Soundtrack for The Unknown Known

Your Monday morning needs a soundtrack and Danny Elfman’s score for Errol Morris’ The Unknown Known is just the thing. Available at Amazon or on iTunes.

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Watch The Unknown Known

Errol Morris’s latest documentary on Donald Rumsfeld, The Unknown Known, just came out in theaters. But it’s also available right now to rent/buy on Amazon and iTunes. Here’s a trailer if you need convincing.

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Donald Rumsfeld: The Unknown Known

Errol Morris’ documentary about Donald Rumsfeld, The Unknown Known, comes out next month. The trailer:

In the first of a four-part companion series to the movie for the NY Times, Morris explores The Certainty of Donald Rumsfeld.

When I first met Donald Rumsfeld in his offices in Washington, D.C., one of the things I said to him was that if we could provide an answer to the American public about why we went to war in Iraq, we would be rendering an important service. He agreed. Unfortunately, after having spent 33 hours over the course of a year interviewing Mr. Rumsfeld, I fear I know less about the origins of the Iraq war than when I started. A question presents itself: How could that be? How could I know less rather than more? Was he hiding something? Or was there really little more than met the eye?

The Unknown Known has been referred to as a sequel of sorts to The Fog of War, but from this it seems more like its opposite. Morris got some substantive and honest answers to important questions from McNamara, whereas it sounds like he got bupkiss from Rumsfeld.

Update: Here’s part 2.

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The Unknown Known

Vice has a sneak peak at Errol Morris’ new documentary on Donald Rumsfeld, in what looks like a sequel of sorts to The Fog of War.

Morris has Rumsfeld perform and explain his “snowflakes,” the enormous archive of memos he wrote across almost 50 years in Congress, the White House, in business, and twice at the Pentagon. The memos provide a window into history — not as it actually happened, but as Rumsfeld wants us to see it.

Jesus, that little smile at the end. The Daily Beast has an interview with Morris about the film.

THE DAILY BEAST: How the hell did you get Rumsfeld to agree to do this? Were you chasing him down?

ERROL MORRIS: No, not at all. I wrote him a letter, enclosed a copy of The Fog of War, heard back from him very quickly, went to Washington, and spent a good part of the day with him. We started it under the premise that he would do two days of interviews, I would edit it, and if he liked it, we’d sign a contract and continue. If he didn’t, I’d put the footage in a closet and it would never see the light of day.

The name of the film, The Unknown Known, is a reference to a statement Rumsfeld made at a press briefing about WMDs, terrorism, and Iraq:

There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns — there are things we do not know we don’t know.

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