Davis Guggenheim on ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ at 20

Davis Guggenheim had given notice and was on the way out of his job as a Participant Media creative executive in 2005 when producers Lawrence Bender and Laurie David came to him with an idea.
 
At the time, former Vice President Al Gore was touring the country giving slideshow presentations to any group that would listen about the coming threat of climate change, or “global warming,” as it was widely known 20 years ago.

Bender and David thought Gore’s folksy delivery of complicated scientific and climatological information would lend itself to a documentary that might add urgency to environmental policy debates. The pair also thought Guggenheim had the right sensibility to translate Gore’s passion to the screen. Participant Media chief Jeff Skoll also took in one of Gore’s presentations and had one note for producers: “Do it fast.”
 
The result would be “An Inconvenient Truth,” the 2006 Participant Media/Paramount Classics release that shocked the industry following its domestic theaterical release on May 24, 2006, as it became a runaway hit at the box office by documentary standards. More important, the film had enormous cultural impact.
 
“Thousands of people have come up to me and said, ‘I put solar panels on my house.’ ‘I bought a Prius.’ There were certain countries that made it required viewing,” Guggenheim says in an interview at his Concordia Studio in a former surfboard factory in the Venice area of Los Angeles.

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“Inconvenient Truth” opened in limited release in 2006 and went on to gross about $50 million worldwide. Despite its less than flashy presentation — it’s largely a 95-minute lecture from Gore, with some PowerPoint-style graphics and a bit of behind-the-scenes footage — the film had an impact in the moment that was head-spinning.
 
“You had companies changing their policies, politicians making [climate issues] a priority. It was incredible,” Guggenheim says. “It’ll never happen that way again.”

U.S. environmental policy has been a roller coaster ride in recent years. The Trump administration has been a man-made disaster for environmental policy and for federal support of research and climate-related issues. Guggenheim takes solace in the rise of a green tech and green energy industry that is driving market solutions – or at least mitigations – to urgent concerns.
 
“There’s no way to avoid this. There’s going to be another Sandy, there’s going to be another Katrina,” he says. “There’s going to be another climate change moment, and each time, we get a little bit more focused and more gets done.”
 
Now, he continues, there are “true market forces at play,” two decades later.
 
“When we made the movie 20 years ago, we were struggling at the end to find solutions we could offer the audience,” he says. “We had a shot of a Prius and a shot of a windmill. And now what’s hopeful is that there are market forces, true market forces. So that’s very heartening, despite the political cycle.”
 
Twenty years ago, Guggenheim responded to Skoll’s call to get “An Inconvenient Truth” out into the world. It was five and a half months from the start of production to the film’s Sundance in January 2006.
 
“I like working fast. I think sometimes working fast makes you less precious,” he says.
 
“Inconvenient Truth” won a bevy of awards, including the Oscar for documentary feature.
 
As the son of an old-school doc filmmaker, Charles Guggenheim, Davis Guggenheim knows how rare it is for a film to catch the zeitgeist and enjoy the wave that “Inconvenient Truth” rode in 2006.
 
“It would have a harder time if it was released today,” he acknowledged.

Guggenheim still praises the marketing campaign, spearheaded by then-Paramount exec Megan Colligan. In the same breath, he emphasizes (not for the first time) that it all started with Gore’s vision.
 
“I feel like Al Gore changed the world, and our movie helped what he was doing,” Guggenheim says. “The movie captured it and told his story in a unique way. I think we made a good movie, but it also had to do with all these forces that had nothing to do with us.”