Leo, Waterskis, Shark

Leonardo DiCaprio’s eco-doomfest The 11th Hour has bombed at the box office:

His environmental documentary, “The 11th Hour,” has been a total bust at the box office. After 18 days in release, the film has grossed only $417,913 from ticket sales. The 90-minute snore-fest is playing on 111 screens this week, but that number is likely to be reduced this Friday. The film will be sent to DVD heaven after that.

Why? Fox’s Roger Friedman has an inkling:

I hesitated to say before “11th Hour” actually opened how mind-numbingly dull it was for fear that I would ruin it for those interested in the subject of global warming. But at Cannes, when the film by Nadia Conners and Leila Conners Petersen was shown to journalists, nearly the entire room fell asleep. A Russian filmmaker told us afterward that she was the only person in the room who was awake at one point.

There’s an interesting illustration of the intellectual class zeitgeist in the Fox story as well. Note how Friedman goes out of his way to point out that he isn’t one of those horrible deniers. It’s the 21st-century equivalent of “Some of my best friends are black.”