A couple of years later, Morris turned in a documentary called 'Vernon, Florida', which was kind of life threatening at first for the director. The town in Florida was known as 'Nub-City', due to the high number of people who would volunteer to cut off their own limbs as a way to collect insurance money. Originally, this was what Morris set 'Vernon, Florida' to be about, but the citizens weren't too happy about it and began to threaten his life and eventually ran him out of town. A little while later, he came back to the town and focused on the many different and eclectic people who lived in this small community. Everyone here as all four limbs now and Morris wants to hear these people's stories and outlook on life in the small swamp town of Vernon. He meets people who think sand grows to a larger size, the pros and cons of turkey hunting, and stories of people with several brains.It's a genuine, funny, yet oddly charming look at life in a small town. Morris really engraved his name in the annals of filmmaking with these two brilliant films and made an impact on the movie industry and his colleagues that would further his career for many years to come.

Errol Morris made Vernon, Florida way before he made Gates of Heaven. Werner Herzog gave him 2,000 dollars cash to make this movie. We must go and thank Mr. Herzog for helping Errol Morris become a director so we could watch his wonderful movies.Vernon, Florida is about the people in Vernon, Florida a small town with a small population in Florida. The people are very obsessed with hunting. It occupies a lot of their time. Despite this Errol who as usual shows his deep love for anything he films and brings out a weird beauty ion his interaction with these oddball characters.Morris has a very good eye for these characters. He must have tons of footage of all these people. I imagine he sits up late into the night and just watches and re - watches all the unused footage he has of these characters.There are many characters. A policeman who has very little to do in the afternoon. A man obsessed with hunting turkeys. A man who has a lot of pets and who claims to have been bitten by anything in the forest except rattlesnakes. " I watch out for those" he says.Vernon Florida is a beautiful movie. It is a movie to be seen to know more about people that no longer exist. What a forgotten generation was like. It is a fascinating insight into human psyche.

The overwhelming majority of comedians could sharpen their technique and analyze for decades and not come anywhere close to the unintentional hilarity of these 'regular folks'. At only fifty-five minutes, this is a side-splitting tour de force. Each and every 'interview' contains a nugget of cracked wisdom and haphazard idiocy that made me want to grab a pen and paper. There are so many favorites, that I am at a loss to declare the funniest moment in the film. However, the fishing incident involving the dead mule, the "expanding sand", and the prolix philosophy of The Turkey Hunt are all comedic gems. Rarely does a film which is merely a random collection of 'talking heads' leave you wishing for more.

How many times have you driven through a small town and briefly caught the looks of the locals as you drove by, perhaps thinking about their lives – seemingly static – just as they were probably thinking about yours – moving too fast, perhaps?This is a film where Errol Morris lets you get out of your auto, so to speak, just to find out what those locals are indeed thinking about. It could be Any Town, Any State, Any Country but, for reasons unknown to me, Morris chose to get out at Vernon, Florida which, according to my Google maps, is about thirty miles due north of Panama City, just south of I10 – for those who like to know where they are all the time...Nobody, however, does documentaries quiet like Morris: stop the car, set up the camera, ask one of the local locals to talk, roll sound, roll camera, action – and say nothing to distract the viewer from what is being said. That's about as close to actual cinema verite as you're ever likely to get. That's Morris's trademark technique, which is its strength as well as its weakness – in a sense.Its strength because, as the viewer, you gain a totally uninterrupted (except for necessary editing) slice of humanity, uncluttered by any considerations other than to let that person talk. And, talk they do, providing a near voyeuristic insight into the rural mentality and psychology of part of America's deep south – something you'd never get, probably, if you'd just stopped off there one day to get directions to I10, or somewhere else. Often, some locals don't like to talk to foreigners, do they now? Well, here's your chance...Its weakness because Morris has obviously made a choice about who to put on film; he didn't simply set up the camera and then wait for people to sidle up to say their piece and then exit stage left. No – the locals he did choose (maybe they chose him also?) had something interesting to say, and they all said it well. To that extent, they all became 'actors', but no more than we are all actors in the story of our own life. The core of their beliefs shine through, however, from the guy who hunts wild turkey, to the pastor who provides a semantic dissertation on the word 'therefore', to the old man who keeps wild animals in his pen, and to the local cop who sits, most days, in his patrol car, waiting, waiting and waiting...The camera work is, as indicated, composed of many long, static takes for each interviewee; in all, there are six or seven characters, most of whom appear as individuals. Once, however, Morris has three old men discussing the bizarre facts about a suicide by a fourth person, and quietly arguing about the exact method the deceased used. Such candor is rarely seen or heard. The turkey hunter has the most screen time, perhaps because he is the most articulate, has fascinating details about turkey shoots and allows us to hear, at length, the languid silence of the Florida wetlands. The final scene, where Morris uses the only moving frame in the film, has that hunter watching the buzzards nest in the trees for the night, as the sun goes down – and wishing they were turkeys. City dwellers: eat your heart out...Truth is always better than fiction, and definitely stranger. You'll certainly laugh, you'll maybe cringe a bit, you'll smile often, and you might even feel sorry for some of these people who are, in the final analysis, no less than we are. And, no more.Highly recommended for all.