The Earth Day Issue
Thinking about sustainability in the industry and on productions. Plus, Earth Day movies...
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Happy Earth Day! I hope you hugged a tree, picked up some trash, and composted your food scraps. If you didn’t do any of those things, though, you can make up for it by reading this green-themed issue of Nothing Bogus. It’s got sustainable production tips, hot eco flicks, and some thoughts on the future of the industry.
Ways to reduce environmental impact
Movies aren’t exactly coal-fired power plants. But they’re not passive either. According to Forbes, “blockbuster films with budgets of over $70 million produce an average of 2,840 tons of CO2 per production.” Which… is A LOT. And though small indies—especially ones that don’t require much travel or use trailers and trucks—have a far smaller carbon footprint, they still typically leave much to be desired in the sustainability department. No matter your production’s size, there are a lot of practices you can—and should—implement to reduce your environmental impact. Most of which are not just ethical, but economical. This green production guide has a lot of great, easy suggestions. Above all, they come down to communicating well and being intentional. Here are a few practical suggestions:
Enforce a “no idling” policy for all vehicles.
Require catering to provide washable china and cutlery.
Donate leftover food from catering to a local nonprofit.
Set up clearly labeled recycling and compost bins, especially around craft services.
Use rechargeable batteries and electric vehicles where possible.
Eliminate single-use plastic water bottles; instead, install a water filter or dispenser.
Earth Day cinema
Here’s an extremelyyyy hot take: Earth Day cinema > Christmas cinema.
Yep.
I probably wouldn’t have said it a decade ago, but as consciousness of the crisis has exploded so have the movies about it. First Reformed, Dark Waters, Okja, How to Blow Up a Pipeline, a million jillion documentaries… the list goes on.
There are plenty of options if you’re looking for something with which to ring in the holiday tonight. But streaming nothing is even better environmentally. And hell, why not wait a month and celebrate with America’s preeminent eco-auteur? That’s right, Metrograph just announced a series called American Landscapes: The Cinema of Kelly Reichardt, beginning May 11. It includes Certain Women, First Cow, Meek's Cutoff, Night Moves, Old Joy, River of Grass, Showing Up, and Wendy and Lucy. Only one of those films (Night Moves) is explicitly about the climate crisis. But across her body of work, Reichardt is simply the best at capturing the natural world and the animals that inhabit it.
Sustainability within the industry
There was a good—though, terribly depressing—article by Daniel Bessner in Harpers last week about how private equity and the streamers’ efforts to disrupt Hollywood have, essentially, broken the system and made it virtually impossible for the next generation of writers to make a living and advance in the industry. Basically, same old late stage capitalism shit of suits devaluing workers and cutting corners to make short term gains. Fun.
Bessner’s story made me think of a couple other long magazine features I read recently. One, “The True Cost of Dollar Stores,” in the New Yorker, was about how discount stores like Dollar General and Dollar Tree (which have the same ownership) have taken the legs out of local economies, “undercut[ting] traditional grocery stores by having few employees, often only three per store, and paying them little,” which has exacerbated poverty and resulted in more local crime.
The other story, The Hottest Restaurant in France Is an All-You-Can-Eat Buffet, also in the New Yorker, is a profile of the anti-dollar store: the ultra-decadent Les Grands Buffets. The restaurant’s proprietor, Louis Privat “practices a sort of gastronomic prosperity gospel,” which amounts to being generous rather than greedy—both with customers and staff. The restaurant’s excellence, ambition, and hospitality have made it not just a hot table, but the highest grossing restaurant in France. But Privat has refused to expand to other locations because “he considers the bald pursuit of profit pointless, and the idea of churning out imitations bores him.”
The idea I’m driving at here is that it would be super cool if everyone embraced Privat’s ethos rather than discount stores’. Make good things, sustainably, don’t get greedy.
Short of that, though, here’s Bessner on potential solutions for screenwriters:
The most direct solution would be government intervention. If it wanted to, a presidential administration could enforce existing antitrust law, break up the conglomerates, and begin to pull entertainment companies loose from asset-management firms. It could regulate the use of financial tools, as deWaard has suggested; it could rein in private equity. The government could also increase competition directly by funding more public film and television. It could establish a universal basic income for artists and writers.
Of course, Bessner concedes that “none of this is likely to happen.” So what else to do?
One change in particular has the potential to flip the power structure of the industry on its head: writers could demand to own complete copyright for the stories they create. They currently have something called “separated rights,” which allow a writer to use a script and its characters for limited purposes. But if they were to retain complete copyright, they would have vastly more leverage. Nearly every writer I spoke with seemed to believe that this would present a conflict with the way the union functions. This point is complicated and debatable, but Shawna Kidman and the legal expert Catherine Fisk—both preeminent scholars of copyright and media—told me that the greater challenge is Hollywood’s structure. The business is currently built around studio ownership. While Kidman found the idea of writer ownership infeasible, Fisk said it was possible, though it would be extremely difficult. Pushing for copyright would essentially mean going to war with the studios. But if things continue on their current path, writers may have to weigh such hazards against the prospect of the end of their profession. Or, they could leave it all behind.
Listings
Maddie McCann is looking for a location sound mixer (with post sound mixing experience a plus) for a half-day short film shoot in Prospect Heights on 5/5. Email memorabiliamovie@gmail.com for more info!
AMT Casting is looking for the lead in a SAG short. Rate of $232 + 10% per shoot day. 6-7 day shoot sometime between June 6 - June 14. The character, SAM MORESCHI, is 18-23, male or non-binary. Angelic, strikingly pretty face, more beautiful than handsome. Intelligent, determined, emotional, sarcastic, self centered, musical. Email TAPES.AMTCASTING@GMAIL.COM.
Melina Valdez is available for graphic design / illustration / pitch deck work. Here is a link to Melina’s portfolio.
There are a few different casting notices out for a new Savanah Leaf short film called BIRTH. Find them here.
If you would like to list in a future issue, either A) post in the Nothing Bogus chat thread, or B) email nothingbogus1@gmail.com with the subject “Listing.” (It’s FREE!) Include your email and all relevant details (price, dates, etc.).
::Donate leftover food from catering to a local nonprofit.::
First, make sure you're not breaking the law doing that! Hard as it is to believe, some places outlaw donating leftover food for...reasons.
If you legally can, then you absolutely should.