debate of the pros and cons of a large-scale military involvement … before we initiated the action. # After the action got under way, and unanticipated events forced us off our planned course … we did not fully explain what was happening, and why we were doing what we did. # We did not recognize that neither our people nor our leaders are omniscient. Our judgment of what is in another people's or country's best interest should be put to the test of open discussion in international forums. We do not have the God-given right to shape every nation in our image or as we choose. # We did not hold to the principle that U.S. military action … should be carried out only in conjunction with multinational forces supported fully (and not merely cosmetically) by the international community. # We failed to recognize that in international affairs, as in other aspects of life, there may be problems for which there are no immediate solutions … At times, we may have to live with an imperfect, untidy world. # Underlying many of these errors lay our failure to organize the top echelons of the executive branch to deal effectively with the extraordinarily complex range of political and military issues.

Charity

Sony Pictures Classics allowed proceeds from limited screenings of The Fog of War to benefit Clear Path International's work with victims of war in Vietnam.

References

Specific references: General references:

Globe and Mail, Jan. 24, 2004 - registration required

External links

Official site from Sony Classics

The movie in full length at the Google videos.

Making History: Errol Morris, Robert McNamara and The Fog of War from sensesofcinema.com

Transcript of the film from errolmorris.com

Eleven Lessons from The Fog of War

Errol Morris on interviewing Robert McNamara – from NFB documentary

Robert McNamara - Daily Telegraph obituary

Category:Documentary films about the Vietnam War Category:American documentary films Category:Sony Pictures Classics films Category:Films about nuclear war and weapons Category:English-language films Category:2003 films Category:2000s documentary films Category:Best Documentary Feature Academy Award winners Category:Films directed by Errol Morris

Name	Robert Strange McNamara
Imagesize	250px
Order	8th United States Secretary of Defense
Term start	January 21, 1961
Term end	February 29, 1968
President	John F. Kennedy Lyndon B. Johnson
Deputy	Roswell Gilpatric Cyrus Vance Paul Nitze
Predecessor	Thomas S. Gates, Jr.
Successor	Clark Clifford
Order2	5th President of the World Bank Group
Term start2	April 1968
Term end2	June 1981
Predecessor2	George David Woods
Successor2	Alden W. Clausen
Birth date	June 9, 1916
Birth place	San Francisco, California
Death date	July 06, 2009
Death place	Washington, D.C.
Party	Democrat
Spouse	Margaret Craig (1940-1981) Diana Masieri Byfield (2004-2009)
Alma mater	University of California, Berkeley (B.A.) Harvard Business School (M.B.A.)
Religion	Presbyterian
Signature	Robert S McNamara Signature.svg
Branch	United States Army Air Forces
Serviceyears	1943-1946
Rank	Lieutenant Colonel
Awards	Legion of Merit
Footnotes

Robert Strange McNamara (June 9, 1916 – July 6, 2009) was an American business executive and the eighth Secretary of Defense, serving under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson from 1961 to 1968. Following that he served as President of the World Bank from 1968 until 1981. McNamara was responsible for the institution of systems analysis in public policy, which developed into the discipline known today as policy analysis.

Early life and career

Robert McNamara was born in San Francisco, California. According to McNamara, his father's family was Irish and in about 1850, following the Great Irish Famine, had immigrated to Massachusetts and later to California. He graduated from Piedmont High School in Piedmont, California in 1933 where he was president of the Rigma Lions boys club and earned the rank of Eagle Scout. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1937 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics with minors in mathematics and philosophy. He was a member of Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa his year and earned a varsity letter in crew. He was also a member of the UC Berkeley's Order of the Golden Bear which was a fellowship of students and leading faculty members formed to promote leadership within the student body. He earned an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1939.

After graduating from Harvard Business School, McNamara worked a year for the accounting firm Price Waterhouse in San Francisco. In August 1940 he returned to Harvard to teach accounting in the business school and became the highest paid and youngest assistant professor at that time. Following his involvement there in a program to teach analytical approaches used in business to officers of the Army Air Forces (AAF) he entered the Armed Forces as a captain in early 1943, serving most of World War II with the AAF's Office of Statistical Control. One major responsibility was the analysis of U.S. bombers' efficiency and effectiveness, especially the B-29 forces commanded by Major General Curtis LeMay in Japan, China and the Mariana Islands. He left active duty in 1946 with the rank of lieutenant colonel and with a Legion of Merit.

President of Ford Motor Company

In 1946 McNamara joined Ford Motor Company owing to the influence of Charles "Tex" Thornton, a colonel for whom he had worked while in the military. Thornton had read an article in Life magazine which reported the company was in dire need of reform.

McNamara was one of ten former World War II officers known within Ford as the "Whiz Kids" who helped the company to stop its losses and administrative chaos by implementing modern planning, organization and management control systems. Starting as manager of planning and financial analysis, he advanced rapidly through a series of top-level management positions.

In the mid-1950s, McNamara opposed Ford's planned Edsel automobile and worked to stop the program even before the first car rolled off the assembly line. He eventually succeeded in ending the program in November 1959. The car continues to be seen as one of the largest blunders in automotive history.

McNamara was a force behind the wildly popular Ford Falcon sedan, which was introduced in the fall of 1959 as a 1960 model. He saw the Falcon, which was small, simple and inexpensive to produce, as a much better alternative to the large, expensive-to-build cars which proliferated in Detroit in the late Fifties. During his time as an executive, McNamara placed a high emphasis on safety standards, introducing in the Lifeguard package both the seat belt, and a dished steering wheel that reduced the chances of a driver being impaled by the steering column.

McNamara also came close to terminating the Lincoln after the very large 1958 through 1960 models proved unpopular, forcing product planners to reinvent the car for 1961. His new, smaller Lincoln Continental, which debuted as a 1961 model in four-door sedan and four-door convertible form, was an instant hit and remains an icon among Sixties automobiles today.

On November 9, 1960, McNamara became the first president of Ford from outside the family of Henry Ford. He received substantial credit for Ford's expansion and success in the postwar period.

Secretary of Defense

and McNamara, 1962]] booklet Fallout Protection commissioned by McNamara]] After his election in 1960, President-elect John F. Kennedy first offered the post of Secretary of Defense to former secretary Robert A. Lovett; Lovett declined but recommended McNamara. Kennedy then sent Sargent Shriver to approach him regarding either the Treasury or the Defense cabinet post less than five weeks after McNamara had become president at Ford. McNamara immediately rejected the Treasury position but eventually accepted Kennedy's invitation to serve as Secretary of Defense.

According to Special Counsel Ted Sorensen, Kennedy regarded McNamara as the "star of his team, calling upon him for advice on a wide range of issues beyond national security, including business and economic matters." McNamara became one of the few members of the Kennedy Administration to work and socialize with Kennedy, and he became so close to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy that he served as a pallbearer at the younger Kennedy's funeral in 1968.

Initially, the basic policies outlined by President Kennedy in a message to Congress on March 28, 1961, guided McNamara in the reorientation of the defense program. Kennedy rejected the concept of first-strike attack and emphasized the need for adequate strategic arms and defense to deter nuclear attack on the United States and its allies. U.S. arms, he maintained, must constantly be under civilian command and control, and the nation's defense posture had to be "designed to reduce the danger of irrational or unpremeditated general war." The primary mission of U.S. overseas forces, in cooperation with allies, was "to prevent the steady erosion of the Free World through limited wars." Kennedy and McNamara rejected massive retaliation for a posture of flexible response. The United States wanted choices in an emergency other than "inglorious retreat or unlimited retaliation", as the president put it. Out of a major review of the military challenges confronting the United States initiated by McNamara in 1961 came a decision to increase the nation's "limited warfare" capabilities. These moves were significant because McNamara was abandoning President Dwight D. Eisenhower's policy of massive retaliation in favor of a flexible response strategy that relied on increased U.S. capacity to conduct limited, non-nuclear warfare.

He also created the Defense Intelligence Agency in 1961 and the Defense Supply Agency.

The Kennedy administration placed particular emphasis on improving ability to counter communist "wars of national liberation", in which the enemy avoided head-on military confrontation and resorted to political subversion and guerrilla tactics. As McNamara said in his 1962 annual report, "The military tactics are those of the sniper, the ambush, and the raid. The political tactics are terror, extortion, and assassination." In practical terms, this meant training and equipping U.S. military personnel, as well as such allies as South Vietnam, for counterinsurgency operations.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 McNamara served as a member of EXCOMM and played a large role in the Administration's handling and eventual defusing of the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was a strong proponent of the blockade option over a missile strike and helped persuade the Joint Chiefs of Staff to agree with the blockade option.

Increased attention to conventional strength complemented these special forces preparations. In this instance he called up reserves and also proceeded to expand the regular armed forces. Whereas active duty strength had declined from approximately 3,555,000 to 2,483,000 between 1953 (the end of the Korean War) and 1961, it increased to nearly 2,808,000 by June 30, 1962. Then the forces leveled off at around 2,700,000 until the Vietnam military buildup began in 1965, reaching a peak of nearly 3,550,000 by mid-1968, just after McNamara left office.

Other steps

McNamara took other steps to improve U.S. deterrence posture and military capabilities. He raised the proportion of Strategic Air Command (SAC) strategic bombers on 15-minute ground alert from 25 percent to 50 percent, thus lessening their vulnerability to missile attack. In December 1961 he established the United States Strike Command (STRICOM). Authorized to draw forces when needed from the Strategic Army Corps (STRAC), the Tactical Air Command, and the airlift units of the Military Air Transport Service and the military services, Strike Command had the mission "to respond swiftly and with whatever force necessary to threats against the peace in any part of the world, reinforcing unified commands or… carrying out separate contingency operations." McNamara also increased long-range airlift and sealift capabilities and funds for space research and development. After reviewing the separate and often uncoordinated service efforts in intelligence and communications, McNamara in 1961 consolidated these functions in the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Defense Communications Agency (the latter originally established by Secretary Gates in 1960), having both report to the secretary of defense through the JCS. The end effect was to remove the Intelligence function from the control of the military and to put it under the control of the Secretary of Defense. In the same year, he set up the Defense Supply Agency to work toward unified supply procurement, distribution, and inventory management under the control of the Secretary of Defense rather than the uniformed military.

McNamara's institution of systems analysis as a basis for making key decisions on force requirements, weapon systems, and other matters occasioned much debate. Two of its main practitioners during the McNamara era, Alain C. Enthoven and K. Wayne Smith, described the concept as follows: "First, the word 'systems' indicates that every decision should be considered in as broad a context as necessary… The word 'analysis' emphasizes the need to reduce a complex problem to its component parts for better understanding. Systems analysis takes a complex problem and sorts out the tangle of significant factors so that each can be studied by the method most appropriate to it." Enthoven and Smith said they used mainly civilians as systems analysts because they could apply independent points of view to force planning. McNamara's tendency to take military advice into less account than had previous secretaries and to override military opinions contributed to his unpopularity with service leaders. It was also generally thought that Systems Analysis, rather than being objective, was tailored by the civilians to support decisions that McNamara had already made.

The most notable example of systems analysis was the Planning, Programming and Budgeting System (PPBS) instituted by United States Department of Defense Comptroller Charles J. Hitch. McNamara directed Hitch to analyze defense requirements systematically and produce a long-term, program-oriented Defense budget. PPBS evolved to become the heart of the McNamara management program. According to Enthoven and Smith, the basic ideas of PPBS were: "the attempt to put defense program issues into a broader context and to search for explicit measures of national need and adequacy"; "consideration of military needs and costs together"; "explicit consideration of alternatives at the top decision level"; "the active use of an analytical staff at the top policymaking levels"; "a plan combining both forces and costs which projected into the future the foreseeable implications of current decisions"; and "open and explicit analysis, that is, each analysis should be made available to all interested parties, so that they can examine the calculations, data, and assumptions and retrace the steps leading to the conclusions." In practice, the data produced by the analysis was so large and so complex that while it was available to all interested parties, none of them could challenge the conclusions.

Among the management tools developed to implement PPBS were the Five Year Defense Plan (FYDP), the Draft Presidential Memorandum (DPM), the Readiness, Information and Control Tables, and the Development Concept Paper (DCP). The annual FYDP was a series of tables projecting forces for eight years and costs and manpower for five years in mission-oriented, rather than individual service, programs. By 1968, the FYDP covered ten military areas: strategic forces, general purpose forces, intelligence and communications, airlift and sealift, guard and reserve forces, research and development, central supply and maintenance, training and medical services, administration and related activities, and support of other nations.

The DPM, intended for the White House and usually prepared by the systems analysis office, was a method to study and analyze major defense issues. Sixteen DPMs appeared between 1961 and 1968 on such topics as strategic offensive and defensive forces, NATO strategy and force structure, military assistance, and tactical air forces. OSD sent the DPMs to the services and the JCS for comment; in making decisions, McNamara included in the DPM a statement of alternative approaches, force levels, and other factors. The DPM in its final form became a decision document. The DPM was hated by the JCS and uniformed military in that it cut their ability to communicate directly to the White House. The DPMs were also disliked because the systems analysis process was so heavyweight that it was impossible for any service to effectively challenge its conclusions.

The Development Concept Paper examined performance, schedule, cost estimates, and technical risks to provide a basis for determining whether to begin or continue a research and development program. But in practice, what it proved to be was a cost burden that became a barrier to entry for companies attempting to deal with the military. It aided the trend toward a few large non-competitive defense contractors serving the military. Rather than serving any useful purpose, the overhead necessary to generate information that was often in practice ignored resulted in increased costs throughout the system.

The Readiness, Information, and Control Tables provided data on specific projects, more detailed than in the FYDP, such as the tables for the Southeast Asia Deployment Plan, which recorded by month and quarter the schedule for deployment, consumption rates, and future projections of U.S. forces in Southeast Asia.

ABM

Toward the end of his term McNamara also opposed an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system proposed for installation in the United States in defense against Soviet missiles, arguing the $40 billion "in itself is not the problem; the penetrability of the proposed shield is the problem." Under pressure to proceed with the ABM program after it became clear that the Soviets had begun a similar project, McNamara finally agreed to a "light" system which he believed could protect against the far smaller number of Chinese missiles. However, he never believed it was wise for the United States to move in that direction because of psychological risks of relying too much on nuclear power and that there would be pressure from many directions to build a larger system than would be militarily effective.

He always believed that the best defense strategy for the US was a parity of mutually assured destruction with the Soviet Union. An ABM system would be an ineffective weapon as compared to an increase in deployed nuclear missile capacity.

Cost reductions

McNamara's staff stressed systems analysis as an aid in decision making on weapon development and many other budget issues. The secretary believed that the United States could afford any amount needed for national security, but that "this ability does not excuse us from applying strict standards of effectiveness and efficiency to the way we spend our defense dollars…. You have to make a judgment on how much is enough." Acting on these principles, McNamara instituted a much-publicized cost reduction program, which, he reported, saved $14 billion in the five-year period beginning in 1961. Although he had to withstand a storm of criticism from senators and representatives from affected congressional districts, he closed many military bases and installations that he judged unnecessary to national security. He was equally determined about other cost-saving measures. But in the end, most of the cost savings were illusionary. Every base he closed resulted in a new construction project elsewhere to expand another base, relocation of forces projects and other related spending. The actual cost savings through consolidation of installations was often minimal or in some cases negative.

Due to the nuclear arms race, the Vietnam War buildup and other projects, total obligational authority (TOA) increased greatly during the McNamara years. Fiscal year TOA increased from $48.4 billion in 1962 to $49.5 billion in 1965 (before the major Vietnam increases) to $74.9 billion in 1968, McNamara's last year in office. Not until FY 1984 did DoD's total obligational authority surpass that of FY 1968 in constant dollars.

Program consolidation

One major hallmark of McNamara's cost reductions was the consolidation of programs from different services, most visibly in aircraft acquisition, believing that the redundancy created waste and unnecessary spending. McNamara directed the Air Force to adopt the Navy's F-4 Phantom and A-7 combat aircraft, a consolidation that was quite successful. Conversely, his actions in mandating a premature across-the-board adoption of the untested M16 rifle proved catastrophic when the weapons began to fail in combat. McNamara tried to extend his success by merging development programs as well, resulting in the TFX dual service F-111 project. It was to combine Air Force requirements for an air superiority fighter and tactical bomber. His experience in the corporate world led him to believe that adopting a single type for different missions and service would save money. He insisted on the General Dynamics entry over the DOD's preference for Boeing because of commonality issues. Though heralded as a fighter that could do everything — fast supersonic dash, slow carrier and short airfield landings, tactical strike, and even close air support, in the end it involved too many compromises to succeed at any of them. The Navy version was drastically overweight and difficult to land, and eventually cancelled after a Grumman study showed it was incapable of matching the abilities of the newly revealed MiG-23 and MiG-25. The F-111 would eventually find its niche as a tactical bomber and electronic warfare aircraft with the Air Force.

However, many analysts believe that even though the TFX project itself was a failure, McNamara was ahead of his time as the trend in fighter design has continued toward consolidation — the F-16 and F/A-18 emerged as multi-role fighters, and most modern designs combine many of the roles the TFX would have had. In many ways, the JSF is seen as a rebirth of the TFX project, in that it purports to satisfy the needs of three American Air arms (as well as several foreign customers), fulfilling the roles of strike fighter, carrier-launched fighter, VSTOL, and CAS (and drawing many criticisms similar to those leveled against the TFX).

Vietnam War

During President John F. Kennedy's term, while McNamara was Secretary of Defense, America's troops in Vietnam increased from 900 to 16,000 advisers, who were not supposed to engage in combat but rather to train the Army of the Republic of Vietnam.

The Truman and Eisenhower administrations had committed the United States to support the French and native anti-Communist forces in Vietnam in resisting efforts by the Communists in the North to control the country, though neither administration established actual combat forces in the conflict. The U.S. role, initially limited to financial support, military advice and covert intelligence gathering, expanded after 1954 when the French withdrew. During the Kennedy administration, the U.S. military advisory group in South Vietnam steadily increased, with McNamara's concurrence, from 900 to 16,000.

Social equity

To commemorate President Harry S Truman's signing an order to end segregation in the military McNamara issued Directive 5120.36 on July 26, 1963. This directive, Equal Opportunity in the Armed Forces, dealt directly with the issue of racial and gender discrimination in areas surrounding military communities. The directive declared, “Every military commander has the responsibility to oppose discriminatory practices affecting his men and their dependents and to foster equal opportunity for them, not only in areas under his immediate control, but also in nearby communities where they may live or gather in off-duty hours.” (para. II.C.) Under the directive, commanding officers were obligated to use the economic power of the military to influence local businesses in their treatment of minorities and women. With the approval of the Secretary of Defense, the commanding officer could declare areas off-limits to military personnel for discriminatory practices.

Departure

, President Johnson and McNamara]]McNamara wrote of his close personal friendship with Jackie Kennedy, and how she demanded that he stop the killing in Vietnam. As McNamara grew more and more controversial after 1966 and his differences with the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff over Vietnam strategy became the subject of public speculation, frequent rumors surfaced that he would leave office. In early November 1967, McNamara's recommendation to freeze troop levels, stop bombing North Vietnam and for the US to hand over ground fighting to South Vietnam was rejected outright by President Lyndon B. Johnson. McNamara's recommendations amounted to his saying that the strategy of the United States in Vietnam which had been pursued to date had failed. Largely as a result, on November 29 of that year, McNamara announced his pending resignation and that he would become President of the World Bank. Other factors were the increasing intensity of the anti-war movement in the United States, the approaching presidential campaign in which Johnson was expected to seek re-election, and McNamara's support - over the objections of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - of construction along the 17th parallel separating South and North Vietnam of a line of fortifications running from the coast of Vietnam into Laos. The President's announcement of McNamara's move to the World Bank stressed his stated interest in the job and that he deserved a change after seven years as Secretary of Defense, much longer than any of his predecessors or successors.

Others give a different view of McNamara's departure from office. For example, Stanley Karnow in his book "Vietnam: A History" strongly suggests that McNamara was asked to leave by the President. McNamara himself has expressed lack of certainty about the question.

McNamara left office on February 29, 1968; for his efforts, the President awarded him both the Medal of Freedom and the Distinguished Service Medal.

Shortly after McNamara departed the Pentagon, he published "The Essence of Security", discussing various aspects of his tenure and position on basic national security issues. He did not speak out again on defense issues or Vietnam until after he left the World Bank.

World Bank

McNamara served as head of the World Bank from April 1968 to June 1981, when he turned 65. In his thirteen years at the Bank, he introduced key changes, most notably, shifting the Bank's focus towards targeted poverty reduction. He negotiated, with the conflicting countries represented on the Board, a spectacular growth in funds to channel credits for development, in the form of health, food, and education projects. He also instituted new methods of evaluating the effectiveness of funded projects. One notable project started during McNamara's tenure was the effort to prevent river blindness.

As World Bank President, McNamara declared at the 1968 Annual Meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group that countries permitting birth control practices would get preferential access to resources.

Post-World Bank activities

In 1982 McNamara joined several other former national security officials in urging that the United States pledge not to use nuclear weapons first in Europe in the event of hostilities; subsequently he proposed the elimination of nuclear weapons as an element of NATO's defense posture. His memoir, In Retrospect, published in 1995, presented an account and analysis of the Vietnam War from his point of view.

McNamara maintained his involvement in politics in his later years, delivering statements critical of the Bush administration's 2003 invasion of Iraq. On January 5, 2006, McNamara and most living former Secretaries of Defense and Secretaries of State met briefly at the White House with President Bush to discuss the war.

Promise and Power

In 1993, Washington journalist Deborah Shapley published a 615-page biography of Robert McNamara entitled . The last pages of her book made clear that while Ms. Shapley deeply admired certain aspects of McNamara the man, and the public servant, she had seen first-hand his need to manipulate the truth, as well as to tell it.

Shapley concluded her book with these words: "For better and worse McNamara shaped much in today's world -- and imprisoned himself. A little-known nineteenth century writer, P.W. Bornum, offers a summation: `We make our decisions. And then our decisions turn around and make us.'"

The Fog of War

The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara is a 2003 Errol Morris documentary consisting mostly of interviews with Robert McNamara and archival footage. It went on to win the Academy Award for Documentary Feature. The particular structure of this personal account is accomplished with the characteristics of an intimate dialogue. As McNamara explains, it is a process of examining the experiences of his long and controversial period as the United States Secretary of Defense, as well as other periods of his personal and public life. In this documentary he referred to the Vietnam war and he said, "None of our allies supported us. Not Japan, not Germany, not Britain or France. If we can't persuade nations with comparable values of the merit of our cause, we'd better reexamine our reasoning."

The eleven lessons explored in the documentary are: # Empathise with your enemy # Rationality will not save us # There's something beyond oneself # Maximise efficiency # Proportionality should be a guideline in war # Get the data # Belief and seeing are both often wrong # Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning # In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil # Never say never # You can't change human nature.

Personal life

McNamara married Margaret Craig, his teenage sweetheart, on August 13, 1940. Margaret McNamara, a former teacher, used her position as a Cabinet spouse to launch a reading program for young children, Reading Is Fundamental, which became the largest literacy program in the country. She died of cancer in 1981.

The couple had two daughters and a son. The son Robert Craig McNamara, who as a student objected to the Vietnam War, is now a walnut and grape farmer in California. He is the owner of Sierra Orchards in Winters, California. Daughter Kathleen McNamara Spears is a forester with the World Bank.

In the Errol Morris documentary, McNamara reports that both he and his wife were stricken with polio shortly after the end of World War II. Although McNamara had a relatively short stay in the hospital, his wife's case was more serious and it was concern over meeting her medical bills that led to his decision to not return to Harvard but to enter private industry as a consultant at Ford Motor Company.

When working at Ford Motor Company, McNamara resided in Ann Arbor, Michigan rather than the usual auto executive domains of Grosse Pointe, Birmingham, and Bloomfield Hills. He and his wife sought to remain connected with a university town (the University of Michigan) after their hopes of returning to Harvard after the war were put on hold.

In 1961 he was named Alumnus of the Year by the University of California at Berkeley.

On September 29, 1972, a passenger on the ferry to Martha's Vineyard recognized McNamara on board and attempted to throw him into the ocean. McNamara declined to press charges. The man remained anonymous, but was interviewed years later by author Paul Hendrickson, who quoted the attacker as saying, "I just wanted to confront (McNamara) on Vietnam."

On June 9, 1973, during the CBS Broadcast of the Belmont Stakes, a reporter had recalled seeing McNamara.This was the same Belmont Stakes that Triple Crown winner Secretariat had romped to a 31 length victory and set a new world record for a mile and a half that no other horse has even come close to.

After his wife's death, McNamara dated Katharine Graham, with whom he had been friends since the early 1960s. Graham died in 2001.

In September 2004, McNamara wed Diana Masieri Byfield, an Italian-born widow who had lived in the United States for more than 40 years. It was her second marriage. She was married for more than three decades to Ernest Byfield, a former OSS officer and Chicago hotel heir whose mother, Gladys Tartiere, leased her , Glen Ora estate in Middleburg, Virginia to John F. Kennedy during his presidency.

McNamara was at the end of his life a life trustee on the Board of Trustees of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), a trustee of the Economists for Peace and Security, and an honorary trustee for the Brookings Institution.

McNamara died in his sleep at his home in Washington, D.C. early in the morning on July 6, 2009. He was 93.

In other media

Dana Elcar portrayed Robert McNamara in the 1974, made for TV film, The Missiles of October. Actor Dylan Baker portrayed McNamara in the 2000 motion picture Thirteen Days and Alec Baldwin portrayed him in the 2002 TV movie Path to War.

McNamara appears in the video game , in both the single player campaign and a "Zombie Mode" Along with John F. Kennedy, Fidel Castro and Richard M. Nixon, where he is voiced by Robert Picardo.

The 2003 documentary The Fog of War is about McNamara's career as Secretary of Defense

See also

List of California Institute of Technology trustees

List of Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients

List of United States political appointments that crossed party lines

Project Dye Marker

The Fog of War

Works

(1968) The Essence of Security: Reflections in Office. New York, Harper & Row, 1968; London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1968. ISBN 0-340-10950-5.

(1973) One hundred countries, two billion people: the dimensions of development. New York, Praeger Publishers, 1973. ASIN B001P51NUA

(1981) The McNamara years at the World Bank: major policy addresses of Robert S. McNamara, 1968-1981; with forewords by Helmut Schmidt and Léopold Senghor. Baltimore: Published for the World Bank by the Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981. ISBN 0-8018-2685-3.

(1985) The challenges for sub-Saharan Africa. Washington, DC: 1985.

(1986) Blundering into disaster: surviving the first century of the nuclear age. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986. ISBN 0-394-55850-2 (hardcover); ISBN 0-394-74987-1 (pbk.).

(1989) Out of the cold: new thinking for American foreign and defense policy in the 21st century. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989. ISBN 0-671-68983-5.

(1992) The changing nature of global security and its impact on South Asia. Washington, DC: Washington Council on Non-Proliferation, 1992.

(1995) . (with Brian VanDeMark.) New York: Times Books, 1995. ISBN 0-8129-2523-8; New York: Vintage Books, 1996. ISBN 0-679-76749-5.

(1999) Argument without end: in search of answers to the Vietnam tragedy. (Robert S. McNamara, James G. Blight, and Robert K. Brigham.) New York: Public Affairs, 1999. ISBN 1-891620-22-3 (hc).

(2001) Wilson’s ghost: reducing the risk of conflict, killing, and catastrophe in the 21st century. (Robert S. McNamara and James G. Blight.) New York: Public Affairs, 2001. ISBN 1-891620-89-4.

References

External links

Robert McNamara on the JFK and LBJ White House Tapes

AP Obituary in The Washington Post

The Economist obituary

Robert McNamara - Daily Telegraph obituary

McNamara's Evil Lives On by Robert Scheer, The Nation, July 8, 2009

McNamara and Agent Orange

Biography of Robert Strange McNamara (website)

US Department of Defense

Interview about the Cuban Missile Crisis for the WGBH series

Interview about nuclear strategy

Annotated bibliography for Robert McNamara from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues

Oral History Interviews with Robert McNamara, from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library

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Name	Philip Glass
Background	non_performing_personnel
Born	January 31, 1937 Baltimore, Maryland, United States
Genre	Minimalist, Classical, Contemporary classical, Ambient
Occupation	Composer
Years active	1956–present
Label	CBS Records Nonesuch/Elektra Records Sony Classical/SME Records Orange Mountain Music

Philip Glass (born January 31, 1937) is an American music composer. He is considered one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public (along with precursors such as Richard Strauss, Kurt Weill and Leonard Bernstein).

Although his music is often, though controversially, described as minimalist, for his later work he distances himself from this label, describing himself instead as a composer of "music with repetitive structures." Although his early, mature music is minimalist, he has evolved stylistically. Currently, he describes himself as a "Classicist", pointing out that he is trained in harmony and counterpoint and studied Franz Schubert, Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with Nadia Boulanger.

Glass is a prolific composer: He has written works for his own musical group which he founded, the Philip Glass Ensemble (for which he still performs on keyboards), as well as operas, musical theatre works, eight symphonies, ten concertos, solo works, string quartets, and film scores. Three of his film scores have been nominated for Academy Awards.

Glass counts many artists among his friends and collaborators, including visual artists (Richard Serra, Chuck Close), writers (Doris Lessing, David Henry Hwang, Allen Ginsberg), film and theatre directors (including Errol Morris, Robert Wilson, JoAnne Akalaitis, Godfrey Reggio, Paul Schrader, Martin Scorsese, Christopher Hampton, Bernard Rose, and many others), choreographers (Lucinda Childs, Jerome Robbins, Twyla Tharp), and musicians and composers (Ravi Shankar, David Byrne, the conductor Dennis Russell Davies, Foday Musa Suso, Laurie Anderson, Linda Ronstadt, Paul Simon, Joan LaBarbara, Arthur Russell, David Bowie, Brian Eno, Roberto Carnevale, Patti Smith, Aphex Twin, Lisa Bielawa, John Moran, Bryce Dessner and Nico Muhly). Among recent collaborators are Glass's fellow New Yorker Woody Allen, Stephen T. Colbert, and poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen.

Life and work

:For a list of works, see List of compositions by Philip Glass

Beginnings, early education and influences (1937–1964)

Glass was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Ida (née Gouline) and Benjamin Charles Glass, and the grandson of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania. His father owned a record store, and consequently Glass's record collection consisted to a large extent of unsold records, including modern music (Hindemith, Bartók, Schoenberg, at a very early age. He then studied the flute as a child at the Peabody Conservatory of Music and entered an accelerated college program at the University of Chicago at the age of 15, where he studied Mathematics and Philosophy. In Chicago he discovered the serialism of Webern and composed a twelve-tone string trio. In 1954 Glass went to Paris for the first time, encountering the films of Jean Cocteau, which made a lasting impression on him. He visited artists' studios and saw their work; "the bohemian life you see in [Cocteau's] Orphée was the life I ... was attracted to, and those were the people I hung out with."

Glass then went on to the Juilliard School of Music where the keyboard became his main instrument. His composition teachers included Vincent Persichetti and William Bergsma and fellow students included Steve Reich. During this time, in 1959, he was a winner in the BMI Foundation's BMI Student Composer Awards, one of the most prestigious international prizes for young composers. In the summer of 1960, he studied with Darius Milhaud at the summer school of the Aspen Music Festival and composed a Violin Concerto for a fellow student, Dorothy Pixley-Rothschild. After leaving Juilliard in 1962, Glass moved to Pittsburgh and worked as a school-based composer-in-residence in the public school system, composing various choral, chamber and orchestral music.

Paris (1964–1966)

In 1964 Glass received a Fulbright Scholarship and went to Paris, where he studied with the eminent composition teacher Nadia Boulanger from autumn of 1964 to summer of 1966, analyzing scores of Johann Sebastian Bach (The Well-Tempered Clavier), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (the Piano Concertos). Glass's years in Paris as a student of Boulanger had a lasting impression and influence on his work ever since, as the composer admitted in 1979: "The composers I studied with Boulanger are the people I still think about most – Bach and Mozart."

Glass later stated in his autobiography Music by Philip Glass (1987) that the new music performed at Pierre Boulez's Domaine Musical concerts in Paris lacked any excitement for him (with the notable exceptions of music by John Cage and Morton Feldman), but he was deeply impressed by new films and theatre performances. He encountered revolutionary films of the French New Wave, such as those of Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, which ignored the rules set by an older generation of artists., and Glass made friends with American visual artists (the sculptor Richard Serra and his wife Nancy Graves), actors and directors (JoAnne Akalaitis, Ruth Maleczech, David Warrilow, and Lee Breuer, with whom Glass later founded the experimental theatre group Mabou Mines). Together with Akalaitis (they married in 1965), Glass in turn attended performances by theatre groups including Jean-Louis Barrault's Odéon theatre, The Living Theatre and the Berliner Ensemble in 1964 to 1965. These significant encounters resulted in a collaboration with Breuer for which Glass contributed music for a 1965 staging of Samuel Beckett's Comédie (Play, 1963). The resulting piece (written for two soprano saxophones) was directly influenced by the play's open-ended, repetitive and almost musical structure and was the first one of a series of four early pieces in a minimalist, yet still dissonant, idiom. on a film score (Chappaqua, Conrad Rooks, 1966) with Ravi Shankar and Alla Rakha, which added another important influence on Glass's musical thinking. His distinctive style arose from his work with Shankar and Rakha and their perception of rhythm in Indian music as being entirely additive. He renounced all his compositions in a moderately modern style resembling Milhaud's, Aaron Copland's, and Samuel Barber's, and began writing pieces based on repetitive structures of Indian music and a sense of time influenced by Samuel Beckett: a piece for two actresses and chamber ensemble, a work for chamber ensemble and his first numbered string quartet (No.1, 1966).

Glass then left Paris for northern India in 1966, where he came in contact with Tibetan refugees and began to gravitate towards Buddhism. He met Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, in 1972, and has been a strong supporter of the Tibetan independence ever since.

Minimalism: From Strung Out to Music in 12 Parts (1967–1974)

Shortly after arriving in New York City in March 1967, Glass attended a performance of works by Steve Reich (including the ground-breaking minimalist piece Piano Phase), which left a deep impression on him; he simplified his style and turned to a radical "consonant vocabulary".

Between summer of 1967 and the end of 1968, Glass composed nine works, including "Strung Out" (for amplified solo violin, composed in summer of 1967), Gradus (for solo saxophone, 1968), Music in the Shape of a Square (for two flutes, composed in May 1968, an homage to Erik Satie), "How Now" (for solo piano, 1968) and 1+1 (for amplified tabletop, November 1968) which were "clearly designed to experiment more fully with his new-found minimalist approach", as the musicologist Keith Potter pointed out. The first concert of Philip Glass's new music was at Jonas Mekas's Film-Makers Cinemathèque (Anthology Film Archives) in September 1968. This concert included the first work of this series with Strung Out (performed by the violinist Pixley-Rothschild) and Music in the Shape of a Square (performed by Glass and Gibson). The musical scores were tacked on the wall, and the performers had to move while playing. Glass's new works met with a very enthusiastic response by the open-minded audience that consisted mainly of visual and performance artists who were highly sympathetic to Glass's reductive approach.

Apart from his music career, Glass had a moving company with his cousin, the sculptor Jene Highstein, and worked as a plumber and cab driver (in 1973 to 1978). During this time he made friends with other New York based artists such as Sol LeWitt, Nancy Graves, Michael Snow, Bruce Nauman, Laurie Anderson, and Chuck Close, who created a now famous portrait of Glass. (Glass returned the favour in 2005 with "A Musical Portrait of Chuck Close" for piano, dedicated to the visual artist.)

With "1+1" and "Two Pages" (composed in February 1969) Glass turned to a more "rigorous approach" to his "most basic minimalist technique, additive process", pieces which were followed in the same year by Music in Contrary Motion and Music in Fifths (a kind of homage to his composition teacher Nadia Boulanger, who pointed out "hidden fifths" in his works but regarded them as cardinal sins). Eventually Glass's music grew less austere, becoming more complex and dramatic, with pieces such as Music in Similar Motion (1969), and with Music with Changing Parts (1970). These pieces were performed by The Philip Glass Ensemble in the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1969 and in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1970, often encountering hostile reaction from critics, Eno described this encounter with Glass's music as the "most extraordinary musical experiences of [his] life", as a "viscous bath of pure, thick energy", concluding "this was actually the most detailed musics I'd ever heard. It was all intricacy exotic harmonics". In 1970 Glass returned to the theatre with composing music for the theatre group Mabou Mines, resulting in his first minimalist pieces employing voices: Red Horse Animation and Music for Voices (both 1970, and premiered at the Paula Cooper Gallery).

After certain differences of opinion with Steve Reich in 1971, Though he finds the term minimalist inaccurate to describe his later work, Glass does accept this term for pieces up to and including Music in 12 Parts, excepting this last part which "was the end of minimalism" for Glass. As he pointed out: "I had worked for eight or nine years inventing a system, and now I'd written through it and come out the other end." As "Another Look at Harmony", "Einstein added a new functional harmony that set it apart from the early conceptual works". The piece was praised by the Washington Post as "one of the seminal artworks of the century."

Einstein on the Beach was followed by further music for projects by the theatre group Mabou Mines such as Dressed like an Egg (1975), and again music for plays and adaptations from the prose by Samuel Beckett, such as The Lost Ones (1975), Cascando (1975), Mercier and Camier (1979). Glass also turned to other media; two multi-movement instrumental works for the Philip Glass Ensemble which originated as music for film and TV: North Star (1977 for the Documentary "Mark di Suvero, sculptor" by Francois de Menil and Barbara Rose) and four short cues for Jim Henson's TV-series for children, Sesame Street, named (1977).

Another series, “Fourth Series” (1977–79), included music for chorus and organ ("Part One", 1977), organ and piano ("Part Two" and "Part Four", 1979), and music for a radio adaption of Constance DeJong's novel Modern Love ("Part Three", 1978). Part Two and Part Four were used (and hence renamed) in two dance productions by choreographer Lucinda Childs (who had already contributed to and performed in Einstein on the Beach). "Part Two" was included in Dance (a collaboration with visual artist Sol LeWitt, 1979), and "Part Four" was renamed as Mad Rush, and performed by Glass on several occasions such as the first public appearance of the 14th Dalai Lama in New York City in Fall 1981. The piece demonstrates Glass's turn to more traditional models: the composer added a conclusion to an open-structured piece which "can be interpreted as a sign that he [had] abandoned the radical nonnarrative, undramatic approaches of his early period", as the pianist Steffen Schleiermacher pointed out.

In Spring 1978 Glass received a commission from the Netherlands Opera (as well as a Rockefeller Foundation grant) which "marked the end of his need to earn money from non-musical employment." With the commission Glass continued his work in music theater, composing his opera Satyagraha (composed in 1978–1979, premiered in 1980 at Rotterdam), themed on the early life of Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa, Rabindranath Tagore, and Martin Luther King Jr.. On Satyagraha, Glass worked in close collaboration with two "SoHo friends": the writer Constance deJong, who provided the libretto, and the set designer Robert Israel. This piece also was in other ways a turning point for Glass, as it was his first one since 1963 scored for symphony orchestra , even if the most prominent parts were still reserved for solo voices (but now operatic) and chorus. Shortly after completing the score in August 1979, Glass met the conductor Dennis Russell Davies, studying the score in a piano-four-hands version for performances in Germany, and together they started the projecting of yet another opera to be premiered at the Stuttgart State Opera.

Glass also again collaborated with Robert Wilson on another opera, the CIVIL warS (1983, premiered in 1984), which also functioned as the final part – "the Rome section", of Wilson's epic work by the same name, originally planned for an "international arts festival that would accompany the Olympic Games in Los Angeles" (for the Opening of the Games Glass also composed a highly prestigious work for chorus and orchestra, "The Olympian: Lighting of the Torch and Closing"). The premiere of "The CIVIL warS" in Los Angeles never materialized and the opera was in the end premiered at the Opera of Rome. Glass's and Wilson's opera includes musical settings of Latin texts by the 1st-century-Roman playwright Seneca and allusions to the music of Giuseppe Verdi and from the American Civil War, featuring the 19th century figures Giuseppe Garibaldi and Robert E. Lee as characters.

In the mid-1980s Glass produced "works in different media at an extraordinarily rapid pace". Projects from that period include music for dance (Dance Pieces, Jerome Robbins, 1983, and In the Upper Room, Twyla Tharp, 1986), and music for theatre productions Endgame (1984), and Company (1983). Beckett vehemently disapproved of the production of Endgame at the American Repertory Theater (Cambridge, Massachusetts), which featured Joanne Akalaitis's direction and Glass's Prelude for timpani and double bass, but in the end, though, he authorized the music for Company, four short, intimate pieces for string quartet that were played in the intervals of the dramatization. This composition was initially regarded by the composer as a piece of Gebrauchsmusik (music for use) – "like salt and pepper (...) just something for the table”, as he noted. Eventually Company was published as Glass's String Quartet No.2 and in a version for string orchestra, being performed by ensembles ranging from student orchestras to renowned ones such as the Kronos Quartet and the Kremerata Baltica.

This interest in writing for the string quartet and the string orchestra led to a chamber and orchestral film score for (Paul Schrader, 1984–85), which Glass recently described as his "musical turning point" that developed his "technique of film scoring in a very special way".

Glass also dedicated himself to vocal works with two sets of songs, Three Songs for chorus (1984, settings of poems by Leonard Cohen, Octavio Paz and Raymond Levesque), and a song cycle initiated by CBS Masterworks Records: Songs from Liquid Days (1985), with texts by songwriters such as David Byrne, Paul Simon, in which the Kronos Quartet is featured (as it is in Mishima) in a prominent role. Glass also continued his series of operas with adaptations from literary texts such as The Juniper Tree (an opera collaboration with composer Robert Moran, 1984), Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher (1987), and also worked with novelist Doris Lessing on the opera The Making Of The Representative For Planet 8 (1985–86, and performed by the Houston Grand Opera and English National Opera in 1988).

Operas and the turn to symphonic music (1987–1991)

Compositions such as Company, Facades and String Quartet No.3 (the last two extracted from the scores to Koyaanisqatsi and Mishima) gave way to a series of works more accessible to ensembles such as the string quartet and symphony orchestra, in this returning to the structural roots of his student days. In taking this direction his chamber and orchestral works were also written in a more and more traditional and lyrical style. In these works, Glass often employs old musical forms such as the Chaconne and the Passacaglia — for instance in Satyagraha, and Songs and Poems for Solo Cello (2006).

A series of orchestral works that were originally composed for the concert hall commenced with the 3-movement Violin Concerto No. 1 (1987). This work was commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra and written for and in close collaboration with the violinist Paul Zukofsky and the conductor Dennis Russel Davies, who since then encouraged the composer to write numerous orchestral pieces. The Concerto is dedicated to the memory of Glass's father: "His favorite form was the violin concerto, and so I grew up listening to the Mendelssohn, the Paganini, the Brahms concertos. (...) So when I decided to write a violin concerto, I wanted to write one that my father would have liked." Among its multiple recordings, in 1992, the Concerto was performed and recorded by Gidon Kremer and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. This turn to orchestral music was continued with a symphonic Trilogy of "portraits of nature", commissioned by the Cleveland Orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra: The Light (1987), The Canyon (1988), and Itaipu (1989).

While composing for symphonic ensembles, Glass also composed again music for piano, the cycle of five movements, titled Metamorphosis (adapted from music for a theatrical adaptation of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, and for the Errol Morris film The Thin Blue Line, 1988]). In the same year Glass met the poet Allen Ginsberg by chance in a book store in the East Village of New York City, and they immediately "decided on the spot to do something together, reached for one of Allen's books and chose Wichita Vortex Sutra", a piece for reciter and piano which in turn developed into a music theatre piece for singers and ensemble, Hydrogen Jukebox'' (1990).

Glass also turned to chamber music; he composed two String Quartets (No.4 and No.5, for the Kronos Quartet, 1989 and 1991), and chamber works which originated as incidental music for plays, such as Music from "The Screens" (1989/1990). This work originated in one of many theater music collaboration with the director Joanne Akalaitis, who originally asked the Gambian musician Foday Musa Suso "to do the score [for Jean Genet's "The Screens"] in collaboration with a western composer", who was finally found in Philip Glass, who had already collaborated with Suso in the film score to Powaqqatsi (Godfrey Reggio, 1986). Music from "The Screens" is on occasion, a touring piece for Glass and Suso, and individual pieces found its way to the repertoire of Glass and the cellist Wendy Sutter. Another collaboration was a collaborative recording project with Ravi Shankar, initiated by Peter Baumann (a member of the band Tangerine Dream), which resulted in the album Passages (1990).

In the late 1980s and early 1990s Glass's projects also included two highly prestigious opera commissions, based on the life of two explorers, Christopher Columbus (The Voyage [1990], commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera, with a libretto by David Henry Hwang), and Vasco da Gama (White Raven [1991], a collaboration Robert Wilson and composed for the opening of the Expo '98). Especially in The Voyage, the composer "explore[d] new territory", with its "newly arching lyricism", "Sibelian starkness and sweep", and "dark, brooding tone (...) a reflection of its increasingly chromatic (and dissonant) palette", as one commentator put it. Glass responded with two 3-movement symphonies ("Low" [1992]), and Symphony No.2 [1994]); his first in an ongoing series of symphonies is a combination of the composer's own musical material with themes featured in prominent tracks of the David Bowie/ Brian Eno Album Low (1977), whereas Symphony No.2 is described by Glass as a study in polytonality. He referred to the music of Honegger, Milhaud, and Villa-Lobos as possible models for his symphony. With the Concerto Grosso (1992), Symphony No. 3 (1995), a Concerto for Saxophone Quartet and Orchestra (1995) (all commissioned by conductor Dennis Russel Davies), and Echorus (1994/95), a more transparent, refined, and intimate chamber-orchestral style paralleled the excursions of his large-scale symphonic pieces. In the four movements of his Third Symphony, Glass treats a 19-piece string orchestra as an extended chamber ensemble. In the third movement, Glass re-uses the Chaconne as a formal device; one commentator characterized Glass's symphony as one of the composer's "most tautly unified works" The third Symphony was closely followed by a fourth, subtitled Heroes (1996), commissioned the American Composers Orchestra. Its six movements are symphonic reworkings of themes by Glass, David Bowie, and Brian Eno (from their Album "Heroes", 1977); as other works by the composer it is also a hybrid work and exists in two versions: one for the concert hall, and another, shorter one for a dance work, choreographed by Twyla Tharp. Another commission by Dennis Russell Davies was a second series for piano, the Etudes for Piano (dedicated to Davies as well as the production designer Achim Freyer); the complete first set of ten Etudes has been recorded and performed by Glass himself. Bruce Brubaker and Dennis Russell Davies have each recorded the orginal set of six. Most of the Etudes are composed in the post-minimalist and increasingly lyrical style of the times: "Within the framework of a concise form, Glass explorespossible sonorities ranging from typically Baroque passagework to Romantically tinged moods". Some of the pieces also appeared in different versions such as in the theatre music to Robert Wilson's Persephone (1994, commissioned by the Relache Ensemble) or Echorus (a version of Etude No.2 for two violins and string orchestra, written for Edna Mitchell and Yehudi Menuhin 1995).

Glass's prolific output in the 1990s continued to include operas with an opera triptych (1991–1996), which the composer described as an "homage" to writer and film director Jean Cocteau, based on his prose and cinematic work: Orphée (1949), La Belle et la Bête (1946), and the novel Les Enfants Terribles (1929, later made into a film by Cocteau and Jean-Pierre Melville, 1950). In the same way the triptych is also a musical homage to the work of a French group of composers associated with Cocteau, Les Six (and especially to his teacher Darius Milhaud), as well as to various 18th century composers such as Gluck and Bach whose music featured as an essential part of the films by Cocteau.

The inspiration of the first part of the trilogy, Orphée (composed in 1991, and premiered in 1993 at the American Repertory Theatre) can be conceptually and musically traced to Gluck's opera Orfeo ed Euridice (Orphée et Euridyce, 1762/1774), One theme of the opera, the death of Eurydice, has some similarity to the composer's personal life: the opera was composed after the unexpected death in 1991 of Glass's wife, artist Candy Jernigan: "(...) One can only suspect that Orpheus' grief must have resembled the composer's own", as K. Robert Schwartz suggested.

For the second opera, La Belle et la Bête (1994, scored for either the Philip Glass Ensemble or a more conventional chamber orchestra) Glass replaced the soundtrack (including Georges Auric's film music) of Cocteau's film, wrote "a new fully operatic score and synchronize[d] it with the film". The final part of the triptych returned again to a more traditional setting with the "Dance Opera" Les Enfants Terribles (1996), scored for voices, three pianos and dancers, with choreography by Susan Marshall. The scoring of the opera evokes Bach's Concerto for Four Harpsichords, but in another way also "the snow, which falls relentlessly throughout the opera (...) bearing witness to the unfolding events. Here time stands still. There is only music, and the movement of children through space" (Glass).

Symphonies, opera, and concerti (1997–2004)

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Glass's lyrical and romantic styles peaked with numerous projects: operas, theatre and film scores (Martin Scorsese's Kundun, 1997, Godfrey Reggio's Naqoyqatsi, 2002, and Stephen Daldry's The Hours, 2002), a series of five concerti, and three symphonies centered on orchestra-singer and orchestra-chorus interplay. Two symphonies, Symphony No.5 "Choral" (1999) and Symphony No.7 "Toltec" (2004), and the song cycle Songs of Milarepa (1997) are thematically meditative. The operatic Symphony No.6 Plutonian Ode (2002) for soprano and orchestra was commissioned by The Brucknerhaus Linz and Carnegie Hall in celebration of Glass's sixty-fifth birthday, and originated as Glass's collaboration with Allen Ginsberg (poet, piano — Ginsberg, Glass), based on his eponymous poem.

Besides writing for the concert hall, Glass continued his ongoing operatic series with adaptions from literary texts: The Marriages of Zones 3, 4 and 5 ([1997] story-libretto by Doris Lessing), In the Penal Colony (2000, after the novella by Franz Kafka), and the chamber opera The Sound of a Voice (2003, with David Henry Hwang), which features the Pipa, performed by Wu Man at its premiere. Glass also collaborated again with the co-author of Einstein on the Beach, Robert Wilson (Monsters of Grace, 1998), and created a biographic opera on the life of astronomer Galileo Galilei (2001).

In the early 2000s Glass started a series of five concerti with The Tirol Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (2000, premiered by Dennis Russell Davies as conductor and soloist), and the Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanists and Orchestra (2000, for the tympanist Jonathan Haas), which is a popular, often-played concerto. The Concerto for Cello and Orchestra (2001) had its premiere performance in Beijing, featuring cellist Julian Lloyd Webber; it was composed in celebration of his fiftieth birthday. These concertos were followed by the concise and rigorously neo-baroque Concerto for Harpsichord and Orchestra (2002), demonstrating in its transparent, chamber orchestral textures Glass's classical technique, evocative in the "improvisatory chords" of its beginning a toccata of Froberger or Frescobaldi, and 18th century music. Two years later, the concerti series continued with Piano Concerto No. 2: After Lewis and Clark (2004), composed for the pianist Paul Barnes. The concerto celebrates the pioneers' trek across North America, the second movement features a duet for piano and Native American flute. With the chamber opera The Sound of a Voice, Glass Piano Concerto No.2 might be regarded as bridging Glass's traditional compositions and his more popular excursions to World Music, e.g. with Orion (also composed in 2004).

Songs and Poems (2005–2007)

Waiting for the Barbarians, an opera from J.M. Coetzee's novel (with the libretto by Christopher Hampton), had its premiere performance in September, 2005. Glass defined the work as a "social/political opera", a "dialogue about political crisis", and an illustration of the "power of art to turn our attention toward the human dimension of history"; the composer chose a very understated approach in using "very simple means, and the orchestration is very clear and very traditional; it's almost classical in sound", as the Conductor D. Russell Davies notes.

Two months after the premiere of this opera, in November 2005, Glass's Symphony No.8, commissioned by the Bruckner Orchester Linz, was premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City. After three symphonies for voices and orchestra, this piece was a return to purely orchestral and abstract composition; like previous works written for the conductor Dennis Russell Davies (the 1992 Concerto Grosso and the 1995 Symphony No.3), it features extended solo writing. Critic Allan Kozinn described the symphony's chromaticism as more extreme, more fluid, and its themes and textures as continually changing, morphing without repetition, and praised the symphony's "unpredictable orchestration", pointing out the "beautiful flute and harp variation in the melancholy second movement". Alex Ross, remarked that "against all odds, this work succeeds in adding something certifiably new to the overstuffed annals of the classical symphony. (...) The musical material is cut from familiar fabric, but it’s striking that the composer forgoes the expected bustling conclusion and instead delves into a mood of deepening twilight and unending night."

The Passion of Ramakrishna (2006), was composed for the Pacific Symphony Orchestra, the Pacific Chorale and the conductor Carl St. Clair. The 45 minutes choral work is based on the writings of Indian Spiritual leader Sri Ramakrishna, which seem "to have genuinely inspired and revived the composer out of his old formulas to write something fresh", as one critic remarked, whereas another noted that "The musical style breaks little new ground for Glass, except for the glorious Handelian ending (...) the "composer’s style ideally fits the devotional text".

A Cello Suite, composed for the cellist and his fiance, Wendy Sutter, "Songs and Poems for Solo Cello" (2005–2007), was equally lauded by critics. It was described by Lisa Hirsch as "a major work, (...) a major addition to the cello repertory" and "deeply Romantic in spirit, and at the same time deeply Baroque". Another critic, Anne Midgette of the Washington Post, noted that the suite "maintains an unusual degree of directness and warmth"; she also noted a kinship to a major work by Johann Sebastian Bach: "Digging into the lower registers of the instrument, it takes flight in handfuls of notes, now gentle, now impassioned, variously evoking the minor-mode keening of klezmer music and the interior meditations of Bach's cello suites". Whereas Glass himself pointed out that "in many ways it owes more to Schubert than to Bach".

In 2007 Glass also worked alongside Leonard Cohen on an adaptation of Cohen's poetry collection Book of Longing. The work, which premiered in June, 2007, in Toronto, Canada, is a piece for seven instruments and a vocal quartet, and contains recorded spoken word performances by Cohen and imagery from his collection.

Appomattox, an opera surrounding the events at the end of the American Civil War, was commissioned by the San Francisco Opera and premiered on October 5, 2007. As in Waiting for the Barbarians, Glass collaborated with the writer Christopher Hampton, and as the preceding opera and Symphony No.8, the piece was conducted by Glass's long time collaborator Dennis Russell Davies, who noted that "in his recent operas the bass line has taken on an increasing prominence,(...) (an) increasing use of melodic elements in the deep register, in the contrabass, the contrabassoon – he's increasingly using these sounds and these textures can be derived from using these instruments in different combinations. (...) He's definitely developed more skill as an orchestrator, in his ability to conceive melodies and harmonic structures for specific instrumental groups. (...) what he gives them to play is very organic and idiomatic."

Works (2008-present)

In 2008 Glass continues to work on a series of chamber music pieces which started with "Songs and Poems": the Four Movements for Two Pianos (2008, premiered by Dennis Davies and Maki Namekawa in July 2008), a Sonata for Violin and Piano composed in "the Brahms tradition" (completed in 2008, premiered by violinist Maria Bachman and pianist Jon Klibonoff in February 2009); a String sextet, an adaption of the Symphony No.3 of 1995 made by Glass' musical director Michael Riesman followed in 2009. In 2008, Glass also added a new instrumental piece to the repertory of his own ensemble with Los Paisajes del Rio (premiered in September 2008).

Other works for the theatre: a score for Euripides' The Bacchae (2009, directed by JoAnne Akalaitis), and another operatic biography of a scientist/explorer and Glass's first opera in German, "Kepler" (2008–2009) premiered by the Bruckner Orchester Linz and Dennis Russell Davies in September 2009.

Glass also donated a short work, Brazil, to the video game Chime, which was released on February 3, 2010.

Recently Glass returned to the orchestra with three concert works: the Violin Concerto No. 2 in four movements for violinist Robert McDuffie, titled "The American Four Seasons" (2009) it premiered in December 2009 by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and subsequently performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra in April 2010.

The Double Concerto for Violin and Cello and Orchestra (2010) was composed for soloists Maria Bachmann and Wendy Sutter and also for a ballet for the Nederlands Dans Theater.

Another project is an orchestral score to a multimedia presentation based on the novel Icarus at the Edge of Time by theoretical physicist Brian Greene, which premiered on June 6, 2010.

Projected works include more entries in the ongoing series of chamber works: Pendulum (2010, a one-movement piece for piano trio), a Suite for solo violin (2010) for violinist Tim Fain, a string quintet for the recently formed ensemble Glass Chamber Players ("a huge challenge because Schubert did it so beautifully", as Glass states), more instrumental sonatas and a projected second Suite of cello pieces for Wendy Sutter.

Influences and connections

Aside from composing in the Western classical tradition, his music has ties to rock, ambient music, electronic music, and world music. Early admirers of his minimalism include musicians Brian Eno and David Bowie, who attended an early performance of the Philip Glass Ensemble in 1973. In the 1990s, Glass composed the aforementioned symphonies Low (1992) and Heroes (1996), thematically derived from the Bowie-Eno collaboration albums Low and "Heroes" (composed in late 1970s Berlin).

Philip Glass has collaborated with recording artists such as Paul Simon, Suzanne Vega, Mick Jagger, Leonard Cohen, David Byrne, Uakti, Natalie Merchant, and Aphex Twin (yielding an orchestration of Icct Hedral in 1995 on the Donkey Rhubarb EP). Glass's compositional influence extends to musicians such as Mike Oldfield (who included parts from Glass's North Star in Platinum), and bands such as Tangerine Dream and Talking Heads. Philip Glass and his sound designer Kurt Munkacsi produced the American post-punk/new wave band Polyrock (1978 to the mid-1980s).

In 1970 Glass and Klaus Kertess (owner of the Bykert Gallery) formed a record label named Chatham Square Productions (named after the location of the studio of a Philip Glass Ensemble member Dick Landry). Metamorphosis for Piano (1988) was featured in the reimagined Battlestar Galactica in the episode "Valley of Darkness", and in 2008, Rockstar Games released Grand Theft Auto IV featuring Glass's "Pruit Igoe" (from Koyaanisqatsi). "Pruit Igoe" and "Prophecies" (also from Koyaanisqatsi) were used both in a trailer for Watchmen and in the film itself. Watchmen also included two other Glass pieces in the score: "Something She Has To Do" (from The Hours) and "Protest (Act II Scene 3)" (from Satyagraha).

Personal life

Glass describes himself as "a Jewish-Taoist-Hindu-Toltec-Buddhist", and he is a supporter of the Tibetan cause. In 1987 he co-founded the Tibet House with Columbia University professor Robert Thurman and the actor Richard Gere. Glass is a vegetarian.

Glass has four children and one granddaughter. Juliet (b. 1968) and Zachary (b. 1971) are his children from his first marriage, to theater director JoAnne Akalaitis (married 1965, divorced 1980). Granddaughter Zuri (b.1989) is Zachary's daughter. His second marriage to Luba Burtyk was dissolved. Marlowe and Cameron are Glass's sons with his fourth wife, Holly Critchlow (from whom Glass is separated). His third wife, the artist Candy Jernigan, died of liver cancer in 1991, aged 39. Glass lives in New York and in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. He has been romantically involved with cellist Wendy Sutter since 2005.

Glass is the first cousin once removed of Ira Glass, host of the nationally syndicated radio show This American Life. Philip once appeared as a guest on This American Life and his piece "Metamorphosis One" is often used on the show. Philip Glass's cousin is Ira Glass's father.

Films about Philip Glass

1976 – Music With Roots in the Aether: Opera for Television. Tape 2: Philip Glass. Produced and directed by Robert Ashley.

1983 – Philip Glass. From Four American Composers. Directed by Peter Greenaway.

1985 – A Composer's Notes: Philip Glass and the Making of an Opera. Directed by Michael Blackwood.

1986 – Einstein on the Beach: The Changing Image of Opera. Directed by Mark Obenhaus.

2005 – Looking Glass. Directed by Éric Darmon.

2007 – glass: a portrait of Philip in twelve parts. Directed by Scott Hicks.

Awards and nominations

Golden Globe Awards

Best Original Score

Nominated: Kundun (1998)

Won: The Truman Show (1999)

Nominated: The Hours (2003)

BAFTA Awards

Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music

Won: The Hours (2002)

Academy Awards

Best Original Score

Nominated: Kundun (1997)

Nominated: The Hours (2002)

Nominated: Notes on a Scandal (2006)

Other Awards

2010 NEA Opera Honors Award 18th International Palm Springs Film Festival Award

References

Further reading

William Duckworth (1995, 1999). Talking Music: Conversations With John Cage, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, and Five Generations of American Experimental Composers. New York, New York: Da Capo Press.

Philip Glass, Robert T. Jones (ed.) (1987, 1995). Music by Philip Glass. New York, New York: DaCapo Press.

Richard Kostelanetz (ed.) (1997). Writings on Glass. Essays, Interviews, Criticism. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press.

Robert Maycock (2002). Glass: A Biography of Philip Glass. Sanctuary Publishing.

Potter, Keith (2000). Four Musical Minimalists: La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass. Music in the Twentieth Century series. Cambridge, UK; New York, New York: Cambridge University Press.

John Richardson (1999). Singing Archaeology: Philip Glass's "Akhnaten". Wesleyan University Press.

K. Robert Schwarz (1996). Minimalists. 20th-Century Composers Series. London: Phaidon Press.

Bartman, William and Kesten, Joanne (editors). The Portraits Speak: Chuck Close in Conversation with 27 of his subjects, New York: A.R.T. Press, 1997

Knowlson, James (2004). Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett, New York: Grove Press.

External links

Philip Glass Q&A;

NewMusicBox cover: Philip Glass (includes video)

Art of the States: Philip Glass Piece in the Shape of a Square (1967)

Category:1937 births Category:20th-century classical composers Category:21st-century classical composers Category:American composers Category:American film score composers Category:American Jews Category:American people of Lithuanian-Jewish descent Category:American musical theatre composers Category:American vegetarians Category:BAFTA winners (people) Category:Baltimore City College alumni Category:Contemporary classical music performers Category:Jewish American composers and songwriters Category:Jewish classical musicians Category:Nonesuch Records artists Category:Juilliard School of Music alumni Category:Living people Category:Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Category:Minimalist composers Category:Musicians from Maryland Category:Opera composers Category:People from Baltimore, Maryland Category:Postmodern composers Category:University of Chicago alumni Category:Peabody Institute alumni

Name	Mark Danner
Imagesize	180px
Caption	Danner speaking at UC-Berkeley
Birth date	November 10, 1958
Birth place	Utica, New York, USA
Occupation	Author, journalist, professor
Website	www.markdanner.com

Mark David Danner (born November 10, 1958) is a prominent American journalist, writer, and educator. He is a former staff writer for The New Yorker and frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. Danner specializes in U.S. foreign affairs and has written extensively on Haiti, Central America, the former Yugoslavia, and the Middle East. In 1999, he received a MacArthur Fellowship.

Background and education

Danner was born at Utica, New York. He attended Utica Free Academy, a public high school, and then Harvard, where he graduated with a degree in modern literatures and aesthetics in 1981.

Career

Early years

After leaving Harvard, Danner joined the staff of The New York Review of Books, where he served as assistant to Robert B. Silvers from 1981 to 1984. In 1984, he moved to Harper's Magazine as a senior editor. In 1986, he joined The New York Times Magazine, where he specialized in foreign affairs and politics, writing pieces about nuclear weapons and about the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti, among other stories.

The New Yorker and El Mozote

In 1990, Danner joined the staff of The New Yorker shortly after the magazine published his three-part series on Haiti, "A Reporter at Large: Beyond the Mountains".

On December 6, 1993, for only the second time in its history, The New Yorker devoted its entire issue to one article, Danner's piece, "The Truth of El Mozote", an investigation into the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador, thought to be the worst atrocity in modern Latin American history. The Mozote article became the basis for Danner's first book, The Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War, which was published in 1994. The New York Times Book Review recognized The Massacre at El Mozote as one of its "Notable Books of the Year."

The Balkans and The New York Review of Books

During the mid-1990s Danner began reporting on the wars in the Balkans, writing a series of eleven extended articles for The New York Review of Books, which began with Danner's cover piece, "The US and the Yugoslav Catastrophe" (November 20, 1997) and concluded with "Kosovo: The Meaning of Victory", (July 15, 1999).

His 16,000-word essay, "Marooned in the Cold War: America, the Alliance and the Quest for a Vanished World," which appeared in World Policy Journal (Fall 1997) provoked a prolonged exchange of letters and responses from Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, Congressman Lee Hamilton, and Ambassador George F. Kennan.

Iraq and the War on Terror

Danner began writing about the war on terror soon after September 11, 2001, publishing ""The Battlefield in the American Mind" in the New York Times in October of that year. He began speaking out against invading Iraq, notably in a series of debates with Christopher Hitchens, Leon Wieseltier, Michael Ignatieff, David Frum, William Kristol and others. He reported from Iraq for The New York Review of Books in a series of lengthy dispatches including "Iraq: How Not to Win a War"(September 25, 2003), "Delusions in Baghdad" (February 12, 2004), and ""The War of the Imagination" (December 21, 2006).

In May 2005 Danner wrote an essay for The New York Review accompanying the first American publication of the so-called "Downing Street Memo", the leaked minutes of a July 2002 meeting the minutes of a July 2002 meeting of high-level British officials confirmed that when it came to the debate over whether to go to war in Iraq, "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," and that the invasion of Iraq was in fact a foregone conclusion. The essay provoked a number of responses and led to two subsequent essays, all of which were collected, along with relevant documents and a preface by New York Times columnist Frank Rich, 2006 in The Secret Way to War: the Downing Street Memo and the Iraq War's Buried History.

Torture and Abu Ghraib

Beginning in the spring of 2004, he wrote a series of essays for The New York Review on the emerging torture scandal that came to be known as Abu Ghraib. In October 2004, he collected these essays and gathered them, together with a series of government documents and reports, into his book, Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror.

In March 2009, Danner published an essay in The New York Review,' "US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites", which revealed the contents of a secret International Committee of the Red Cross report based on testimony from "high-value detainees" in the "War on Terror," who had been captured, held, and interrogated at secret US prisons—the so-called "black sites". Shortly thereafter, he published a second essay, "The Red Cross Report: What it Means' and released the full text of the report on The New York Review website. Weeks later, President Obama ordered released four Justice Department memos in which the Bush administration purported "to legalize torture." Senior Obama officials claimed that the memos' release was prompted by the Red Cross Report.

Other works

Books

In addition to The Massacre at El Mozote (1994), Torture and Truth (2004), and The Secret Way to War (2006), Danner is also the author of The Road to Illegitimacy: One Reporter's Travels through the 2000 Florida Recount (2003) and Stripping Bare the Body: Politics Violence War (Released through Nation Books, 2009).

Television and Commentary

Danner co-wrote and helped produce two hour-long television documentaries for ABC News' Peter Jennings Reporting series: "While America Watched: The Bosnian Tragedy" and "House on Fire: America's Haitian Crisis", which both aired in 1994. As commentator, Danner has appeared on The Charlie Rose Show, The MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour and Bill Moyers Journal on PBS, CNN's Prime News, Situation Room, and Anderson Cooper 360 ABC's World News Now, C-Span's Morning Show, and The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC.

Academic career

In 2000 Danner became Professor of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2002 he also accepted a Henry R. Luce professorship in Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College, where, in 2006, he was then named the James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs, Politics and the Humanities. At Berkeley, where he teaches in the spring, Danner has taught courses on foreign affairs, politics, and literature, including on war and revolution, crisis management, Chekhov, and Dostoevsky. At Bard he conducts seminars on politics and literature, including on torture, utopia, Faust, the picaresque, and the politics of the War on Terror.

Honors and awards

Danner’s work has been honored with a National Magazine Award, three Overseas Press Awards, and an Emmy. In 1999, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. In 2006 he was awarded the Carey McWilliams Award to honor that year's "major journalistic contribution to our understanding of politics." In 2008 he was named the Marian and Andrew Heiskell Visiting Critic at the American Academy in Rome.

References

External links

Mark Danner's website

Category:American newspaper reporters and correspondents Category:War correspondents Category:American investigative journalists Category:American foreign policy writers Category:The New Yorker staff writers Category:University of California, Berkeley faculty Category:Bard College faculty Category:Harvard University alumni Category:MacArthur Fellows Category:People from Utica, New York Category:1958 births Category:Living people

Name	Errol Morris
Caption	Morris in 2008
Birth date	February 05, 1948
Birth place	Hewlett, New York, United States
Occupation	Director
Years active	1978–present
Website	www.errolmorris.com

Errol Morris (born February 5, 1948) is an American director. In 2003, The Guardian put him seventh in its list of the world's 40 best directors. As of 2010, Morris has won one Academy Award for Best Documentary Film.

Biography

Early life and education

Morris was born in Hewlett, New York on February 5, 1948. When he was two years old, his father died of a heart attack. His mother, a Juilliard graduate, supported Morris and his brothers as a music teacher. In the 10th grade, Morris enrolled at the Putney School, a boarding school in Vermont. He began playing the cello, spending a summer in France studying music under the acclaimed Nadia Boulanger, who was the principal teacher of Philip Glass. Glass would eventually score The Thin Blue Line, A Brief History of Time, and The Fog of War. Describing Morris as a teenager, Mark Singer wrote that he "read with a passion the forty-odd Oz books, watched a lot of television, and on a regular basis went with a doting but not quite right maiden aunt ("I guess you'd have to say that Aunt Roz was somewhat demented") to Saturday matinées, where he saw such films as This Island Earth and Creature from the Black Lagoon — horror movies that, viewed again thirty years later, still seem scary to him."

Morris attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison, graduating in 1969 with a B.A. in history. For a brief time Morris held small jobs, first as a cable television salesman and then as a term-paper writer. His unorthodox approach to applying for grad school included "trying to get accepted at different graduate schools just by showing up on their doorstep." Having unsuccessfully approached both the University of Oxford and Harvard University, Morris was able to talk his way into Princeton University, where he began studying the history of science, a topic in which he had "absolutely no background." His concentration was in the history of physics, and he was bored and unsuccessful in the prerequisite physics classes he had to take. This, together with his antagonistic relationship with his advisor ("'You won't even look through my telescope.' And his response was 'Errol, it's not a telescope, it's a kaleidoscope.'" This led to Grigson being nicknamed "Dr. Death". Through Grigson, Morris would meet the subject of his next film, 36 year-old Randall Dale Adams.

Adams was serving a life sentence that had been commuted from a death sentence on a legal technicality for the 1976 murder of Robert Wood, a Dallas police officer. Adams told Morris that he had been framed, and that David Harris, who was present at the time of the murder and was the principal witness for the prosecution, had in fact killed Wood. Morris began researching the case because it related to Dr. Grigson; he was at first unconvinced of Adams's innocence. After reading the transcripts of the trial and meeting David Harris at a bar, however, Morris was no longer so sure.

At the time, Morris had been making a living as a private investigator for a well-known private detective agency that specialized in Wall Street cases. Bringing together his talents as an investigator and his obsessions with murder, narration and epistemology, Morris went to work on the case in earnest. Unedited interviews in which the prosecution's witnesses systematically contradicted themselves were used as testimony in Adams's 1986 habeas corpus hearing to determine if he would receive a new trial. David Harris famously confessed, in a roundabout manner, to killing Wood. Although Adams was finally found innocent after years of being processed by the legal system, the judge in the habeas corpus hearing officially stated that, "much could be said about those videotape interviews, but nothing that would have any bearing on the matter before this court." Regardless, The Thin Blue Line, as Morris's film would be called, was popularly accepted as the main force behind getting its subject, Randall Adams, out of prison.

According to a survey by The Washington Post, The Thin Blue Line made dozens of critics' top ten lists for 1988, more than any other film that year. It won the documentary of the year award from both the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics. Despite its widespread acclaim, it was not nominated for an Oscar, which created a small scandal regarding the nomination practices of the Academy. The Academy cited the film's genre of "non-fiction", arguing that it was not actually a documentary. The Thin Blue Line is to this day one of the most critically acclaimed documentaries ever made.

2000s

Although Morris has achieved fame as a documentary filmmaker, he is also an accomplished director of television commercials. In 2002, Morris directed a series of television ads for Apple Computer as part of a popular "Switch" campaign. The commercials featured ex-Windows users discussing their various bad experiences that motivated their own personal switches to Macintosh. One commercial in the series, starring a high-school friend of his son Hamilton Morris, named Ellen Feiss, became an Internet fad. Morris has directed hundreds of commercials for various companies and products, including Adidas, AIG, Cisco Systems, Citibank, Kimberly-Clark's Depend brand, Levi's, Miller High Life, Nike, PBS, The Quaker Oats Company, Southern Comfort, EA Sports, Toyota and Volkswagen. Many of these commercials are available on his website.

In 2002, Morris was commissioned to make a short film for the 75th Academy Awards. He was hired based on his advertising resume, not his career as a director of feature-length documentaries. Those interviewed ranged from Laura Bush to Iggy Pop to Kenneth Arrow to Morris's 15 year old son Hamilton Morris . Morris was nominated for an Emmy for this short film. He considered editing this footage into a feature length film, focusing specifically on Donald Trump discussing Citizen Kane (This segment was later released on the second issue of Wholphin). Morris went on to make a second short for the 79th Academy Awards in 2007, this time interviewing the various nominees and asking them about their Oscar experiences.

In July 2004, Morris directed another series of commercials in the style of the "Switch" ads. This campaign featured Republicans who voted for Bush in the 2000 election giving their personal reasons for voting for Kerry in 2004. Upon completing more than 50 commercials, Morris had difficulty getting them on the air. Eventually the liberal advocacy group MoveOn PAC paid to air a few of the commercials. Morris eventually wrote an editorial for the New York Times discussing the commercials and Kerry's losing campaign.

In the fall of 2004, Morris also directed a series of noteworthy commercials for Sharp Electronics. The commercials enigmatically depicted various scenes from what appeared to be a short narrative that climaxed with a car crashing into a swimming pool. Each commercial showed a slightly different perspective on the events, and each ended with a cryptic weblink. The weblink was to a fake webpage advertising a prize offered to anyone who could discover the secret location of some valuable urns. It was in fact an alternate reality game. The original commercials can be found on Morris's website.

Morris also directed a series of spots for Reebok that featured rapper 50 cent. The spots featured title design by The Wilderness

In early 2010, a new Morris documentary had been submitted to several film festivals, including Toronto International Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival, and Telluride Film Festival. The film, currently titled Tabloid, features interviews with former Miss Wyoming, Joyce McKinney, who was convicted of rape in England for what would become known as the Mormon sex in chains case.

Additionally Morris has been writing long-form journalism exploring different areas of his interest, published on the New York Times website.

Filmography

Gates of Heaven (1978)

Vernon, Florida (1981)

The Thin Blue Line (1988)

The Dark Wind (1991)

A Brief History of Time (1991)

Fast, Cheap and Out of Control (1997)

(1999)

First Person (2000)

The Fog of War (2003)

Standard Operating Procedure (2008)

Tabloid (documentary film) (2010)

Awards

Jury Grand Prix Silver Bear at the 2008 Berlin Film Festival for Standard Operating Procedure

Academy Award for Documentary Feature The Fog of War (2004)

Best Documentary of the Year awards for The Fog of War (2003): the National Board of Review, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the Chicago Film Critics, and the Washington D.C. Area Film Critics.

2002 International Documentary Association list of the 20 all-time best documentaries: The Thin Blue Line (#2), Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (#14)

Emmy for Best Commercial for PBS commercial "Photobooth" (2001)

In December 2001, the United States' National Film Preservation Foundation announced that Morris's The Thin Blue Line would be one of the 25 films selected that year for preservation in the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress, bringing the total at the time to 325.

MacArthur Fellowship (1989)

Washington Post Best Film of the Year for The Thin Blue Line (1988)

New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics Best Documentary for The Thin Blue Line (1988)

Golden Horse for Best Foreign Film at the Taiwan International Film Festival for The Thin Blue Line (1988)

Edgar Award for Best Motion Picture, from the Mystery Writers of America, for The Thin Blue Line (1989)

Gates of Heaven (1978) has long been on Roger Ebert's list of the ten greatest films ever made.

References

External links

Errol Morris's website

Errol Morris on Twitter

Voices on Antisemitism Interview with Errol Morris from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Errol Morris (Rotten Tomatoes)

Errol Morris (Jonathan Crow, Allmovie)

Errol Morris on "The Fog of War" (Livia Bloom)

Errol Morris on "The Fog of War" (Video interview from )

Errol Morris (GreenCine, Nina Rehfeld)

Errol Morris on "Standard Operating Procedure" (IFC)

Essay on "Standard Operating Procedure" (Paul Arthur, ArtForum)

Errol Morris on "Standard Operating Procedure" Livia Bloom, Cinema Scope)

Werner Herzog in coversation with Errol Morris (The Believer)

Category:1948 births Category:American documentary filmmakers Category:American film directors Category:Living people Category:MacArthur Fellows Category:Edgar Award winners Category:San Francisco Art Institute alumni Category:Documentary film directors Category:People from Hempstead (town), New York Category:Apple Inc. advertising Category:Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Category:University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni