crude written and directed by Joe Berlinger
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Chevron has argued that it’s being targeted because it has deep pockets, yet as Crude makes clear, those deep pockets are ultimately its best defense. Conferring with Kohn in Philadelphia, Donziger admits that the plaintiffs are $100,000 in the red and points out—for the cameras, obviously, since Kohn would understand this already—that “part of Texaco’s strategy is to bankrupt us. I mean, they don’t want this to end, and they know that that’s one of their advantages.” Very few movies deal with this reality (one notable exception is Steven Zaillian’s 1998 adaptation of Jonathan Harr’s nonfiction book, A Civil Action), but any legal battle against a giant corporation inevitably turns into a financial battle. The longer Chevron can prolong this one, the more chance it has of winning; on the other side, the more Donziger turns up the heat in the media, the more money he costs Chevron.
