Yellowknife (Sep 24/04) - "If you want a place in the history books then do something dumb before you die."

That's a line from the marching tune that plays over the credits to Albert Nerenberg's documentary "Stupidity," which screens in Yellowknife next Tuesday to Thursday at Northern United Place.

Director Albert Nerenberg's documentary Stupidity screens next Tuesday through Thursday at Northern United Place. Nerenberg sent Yellowknifer this self portrait. - photo courtesy of Albert Nerenberg

That sentiment seems particularly relevant in the Arctic, where 19th century history is mainly a list of Europeans freezing to death during foolhardy quests.

"I'm sure the NWT is full of stories of stupidity," said Nerenberg on the phone from Vancouver.

In Stupidity, Nerenberg explores the origins of commonly used insults like dunce, moron, idiot and imbecile, and also the modern American phenomenon of "dumbing down," perhaps best embodied in the rise to power of George W. Bush, and the reluctance of presidential candidates to be characterized as intellectuals.

"If they got a picture of John Kerry with a book in his hand, he'd be finished," said Nerenberg.

"He'd have to pretend he was just moving it, or throwing it out the window or something."

The idea for the documentary came to him while he was at a screening of an ultra-serious, publicly-funded movie on intelligence.

"I thought 'this is so boring,'" he said. "'I'd rather watch a movie about stupidity.'"

Funding agencies were puzzled at first by the premise, but eventually The Documentary Channel and CBC Newsworld got on board.

Of course, getting interviews was a challenge. Once they found out what the movie was about, people would hang up, offended. When Nerenberg and his crew tried to interview Pamela Anderson, they got roughed up by her bodyguards.

Nerenberg was amazed by how much ignorance there was about stupidity.

"Take the dunce cap," he said. "No one has any clue where it came from. And I constantly hear people say 'moron' and 'idiot' and I feel like asking them 'do you know what that means?'"

It turns out those terrible insults don't come from the gutter, they come from universities. That's one of the revelations when the documentary delves into the history of the IQ test.

Stupidity has been trumpeted as the next blockbuster documentary, following the successes of Super Size Me, The Corporation and Fahrenheit 9/11.

At the Hot Docs festival in Toronto earlier this year, Stupidity sold out so quickly, the box office turned away 400 or 500 people.

"I couldn't even get into the premiere of my own film," said Nerenberg. "I'd never seen anything like it. The guy at the documentary channel can't stop talking about the fact that there were scalpers."

Though Nerenberg won't be coming up for the screenings, he did spend time in Yellowknife in 1995 while working on Invasion of the Beer People, a documentary about the Molson concert in Tuktoyaktuk.

"That was a great experience," he said. "It really turned me on to Yellowknife."

He's at the Vancouver Film Festival to participate in a panel discussion on why documentaries are suddenly so popular.

And after that is what Nerenberg said is "the weirdest part." He's off to Oxford University Oct. 22 for the first symposium on stupidity, inspired by the film.