A clearly uncomfortable Hanger declines. At the end of the interview - Hanger appears for five minutes of the 105-minute film - the secretary detaches the microphone from his lapel and walks out of his own office.
In an interview with The Inquirer on Wednesday, Hanger was harshly critical of Fox, whom he called a "propagandist."
Hanger dismissed Gasland, which won a Sundance Film Festival award, as "fundamentally dishonest" and "a deliberately false presentation for dramatic effect."
Fox, contacted in New York on Wednesday during a promotional tour, shot back: "It's John Hanger himself who's dishonest." He said the secretary was disingenuous to present natural gas development "as anything other than a disaster."
The flap encapsulates much of the polarizing debate that has erupted around shale-gas drilling, which relies upon a controversial technique known as hydraulic fracturing.
Fox became interested in gas drilling early last year when an operator offered his family nearly $100,000 to lease its 19 acres in northeastern Pennsylvania, in the heart of the booming Marcellus Shale natural gas play. Fox sets out on a mission to expose the evils of natural gas.
Critics say Fox, who stars in his own movie in the style of Michael Moore, presents a one-sided portrait of natural gas extraction. Energy in Depth, an industry website, called Gasland "heavy on hyperbole, light on facts."
But Fox's devastating portrayals of polluted wells, sickened landowners, befouled streams, dead livestock, and evasive industry executives have become a rallying cry for anti-drilling activists, who have shown the film at fund-raisers.
