Al Gore almost didn't make An Inconvenient Truth

Al Gore almost didn&#039;t make famed documentary.

(Image credit: JANEK SKARZYNSKI/AFP/Getty Images)

published 24 May 2016

While it's now hard to think of Al Gore without his documentary An Inconvenient Truth coming to mind, the one-time presidential candidate admits he almost didn't make the famous film. In an interview with Wired — published 10 years after Gore transformed a slideshow he'd compiled on the threats of climate change into the documentary — Gore confesses that, initially, he "did not want to do a documentary":

It's a dumb reason. I didn't think a slideshow could translate into a movie. I thought back to my days in school, when I tried to take a shortcut studying Shakespeare by watching filmed versions of the plays, where they just set up a camera and filmed the stage. It didn't translate. Participant Media and Davis Guggenheim had to convince me it was a good idea, and I'm so glad they found ways to reveal to me the depths of my ignorance about moviemaking. It's a message that has to be heard. Sorry to risk sounding grandiose, but the future of human civilization is at stake. [Wired]

The documentary went on to win two Oscars and, as NPR puts it, "politicized global warming to an unprecedented level."

Read Gore's full reflections on the battle against climate change — and how he thinks he might finally be "winning" it — over at Wired.