Even as we spoke on the phone last week, filmmaker Errol Morris said he was still putting the finishing touches on his new documentary, a version of which I had seen not long before the Oscar-winning director of “The Fog of War” and “Gates of Heaven” chatted with me from his home in Massachusetts.

Until recently, he was still color correcting and filling in the musical score. Letting go of the “final edit” is often the most

Errol Morris' Tabloid (released on July 15), examines what is left, spiritually and mentally, of a once-respected, now-notorious figure, ruined by the unending scrutiny of trashy media. There is, however, one crucial difference. Mr. Death's title character, a builder of more “humane” electric chairs, essentially crucified himself when he became a rallying Holocaust denier; Morris never questions Fred Leuchter's guilt. In Tabloid, all of the subjects interviewed seem a little mad, yet they all possess hints of clarity and conviction; no one's quite smart or stupid enough to believe or disavow.