Great white sharks off L.A. beaches? Yup. Now they're on TV

White sharks at one of Los Angeles’ most popular surfing beaches? Yes.

They’ve become such a familiar site at Sunset Beach in Pacific Palisades that regulars have become almost, kind of, sort of comfortable with their presence. Sometimes the humans don't even tell lifeguards or researchers about seeing the predators.

That’s one of the revelations of “Great White Invasion,” one of several new programs debuting this week on the Discovery channel’s 24th annual “Shark Week.” The television event has been a hit for Discovery since it debuted in the 1980s, routinely attracting 20 million viewers a year. "Shark Week" topped more than 30 million viewers in 2010.

“Great White Invasion” describes how sightings of great whites have multiplied in recent years at Sunset—the surf break near where Sunset Boulevard empties on to Pacific Coast Highway—and at other beaches around the world.

The shark appearances here gained particular notoriety in 2009, when surf shop owner Randy Wright captured photos and video of the creatures jumping out of the water. The “breaching” photos--sizable sharks soaring out of the water--became a sensation on the Web.

The producers of “Great White Invasion” tried to secure some of Wright’s video, but the videographer had his own ideas for disseminating the information, though where it will be shown is not yet clear. Among the footage: shots of a shark perhaps 10 feet long jumping clear of the ocean's surface, video that a prominent shark researcher called “phenomenal."

Unable to secure Wright’s video, the “Great White Invasion” creators made due with interviews with  Sunset surfers about their shark encounters. They paired the Los Angeles segments with dramatic footage from white shark breaches in other locales, like Australia and South Africa.

Ralph Collier, the veteran researcher who founded and runs the San Fernando Valley-based Shark Research Committee, said he thinks “Great White Invasion” gives a fair account of white shark episodes locally. Collier appears in the documentary and comments on the recent proliferation of white shark sitings.

 “There has not been one surfer who was bitten or bumped or harassed at Sunset,” Collier said in an interview with the Big Picture. “There have been numerous reports of sharks coming up, usually on the starboard side of a surfer and rotating and then looking them over, before leveling out and swimming away. We are not really anything of special interest to sharks.”

The reasons for infrequent shark attacks on humans in Southern California are not entirely understood, Collier said. A teenage body-boarder was killed off Vandenberg Air Force Base, north of Santa Barbara, last fall. A veterinarian died while on a training swim off Solana Beach in the spring of 2008.

With millions of people entering the water, there have been only a handful of other fatalities in Southern California in the last half-century. Collier said there are some common sense precautions to be taken by those who enter the shark’s domain. Swimmers and surfers should avoid the ocean when marine mammals or a lot of bait fish are nearby. They should not wear flashy jewelry, swim suits or even nail polish that might attract a shark’s attention, Collier said. Though it’s not understood exactly what color range white sharks can see, better to go low-key.

“Great White Invasion" replays frequently this week, along with a host of other shark-umentaries. One other Discovery offering features "Chief Shark Officer" Andy Samberg, celebrity host for the  week's offerings. The "Saturday Night Live" comedian takes a look, and gets really scared, about sharks off the Bahamas.

ALSO:

Andy Samberg of 'Saturday Night Live' named Discovery Channel's Shark Week host

--James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: White sharks star in the Discovery channel program "Great White Invasion." Surfers in Los Angeles talk about seeing the predators off Sunset Beach. There have been no attacks on humans at the popular surf spot. Credit: C & M Fallows / oceanwideimages.com

Bin Laden photos should be released to American people

Photos of Osama bin Laden won’t be released to the public and press, President Obama has decided—but it’s hard to imagine that the images won’t some day make their way into the public realm.

I think Obama erred on this difficult call. It seems only right that American citizens get additional evidence of an action taken in their name.

Obama reportedly told CBS’ “60 Minutes” that he did not want photos of the dead terrorist leader to become a rallying point for his Al Qaeda followers.

“There is no doubt that we killed Osama bin Laden,” Obama said in the interview, portions of which will air Wednesday night.  “We don’t need to spike the football.”

According to White House press secretary Jay Carney, Obama also told CBS that gloating by releasing the photos “is not who we are."

Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers had expressed opposition to the release of the photos. Fox News quoted sources as saying the pictures are extremely graphic—showing Bin Laden with an open gunshot wound to the forehead, his brain exposed and one eye “completely gone.”

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the intelligence committee, told Fox that he would oppose release of the photos if he thought they would make America's war in Afghanistan more difficult for U.S. troops.

It’s hard to imagine that public demand to see the photos—both by friends and enemies of America—will abate. And the American clamor to see the pictures seems like a righteous one.

The Navy SEALs team that killed Bin Laden late Sunday, U.S. time, took its action on order of the president  but to mete out justice on behalf of the American people. Recognizing this reality, the administration has already shown some members of Congress the Bin Laden pictures.

U.S. citizens should be able to examine at least some minimal evidence of the results of the daring raid.

We shouldn’t abandon our imperative to document and understand our government’s actions in wartime, simply because the most fanatic segments of a potential worldwide audience will not be pleased.

And extremists looking for a reason to inflame passions against America will find it, with or without the Bin Laden pictures.

I find myself in the unlikely company of Alan Dershowitz and Sarah Palin on this one. A public dissemination of the photos would not satisfy the fringe elements, but it will help the press and regular Americans understand the momentous event that has just occurred.

--James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: Photos of the living Osama bin Laden are ubiquitous and fakes of Bin Laden in death have begun to crop up on the Internet. But President Obama has decided that the U.S. military's pictures of the dead Bin Laden, killed by an elite Navy SEALs commando team, will not be made public. Credit: AFP / Getty Images

 

Hondros dead covering war, which he saw as his calling

Chris Hondros, 41, the superb photographer who took some of the most wrenching war photos of our time, has been confirmed dead in a hospital in Misurata, Libya.

The same explosion had earlier Wednesday claimed the life of photographer and filmmaker Tim Hetherington. At least two other photojournalists were injured in the blast, which was believed to have been caused by a mortar round, Los Angeles Times correspondent Ned Parker reported from Misurata.

The Big Picture noted earlier that Hondros took a series of the most chilling photos to come out of the war in Iraq. He also became one of the most eloquent spokesmen on the importance of exposing suffering in the world's trouble spots.

News reports earlier in the day had prematurely declared Hondros dead, but the 41-year-old photographer clung to life for a few hours, with a critical head wound, at Hikma Hospital.

Hondros was a 2004 Pulitzer Prize finalist for spot news photography for his work in Liberia. He won the Robert Capa Gold Medal in 2006. Friends said he had been scheduled to marry this summer.  

"I still can’t believe it," said Rick Loomis, an L.A. Times photographer and one of a cadre who worked frequently in the world's danger zones. "I knew it would happen some day to one of us. I just never wanted to really have that day ever come.  He was one of the most talented guys out there, working in places that no one wants to go but that everyone should see.  He was the eyes for so many people, whether they know it or not."

RELATED:

Tim Hetherington, photojournalist and 'Restrepo' Oscar nominee, killed in Libya

Tim Hetherington: 'Restrepo' movie takes viewers onto front lines in Afghanistan

-- James Rainey
Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: Photographer Chris Hondros walks through the streets in Monrovia, Liberia, in 2003. Hondros, 41, died Wednesday after being wounded in what was believed to be a mortar attack in Misurata, Libya. Credit: Associated Press / Getty Images

 

Chris Hondros fights for life, like those he pictured in war

This post has been corrected. Please see note at bottom for details.

Chris Hondros made headlines Wednesday when he became the victim of one of the wars he has chronicled so brilliantly over the years.

Hondros, 41, was one of the photographers gravely injured in an attack in Libya that killed Tim Hetherington, a photographer for Vanity Fair who gained acclaim for co-directing the Oscar-nominated documentary "Restrepo," about soldiers in Afghanistan.

The terrible news about Hondros, who the New York Times reported suffered a critical brain injury, reminded me of the several occasions when the photographer had spoken to me with passion and insight about his dangerous craft.

I first became aware of Hondros in 2005, when Newsweek published photos that I still believe have been the most chilling images to come out of the long war in Iraq. The photos showed terrified and blood-spattered Iraqi children, just moments after their parents had been mistakenly shot to death by a U.S. military patrol.

After seeing the pictures of the children, I contacted Hondros for a long project I was working on -- a story that showed that American newspaper and magazine readers were seeing very few scenes of the bloodshed in Iraq.

“There can be horrible images, but war is horrible and we need to understand that," said Hondros, a freelancer whose work is distributed by the Getty Images agency. "I think if we are going to start a war, we ought to be willing to show the consequences of that war."

Published in Newsweek and several newspapers, the pictures sparked discussion of the military's rules of engagement and provoked an outpouring of aid for the children, who became known as "The Orphans of Tall Afar." The shots also got Hondros banned from any further work with the unit, part of the 25th Infantry Division.

Rick Loomis, one of my Times colleagues who worked with Hondros in some dangerous places, described him as a man with a quick wit and gift of gab.

"It seemed his duty to document the chaos and unrest in these various hell holes," Loomis said. "He operated at the highest levels.  He never expressed fear about returning to these places.  He is always more nonchalant about the danger than I could ever be."

Though I never met Hondros in person, a handful of email and phone exchanges over the years made me feel like I had a friend out in the world's hottest news zones.

After visiting an exhibit at the Getty last summer that featured one of the great war photographers, James Nachtwey, I emailed Hondros. I wanted to know his take on the state of the photo business. His response was typically ebullient and wise.

Hondros said changing technology was making some people uneasy, but he had no doubt photography would continue to thrive. His response, in part: "Doubtless many Victorian portrait-painters were consumed with indignation and doomsaying for the craft when Cubists and Dadaists arrived on the scene, but the art and profession of painting is still with us, if in a different way than a hundred years ago."

He avowed that documentary photography would never be a path to riches. But he continued to shoot great pictures right up until the attack that suddenly put him on the other side of the news. His pictures from the front line in Libya appeared this week on the front pages of the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and, doubtless, many other papers.

Hondros' words came last year from "the middle of the desert in Afghanistan." He wrote them after 2 a.m., local time. But the message certainly could have applied to his work, even this last week in Libya.

"The still image -- the honest, raw, unadorned still image, whether published in print, hung in a gallery or blinking up on a computer screen -- still holds the elemental power it always had."

For the record, 2:28 p.m. April 20: A previous version of this post misspelled photographer Tim Hetherington's last name as Herrington.

--James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: The 2005 images of distraught and bloodied children who had just seen their parents mistakenly shot to death by U.S. forces in Iraq were among the most troubling of the war. Chris Hondros, who shot the "Orphans of Tall Afar" pictures, was gravely injured while photographing the civil war in Libya. Credit: Chris Hondros / Getty Images

Bill O'Reilly on science: Why is Earth the only planet with a moon?

As my blogmate Jim Rainey has frequently pointed out, Fox News has its own unique view of the world, where the facts rarely get in the way, most recently in the way Fox pollster Frank Luntz used a strange brand of faux science to find a panel of people unimpressed by President Obama's recent State of the Union address. But when it comes to seeing the world through the wrong end of a telescope, no one tops Bill O'Reilly, who has been the butt of a thousand jokes after confronting an atheist on his show with irrefutable evidence of the existence of God--using as his evidence the fact that the tides come in and the tides go out. I mean, O'Reilly said with great certainty, who else could possibly be controlling that?

As any scientist could tell you, it's the moon that controls the tides. So Papa Bear has taken to the airwaves again to pursue a new wrinkle in his faux science agenda. He now acknowledges that the tides might indeed be controlled by the moon. But so what? As he says: "How'd the moon get there? Can you explain that to me? How come we have that? And Mars doesn't have it. Venus doesn't have it. How come?"

Actually, as any amateur astronomer knows, Jupiter has lots of moons, 63 in all, several of which you can see through a good pair of binoculars. One of them, Ganymede, is actually larger than Mercury. Saturn has 62 moons. Uranus has 27 moons. And hey, Bill, Mars actually has two moons of its own, that were discovered in 1877, long before even Roger Ailes was born. As far as I know, there's no evidence that either of them are made of green cheese either. I'm beginning to think that O'Reilly might have slept through quite a few of his fifth-grade science classes. But he sure is certain in his beliefs. Here, watch for yourself:

 --Patrick Goldstein

 

'Waiting for Superman' Oscar snub: A liberal plot in action?

Whenever a film gets snubbed at Oscar time, the conspiracy theorists come out of the woodwork with madcap theories about what dark, mysterious forces were responsible for its disappointing showing. Hence the arrival of this Oliver Stone-style opinion piece from the New York Post's Kyle Smith, who claims that Davis Guggenheim's "Waiting for Superman," despite being easily the most celebrated documentary of the year, failed to get a best documentary Oscar nomination because the film endorses a conservative cause -- allowing the proliferation of charter schools as a means of saving our battered public school system. 

As Smith put it: "Welcome to reverse McCarthyism. Not only are conservatives unwelcome (bordering on unemployable) in Hollywood, but even fully paid-up and lionized liberals like Guggenheim must be shunned for making a case that conservatives agree with." He added in a blog post that the film's snub was "an excellent example of what happens when the Party Line of liberalism comes head to head with the supposed reason for existence of the Democratic Party -- concern for the downtrodden, particularly black and brown people."

I happen to be a fan of Smith's writing, but in this case, he seems unaware of the fact that when it comes to the arcane realm of Oscar voting, politics is about 14th on the list of truly dark and mysterious forces at work. It is especially hard to make the case that liberals had it in for "Waiting for Superman," since the film critics of America --w ho are probably even more overwhelmingly liberal than the Academy -- were the first to champion the "Waiting For Superman," giving it almost unanimously rave reviews.

So if liberal film critics were willing to put aside their supposed ideological blinders and praise the film, why wouldn't the Academy's documentary film branch do the same? If Smith had delved just a little into Oscar history, he would have realized what a creaky limb he'd crawled out on. As it turns out, the Academy has given the cold shoulder to all sorts of wildly popular documentaries in the past, including "Hoop Dreams," "The Thin Blue Line," "Grizzly Man," "Roger & Me" and "Fahrenheit 9/11," which was declared ineligible because of an obscure technicality. The fact that the Academy has snubbed films made by all sorts of liberal filmmakers, most notably the famously left-wing Michael Moore, makes it hard to cite politics as a key rationale for the omission.

This wouldn't be the first time the documentary branch has punished a documentary for being hugely popular or for benefiting from the kind of ostentatious Oscar campaign "Superman" had. There are enough examples of liberal documentaries losing out to less partisan efforts -- such as when Moore's 2007 film "Sicko" and that year's "No End in Sight" lost to "Taxi to the Dark Side" -- that it seems plausible that bias against conservatism seems hardly a major force at work here. Smith and I agree that "Superman" deserved an Oscar nod, but it's a huge stretch to blame the snub on a liberal plot. The only politics at work here were the usual kind -- office politics. 

-- Patrick Goldstein

Photo: Davis Guggenheim accepts the award for best documentary feature at the Critic's Choice Movie Awards in Hollywood. Credit: Mario Anzuoni / Reuters

 

KCET dumped PBS, now holds door open to remarriage

KCET's New Year's break from the PBS system and its move to become an independent station seemed quite final and irreversible.

But in an interview published in a trade publication, the hard-charging head of KCET's board held out the possibility that KCET might one day return to PBS.

Huh? Given the hard feelings at the public network that seems a bit like NBC offering to make nice with Conan O'Brien. But perhaps nothing is eternal in love ...and television.

Speaking to Broadcasting & Cable, KCET Chairman Gordon Bava was asked if the station might return to the public TV network's "fold." His response: "That is certainly a possibility. We have not terminated our relationship with PBS, we have suspended it indefinitely. We aren’t sure PBS is willing to accept that distinction, but that is our express intention. So that when the dust settles and we see maybe in a couple of years what the future of PBS holds and its role will be, we certainly would be open to returning on a reasonable and sustainable basis."

KCET stunned many people in the small and insular public broadcasting world when it said last year (to The Times, incidentally) that it would break with the dominant public TV network. Bava and station Chief Executive Al Jerome said KCET simply couldn't afford to pay the roughly $7 million in annual "dues" levied by PBS.

Bava also says in the Broadcasting & Cable interview that he thinks many other public stations will be in danger of closing down if the federal government cuts funding--as congressional Republicans have proposed.

The stations have already been losing support rapidly, Bava said, adding: "In this era of budget cuts and eliminating government services and a reluctance to increase taxes, the viability of the system is in question."

Bava told the trade publication that public TV may, like the auto industry, have to be retooled in order to justify its taxpayer subsidy. He suggested a "new grand bargain" between public TV, Congress and the American people.

With KCET out of PBS, the vast bulk of PBS programming now comes to Southern California via Orange County-based KOCE. KOCE Chief Executive Mel Rogers previously expressed puzzlement about KCET's flight from PBS. On Tuesday, Rogers told my colleague Scott Collins that he found Bava's remark about a possible return to PBS "curious and surprising.”

PBS execs could not be reached. But given Bava's previous tough talk about PBS and its fees, he must have stunned a lot of people by holding the door open to a renewed relationship with KCET. I doubt many of the people in charge at PBS would welcome a second marriage.

--James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: KCET Chief Executive Al Jerome, who helped engineer the public television station's flight from the PBS network. Now the chairman of the KCET board, Gordon Bava, has held open the door that KCET might someday return to PBS. Credit: Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times

 

'Charlie Rose,' 'NewsHour' short-term orphans in new PBS world

Most Southern California viewers who want to watch PBS programs shifted on New Year's Day from KCET to KOCE, or "PBS SoCal," as the Orange County-based station now brands itself.

The switch, triggered when Los Angeles' KCET dropped out of PBS' network in a dues dispute, has caused a few bumps in programming and annoyed a small but committed public TV audience.

I noted in my "On the Media" column how awkward some of KCET's new programming is--particularly the evening news delivered by Japan-based NHK. One producer of a prime-time PBS show showcasing film, "Independent Lens," has expressed frustration at the show being moved to yet another PBS affiliate.

But most of the gripes since the Jan. 1 shift come from old viewers trying to chase their favorite programs to their new home at KOCE. Take the "Charlie Rose" program, for instance. KOCE has not had room in its lineup for the late-night talk show. KVCR, another public TV station, has "Charlie," but not all cable systems carry that Inland Empire-based station.

"I'm just sick about it," said Teri Duncan of West Hollywood, who made the Rose show a nightly habit. "It's an intelligent show with great guests. I am so upset about this whole fiasco."

The problem stemmed from KOCE's obligation to save time in its late-night schedule for tele-courses--academic offerings from Coastline Community College, which sold the station to KOCE's current operators. Those tele-courses filled the time that normally would go to Charlie Rose.

But KOCE chief executive Mel Rogers called late in the day Wednesday to say that, because of budget cuts, Coastline would no longer offer the televised courses. So "Charlie Rose" will get itself a midnight time slot on KOCE starting Jan. 17.

Another hiccup in public television programming left portions of the Inland Empire and the Coachella Valley, including Palm Springs, without "NewsHour" at the start of 2011. Linda Strome of Palm Springs e-mailed me to complain that her Time Warner reps--including a call center in India--didn't seem to have a clue about what happened to PBS' mainstay news show, long hosted by Jim Lehrer.

"The voice of reason is precious to us all," Strome said.

KOCE's Rogers told me that the "NewsHour" blackout should be solved by Wednesday evening as Time Warner, the dominant cable carrier in inland communities, agreed to add KOCE to its lineup. The news show should pop up in its typical 6 p.m. time slot. The show will appear for digital Time Warner customers in the Coachella Valley on Channel 130. Analog cable customers in that area will have to wait until Jan. 24 to get "NewsHour," which they will find on Channel 8.

Rogers said he thought the transition of PBS programming had gone fairly smoothly, given how little time KOCE had to adapt to becoming the dominant affiliate in the region.

That doesn't mean everyone is satisfied, though. Among those still campaigning to get on the KOCE schedule are the San Francisco-based producers of "Independent Lens," a series that offers a diversity of voices and perspectives via independent film. The show was moved to KLCS, the public station operated by the Los Angeles Unified School District. 

"It's hard to understand why they would take this program, which is the cornerstone of diversity and independent storytelling in the PBS prime-time schedule, and put it at a secondary station," said Dennis Palmieri, director of communications for the company.

Palmieri said though KLCS reaches fewer viewers, the biggest concern was breaking "Independent Lens" from the rest of PBS' prime-time lineup. He said the show and its younger viewers help expand interest in PBS.

KOCE's Rogers said it's inevitable with a large and unwieldy menu of offerings that no single public TV station can handle everything. He suggested that the stations in Southern California need a degree of specialization and that KLCS might find one niche focusing on the arts.

It may take longer, though, to warm public TV viewers--many of whom are older and set in their ways--to the new reality in Southern California: Their favorite PBS programs will be spread over multiple stations.

--James Rainey

Twitter.com/latimesrainey

Photo: Charlie Rose, host of the late-night PBS talk show. His program has been hard for some viewers to find due to a shift in programming by affiliates in Southern California. KOCE promises to air the show beginning Jan. 17 when a spot opens in its lineup. Credit: Jonathan Fickies / Bloomberg

Werner Herzog gets the shaft again from the Academy

If you were compiling a short list of the preeminent documentarians of our time who are still working at the top of their game, it would be hard to imagine the list not including the always adventuresome, always unpredictable Werner Herzog. But when it comes to the motion picture Academy's just-announced short list of the 15 films eligible for this year's Oscar for best documentary, Herzog's remarkable 3-D documentary "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" is nowhere to be found.

It's not the first time Herzog has been snubbed. In fact, of all his recent documentary work, only "Encounters at the End of the World" made the Academy short list. His other work, even the profoundly disturbing and critically beloved "Grizzly Man," has been roundly ignored.

I'm a big fan of a number of films that did make the Final 15, starting with Charles Ferguson's "Inside Job," David Guggenheim's "Waiting for Superman" and Shlomi Eldar's "Precious Life," a heartbreaking humanist portrait of the staggering gulf between Israelis and Palestinians that I wrote about recently. But it's still a shock to see Herzog's "Forgotten Dreams" absent from the list, especially after the warm reception it received when it debuted this fall at the Toronto Film Festival. Also absent from the Final 15 is "Catfish," a strange, unsettling documentary about a Facebook romance that is not at all what it initially appears to be. 

My suspicion is that both films didn't make the cut for the same reason: They are too iconoclastic for the Academy's all-too-conservative tastes. The Academy's doc slate is full of straight-forward narrative films, many of them muckraking critiques about political and social issues. Herzog's film is quirky and personal, not to mention technologically groundbreaking, since it is one of the first documentaries ever to be filmed in 3-D. That alone would make the Academy nervous, since 3-D smacks of commercialism and technological innovation, two things that always give the Academy the heebie-jeebies. Ditto for "Catfish," which has sparked criticism for its narrative leaps and raised concerns about whether its filmmakers were really as gullible as they portray themselves in the film.

Still, if the Oscars can't make room for documentaries that push the medium in new directions, especially when a gifted old master like Herzog is at the helm, then the Oscars once again seem to be guilty of celebrating filmmakers who play it safe over the ones that embrace new ideas and artistic innovation.

Photo: Werner Herzog at an Academy screening of "Swing Time" last month.

Credit: Valerie Macon/Getty Images

 

The new docs: Do they change our minds or just preach to the converted?

Arnold Schwarzenegger showed up for a few brief moments in "The Expendables" this year, but the only movie in which the California governor has played a major role since he took office in 2003 is not an action film but a tiny documentary that opened this weekend in five cities, including Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco.

The film, "Gerrymandering," exposes the details of a practice that allows politicians to dramatically alter the boundaries of their voting areas via redistricting as a way to either keep themselves in power or punish a rival party or politician.

It's an especially timely subject, because we have two propositions on the November ballot involving redistricting. Proposition 20 would expand the scope of 2008's Proposition 11, which put state legislative redistricting into the hands of an independent citizens commission -- a fight led by Schwarzenegger and California Common Cause leader Kathay Feng that is the focus of the film. Proposition 20 would extend citizens commission control to congressional districts as well. Opponents have sponsored Proposition 27, which would scuttle the citizens commissions and return redistricting power to the Legislature.

Why should we care? Because gerrymandering effectively disenfranchises the majority of voters. With redistricting in the hands of politicians, only one California congressional seat has changed parties in the last four elections. The film, directed by Jeff Reichert, does a marvelous job of dramatizing the excesses of the current system. In fact, the stories are often so comically outlandish that they seem plucked straight out of one of Preston Sturges’ great political satires.

We see the story of the New York assemblyman who, when he first proved a threat to an established incumbent in Brooklyn, found his district redrawn so that the street he lived on was excluded from it. In Texas, when Tom DeLay set about creating six new safe Republican congressional districts in 2004, the entire contingent of Democratic state representatives -- 53 in all -- disappeared in the dead of night, crossing the border and establishing camp at a Holiday Inn in Oklahoma in order to avoid taking a vote that would approve the new redistricting plan.

In Illinois, gerrymandering had a direct influence on the political fortunes of Barack Obama. Seen as a rising star in the Democratic party, his old state Senate district was reshaped so that it included much of the Chicago lakefront, heavily populated with wealthy white liberals, a key power base for a presidential contender.

There's nothing partisan about this documentary -- both political parties look equally craven and opportunistic. Still, it would be hard to imagine that a tiny documentary playing in a handful of theaters could possibly have any effect on a major election. But Reichert has an ace in the hole -- Stanford physicist Charles Munger Jr. (whose father is the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway). Munger had been a major supporter of Proposition 11, so when he heard about the documentary, he volunteered to help spread the word in a big way. With Munger’s financial backing, the film has been mailed out to 660,000 registered voters across the state.

"I know people just throw away most campaign mailers, but we figured that if they actually got a movie in the mail, maybe they'd watch it," said Reichert. "It's a way of going one on one with the voters and giving them something of value. Gov. Schwarzenegger has been a great spokesman for us -- he went on ['The Tonight Show with] Jay Leno' and promoted the movie, even playing a clip from it."

Still, a big question remains. Documentaries can often arouse passion and indignation. But do they change our minds or just preach to the converted?