When you think of the overall Sundance docu selections, programmers may want to balance the hard-hitting slate with this, the curiously titled (Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies. Thanks to Dan Ariely’s bookshelf favorite “The Honest Truth About Dishonesty – How We Lie To Everyone, Especially Ourselves,” it benefits from an already built-in aud and via the smart talking heads package, it comes across as an intriguing-sounding “lite” docu experiment. In a Moneyball-ian kind of way, it treats moral and ethical flaws in making minor and major fibs almost in a data analysis argumentative measuring stick. Why finger point when everyone is accountable? Having recently landed some kickstarter funds for completion, we’re not sure if this talking heads package is in the final innings of the edit, but fittingly this is producer Yael Melamede’s (see pic above) first outing as a director – she produced a dozen of items including a couple of Sundance preemed items, most recently, Jason DaSilva’s When I Walk.
Gist: From ticket-fixing in our police departments to test-score scandals in our schools, from our elected leaders’ extra-marital affairs to financial schemes undermining our economy, dishonesty seems to be a ubiquitous part of the news. But it’s not just true in the headlines – we ALL cheat.
Production Co./Producers: Yael Melamede (Brief Interviews with Hideous Men), Ella Nuortila. Executive Producer: Dan Ariely. Associate Producers: Ashley Robinson, Dawn Schwartz, Holly Meehl.
Prediction: May very well end up in SXSW or Tribeca, but if Sundance programmers nab this first I’d bet on Non-Competing Documentary Premieres.
U.S. Distributor: Rights Available. TBD (domestic). TBD (international)
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