DC/DOX: “Oh Whale” Blows Up the Idea of Legacy
We don’t get to decide our legacy. Hypothetically, they should be the sum of our actions, but often there’s one thing that tends to overshadow everything else. News anchor Paul Linnman’s legacy would be defined by a whale of a tale. Directed by Winslow Crane-Murdoch, Oh Whale is a short film about a story that would go on for decades, spawning a life of its own, and demonstrating that fate has a plan for all of us. Oh Whale just screened at the DC/DOX Film Festival after playing Big Sky Documentary, Cleveland International, Miami, Hot Docs, and more.
“I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.” The quote that opens Oh Whale comes from perhaps the most famous piece of whale-related literature: Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. It was uttered by Stubb, the second mate of the Pequod whaling ship. Much like Mellville’s epic, Oh Whale is about a sperm whale whose presence looms large over the life of a man. On November 12, 1970, news anchor Paul Linnman arrived on a beach in Florence, Oregon, with his camera partner, Doug Brazil. They were there to capture the disposal of a washed-up sperm whale. It had been so long since an animal had washed up on shore that no one remembered how to get rid of a whale this size. Local government decided that twenty cases of dynamite should do the trick. That worked, but the repercussions were also more than they’d imagined.
Oh Whale is one of those documentaries that’s too strange to have ever been written as fiction. Blowing up a whale with twenty cases of dynamite is ludicrous. A tiny bit of critical thinking would make someone pause to think about what this amount of explosives would do to a blubberous animal. Of course, that lack of consideration is part of the reason the story of Paul, Doug, and the whale has continued to live on past that fateful broadcast. The town of Florence has turned the events of November 12 into a festival, with a parade and all. For them, it’s a shiny, weird moment in their town’s history.
Courtesy of Oh Whale
Over the years, Paul was called “Blubber Boy” and his career was reduced to this tale. It frustrated him at first. The beginning of his career was marked by his coverage of a prison riot at the Oregon State Penitentiary. An event that proved he could be dropped into chaos and craft a story that could run on the news on short notice. It’s how he and Doug ended up on that beach on that fateful morning. To be remembered for something like this did a number on Paul. It didn’t require any research or investigative journalism on his part, so it was a more passive piece of work than he normally did. Eventually, Paul recognized that, much like the flying chunks of whale blubber, his legacy was not something he could control.
We cannot choose how people remember us, but we can choose how to embrace the way they view us. Oh Whale sees Paul finally returning to the town of Florence. Not just being present, but taking part in the festivities, a recognition of the impact this freak event has had on his life. Oh Whale is a loving ode to the strangeness of life on Earth and the way twenty cases of dynamite can make the winds of change.
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