I strongly suspect that most of those who have reviewed this title on IMDB never watched the documentary through to the end. That's understandable - the filmmaker mostly just lets his subjects talk to the camera, and for the first 50 or so minutes of the film, the people who are speaking are essentially those who have drunk the free energy Kool-aid. It's after that portion of the film that the documentary actually gets quite interesting. In the last 30 or so minutes of the film, Newman (the inventor of a Rube Goldberg device that can power the world for peanuts) is revealed unequivocally as a scam artist and looney-tune - and a very hostile, violence-prone looney-tune at that. We see "demonstrations" of his goofy technology that reveal clearly that it is bogus - the demonstrations fail miserably. I think this is a worthwhile film as documentaries go, and I often find that good documentaries require the viewer to stick with them. There is often an opening which makes you think the film is one-sided, but all it takes is a little patience to get to the truth of the matter. The reviewer who wordily describes this as redemption for the inventor clearly didn't watch the whole film. Nor did those one-star reviewers who thought the film was propaganda for free energy "technology." The portrait of a slick homespun scam artist gradually descending into raging madness is actually quite riveting.
9 Reviews
Worth it for the last 30 minutes - psychology of a conman in full bloom
chaosroach30 September 2019
I originally skipped watching this doc when I thought it was just a promotional piece for this guy, but the last 30 minutes were genuinely entertaining and definitively answered the question of whether his ideas were ever actually valid. The psychology of this conman is put on full display, in a few tense minutes a lifetime of questions and doubt are crystallized, the mystery revealed.
The last 30 minutes finishes off showing him having been semi-famous during the 80's, doing tons of press, having followers, appealing to congress, even going on Carson... then it jumps over 20 years later to 2015. After his current prototype is demonstrated, the documentarians eventually set him up with a sincere and credible investor to finally bring his idea to reality. Then at age 77 we see Newton's ugly-crazy-violent side come up where he starts a dramatic rant about not wanting to be controlled or forgotten and conclusively discredits himself once and for all.
The last 30 minutes finishes off showing him having been semi-famous during the 80's, doing tons of press, having followers, appealing to congress, even going on Carson... then it jumps over 20 years later to 2015. After his current prototype is demonstrated, the documentarians eventually set him up with a sincere and credible investor to finally bring his idea to reality. Then at age 77 we see Newton's ugly-crazy-violent side come up where he starts a dramatic rant about not wanting to be controlled or forgotten and conclusively discredits himself once and for all.
We must Wake Up for Free Energy to be Successful!
vinyaasi21 December 2017
Fraud is the most difficult thing to disprove. And film-fantasies tend to create characterizations of criminals parallel to the characterizations of inventors functioning outside of social norms.
Newman was crucified on his own cross of proprietary ambition - which says nothing of the caliber of his device, but instead - says everything about our characterization as a society hell-bent on crucifying anyone who thinks, feels, or acts in a manner which discomforts us.
If we had backed him instead of crucifying him, then our society - as we know it - would collapse.
We take our corporate world too much for granted. Our money would become worthless if free energy dominated all of our machinery. Quality of life would replace the Gross National Product as a measuring rod of how well we're doing. And sovereignty would replace eminent domain....
Eminent domain is the presumed right of local governments to seize the property of individuals. This is what happened in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in violation of the Ninth Amendment to the United States Constitution which prohibits abuse of power under "color of authority".
....amounting to heresy in today's world wherein the individual is less important than is our corporate government.
Newman had the backing of physicists, but that was short-lived.
He had the backing of the public. But that died out once we lost him in our collective focus.
We are taught innumerable lies, such as this one: when Charlton Heston's character, in the Planet of the Apes movie, sees a broken Statue of Liberty fallen to the ground at the close of that movie indicating that he had not traveled to another planet, but -instead- had merely traveled forward in time within his own planet. The implication, in this cinematic fantasy, is that the only way for the sovereignty of the individual to return and the eminent domain of governments to die out is for us to return to our prehistorically, barbaric ways of life.
This is not true, but is what we are encouraged to believe so as to avoid another possibility: that our institutions will die - not our culture - since it is the centralization of institutionalized power that holds back the avant-garde inventor. The Industrial Revolution only helps our institutions. It does not help the sovereign inventor, for he has to help himself.
Newman can't rescue us. We have to rescue ourselves just as he rescued himself from the ignorance of pathological science quagmired in stock expressions along with a lack of knowing how the misapplication of those socially contrived idioms is flawed - not the expressions, themselves.
Take, for example, the expression: "Energy OUT (must equal) energy IN". That is a derivation of finite Quality factor. Thus, energy cannot come OUT to a greater degree than it goes IN for, then, it would transcend the duration of energy's bandwidth becoming a dimensionless moment: the ETERNAL NOW. This latter possibility gives an infinite Quality Factor, also known as an infinite Q -- considered improbable or impossible by conservative scientists who don't possess the wherewithal to improvise a solution, namely: a method whereby an electric motor may obtain usable energy from an artificially contrived, negative power factor by converting it at a cost far less than to produce it. Ergo, free energy.
This is what Joseph Newman managed to accomplish, but kept his proprietary secret to himself. Nowhere inside his book, nor in any of his public disclosures, did he divulge his secret. Well, here it is...
His original design is what he openly confessed to, that of: a permanent magnet, or set of same, rotating at a slow rate in the middle of a massive copper coil. This will NOT give overunity no matter how large it is constructed. Yet, this is all wannabe replicators have had to work with all these years!
At some point in time, somewhere around the middle of the 1980s, he switched to an improved design (given to him by Byron Brubaker, an electrical engineer from Indiana known as MX6Maximus on YouTube and Facebook) in which Newman was instructed to substitute the rotating bar magnet/s with a glass canister of helium wrapped with an open coil. That means, a coil which is not connected to itself, nor to anything else. Simply, a piece of wire wrapped around this canister with its two ends insulated so as to not make electrical connection to anything including the air (lest arcing occur).
If you look up the properties of helium, you'll find that it will not respond to an electromagnetic field. But it WILL respond to an electrostatic field by creating an EM field of its own at a relatively high frequency.
His motor coil was so massive on purpose. This was to save energy coming from the battery by restricting the flow of current, and accumulate a huge electrostatic field -- something the open coil wrapped around the glass canister of helium could respond to and retain long enough to transfer this voltage to the helium.
Once excited, the helium will put out a high frequency, electromagnetic field which will radiate out of the helium and return back to the massive coil to boost its amperage just enough to neutralize the battery's current coming out to send approximately half an ampere back to the battery pack to recharge it.
Voila! Overunity at no additional cost to the battery pack, nor to the rotating canister!
Did Newman fail us? Did he fail himself? Did he fail to share his proprietary technology with us before he died?
Maybe, now, his legacy may be redeemed. For in truth, we are released from our prison of ignorance.
Newman was crucified on his own cross of proprietary ambition - which says nothing of the caliber of his device, but instead - says everything about our characterization as a society hell-bent on crucifying anyone who thinks, feels, or acts in a manner which discomforts us.
If we had backed him instead of crucifying him, then our society - as we know it - would collapse.
We take our corporate world too much for granted. Our money would become worthless if free energy dominated all of our machinery. Quality of life would replace the Gross National Product as a measuring rod of how well we're doing. And sovereignty would replace eminent domain....
Eminent domain is the presumed right of local governments to seize the property of individuals. This is what happened in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in violation of the Ninth Amendment to the United States Constitution which prohibits abuse of power under "color of authority".
....amounting to heresy in today's world wherein the individual is less important than is our corporate government.
Newman had the backing of physicists, but that was short-lived.
He had the backing of the public. But that died out once we lost him in our collective focus.
We are taught innumerable lies, such as this one: when Charlton Heston's character, in the Planet of the Apes movie, sees a broken Statue of Liberty fallen to the ground at the close of that movie indicating that he had not traveled to another planet, but -instead- had merely traveled forward in time within his own planet. The implication, in this cinematic fantasy, is that the only way for the sovereignty of the individual to return and the eminent domain of governments to die out is for us to return to our prehistorically, barbaric ways of life.
This is not true, but is what we are encouraged to believe so as to avoid another possibility: that our institutions will die - not our culture - since it is the centralization of institutionalized power that holds back the avant-garde inventor. The Industrial Revolution only helps our institutions. It does not help the sovereign inventor, for he has to help himself.
Newman can't rescue us. We have to rescue ourselves just as he rescued himself from the ignorance of pathological science quagmired in stock expressions along with a lack of knowing how the misapplication of those socially contrived idioms is flawed - not the expressions, themselves.
Take, for example, the expression: "Energy OUT (must equal) energy IN". That is a derivation of finite Quality factor. Thus, energy cannot come OUT to a greater degree than it goes IN for, then, it would transcend the duration of energy's bandwidth becoming a dimensionless moment: the ETERNAL NOW. This latter possibility gives an infinite Quality Factor, also known as an infinite Q -- considered improbable or impossible by conservative scientists who don't possess the wherewithal to improvise a solution, namely: a method whereby an electric motor may obtain usable energy from an artificially contrived, negative power factor by converting it at a cost far less than to produce it. Ergo, free energy.
This is what Joseph Newman managed to accomplish, but kept his proprietary secret to himself. Nowhere inside his book, nor in any of his public disclosures, did he divulge his secret. Well, here it is...
His original design is what he openly confessed to, that of: a permanent magnet, or set of same, rotating at a slow rate in the middle of a massive copper coil. This will NOT give overunity no matter how large it is constructed. Yet, this is all wannabe replicators have had to work with all these years!
At some point in time, somewhere around the middle of the 1980s, he switched to an improved design (given to him by Byron Brubaker, an electrical engineer from Indiana known as MX6Maximus on YouTube and Facebook) in which Newman was instructed to substitute the rotating bar magnet/s with a glass canister of helium wrapped with an open coil. That means, a coil which is not connected to itself, nor to anything else. Simply, a piece of wire wrapped around this canister with its two ends insulated so as to not make electrical connection to anything including the air (lest arcing occur).
If you look up the properties of helium, you'll find that it will not respond to an electromagnetic field. But it WILL respond to an electrostatic field by creating an EM field of its own at a relatively high frequency.
His motor coil was so massive on purpose. This was to save energy coming from the battery by restricting the flow of current, and accumulate a huge electrostatic field -- something the open coil wrapped around the glass canister of helium could respond to and retain long enough to transfer this voltage to the helium.
Once excited, the helium will put out a high frequency, electromagnetic field which will radiate out of the helium and return back to the massive coil to boost its amperage just enough to neutralize the battery's current coming out to send approximately half an ampere back to the battery pack to recharge it.
Voila! Overunity at no additional cost to the battery pack, nor to the rotating canister!
Did Newman fail us? Did he fail himself? Did he fail to share his proprietary technology with us before he died?
Maybe, now, his legacy may be redeemed. For in truth, we are released from our prison of ignorance.
This is a meta review of reviews for this fascinating film
antimatter3327 February 2021
What people say in the reviews is that there is no science in the film. That is true. But that's not the point. The point is that no one it seems will give him a straight answer - that he has an electric motor and has failed to account for energy balance - but on the other hand, Mr. Newman would surely have never accepted a straight answer. The film is a strange macabre dance between Newman and bureaucracy and lawyers in which everyone comes off badly, and in a sense, so do we all.
PS, I am a physicist, and there is nothing to the machine that cannot be found in an electric shaver.
PS, I am a physicist, and there is nothing to the machine that cannot be found in an electric shaver.
This "documentary" bears no relationship to reality.
ejonconrad12 August 2018
I really don't know why I put myself through the pain of watching this nonsense.
I'm a physics professor and researcher, and I've made kind of a hobby of studying free energy scams, so I'm very familiar with Mr. Newman. When I give talks on the subject, I frequently used clips of him to demonstrate "technical sounding gobbledygook". He sounds pretty rational in this movie - at least at first, but if you go to YouTube, he makes it clear that he has no understanding of even the most basic concepts of work and energy.
The documentary trots out a whole host of "experts" who turn out not to be experts at all. For example they rely a lot on a guy named Evan Soule, Jr, who is identified as a "physicist"; however, if you search, you'll find that the only thing he's ever done is to work for Newman.
Although there's no narration, the makers also appear to accept everything Newman and his supporters at at face value, even when the counter-evidence is right in front of there eyes. For example, at one point, they say his machine is running on a "few batteries", while holding up a couple of AAA cells. Later, we see that it's actually running on a very large bank of batteries, and no one seems to comprehend that there's nothing particularly impressive about that. Indeed, if you know anything about Newman, he never understood that putting a lot of batteries together can produce a lot of power. In one of his YouTube videos, he's very impressed that he can power a pickup truck (at about 1 mph) using "only" 6 12-V car batteries.
The fact is that the NBS did test Newman's machine and found that it was a rather inefficient motor. End of story. All that stuff about "grounding the motor" was just nonsense.
The documentary tries to make it seem like not getting the patent kind of drove Newman crazy, but the fact is he was always just a pathetic nut who wasted his entire life working on nonsense.
Here's the bottom line: if a motor puts out more energy than it takes in, then you can connect the output to the input and run it without an external energy source. In all the years Newman hawked his "motor", he never did that. Because he couldn't. Because it didn't work. Period.
I'm a physics professor and researcher, and I've made kind of a hobby of studying free energy scams, so I'm very familiar with Mr. Newman. When I give talks on the subject, I frequently used clips of him to demonstrate "technical sounding gobbledygook". He sounds pretty rational in this movie - at least at first, but if you go to YouTube, he makes it clear that he has no understanding of even the most basic concepts of work and energy.
The documentary trots out a whole host of "experts" who turn out not to be experts at all. For example they rely a lot on a guy named Evan Soule, Jr, who is identified as a "physicist"; however, if you search, you'll find that the only thing he's ever done is to work for Newman.
Although there's no narration, the makers also appear to accept everything Newman and his supporters at at face value, even when the counter-evidence is right in front of there eyes. For example, at one point, they say his machine is running on a "few batteries", while holding up a couple of AAA cells. Later, we see that it's actually running on a very large bank of batteries, and no one seems to comprehend that there's nothing particularly impressive about that. Indeed, if you know anything about Newman, he never understood that putting a lot of batteries together can produce a lot of power. In one of his YouTube videos, he's very impressed that he can power a pickup truck (at about 1 mph) using "only" 6 12-V car batteries.
The fact is that the NBS did test Newman's machine and found that it was a rather inefficient motor. End of story. All that stuff about "grounding the motor" was just nonsense.
The documentary tries to make it seem like not getting the patent kind of drove Newman crazy, but the fact is he was always just a pathetic nut who wasted his entire life working on nonsense.
Here's the bottom line: if a motor puts out more energy than it takes in, then you can connect the output to the input and run it without an external energy source. In all the years Newman hawked his "motor", he never did that. Because he couldn't. Because it didn't work. Period.
The patent office issue is the key to this movie!
rapid-sapienza22 March 2021
No matter if Mr. Newman's machine "invention" was nonsense or not, the legal account is REAL and factual. Reviews said yes, experts picked by the patent office said ye, but he was denied! Why? This is what leads to conspiracy theories and Mr. Conrad should be more careful in his reviews. My 10 is to counter his "missing the point". Why didn't physicists kill this "nonsense" when the had the chance - too lazy, too busy or couldn't find something wrong?
Combine this movie with "Invalidate" another about the US patent BS and you have a compelling view of cognitive dysfunction among scientists and the IP legal system
Combine this movie with "Invalidate" another about the US patent BS and you have a compelling view of cognitive dysfunction among scientists and the IP legal system
Gibberish. Intellectually vapid, a total hoax
hardcase_199929 April 2017
The review is simple - this is NOT a documentary. It is an insipid piece of promotional propaganda in furtherance of a hoax. This tripe never even attempts to justify or explain the science behind the fraudulent claims made by Joe Newman, one can safely assume because there is none. In totality the content contained herein consists of know nothings jabbering nonsense. The authors of this trash are not filmmakers, they are accomplices.
How stupid men can be?
pecheruser26 November 2018
Interesting portrayal of an unusual man, but incomplete as a story.
allenslc15 June 2021
Joseph Newman is often portrayed as a kind of poster child for the struggle of the "outsider" vs. The scientific establishment and in this oddly unbalanced documentary, that idea is generally supported..right up until the final 30 minutes or so, when a kind of big reveal occurs. I won't spoil it, but to really understand what's really going on here you must watch the last 30 minutes of the film!
With that said, I think that a much better and more balanced documentary could be made of this man's life and the role and responsibility that media has in reporting what are ofttimes delusional or outright fraudulent claims.
With that said, I think that a much better and more balanced documentary could be made of this man's life and the role and responsibility that media has in reporting what are ofttimes delusional or outright fraudulent claims.
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