Everybody, it seems, has got a first-person political documentary waiting to burst out. For Josh Tickell, however, the waiting was longer than most.
Having worked for a reported 10 years on “Fuel,” Tickell has the benefit of more seasoning than most. And his subject, the world’s addiction to oil, gives him considerably more urgency.
Tickell is onscreen for a good part of “Fuel,” and his presence is sometimes annoying in the midst of so much strong information. But this is how documentaries are put over, so grit your teeth and listen to the message. (And by the way, Tickell will be at the Varsity theater to speak at tonight’s shows.)
Despite having a name that sounds like a children’s entertainer, Josh Tickell does finally win you over. His litany of oil-company abuses and corporate (and, let’s face it, consumer) short-sightedness is finally devastating.
After highlighting the problems with foreign oil dependence, Tickell makes the case for his chief solution. Is it “Drill, baby, drill?” No, closer to “Grill, baby, grill,” as in the food counter at the local McDonald’s.
We’re talking about biodiesel. To prove the point, Tickell powers his van with the leftovers from the deep-fryers at fast-food joints.
He makes a strong case for using something that isn’t sitting beneath the sands of Iraq and Saudi Arabia. He also provides some dark history about alternative fuels, including the fact that Rudolf Diesel (he invented you-know-what) disappeared from an ocean liner one night in 1913, an event that conspiracy theorists have used as a suspicious factor in the ascendancy of gasoline rather than diesel in automobile use.
Along with his alternative-fuel arguments, Tickell marshals a long roster of talking heads to make his case, among them scientists, activists and regular folks. A few celebrities appear too, for reasons that need no explaining: Julia Roberts, Willie Nelson, Neil Young. Washington congressman Jay Inslee is in there, too.
I resisted “Fuel” at first, unsure about Tickell’s cute style and folksy approach. But if it gets enough people outraged about our addiction to oil, let it flow.
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