Remote patrol

What sets Errol Morris' new series for Bravo, "First Person" (9:30 tonight), apart from his feature films is that his subjects are not discovered by Morris so much as interpreted by him. Case in point: tonight's profile of Gary Greenberg, a psychologist who got some national press last year when he corresponded with Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber), then wrote about it for a small magazine called McSweeney's. This half-hour is not much more than a dialogue between Greenberg and Morris, who as usual is not seen but heard calling out his questions loudly and shrilly, as though he knew nothing about good audio technique. Morris uses various visual tricks, like cutting to black or moving the camera a few degrees. But he didn't need to resort to gimmicks with Greenberg, who is a compelling character and sufficiently detached from his pursuit of Kaczynski to retell his tale with humor and perspective. From the start Greenberg is disarming, as when he admits that his original motive in contacting the Unabomber was to get himself published. This, he quickly adds, wasn't much different from Kaczynski's motive in mailing out bombs. >>>