They seek him here, they seek him there... Morgan Spurlock in Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?
Where in the World is Osama bin Laden? is about my personal quest to find the world's most wanted man. I first got the idea back in 2005, when Bin Laden had just put out another of his videotapes and everyone was wondering why no one had found him. I thought it would be a fun idea to take someone with absolutely no training or expertise, send him off and see if he could do any better.
OK, so I never suspected I'd actually find the guy. In the first place, the evidence suggests that he's hiding out in a rough and tumble tribal area that is very difficult to access. Secondly we live in a world where there is some benefit in having a bogeyman. Where in the world is Osama bin Laden? Well, he's everywhere and he's nowhere. He's like Keyser Söze in The Usual Suspects. Along the way people would tell us where they thought he was, and I suspect that we probably came within 50 miles of him when we were in Waziristan. But who knows?
In any case, the film took a dramatic turn when my wife became pregnant. It changed the question - from "where in the world?" to "what kind of world am I bringing a child into?" Making this documentary was an incredible trip for me. I met a lot of people and opened a lot of doors. It became about discovering the root causes as opposed to the man himself.
Hollywood dramas that tackle the "war on terror" have had a tough time recently. I think the problem is that these films look at the war in real time. Post-Vietnam, we had to wait years before films on the subject began to come out. Now you can turn from the evening news to watch a film covering exactly the same points; there hasn't been enough time for the issues to sink in. Documentaries do it better. They take off where the news leaves off, in that they give a face and a voice to the people you don't get to see on NBC or CNN. Alex Gibney's Taxi to the Dark Side, for instance, is a fantastic movie. Errol Morris, too, is a big hero of mine.
As for me, I've faced criticism for the tone of this film - for sometimes taking what my critics regard as a light and comedic approach to the subject matter. But I've always tended to follow the Lily Tomlin idea. You have to try to find the humour in everything. Because, by finding the humour, you find the humanity.
