S01E01 Mr. Debt
Andrew Capoccia is fighting in his own personal crusade against credit card companies. He is a lawyer that helps people that are ruined by debt coming from their massive use of credit cards. He wins...
First Person
S01E03: Stairway to Heaven
A conversation with Temple Grandin. She is a university professor, a diagnosed autistic, and has designed 1/3 of the slaughterhouses in the United States. Temple Grandin understands and relates more easily to cattle than to people. She's renowned for her design "stairway to heaven," a curving, high-wall ramp system that utilises optical illusions to lead livestock calmly from the pen to the bolt gun and ultimately to a humane death.
Overview
First Person was an American TV series produced and directed by Errol Morris. The show engaged a varied group of individuals from civil advocates to criminals.
Interviews were conducted with "The Interrotron", a device similar to a teleprompter: Errol and his subject each sit facing a camera. The image of each person's face is then projected onto a two-way mirror positioned in front of the lens of the other's camera. Instead of looking at a blank lens, then, both Morris and his subject are looking directly at a human face. Morris believes that the machine encourages monologue in the interview process, while also encouraging the interviewees to "express themselves to camera".
Episodes
S01E02 Eyeball to Eyeball
Clyde Roper has dedicated his life to become the first person to see a giant squid. He started off as a lobster fisherman, but then became a zoologist, and for 30 years he has been...
S01E03 Stairway to Heaven
A conversation with Temple Grandin. She is a university professor, a diagnosed autistic, and has designed 1/3 of the slaughterhouses in the United States. Temple Grandin understands and relates more easily to cattle than to...
S01E04 The Killer Inside Me
A conversation with Sondra London. Her high school boyfriend was Gerald Shaefer, the same man that later became one of America's most notorious mass murderers. They broke up because of his wish to kill young...
S01E05 I Dismember Mama
A conversation with Saul Kent. He is one of the pioneers in the field of cryonics, that being the freezing of persons for resuscitation in the future. He tells about his thoughts around life extension,...
S01E06 The Stalker
An interview with Bill Kinsley. He was once a promising post office worker on the brink of promotion to postmaster general. That was before he met Thomas McIlvane, kick boxer, mailman, gun freak and soon...
S01E07 The Parrot
This documentary is about an unusual murder mystery. Jane Gill is found murdered in her bedroom. Next to the body the police find Max, an African parrot with a highly developed ability to speak, and...
S01E08 Smiling in a Jar
An interview with Gretchen Worden. She is the director of Mütter Museum in Philadelphia. Here exists a unique collection of medical curiosities and deformations preserved in jars. Worden does not find the specimens monstrous, but...
S01E09 In the Kingdom of the Unabomber
Gay Greenberg was a psychotherapist that wanted to become a writer. His career as a writer lead to nowhere, and he decided to seek help from a famous author. This is why he started to...
S01E10 The Little Gray Man
For 25 years Antonio Mendez worked as a secret agent for the CIA. He led two lives. To his friends he was a bureaucrat working for the American Ministry of Defense, but to the CIA...
S01E11 You're Soaking In It
After Joan Dougherty's son's shotgun suicide, she was left alone with a gruesome mess. Having no other choice, she started to clean up herself. Now she tries to help others in the same situation. She...
Cast
Errol Morris
