Dylan Avery and his film Loose Change have the world
wondering what really happened on Sept. 11, 2001
BY JARRET KEENE

Of all the many strange and invigorating things Liberty Watch writers have done for an honest buck � from attending a press conference with porn star and Nevada gubernatorial candidate Mimi Miyagi to shooting handguns in the desert with Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist and Libertarian novelist Vin Suprynowicz � nothing tops the delightfully surreal experience of gnawing spicy wings and downing domestic beers at the Hooters inside Sunset Station Hotel & Casino alongside Dylan Avery, the 24-year-old w�nderkind responsible for the notorious Loose Change documentary. If you�re someone who unthinkingly believes everything your government tells you regarding 9/11, now is a good time to put down this magazine and resume watching Fox News or CNN or whatever propaganda cable channel you feel best represents your brainwashed interests.

If, however, you�re someone who deeply distrusts government, please keep reading. You�re likely to have your mind blown wide open.

Loose Change is a must-see film that convincingly and thoroughly makes the case for direct U.S. government involvement in the 9/11 attacks. From the idea of controlled demolitions bringing down the Twin Towers in casino-implosion-like fashion to the confirmed stand-down orders given by Vice President Dick Cheney to let the commercial airliners approach the Pentagon and White House to the expert piloting executed by the so-called hijackers whose trainers deemed them insufficient flight students. These are just a few of the inconsistencies in the official 9/11 story that Loose Change illuminates. Watch the film in its entirety, and you�ll discover even more anomalies.

Loose Change is nothing short of an Internet phenomenon with more than 10 million viewings on Google Video alone. The official Loose Change website continues to receive 10,000 unique hits per day, and more than 50,000 copies of the DVD have been sold via the Internet and many times that number given away for free. So damning and powerful is the film that the science magazine Popular Mechanics devoted an entire issue to discrediting the movie�s claims, and the mainstream publication even went so far as to bring out a book, Debunking 9/11 Myths, in 2006. Since Loose Change�s initial release in 2005, when Avery was just 22, he has become the most significant writer/director on the Web. In Las Vegas to attend the Libertarian State Leadership Alliance�s 2008 Leadership Conference, which took place Feb. 15-18 at Sunset Station, Avery introduced Loose Change: 2nd edition on Friday and on the following day offered a free screening of Loose Change: Final Cut, after which he participated in a discussion.

When Liberty Watch caught up with Avery at the cash bar in front of the conference rooms on Friday evening, Avery was in good spirits, eager to listen and chat about the ongoing challenges facing the 9/11 Truth movement, a movement his film directly inspired. However, Avery is no cult leader; he possesses a healthy sense of irony and cynicism that makes it impossible for him to become the next Jim Jones. He seems suspicious of everything and anything � perhaps even certain aspects of the Truth movement. Still, Avery is far from paranoid; he brings skepticism to any discussion of politics. Think of him as a sassy upstate New Yorker�s answer to the granola-munching, sandal-wearing, West Coast-dominated anti-war movement. Like Johnny Cash, Avery wears black on black, an ensemble that�s oddly appropriate given the death of the American dream, a passing that seems ever more likely as the current presidential race breaks down to a choice between a pro-war candidate and a pro-war candidate.



�Look, I support [Republican Presidential candidate] Ron Paul 100 percent,� he told a group of Libertarians at the bar. �But the reason it doesn�t matter who I officially endorse is because I�m looking at the reality of the situation. I know how the game is played. I saw it happen to Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004. You can sense what�s going to happen before it happens. I see Hillary Clinton taking the White House, and it�s scary as hell. There used to be a range of candidates, and now it�s Hillary/Obama, Hillary/Obama � Hell, they�ll probably both take the White House in November.�

And what about so-called �conservative candidate� John McCain?

�McCain is an idiot,� Avery says. �He still refers to the Vietnamese as �gooks,� that�s how far out of it he is. If he doesn�t care enough to change his language, then how will he care enough to change this country? He thinks �Bomb Iran� is a funny parody of a Beach Boys song. And, you know, it is funny � if you�re 6 years old.�

Later, after a marathon session of penny Keno, Avery sat down with Liberty Watch on a bench outside Sunset Station, snapping pictures of Cirque du Soleil-airbrushed taxicabs with a small digital camera. �You don�t see stuff like this in upstate New York.�

Avery was generous with his time, talking freely on a wide range of topics � from Ron Paul to Red Lobster, from Mike Judge to Michael Moore, from his future plans as a acclaimed yet controversial filmmaker to the fact that he�s never been hassled for expressing what many consider to be a sinister view of government.

So how has the 2008 Leadership Conference been so far?

It�s been very good. The crowd here has been treating me very well. The Libertarian party is definitely a good group of people to get along with. Like any party, I�m sure the Libertarians have their bad apples, so to speak, and I guess you shouldn�t let that spoil the bunch. But I�ve had fun out here! My hosts, Jim and Beth [Duensing], are a lot of fun and have been very hospitable. Everyone I�ve met here has been really cool. I had to give a speech earlier and took a Q&A session for about 20 minutes. It took a while to coax the skeptics out of their respective shells. Once they did, of course, I was presented with the same kind of knee-jerk psychological reactions I always get, which include: �How could something like this happen? Too many people would have been involved. Too many people would have come forward by now.� You get a lot of the same things everywhere you go. It�s kind of funny, actually.

You spoke with us briefly about Ron Paul�s candidacy. Though you�re not officially endorsing him for president, what are some things you like?

Do I like Ron Paul�s positions? Absolutely. I agree with him that the Federal Reserve definitely needs to be cut back. The Patriot Act needs to be repealed. Our fundamental rights and liberties need to be returned to us. But at the same time, I guess I was reticent to fully jump behind him and support him, just because I could predict what I�m seeing now. The mainstream media has taken it and they�ve chosen the candidates. The game is set. They�ve made their move, put the things in place they need to. I think Hillary [Clinton] and [Barack] Obama are definitely heading to the White House, and that�s unfortunate. That�s absolutely unfortunate. But apart from that, I support Ron Paul and what he stands for. I support the fact that he wants to take some time away from [the presidential campaign] and focus on his Congressional race. I support him, and that�s the best way I can put it.

Tell us about your near-future plans for Loose Change: The Final Cut.

We�ve had the DVDs on sale on our website [www.LooseChange911.com] since November. We�re actually going to push and try to get it into Virgin Megastores; we�ve got a connection that�s helping us with that. It�s just taking time. We�re also trying to get an independent theater run of sorts going. We�ll see how that goes. It�s a very long process, especially given the fact that we don�t really have the help and assistance of the mainstream media and of the mainstream theater distributor chains. We have to do things independently. We have to do things on our own terms, which is unfortunate, but that�s what it�s come down to. Mike Judge is the creator of �Beavis & Butthead,� and more famously Office Space and Idiocracy. The latter is a movie that dedicates its entire existence to pointing out how fucking stupid we are, how doomed we are, and how we�re totally headed down the shitter. The movie makes fun of Fox News, mocks the commercialist culture that we�ve become.

Which is interesting, since Judge is, or was, employed by Fox.

And that�s the thing. And that�s why the film got shafted. It got a theatrical run in, I think, six cities, none of which were New York or Los Angeles or Chicago. Idiocracy is an amazing movie, but you get the impression walking away from it that there was a lot that was cut from it. Some of it was slapdash. Judge has expressed his extreme dissatisfaction with the way things went down. That�s not uncommon, which is the unfortunate part about [the film industry]. We went through the same thing a couple of times with distributors who weren�t giving us a fair guarantee. They weren�t saying, �We will put your film in theaters.� Instead, it was more like they were saying, �Well, if there is a theatrical run, here�s what will happen.� That�s unfortunately the world we live in now, so we have to work around the mainstream media and the big guys to slowly build [Loose Change] up off the ground and create a kind of grassroots movement.

How difficult is it to make political documentaries in the wake of Michael Moore?

All I can really say about that is, when I was originally developing the first Loose Change documentary, I was working on the film on my laptop � writing, editing � after work at Starbucks. I was always hanging out with this group of Eritreans, really cool people. [Editor�s note: Eritrea is a country situated in northern East Africa that succeeded in getting its independence from Ethiopia.] And they knew about Loose Change, but when I first tried to tell them about it, they were like, �Oh, like the Michael Moore film.� I mean, these guys are Eritreans who had just arrived in America, and even they know Moore and that his documentary is a 9/11 documentary. That�s how widespread Moore�s films are. The first thing people think when they hear the words �9/11� and �documentary� in the same sentence is Moore. Maybe if Fahrenheit 911 had gone into detail about 9/11 and hadn�t focused on Bush sitting on his ass and thinking about his friends the Saudis and how he�s going to blame Saddam, I could enjoy it more. I mean, Moore totally spun the entire thing to fit the narrative of his movie when in reality the focal point should�ve been: Why was Bush allowed to sit in that classroom? Why was the Secret Service allowed to be derelict in their duty? Their obligated duty as the Secret Service is to protect the President. That was a big question that jumped into everybody�s mind, and yet again it was painted as the whole: �Bush is an idiot. He�s sitting there because he doesn�t know what to do, and he�s thinking about how to protect his buddies,� when in reality he was probably scared out of his wits. He was told something was going to happen that he knew was coming, but wasn�t instructed as to what the full scale of it would be. He was probably told something was going to happen and to be ready for it. But I don�t think he had a clue what was really going to happen.

You have some creative aspirations outside documentary filmmaking and Loose Change. Can you tell us more about that?

In March, I�m hoping to shoot two videos for my friend Dave Cahill, who has a rock band, and for my friends Contents Under Pressure. And then when I move out here to the West Coast, I want to do some videos for [hip-hop artist] Remo Conscious. I want to do that to: A) build a portfolio and B) get some actual directing experience. It�s been a while since I�ve actually been behind a camera and had to direct people. That�s really the next step for me, because I�ve done the documentary thing, and now I�ve done Loose Change: The Final Cut, so I can�t make another. I can tweak it; I can improve on it. But that�s it.

How much investigative work did you do this time around for Final Cut. Did you place those hardcore phone calls?

Sure, I�ve definitely called some people. But it�s harder to get in touch with some of them than you might think. I�ve done what I can within my capacity, but remember: Most of the time, all the information I need is in the public domain.

Why aren�t you making tons of money off Loose Change?

I�m making enough to get by, I guess. We made enough to make another [version of the] film. I�m not in this for money. I�m not in this for financial gain. If I were in filmmaking for money, I�d make shit like See Spot Run. I would have sold my soul. I would have gone to film school for four years. I would have walked out with debt. I would have had professors talking down to me and telling me I need to memorize all these terms for how to describe a film and how to analyze it without actually telling me how to make a fucking film in the first place. That�s what I�ve found. More often than not, the main experience of people coming away from film school, the only thing they know, is learning a bunch of fancy words that someone taught them � mise en scene and stuff like that. They don�t know how to make a movie. They don�t know how to tell an interesting story. They don�t how to write a screenplay. They don�t know how to keep the viewer engaged. All they know is how to pick apart other people�s work. That�s not filmmaking. I�m not bashing every single film school, but this is very often my experience with the people who come out of film school today. They don�t know much.

What was the most fun part about creating Loose Change?

The whole experience has been a ride, man. It sounds like a clich�, but it has been a whirlwind. When the first Loose Change came out, I didn�t think it was going to do anything. I thought that was it. I made a thousand copies of my movie just to give away to people. And then people online wanted to buy them, so I sold them online. It slowly, over time, went from something I did after working a shift at Red Lobster to taking over everything, and I had to make a decision. When I had to go to California to do promotion for my movie, I told Red Lobster to keep me on the schedule. They never did. Three years later, I�m here.

Your girlfriend, at the time you were making the first Loose Change, supported your filmmaking, but didn�t care for your film.

She helped me with [the film] all the time. She helped me ship packages out. She supported the idea of me making a film and getting it out there. She sat with me night after night when I had to stamp envelopes. She was right there with me. She did an amazing job, and she did it because she was my girlfriend, and she cared, and she wanted to help me. But whenever I tried to sit down and actually show her the fucking film that she was helping me ship out, she�d say, �I know you�re really proud of this, and I know you�ve put a lot of work into this, but I can�t think about it. It�s too depressing for me.� 

Doesn�t that attitude pretty much sum up America?

It�s a pretty common attitude, I�ve found. It�s maybe less of a trend now than it was a couple of years ago, but you still find it. Even today at the conference, there were people who knew I was there, knew who I was, but refused to confront me on a personal level or with a microphone in front of a group of people. If I�m full of shit, confront me in front of this group of perfect strangers and make me look like a fool, OK? If I�m so wrong, prove it. Make me look bad. Come get me. They don�t. As soon as the Q&A started, those people got up and left. They didn�t even want to think about asking me a question.

The best way to fight truth is to ignore it.

That�s another reason why nothing has ever happened to me. For anything to happen to me � for them to tell me to shut up or to make me disappear in one way, shape or form � would hurt their cause.

You�ve never felt any intimidation at all?

No. Not once. Never been intimidated. Never been harassed. Anyway, we pay our taxes. We�re good.

Ever met Cindy Sheehan?

We met her in late 2005. She was speaking at a local college, and we gave her a copy of Loose Change, 2nd Edition. We told her: �Take it home. Watch it if you want.� She said she would; had a nice smile on her face. Never heard back from her. But then two years later, she�s talking about how she thinks there was a controlled demolition at the World Trade Center, and she supports a new investigation. So she might have had to watch her mouth originally, but she�s definitely with us now 100 percent, so that�s good. And that was a real a pivotal moment, I think, because for the longest time the anti-war movement and the 9/11 Truth movement had this incredible resistance with each other. And it was more on the side of the anti-war people, honestly, because all 9/11 Truthers are anti-war people. It�s almost hand-in-hand. I can�t imagine there are any 9/11 Truthers out there who think the war was a good idea. If there are any, I�d sure love to meet them.

About that resistance between the two groups � you don�t see many 9/11 Truthers at Burning Man for instance, right? [Editor�s note: Burning Man is an eight-day annual event of hippies that takes place in Black Rock Desert of Nevada.]

Well, I was at Bonnaroo. [Editor�s note: Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival is a four-day annual music festival of hippies in Manchester, Tennessee.] I love going to festivals, man; I love shows. I love having a good time. No, you see plenty of Truthers at Burning Man. You see them all over the place now. They�re a growing movement.


For more information on Loose Change, visit www.loosechange911.com.