Last week, I wrote about Rescue Dawn: The Truth, a website where friends and family of Gene DeBruin, the character played by Jeremy Davies in Werner Herzog’s film, make the case that the director distorted the real life events at the Laotian prison camp in order to puff up the heroism of Dieter Dengler. Conservative bloggers and critics, who had initially praised the film for upholding American patriotic values, immediately turned on Herzog. They were particularly fired up by the claim that Herzog had been contacted by people close to DeBruin but had ignored their pleas to make changes to the film. In response to charges that DeBruin’s defenders were “blown off” by Herzog, Debbie Schlussel wrote, “Since Mr. Herzog would not tell the truth, I will.”
But over the weekend, I was listening to the August 3rd episode of Filmspotting, which features an interview with Herzog. This interview must have been recorded at least two weeks before Schlussel started the blog firestorm with her post, and in it Herzog voluntarily acknowledges the DeBruin camp’s unhappiness with his version of the story. Herzog concedes the discrepancy between his version and the family’s version, but says the Gene seen in Rescue is basically an exaggeration of certain character flaws related by Dengler to Herzog before Dengler’s death. Herzog’s basic attitude is, “I understand that they love Gene and want to think the best of him, but sometimes when men are put in extraordinary situations, they behave in ways that even the people closest to them wouldn’t expect.” You can listen to the podcast here.
This would seem to absolve Herzog of the charges of libel that were recklessly flying around the blogosphere last week. It’s not that he willfully mischaracterized DeBruin; the Herzog and the DeBruin camps simply have two different takes on the truth.
Originally posted on:
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