page_title: An Inconvenient Truth
section_title: The slide show
hierarchical_section_title: An Inconvenient Truth / Background / The slide show
caption_attribution_description: English: Al Gore's speech on Global Warming at the University of Miami BankUnited Center, Feb 28th, 2007
context_page_description: An Inconvenient Truth is a 2006 American concert/documentary film directed by Davis Guggenheim about former United States Vice President Al Gore's campaign to educate people about global warming. The film features a slide show that, by Gore's own estimate, he has presented over a thousand times to audiences worldwide.
  The idea to document Gore's efforts came from producer Laurie David, who saw his presentation at a town hall meeting on global warming, which coincided with the opening of The Day After Tomorrow. Laurie David was so inspired by his slide show that she, with producer Lawrence Bender, met with Guggenheim to adapt the presentation into a film. Premiering at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and opening in New York City and Los Angeles on May 24, 2006, the documentary was a critical and commercial success, winning two Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature and Best Original Song. The film grossed $24 million in the U.S. and $26 million at the international box office, becoming the eleventh highest grossing documentary film to date in the United States.
context_section_description: After his defeat in the 2000 presidential election by George W. Bush, Gore returned his focus to the topic. He edited and adapted a slide show he had compiled years earlier, and began featuring the slide show in presentations on global warming across the U.S. and around the world. At the time of the film, Gore estimated he had shown the presentation more than one thousand times.
  Producer Laurie David saw Gore's slide show in New York City at a global warming town-hall meeting after the May 27, 2004 premiere of The Day After Tomorrow. Gore was one of several panelists and he showed a ten-minute version of his slide show.
  I had never seen it before, and I was floored. As soon as the evening's program concluded, I asked him to let me present his full briefing to leaders and friends in New York and Los Angeles. I would do all the organizing if he would commit to the dates. Gore's presentation was the most powerful and clear explanation of global warming I had ever seen. And it became my mission to get everyone I knew to see it too.
  Inspired, David assembled a team, including producer Lawrence Bender and former president of eBay Jeffrey Skoll, who met with Gore about the possibility of making the slide show into a movie. It took some convincing. The slide show, she says, "was his baby, and he felt proprietary about it and it was hard for him to let go."
  David said the box office returns weren't important to her. "None of us are going to make a dime." What is at stake, she says, "is, you know, the planet."
  David and Bender later met with director Davis Guggenheim, to have him direct the film adaptation of his slide show. Guggenheim, who was skeptical at first, later saw the presentation for himself, stating that he was "blown away," and "left after an hour and a half thinking that global warming [was] the most important issue ... I had no idea how you'd make a film out of it, but I wanted to try," he said.
  In 2004 Gore enlisted Duarte Design to condense and update his material and add video and animation. Ted Boda described the tools that went into designing the project: "Gore's presentation was in fact using Apple's Keynote presentation software (the same software Steve Jobs presents from) and did so for a number of reasons. As a designer for the presentation, Keynote was the first choice to help create such an engaging presentation."
  Initially reluctant of the film adaptation, Gore said after he and the crew were into the production of the movie, the director, Guggenheim, earned his trust.
  I had seen enough to gain a tremendous respect for his skill and sensitivity. And he said that one of the huge differences between a live stage performance and a movie is that when you're in the same room with a live person who's on stage speaking – even if it's me – there's an element of dramatic tension and human connection that keeps your attention. And in a movie, that element is just not present. He explained to me that you have to create that element on screen, by supplying a narrative thread that allows the audience to make a connection with one or more characters. He said, "You've got to be that character." So we talked about it, and as I say, by then he had earned such a high level of trust from me that he convinced me.
caption: Gore presents his global warming slide show at the University of Miami
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