Anything But Crude; RADiUS Dives into Margaret Brown’s “The Great Invisible”

RADiUS’ Tom Quinn and Jason Janego have traded in suit & tie garb for some wetsuit gear as they’ve landed the rights to Margaret Brown’s SXSW Grand Jury Award-winning docu. On our radar for several years now, The Great Invisible will be released theatrically this year. Peg this as a awards contender at the Cinema Eye Honors & Oscars.

Gist: On April 20, 2010, communities throughout the Gulf Coast of the United States were devastated by the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, a state-of-the-art, offshore oilrig operated by BP in the Gulf of Mexico. The blast killed 11 of 126 rig crewmembers and injured many more, setting off a fireball that was seen 35 miles away. After burning for two days, the Deepwater Horizon sank, causing the largest offshore oil spill in American history. The spill flowed unabated for almost three months, dumping hundreds of millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic ocean, shutting down the local fishing industry, polluting the fragile ecosystem, and raising serious questions about the safety of continued deep-water offshore drilling.

Worth Noting: A regular contributor to the works of David Gordon Green and Jeff Nichols, David Wingo composed the score for The Great Invisible. Next up: TIFF items Maggie (Henry Hobson) and Green’s Manglehorn.

Do We Care?: Fans of the filmmaker’s visual and narrative approach to the docu-form since Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt, word from Austin is that this coined “thriller ” might be Brown’s best work to date and the subject has yet.