Speaking of tigers...

Last fall I went to North Carolina for my good friend's wedding and one our activities was a trip to the Carnivore Preservation Trust. North Carolina is one of the states that still allows citizens to keep wild animals as pets. When these brilliant people realize that it's dangerous to keep animals whose teeth are shaped like scissors and their claws are razor sharp and they're given up or taken away, CPT is where they live the rest of their days. They all really should be living in the wild but because they've been raised by humans, they can't.

A carnivore, by the way, is defined by its teeth, not the intestines as is often the argument that humans are carnivores. A carnivore's teeth work exactly like scissors, not to chew anything but to cut meat into bite sized pieces that are then swallowed whole. CPT's residents range from Siberian tigers to some amazing small cats that jump 12-15 feet with these powerful back legs and can catch 2-3 birds at the same time (one in each paw and one in the mouth), and a jaguar that can carry the carcass of an animal three times its weight up into a tree, with its teeth.

For the record, there are several differences between this facility and a zoo:
1) It's a not-for-profit organization that rescues abused, abandoned or otherwise neglected carnivores. It does NOT purchase animals, contribute to breeding programs (although ironically that is the origin of the CPT) or capture animals from the wild for profit, as zoos do.

2) They have very limited visiting hours as their focus is the well being of the animals, not making money.

3) You MUST go on a tour with a CPT guide. You cannot walk around unsupervised or even stray from the group. In addition, the guides only take you to visit the cats who are feeling "social" that day and avoid those that are new and still adjusting to their new environment. The guides are extremely well versed in their subject and highly engaging so you leave feeling educated and enlightened. They are so reverent to the animals and instruct guests on how to be considerate so that you feel you are being granted permission by the animals to be viewed, instead of the zoo environment of entitlement.

4) The habitats are dirt, grass, rocks, trees and bushes. There is no concrete. The concrete viewing arenas at the zoo are so disgusting to me. Can you imagine living your whole life with nothing natural in your environment? It reminds me of the white man making the Native-American children wear shoes when they had always felt the earth beneath their feet or fish in an aquarium the size of a shoe box filled with plastic plants. So sad!


We learned some really interesting things about tigers. The volunteers never ever go inside a cage with a tiger. A tiger is an extremely powerful and dangerous animal. Its cage is at least 20 feet high and food is catapulted over the top or put into an empty cage before the tiger is allowed to move into it. If someone hits a deer on the road there, they bring it to CPT to be thrown over the cage for the tigers, a real treat!

We also learned that white tigers are actually albinos. They are freaks of nature, not a rare species of tiger as some zoos (the famed educational centers) and circuses would have you believe. The first white tiger was found in the jungle by an Indian Maharajah in the 1800's. He brought the white tiger cub back to his compound and bred it with another tiger until they had another white one. As the story goes, he killed all the yellow cubs as he really didn't have any use for them. Then he inbred the white ones to get more but only one out of every four comes out white and they are almost always born with some kind of deformity - cleft palates, crossed eyes, malformed spines, shortened tendons of the legs and other totally disgusting things. In the wild, a mother tiger would probably kill a white cub, or it wouldn't survive on its own because it doesn't camouflage with its environment.



Then they told us a story about a guy who bought a "guard tiger" for his store. It was just a cub but it kept people from robbing him, apparently. Then one day it got taken away because he couldn't prove that he'd bought the tiger in the U.S. See, and here's where the law is totally stupid, it's legal to buy a tiger born in the U.S. bred by the circus or whoever, but not to buy one from the wild. I guess the reasoning is that an animal born in captivity is already ruined and might as well be a pet, but those animals should NEVER be bred in the first place. But I digress. A couple of years later, the shop owner turned up to the authorities with his papers proving the tiger's origins and demanded him back. The good people at CPT walked this guy to the cage of his now 600-lb. tiger at which point the guy freaked and said "you can keep him!" Good to know the people buying these cubs know so much about tigers, eh?

Scaling the walls

On Christmas day, a Siberian tiger escaped its enclosure at the San Francisco Zoo and attacked three teenage boys, killing one, before police shot and killed it. The zoo claims the teen and his friends were throwing things, harassing the tiger, and had evidence of drugs in their car. But the real concern seems to be whether the walls should be higher; clearly the public isn’t safe around a caged wild animal.

Yesterday, the paper reported that since the attack, in two separate incidents, a 600-pound polar bear scaled the wall of her enclosure and nearly escaped and a snow leopard, while being moved between enclosures, chewed a 4-inch hole in the mesh cage and stuck its head and paw through. The zoo administrator denied these reports as escape attempts or anything to be worried about. Of course, they mean that we don't have to worry about ourselves. We should still be worried about the animals.

Most of the animals that people like to see in zoos are mammals. Mammals are the only species that need touch from other mammals to survive. Our social structures are built around that touch – how and when and who can touch us. These majestic animals that we love to look at - gorillas, tigers, lions, elephants and polar bears – have incredibly complex social structures like our own. Think about your life. How many people you see on a daily basis, how many you talk to, how many are your friends and your family. Think about how many miles you travel, all the different kinds of foods you eat and the places you go and look at.

Now imagine that you instead you spent your whole life in an apartment with one person you don’t even know and might not even like. Your keepers expect you to mate and have children with that person! Should you actually like this person enough to do so, it's very probable that they'll take your child or sell you to another zoo. They feed you the same thing every day. You never leave, you never see anyone different, you weigh twice as much as you do now, and you sleep all the time because you’re depressed.

Now imagine that six days a week visitors came to look at you. They yell at you, pound on your windows, take pictures of you and sometimes throw things. They want you to do something entertaining, to make them laugh or smile but they get to leave and you will always be there. Would you regard that life as anything but torture? Wouldn’t you also scale a wall or chew a hole through your cage and attack someone? Wouldn’t you do anything you could to get out of that situation?

I have said before that PETA is too extreme but on this issue, I agree with them one hundred percent. Zoos are pitiful prisons and they should be closed. All of them. The position of the Humane Society, whom I normally support, is pathetic and contradictory:

The Humane Society of the United States strongly believes that under most circumstances wild animals should be permitted to exist undisturbed in their natural environments. However, we recognize the widespread existence of zoos and acknowledge that some serve a demonstrable purpose in the long-term benefit of animals, such as the preservation and restoration of endangered species, and the education of people to the needs of wild animals and their role in ecosystems. [Emphasis mine]

But then they go on to say that not only is it impossible to simulate an animal's natural environment, only 10% of facilities are accredited to humane standards - and even that doesn't ensure humane treatment! Their focus is to work for better treatment of animals in zoos. It reminds me of the tobacco companies who, when their sales are dropping, ask how they could get people smoking more and never question whether they should even be making cigarettes. That's what we should be asking here, why are there zoos?

Zoos fail at everything they claim to do. They don't educate. Where's the education is seeing an animal in a cage? It's not going to do anything it does in the wild and people don't want to learn anyway, they want to be entertained. Zoos don't preserve species. Even if they breed endangered species, those animals can never be released into the wild because if they're raised in captivity, they aren't really wild animals! In Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond says that the animals that are domesticated are domesticated because it was possible, because it was easy. Wild animals are not meant to be raised by humans.

How many people, I wonder, after learning that an animal they've seen in the zoo is endangered, like the Siberian Tiger that killed the teenager, go home a write a check for preservation, or find out what they can do to help that species, get involved or write a letter? Are people really more concerned about poaching and encroachment and loss of habitat when they've just seen a majestic animal pacing in a cage like a creature that's lost its mind? Clearly it only sends a message that it's acceptable to torture animals.

"But the kids LOVE the zoo!" No, kids don't love zoos, they love animals. They come out of the womb loving animals but they have to be taught to love the zoo. Whenever I’ve gone with my nephew, we spend more time trying to get him excited about the exhibits than anything else. “Look Jonathan, look over here!” we yell while he seems perfectly fine to look at the plants, climb on a rock or watch other people.

Our pets are treated ten times better than these animals. They're domesticated for one thing, so human company is something they choose and enjoy. (Except for some states like North Carolina that allow ownership of wild animals including tigers.) They get to eat all different kinds of foods, or whatever food they want. They get out into the world, get to socialize with other animals, get love and affection and new experiences. Even so, we've all seen what happens when a dog is tied up and neglected. They're mean, they bark and bite and attack. Why? Because it's inhumane to restrict an animal's movement and deprive them of social interaction. Even domesticated animals have been known to escape from the slaughter house.

So I find it really sad that people love zoos. A Google search of "I love zoos" turned up 225,000 results while "I hate zoos," only 26,400. Ten times more people find the idea of building bigger walls and restricting the animals even more to be preferable over closing the zoo altogether. We put people in prisons as a punishment but what did the animals do to us? I say if you really like animals, boycott the zoo, donate to WWF, watch animal shows like Planet Earth, buy your kids a subscription to National Geographic Kids and take them hiking where you can see wild animals in their own habitat.

Here's the way kids should enjoy lions!

Letter to Radiohead

Dear Mr. Yorke,

I've been reading the articles about you and your band in Wired and am really excited about the changes in the music industry, especially as they put the music directly into the hands of the fans. I've never had such a varied music collection as I do now. At the moment, I can't stop listening to your solo album (thank you!) which I bought on an old-fashioned CD.

So I read your interview in Wired this month with great interest, especially your dilemma over making most of your money touring but not being a fan of the ecological impact. I'm a fan, a filmmaker and a marketer and I have an idea to address this issue.

First I considered why people go to a live show:
- To be close to the band
- To enjoy the music with other fans
- To be part of a once-in-lifetime event
- For an experience beyond the album
- For a great show!

But there are certain limitations to concerts:
- You're never close enough to the band
- They’re expensive, making them inaccessible to many people
- They have limited dates and times, again making them inaccessible
- Late hours and long distances keep people from going more than once
- Big venues, unruly crowds and traffic jams can make the show impersonal and unsatisfying

A couple of years ago, I saw a screening of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars at the Henry Fonda Amphitheater in Hollywood. It was part of the LA Film Festival so the price of admission was the same as a movie, about $10. It was a summer night and the amphitheater was packed with people of all ages. The film was beautifully shot and the projection and sound were amazing. People sang along, clapped and shouted as if they were at a live performance. The film brought us so close to Bowie, we were practically onstage with him. I honestly felt like it was 1973 and I was watching the one and only Ziggy Stardust. Truly a beautiful experience!

Then this New Year’s Eve, a friend of mine sent me a video of a “silent disco” she went to in London. Hundreds of people wearing headphones danced in virtual silence as they tuned their headphones to one of two DJs and listened at whatever volume they liked. They were having no less fun than if they were all listening to the same live music. The virtual experience is rapidly catching up to and in some cases surpassing the real thing.

So here’s the idea: You shoot a concert series with one or several filmmakers that screens in small venues all over the world for the price of a movie. The series runs as long as people attend, like a film, and you own the rights, you don’t have to travel, your concert is ten times more accessible and it’s available forever!

Here’s how it could work:
- A small audience of diehard fans, or a random audience via a sweepstakes on your website, is selected to be your live audience
- You shoot a number of concerts with your selected audience in beautiful, historic or otherwise significant locations, each show is a little different so people will want to experience all of them
- Because there are several different films, multiple venues in the same city can competitively screen the series at the same time
- Radiohead sells the DVD through the website
- Venues can use the headphone idea to create a more personalized experience

I see you've already booked your tour dates for 2008 but maybe you could consider this idea for the next go around. Or maybe you love the idea of making your own Pennebaker classic and will contact this eager young filmmaker for more great ideas.

I look forward to hearing from you,
Cheers!

A place worth fighting for

I've been asked by so many people since I've moved here why I gave up acting. They ask the question as if talking about something I loved to do and got to do all the time but just grew tired of, like drawing. In Los Angeles, no one asks you why you're giving up acting, and I doubt any really believes you until you move away. See, it's not ACTING that anyone gives up, it's the PURSUIT of acting, which is really a completely different animal.

The pursuit of acting is like gambling. It requires a huge investment, over a long period of time with very poor odds that it will ever pay out. The more money and support an actor has from their family (and you'd be surprised to learn how many are being supported by husbands, wives and parents) the better their chances. They can make more bets, bigger bets and can afford to stay in the game longer. But that doesn't take into account the enormous emotional toll being in the game takes.

Some don't have the courage to play at all and just sit on the sidelines waiting for someone to discover them, or for the right moment. Those who do throw in their chips, eventually win but the wins are usually small and only justify the playing. If you gamble $50 in an hour but win $5 back, you keep playing because you've proven that you CAN win. I remember thinking it was funny when I first met someone in L.A. who described herself as a recovering actress. I had no idea what she meant.

People who haven't lived it find it to be funny and I guess it is in an ironic sort of way. At its best, it's exhilarating. An entire town of people with stars in their eyes, singing, dancing and acting their hearts out day after day, hoping to hit the jackpot. At it's worst, it's a town of junkies so desperate for a fix that they'll do anything to get it. So surrounded by their own kind that they don't notice their condition. The masses of those who accomplish nothing are so thick that a couple of lines on a little watched TV show for a few hundred bucks are enough to garner great accolades and envy from one's friends.

I "quit acting" because I couldn't afford to play any more. It just wasn't fun. Those little victories, a few bucks after a year of gambling for two lines on a TV show, were depressing instead of thrilling. And the promise of bigger fortune seemed more and more like the bright lights, air conditioning and lack of windows at the casinos in Vegas that keep you gambling all night because you lose track of time. How much time was I willing to lose for this jackpot?

So around the same time that I was fielding this question from well-meaning new friends, I read an article in National Geographic. I love that magazine for publishing an article around Christmas about what a disaster Bethlehem is and about how few Christians are left in the birthplace of Jesus. One family that's leaving has been there since before the birth of Christ and can trace their ancestors to the Bible! The ones that have stayed describe themselves as punching bags in between Israel and Palestine.

The Israelis talk about their children tucking their legs under them on the bus to keep from being blown off like a school friend of theirs, or finding their teenagers bludgeoned to death in a cave. The Palestinians complain of a twenty foot wall that divides their city, and of two-three hours lines they must wait in to be allowed to get to the other side and tend their own land. Encroachment, violence, bankruptcy, and more violence and yet when asked why they don't leave, they say "because I love it," or "because this is where I belong."

It's amazing to me that "place" can have such a draw. I couldn't help but make the comparison to Hollywood. I know it's not the same, I know actors aren't getting their legs blown off in Hollywood and yet, despite so many perils, so many obvious reasons to leave, to go somewhere else, to do something else, they don't. Thousands of people from all over the world move to Hollywood every day to pursue their dream and while some of them eventually leave, many never leave. They just can't. No matter what humiliation or poverty they suffer, no matter how they are taken advantage of, they still love it. Even celebrities, the lottery winners, who can afford to leave - Gene Hackman lives a secluded life in New Mexico, Clint Eastwood runs a ranch in Carmel - still, overwhelmingly stay in L.A. They're as much a part of the game as anyone. They just high-rollers now - the stakes are higher and they're treated a hell of a lot better while they're winning.

Give up the plastic bag!

I've fallen out of writing again (again!) but maybe have another good excuse. The project I was hired to manage, the job I moved for, is “on ice” which basically means it’s been killed. It’s technically on hold but who knows for how long and in January the woman I’m filling in for could come back or the head count could get cut, which means I don’t have a job anyway.

Once again, I find myself reevaluating my self, my work, my life. Life is definitely more difficult when everything goes topsy turvy every few months. Last year I planned to move to Santa Monica to be closer to a boyfriend who I then ended things with because he was breaking my heart. I had already quit acting so I decided to move to Santa Monica anyway to ease my dislike of LA and the questioning began. Then this year, I started another relationship, ended that relationship, quit my job, started a new job, got laid off, was unemployed for three months, got another job, then got hired away by this one, and then moved to San Francisco.

You might think I’m just indecisive but I don’t think that’s it. I think I’m searching for something and I’m just processing my experiences a lot faster than I did when I was younger. Where I would have stayed in a job or relationship for two or three years, I now only need a few months to know if it’s right or wrong. And I value my time so much more. Every weekend I feel like I cram as much fun time as I can into my two days.

This weekend I bought green zebra striped tomatoes, the last of the heirloom crop for the year, at the farmer's market. I went with a friend to Golden Gate Park and climbed to the top of the tower in the de Young art museum for the most amazing views of the park, the city, and the bay. We went to a craft fair and bought a postcard from a woman inside her self-made "postcard machine," and then headed to the Conservatory of Flowers to see lowland and highland tropical plants and orchids. I went to a charming holiday party and socialized with my co-workers. And the next day met another friend downtown to see the latest exhibits at SF MOMA and then to the Ferry Building for a beer and some chowder (I ate animals!).


But tomorrow morning I'll be back on the bus and back in my (for now) routine. I always sit if I can on the side of the bus that faces west. After we leave the city, with the morning sun glinting off the buildings with a honey glow, and past the airport where I once saw a plane fly silently towards me as if in slow motion from a huge cloud so that it looked like a shark swimming out from behind a coral reef, I love to watch the fog fingering its way through the mountain ridges above the reservoir where these little white birds are migrating. It makes me so happy to see animals, like a little deer leaping or a snowy egret landing near the road, a small herd of cows chomping grass or a horse shaking his mane, but what I see way too many of are plastic bags.

Of the debris along the road, almost all of it is those flimsy plastic bags that every store wants to put your items in when you buy something. They're caught in tree branches, wrapped around sign posts, twisted into long grasses, or shredded and flapping in the wind from a fence. There's literally one every 10 feet all the way down the highway. If they're here, it's not difficult to imagine them in the ocean, choking birds and suffocating fish and elsewhere in the wild mucking things up.

I stopped using plastic bags, for the most part, years ago. I take my Trader Joe’s totes to the farmer’s market, a canvas bag to the mail box when I retrieve my mail or will ball up a small plastic bag if I’m going on a walk but stopping by the store somewhere along the way. This was one of the first “reduce, reuse, recycle” actions I took so it seems so basic to me. I still get looks sometimes but what I think is even more ridiculous are the people who will let one tiny item get thrown in to a bag. It doesn’t even occur to them to say, “I don’t need a bag”?

Some cities are banning Styrofoam as a takeout package because of the havoc it wreaks in nature and plastic bags are next. A letter to the editor in Wired from a Dutch guy suggests charging five cents for each bag, but it's hard to imagine that working on Americans. If you need a New Year’s resolution that’s fun and easy, I suggest this one: give up the plastic bag!

"What does technology want?"

Another one of my favorite Pop!Tech lectures asks the question, “What does technology want?” Kevin Kelly doesn’t give technology a sentient voice, but he examines the behavior of what man creates and makes some startling conclusions. Technology “doesn’t want to be prohibited,” it wants to “increase its efficiency,” it wants to “replicate easily and without restraint,” it wants “to become more complex,” “wants diversity,” and “alters it’s environment to suit itself.” But, he says, it’s not that technology wants to take over the planet, we can live with technology in cities and still have nature coming up to the border of that city. He ends the lecture with a summation that technologies are like children, there are no inherently bad technologies, just bad applications. And it’s our responsibility as the creators of technology to discover the best application for it.

Then I read an article in Wired about the Internet in China and there’s a great illustration where a river is rushing towards The Great Wall and then right over it. I remember someone wrote me an email about China, asking my opinion about censorship and I said that I thought restricted information was better than no information. It seems to me that having the Internet available, filtered through the Chinese government, is better than no Internet at all. (You'll notice that there are no red dots in the giant land mass of China on my ClustrMap.) But this lecture beautifully illustrates how the Internet, as technology, has an agenda of its own and enables people, as this article says, to subvert the sensors and get access to restricted information. Technology wants to be replicated and doesn’t want to be prohibited.

I love this idea of technology, not as something with consciousness but as an organism with it’s own method of evolution and survival. We might give birth to it but it doesn’t mean we know why or how it exists.

A question about Israel

I spent some time with a friend of mine over Thanksgiving who is a quarter Native-American. He visits his Inupiaq relatives in Alaska every year. He towers over them at over six feet tall, a trait inherited from his Dutch grandfather, and at home in L.A. is often mistaken for Hispanic or if he lets his beard grow, Middle Eastern. Once, in a traffic skirmish, a guy yelled out his window for my friend to "go back to your own country," to which he retorted, "I'm Native fucking American, asshole!"

We were having drinks with a couple of girlfriends of mine and he told us that his family justifies celebrating the holiday of the white man who stole their lands and slaughtered its people by purchasing everything with the federal funds they receive each year as compensation for the aforementioned atrocities. Then my Eskimo friend disparaged the expenditure of federal funds to maintain a Jewish state thousands of miles away. I said jokingly that I didn’t understand the need for it since we already have New York and he added that an Israeli friend of his says the same thing about Beverly Hills. But I thought he had an interesting point when he asked why it should be different for the Jews. One woman at the table started rattling off the standard diatribe about Jews being kicked all over the globe as if anyone present honestly didn’t know. Yes, he countered, but what about Native Americans? Why not create a state for them? There are countless numbers of persecuted tribes in the world who don’t enjoy the same protection, many who have suffered genocide at the hands of those who displace them.

In a fantastic Pop!Tech lecture, Richard Dawkins questions the special significance allowed to religions. Why is it, he asks, that we consider it rude to challenge a person’s religion but acceptable to challenge just about everything else related to lifestyle? Who we have sex with, what kind of parents we make, what sports team we root for, our political views, our aesthetic taste, what food we eat, etc. What makes religion so special? He counters religion's attacks on science by showing that science is a study built on critique and sharing of information. Science is a discipline that has evolved by its members proving each other wrong and changing the public’s beliefs 180 degrees, over and over again. Perhaps, he suggests, it’s that religion cannot withstand critique so those organizations have protected themselves though a fabricated sense of reverence that tell us not to question.

I'm certainly no expert on the Israeli conflict but it made me think about the role of religion in how nation states are created.

"Guilt-free affluence"

I was listening to one of my Pop!Tech lectures on the bus the other morning and this guy Alex Steffen was saying what I've been saying. That environmental change will require a change in perception and a change in our model of economy. The world is merely one possible perspective but our current awareness will change the way we look at things, the earth and each other. "Things" will no longer be something to own, but something to use.

None of us, he says, wants to contribute to the denigration of the earth but we do all want "guilt-free affluence." The moment in time that we're in, while a "gigantic challenge," is also an immense opportunity to make this change. All of our challenges are political. The technology to solve all of our problems exists, but will we use it? Will we be able to change the system to adopt our new needs and desires? Watch the lecture, it's fantastic!

Poachers!

I got a call from an executive recruiter today. Last week I got a message from this guy rattling off his name and company with the line "just catching up with you," like I knew him. I looked him up online and found out it was a recruiter. Today I answered the phone by accident and he sounded very surprised to reach me. Immediately he launched into his "catching up" bit and said that I wasn't in the company directory and could I give him my direct line. "Well how did you get to me if I'm not listed?" I asked. He said he'd asked the operator to find me and this time asked me for my email. To which I replied, "I don't know who you are." Does this guy think I'm stupid?

Several times a week I get emails from recruiters but they're never offering me a job, they want me to send them names of people. This guy said he had some jobs available and was wondering if I'd give him some recommendations. "I don't have any," I said. It was kind of fun, I have to admit. He stammered a bit and said maybe he could send me an email and I'd think of some people. No, I said, "I don't feel like doing your job for you." Last time I sent a name over to a company, my friend got the job (but isn't happy there), the recruiter got their fee and what do I get? Nothing. It's not like they're offering me a referral fee, they just want to waste my time and make money off of me.

I continued to tell Mark, the recruiter, that I get emails every week from people wanting me to send them people and frankly, I don't have time. I added that most of the people I know work for themselves and aren't interested in a job, which got a little chuckle out of him. I continued, making a joke about I don't know why people think I've got all the connections. But then this was the weird part, he said "it must be because you're a famous actress." Uck, see, this is why I hate all these online profiles. Now I know that he found me on LinkedIn, probably just by doing a search of the big companies, and because he's read my profile, thinks he knows me. I'm going to put a note on my profile that says "Will make referrals for a $1,000 referral fee" and see how many call me then!

Drinking the Kool-Aid

I just watched "Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room," which is just a remarkable story of a group of guys that we're all supposed to want to be like - charming, smart, ambitious and fun - who, in the pursuit of success, blew up a company like a balloon and when it popped took 20,000 employees and their futures with them. The consequent folding of Arthur Andersen, the financial company that destroyed accounting evidence of the Enron dealings, folded and took with it the jobs of 85,000 more people!

My dad says that he doesn't believe in conspiracies. That there are too many people involved and he just finds it implausible that people can be that organized. Technically, though, it only takes two to make a conspiracy which is the most plausible thing in the world and in this case there was Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. But this is a perfect example of something that looks and feels like a much bigger conspiracy than it is. They may never have sat in a room and said we're going to do this thing. Instead, it demonstrates how power and money can corrupt so completely and so thoroughly that no one ever HAS to conspire. People see what they want to see and believe what they want to believe when huge amounts of money (or power) are at stake.

The biggest banks in the world, politicians, traders and financial analysts lined up to drink the Kool-Aid and take their check. If these guys at the top said something was true then it must be. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy, the bigger the lies, the bigger the liars and the bigger the accomplices. This is how modern terrorism works. One or two people at the top know what's really going on and everyone else is just buying into the vision, seeing what they want to see. They believe what they're told and by the time they know otherwise, it's too late. So it's easy to claim ignorance, just like the banks did when they said they had no reason to believe what they were doing was wrong, because technically they didn't know. One guy in the movie says he knew things were amiss but he didn't ask because he was afraid of the answer.

It's really an excellent movie, worth watching because it makes you realize that every corruption is a version of this story. Think about the war in Iraq. Every lie begets another lie and the lies get bigger and with more at risk. There's no other way to play that game. Everyone who buys it has to keep buying into it, otherwise they have to face themselves and their mistakes. You can't just turn around and say you were wrong and go back, there's no going back. At Enron, they just kept hoping each new lie would pay off and fix all the previous ones.

The big theme of the movie is "ask why," which ironically, was Enron's advertising tagline. Too much of what happened is a result of no one asking why, which, again is reminiscent of too many tragedies in human history. It's easy in these instances to look back and wonder why people didn't ask what was happening, why people didn't demand the truth, why they believed the lies. Yet in the present, we're all drinking the Kool-Aid somewhere when we should be asking why.

Getting screwed in Hollywood (it's true!)

About a week ago I got an email from the writer of a short film I produced and directed. His first feature had been accepted into Sundance and he was so excited. I’d heard about this project since the inception, it was something he would have loved for me to direct but it would have been a difficult sell: a novice director managing a 5-10 million dollar movie written by a first-time writer. (When a writer’s first feature is produced, she/he is called a “first-time” writer because it’s their first time being produced - not writing as the term implies).

In hindsight, had I been more aggressive, I could have probably secured a meeting with the producers and they may even have liked me. I helped the writer with a couple drafts of the script and I had a certain passion and vision for it. Ultimately, though, the job of directing went to a husband-wife team that had the connections to cast the film with people you’ve heard of and in Hollywood, casting is everything. I got frequent updates from Ross. He had a feeling from the beginning that he was going to get screwed in some way. The dynamic duo fancied themselves writers and took turns ruining his script. They turned a totally interesting character, for example, a Mexican-American descended from migrant workers who secretly produces a great wine while working for another vintner, into a petty thief. The stories made me ill but all along, his feeling was give a little, get a lot. His first feature was being produced after all and he was thrilled!

A few days after the email about Sundance, I was on the phone with him and found out that the Writer’s Guild had just arbitrated against him and he’d lost writing credit on his own script! He was absolutely outraged. Years of work, completely erased. His friend who produced the project sided with the directors because he was afraid of retribution even though all along, his script was preferred by the producers but they apparently felt powerless against the people with the connections. His producers were independent money folks and not seasoned industry producers but my friend is an attorney and comes from an industry family! His father is the creator of several classic sitcoms and the writer of hundreds of TV shows.

How is it possible for a guy with that kind of background to get screwed? I think it’s because he was willing to be screwed a little. You give an inch and they’ll take a mile. He didn’t fight because he wanted his movie made, and his instincts were right. It’s not easy to get a movie made and not uncommon for writers to be taken advantage of, but at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is the credit. Credits lead to bigger and better projects. Without a writing credit, it’s like it never happened. If you get another chance, you’ll still be a “first-time” writer. This is why you hear stories of people suing a studio, becoming a drug addict or going into hiding after an experience in Hollywood. Let's hope he sticks it out, live and learn my friend!

A different kind of animal lover

This friend of mine wanted to set me up with a guy she thought I might like. A cute Midwesterner with a great sense of a humor and a sweet “aw shucks” demeanor but, she stalled; there’s something else. She laughed nervously and a slew of dreadful attributes ran through my brain: he used to date men, he’s terrible in the sack, or he has a psycho ex-wife and two kids. “He’s a hunter,” she said, waiting for the vegetarian’s horrified reaction. “Oh!” I said, “I have no problem with hunters.”

I actually, weirdly, have a lot of respect for them. The main reason that I’m vegetarian is as a protest against factory farming and the cruelty and disgusting toxicity associated with the commercial raising of animals, the over fishing of the oceans and reckless destruction of nature in pursuit of profits. The second reason is because I love animals and think that anyone who eats meat should be able to raise it, kill it and prepare it. I couldn’t. With our level of technological development, we have the ability to eat better than any generation prior. I am vegetarian because I have a choice.

I surprise even myself sometimes with my seemingly contradictory beliefs. I’m part of what's referred to in Applebee’s America as the Tipping Tribe because I hold mixed beliefs. Take the quiz for yourself! But I had this conversation years ago with a guy who bow-hunted elk. He described to me how difficult it is to do, and the passion for hunting required to do it successfully impressed me. While these hunters might mount the head of their kill on their wall, they also eat nearly the entire animal. They’re connected at the purest level to the value of the animal’s life, experiencing where food comes from more than other meat eaters. They are aware of the seasons and our affect on nature and the populations of the animals they hunt. Compare that to the person eating a McDonald’s cheeseburger for lunch everyday because it’s cheap and easy, with no awareness of the low quality of meat they’re eating and of the kind of life that animal had before becoming their meal.

Of course there are people who shoot animals for fun or kill animals in cruel ways for sport, but I think of a hunter as someone closer to nature than most of the population, someone with the discipline to track an animal for days at a time and with a love of animals that while different from mine, is no less strong. In this month’s National Geographic, an article describes how the conservation of public land is in jeopardy partly because of the lack of the new generation's interest in and appreciation for hunting. You see, hunters contribute billions of dollars, to ensure the preservation of natural lands and help maintain a balance in species when other human factors cause them to go out of whack.

I knew that Theodore Roosevelt dedicated millions of acres of land in his presidency as National Parks but didn't know he was inspired by a hunting trip to Yellowstone. He believed it was critical to ensure the future of the magnificent animals he liked to hunt. Today, Yellowstone is still home to bison, grizzlies, wolves, bighorn sheep, mountain lions, bobcats and moose and hunters have always played a role in maintaining the balance of these populations. Now how could I have a problem with that? It goes back to the fact that I tend to look at things as a whole and the world is messy, it isn't black and white. It's like my views on PETA. Someone needs to have the laser focus they have in protecting animals because that's how things get done, but it's the sum of the parts that makes the world go round.