Il regista / The Director

Robert Greene (born North Carolina, USA 1976) made his directorial debut with the documentary The Rehobeth Trilogy (2002), followed by Ye are the Light of the World (Don’t Stare into the Sun) (2003), Six Videos about Tourism (2003), Sports: A 12 Part History (2005), and One Dead in Ohio (2006). Owning the Weather is his first feature documentary.  An Omar Broadway Film (2008) which Robert produced, edited, and shot, will premiere on HBO in 2010.  He currently works as post-production supervisor and a documentary producer for the production company 4th Row Films.

In December 2005 I read Ando Arike’s “Owning the Weather: The Ugly Politics of the Pathetic Fallacy” in Harper’s Magazine. It was a smart, considered essay that brought together many disparate stories to illuminate the hubris and folly of Man’s long desire to control the weather. I immediately knew this story would be my first feature film. I contacted the writer, met him at a Brooklyn teashop, and began researching the history, facts about, and ethical/political/moral questions raised by this thing called “weather modification.” We shopped the idea around and the film got some interest at a well-established documentary production company. They told us, however, that we really needed to find one character that wanted to do some major weather modification experiment and follow his journey. This was, of course, documentary conventional wisdom. One-character stories sell. I was convinced, however, that the film could be so much bigger. I saw the story as the kind many of my cinematic heroes (Frederick Wiseman, Adam Curtis, Werner Herzog, etc.) might want to tell. And I was more than a little worried that we would have to make a guy who wanted to screw with the weather a de facto hero. So when our character turned out to be a complete con artist and the film collapsed, I was actually a little relieved. The production company voided my contract and we were back to square one with an article and an idea. I felt like I had to tell the story- not just a sliver of it, but the whole, big, messy thing. This was not just a story about making it rain or stopping a hurricane. It was about our changing place in nature and how our long desire to control the elements have led us to a place where, because of climate change, we may have to control the weather to survive. I brought the project to 4th Row Films and they were supportive of my vision for the film, so we cobbled together the money and began shooting. Some two years and twenty states later, after having a child and getting married (a new family that joined me on almost every trip), we had several hundreds of hours of material that seemed as vast, chaotic and exciting as the weather itself.