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Gore hopes global-warming documentary turns heads

Robert Denerstein, Rocky Mountain News

Published May 12, 2006 at midnight

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If you're looking for a conversation about global warming, there's probably no better person to seek out than former Vice President Al Gore. These days, Gore is traveling the country to promote a documentary that he hopes will draw a lot more people into the conversation.

Gore visited Denver on Thursday to publicize An Inconvenient Truth, a documentary that's opening in New York and Los Angeles on May 24 and that arrives in Denver on June 9. Gore spoke with Denver journalists and appeared at an evening screening of the movie where he fielded questions.

An Inconvenient Truth is a filmed version of a multimedia presentation Gore assembled as part of an ongoing effort to alert people to the dangers of global warming. Most movies hope to turn a hefty profit; Gore hopes his will turn heads. The film makes the case that the need for action is urgent.

Wearing a black suit and shirt that probably will fit right in at the Cannes Film Festival, where he's headed in a week or so, Gore talked about a range of subjects with the same mixture of gravity and humor displayed in the film.

• On Cannes: "I used to have a framed cartoon that was a New Yorker magazine cover on my wall at the U.S. Senate. It was a cartoon by their famous cartoonist named (George) Booth, who had a dog riding a tricycle with a funny little party hat on the stage of a grand opera house. All the tiers were filled with the bedecked and the bejeweled cheering wildly. He's thinking, 'I don't know why they like this, but I'm going to keep pedaling.' That's me at Cannes."

• On running for office again: "I don't really like politics anymore," Gore said. "I don't think I'm particularly good at it. I used to really enjoy it. I'm not at a stage of my life where I'm going to say, 'Never again under any circumstances would I consider it.' But that's more the internal shifting of gears. It's not an effort to be coy. I'm not planning to make another campaign."

• Asked whether he finds anything to be encouraged about in the current administration's approach to the environment, Gore said, "Not yet."

"I fear that I have lost some objectivity where Bush is concerned," the former presidential candidate said, smiling. "It's a mystery, but I do need to report to you that I sense that."

Robert Denerstein is the film critic. or 303-892-5424