Cool People: Jack Guest Releases A Convenient Truth
November 14, 2007 at 2:04 pm
Eco-filmmaker Jack Guest
Eco-filmmaker Jack Guest releases his debut offering, A Convenient Truth, this week. The film, set to be released online in five parts before its full feature length unveiling next year, is a positive response to Al Gore’s 2006 polemic, An Inconvenient Truth.


Here’s the background. A local lad from Croydon, Jack went straight into the City after college but soon got fed up with London. He ended up at Norwich University, working with the local Green Party and becoming something of an activist. After launching a website promoting what he calls “slow travel” – advocating the appreciation of trekking by land to negate the massive footprint of flying – Jack set up an organic juice company, which got him on the BBC’s Daily Politics show. It was then he realised the power of the media in spreading the word. When Sweden announced it was going to end its oil dependency by 2020 last year, Jack simply had to see it for himself. And after pitching the idea to TV in what he calls “a rather amateurish way”, he decided to make the film on his own.

“It made sense to use the media because I wanted to show as many people as possible,” said Jack, speaking to Global Cool recently. “And a month before I went to Sweden, Al Gore’s film came out. It moved me and gave me a concept. I realised I didn’t have to start with the problem. I could just show what needed to be done.”

A Convenient Truth in its entirety is a road movie, made up of three distinct but at the same time inter-related journeys. The first is of discovery, that greener living is not the daydream of a few, but is in fact reality for the people of Sweden; the second is of a hopeless romantic on a cargo ship to Canada, buoyed on by his revived love for an ex and equally heartfelt desire to prove long-haul does not necessarily mean an aisle seat and deep vein thrombosis; and the third is of realisation, that managing life, love and the planet is a big ask, even for a multi-talented 25 year-old.

Jack emptied his life savings to fund the film and, somewhat appropriately, it’s his undying optimism that drives it along. After all, A Convenient Truth is at its heart an affirmation – that the world has an answer to climate change, and that we can all start doing something about it today.

A Convenient Truth has been funded privately by friends, family and myself, and everything we make from releasing this preview will go towards releasing the main film to as wide an audience as possible next year,” says Jack by email. “All eventual profits will go towards the biggest, baddest climate stabilising and carbon reducing causes we can find. That and a massive 200-foot statue of Al Gore.”

A Convenient Truth will be released online in five parts, each costing the viewer £1. Part one, which is free, is online from Wednesday 14th November. To watch, click here.

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