Paul Lazarus has been directing stage and television for decades. It was many years ago that he met inventor Dean Kamen, when Kamen was interested in building a community theater. After many other collaborations, Paul Lazarus suggested to Kamen that they follow an invention from its infancy through to its implementation. The invention that Kamen was working on was the Slingshot, and it was built to solve the world’s water problems.
The structure of the film Slingshot starts off focusing on Dean, then the invention of the Slingshot, and then moves to the culture of ignorance that dominates the Western world and allows many South American, African and Asian countries to go without potable water. The problem turns out not to one of technology, but a cultural problem.
Can this culture of denial, that even affects the quality of the United States drinking water, can it change?
Paul Lazarus and I discuss these and other imponderables in the full interview.
Click here for a Will Findley’s full review of Slingshot.
In addition to contributing to Scene-Stealers, Trey makes short films and teaches at the Kansas City Art Institute. Follow him here:
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