Super-Size This
Super-Size Me and This So-Called Disaster... looks like these two will duke it out for Best Documentary since Moore pulled Farenheit 911 from the category in order to pursue a shot at the Best Picture Oscar, which he should get. 2004 could easily be called the year of the documentary. Super-Size got a super duper reception because Farenheit 911 made it cool to speak out again. The blue-state baby showed that lots of Americans are willing to cough up $10. to hear the truth cause it's the only place left we can get it. Clearly, neither Farenheit or Super could have gotten traditional financing or distribution, much less ever have seen the light of day on our airwaves, or cable, or anything supported by corporate America, which is pretty much everything. For Farenheit to make $120M is staggering, and really says a lot about the quality of information disseminated in this country. Even big budget films are thrilled to break the $100M mark.
This So-Called Disaster shows the three weeks of rehearsal leading up to the opening of The Late Henry Moss, a play by Sam Shepherd performed in 2000 in San Francisco by Sean Penn, Nick Nolte and others. No lightweights here. Shepherd is arguably one of our greatest living playwrights and Penn one of our greatest actors... and it's certainly in evidence here as the play deals with Shepherd's relationship with his alcoholic father, who died in 1984. Although Shepherd is a thoughtful introspective writer, it took him 16 years to be able to put this story down, understand it, grapple with it. It's like the expression that the last thing a fish can see is water. The really big things that color our life and perceptions - those are the hardest things to see and understand. Most of us just keep reenacting our childhoods one way or another, until we can see it in perspective.
The film brought back a lot of memories for me of my time spent in near-empty theatres acting, directing, hanging out, hanging lights, making the soundtrack. It's a huge effort, magical and worth it to watch a story come to life. My time constraints and ADD propel me to tell my stories on film now, but it's amazing to watch the raw power of these actors, stripped of film's accouterments, sort of like the movie Dogville, with its barren set. You're watching some guy clump around a barren stage, but it's Sean Penn acting. Acting is such a collaborative art but at it's heart is the actors abillity to get real and express that. It's powerful to watch a good actor act. OK, but here's music's ultimate trump, if I could have a choice of Brad Pitt or Usher perform for me, personally, gotta go Usher.
So, now for the real meat of this post, Super-Size Me. If you haven't already heard, it's about this guy who eats nothing but McDonalds for a month and trashes his health. I would love to see a Super-Size 911 treatment of a number of other atrocities to the public in the name of profit: alcohol, tobacco, legal drugs and, yes, the one I really want to see, enough to make it myself, the one that shows the music business for what it really is. Bowling For Columbine and Roger & Me both exposed pressing problems successfully. In fact, today, Dec. 27, (remember, I update these posts) word is out that Moore is about to target this legal drug mess in his next film...bravo.
If there is anything super sized it is the problem of obesity in this country, 60% of all American adults are overweight. Now, you will not find a stronger advocate of personal responsibility than me. I guarantee it. I decided at a young age that the only aspects of your life you can control are those that you take responsibility for. I lived for many years with someone who took no responsibility for his actions, so my feelings on this are very strong. And while overweight people are certainly responsible for their condition, the folks that add all these addictive and fattening ingredients to our food are also responsible. The government agencies who are supposed to be paid by the public and protecting them, but who instead allow the practices and cover-ups to go on have much bigger failed responsibilities.
Much of the issue, for me, has to do with transparency & disclosure, putting the real story out there. Farenheit & Super-Size were successful because they gave the public information that had been kept from them. Most people are weak, easily led, easily exploited. Want proof? Half of our population is obese. Not one of those people wants to be obese, I doubt those people became obese on natural foods. They ate foods processed and promoted by big companies belonging to GMA, the grocery lobby. The diet industry alone is a 35 billion dollar business.
There is plenty of blame to go around but, in my mind, companies will always seek a profit, it is the government's job to protect the public. As long as we allow these powerful lobbies in DC we are going to continue to see our "protectors" at the beck and call of corporate interests. Meanwhile these corporate suppliers mess with our food supply to make food more addictive & fattening. There is simply no other way to explain the sudden rise of obesity over the past 30 years, and it is, in fact mentioned in all the literature on the subject. Obesity is about to pass tobacco as the leading cause of preventable death in this country. The CDC is about to lower the life expectancy. For the first time a generation will not expect to live longer than its parents. These are serious problems.
I blame the companies primarily for marketing so seductively to children. Commercial time to them won't get curtailed without public pressure on legislators because the networks make huge money from food related ads. Even a diligent parent has to send their kid to school, where there is lots of very unhealthy stuff, even here in Palo Alto, where my friend JudyAnn and many others went to great pains to put better food choices in the schools. But, they come into these strapped districts (they're all strapped, even here) with "free money". Only it's not free, the money going into those machines is coming from us. We did get the soda out of the schools last year, but, this is Palo Alto, not a particularly typical town. We've kept out Wal-mart and a lot of box retailers, we had Cable Co-op for a long time, etc.
These big food companies constantly advertise to children, not just McDonalds but every tasty treat you could imagine. The average child sees 10k commercials per year, 95% of which are for high sugar/fat processed foods. I have to keep what little processed, commercial type food there is where the kids can't get it without my permission. It tastes great. It should, they spend millions to make it that way, fat & sugar naturally taste good. At the same time the government doesn't crack down on advertising to kids, spiking our food or failing to inform, it makes schools test the hell out of these kids academically so that they cut PE & recess (but not lunch) in favor of test-taking classwork. One third of all children born in 2000 are expected to get diabetes in their lifetime.
The best part of the DVD is the interview with Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, who refused to participate until he saw how successful the film was. He discussed the relationship between Ray Kroc & Walt Disney, friends who shared a desire to market a fairy tale version of the world to children, a belief in better living through chemistry and technology and a Nazi style of management.
He says that agriculture has changed more in the last 30 years than it had in the previous 30k as this heavliy tested, processed, uniform, gargantuan Disneyite food product grew in popularity. In 30 years we went from a few hundred outlets to 30,000 McDonalds alone. A typical hamburger today contains over 1,000 cows, any one of whom could have mad cow disease or ecoli. The goal is to make a uniform, good-tasting & inexpensive product. It's all one big, bland morass of goo, laden with, literally thousands of chemicals. It reminds me of my 80 Days post about the guy who wanted to find the "average color of Palo Alto". Let's get out the blender to make our melting pot, at least it tastes good and is fast, right?
Now real food can't compete price-wise and the system has been co-opted, again, by a relative few who now have a huge amount of power to direct the food supply. The cost of all this is borne by society who are all but voiceless to a nameless, blameless (but tasty) problem. The poor, of course take it the worst because, we all know what fast food is don't we? It's poor man's food. But, it's spreading, throughout the food chain. You can still cull the top, organic, natural etc., but, I eat out a lot, who knows what's going on there? We're all connected and so is our food.
I was talking about this with a friend last night. He's a biochemist and said the reason kids are maturing at younger ages these days is due to the growth hormones in our food. He also said they had to change the parameters for post-mortem libidity. Dead bodies decay slower now than they used to because of the preservatives we ingest in the foods we eat. So, I would say, avoid McDonalds like the plague if only on the basis that they treat their employees like shit (for example, if a location tries to unionize, they close it). Avoid processed foods, especially those labeled "diet", try to keep everything as natural as you can but hey, every day is a risk. I am at least a moderate, if not high risk taker and I'm sorry, but when it comes to my food, I like it good.... and McDonalds is definitely NOT my idea of good, no matter how you look at it.
There is a ton of important information in this DVD that affects everyone. We live in a world where Mc Donalds and other huge chains literally dominate our landscape. We all eat this food, live off it. Every day, one fourth of our population eats in a fast food restaurant, 40% of which are McDonalds. Why isn't this information getting out there? Why is eating all this stuff not looked upon the way smoking or drinking is looked at? It's clearly a bigger killer. It's the media! No matter what show you produce, it's going to have to go through some major outlet, from ABC to A&E, they all rely on this sector for a huge chunk of their advertising, these commercials are absolutely pervasive in our culture, which is all that sustains these networks. They are often cash cows for the conglomerates that own them because that's where all the big companies plow their profits. McDonalds and Pepsi both spend more than a billion dollars a year on advertising. How do food companies continue to show growth? Well, that's a good question, one not asked my the movie. After all, the population isn't growing. We're just buying more and more food to feed the same amount of people.
A nice fat, drugged out population will sit in front of the TV & watch their commercials. If something goes wrong with your body, and it will, consume some of the many drugs you'll see advertised there. I mean, is this where our economic growth is going? It's where our country is going. Fat and happy Americans electing fortunate son liars to drop bombs around to show our weight.
This So-Called Disaster shows the three weeks of rehearsal leading up to the opening of The Late Henry Moss, a play by Sam Shepherd performed in 2000 in San Francisco by Sean Penn, Nick Nolte and others. No lightweights here. Shepherd is arguably one of our greatest living playwrights and Penn one of our greatest actors... and it's certainly in evidence here as the play deals with Shepherd's relationship with his alcoholic father, who died in 1984. Although Shepherd is a thoughtful introspective writer, it took him 16 years to be able to put this story down, understand it, grapple with it. It's like the expression that the last thing a fish can see is water. The really big things that color our life and perceptions - those are the hardest things to see and understand. Most of us just keep reenacting our childhoods one way or another, until we can see it in perspective.
The film brought back a lot of memories for me of my time spent in near-empty theatres acting, directing, hanging out, hanging lights, making the soundtrack. It's a huge effort, magical and worth it to watch a story come to life. My time constraints and ADD propel me to tell my stories on film now, but it's amazing to watch the raw power of these actors, stripped of film's accouterments, sort of like the movie Dogville, with its barren set. You're watching some guy clump around a barren stage, but it's Sean Penn acting. Acting is such a collaborative art but at it's heart is the actors abillity to get real and express that. It's powerful to watch a good actor act. OK, but here's music's ultimate trump, if I could have a choice of Brad Pitt or Usher perform for me, personally, gotta go Usher.
So, now for the real meat of this post, Super-Size Me. If you haven't already heard, it's about this guy who eats nothing but McDonalds for a month and trashes his health. I would love to see a Super-Size 911 treatment of a number of other atrocities to the public in the name of profit: alcohol, tobacco, legal drugs and, yes, the one I really want to see, enough to make it myself, the one that shows the music business for what it really is. Bowling For Columbine and Roger & Me both exposed pressing problems successfully. In fact, today, Dec. 27, (remember, I update these posts) word is out that Moore is about to target this legal drug mess in his next film...bravo.
If there is anything super sized it is the problem of obesity in this country, 60% of all American adults are overweight. Now, you will not find a stronger advocate of personal responsibility than me. I guarantee it. I decided at a young age that the only aspects of your life you can control are those that you take responsibility for. I lived for many years with someone who took no responsibility for his actions, so my feelings on this are very strong. And while overweight people are certainly responsible for their condition, the folks that add all these addictive and fattening ingredients to our food are also responsible. The government agencies who are supposed to be paid by the public and protecting them, but who instead allow the practices and cover-ups to go on have much bigger failed responsibilities.
Much of the issue, for me, has to do with transparency & disclosure, putting the real story out there. Farenheit & Super-Size were successful because they gave the public information that had been kept from them. Most people are weak, easily led, easily exploited. Want proof? Half of our population is obese. Not one of those people wants to be obese, I doubt those people became obese on natural foods. They ate foods processed and promoted by big companies belonging to GMA, the grocery lobby. The diet industry alone is a 35 billion dollar business.
There is plenty of blame to go around but, in my mind, companies will always seek a profit, it is the government's job to protect the public. As long as we allow these powerful lobbies in DC we are going to continue to see our "protectors" at the beck and call of corporate interests. Meanwhile these corporate suppliers mess with our food supply to make food more addictive & fattening. There is simply no other way to explain the sudden rise of obesity over the past 30 years, and it is, in fact mentioned in all the literature on the subject. Obesity is about to pass tobacco as the leading cause of preventable death in this country. The CDC is about to lower the life expectancy. For the first time a generation will not expect to live longer than its parents. These are serious problems.
I blame the companies primarily for marketing so seductively to children. Commercial time to them won't get curtailed without public pressure on legislators because the networks make huge money from food related ads. Even a diligent parent has to send their kid to school, where there is lots of very unhealthy stuff, even here in Palo Alto, where my friend JudyAnn and many others went to great pains to put better food choices in the schools. But, they come into these strapped districts (they're all strapped, even here) with "free money". Only it's not free, the money going into those machines is coming from us. We did get the soda out of the schools last year, but, this is Palo Alto, not a particularly typical town. We've kept out Wal-mart and a lot of box retailers, we had Cable Co-op for a long time, etc.
These big food companies constantly advertise to children, not just McDonalds but every tasty treat you could imagine. The average child sees 10k commercials per year, 95% of which are for high sugar/fat processed foods. I have to keep what little processed, commercial type food there is where the kids can't get it without my permission. It tastes great. It should, they spend millions to make it that way, fat & sugar naturally taste good. At the same time the government doesn't crack down on advertising to kids, spiking our food or failing to inform, it makes schools test the hell out of these kids academically so that they cut PE & recess (but not lunch) in favor of test-taking classwork. One third of all children born in 2000 are expected to get diabetes in their lifetime.
The best part of the DVD is the interview with Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, who refused to participate until he saw how successful the film was. He discussed the relationship between Ray Kroc & Walt Disney, friends who shared a desire to market a fairy tale version of the world to children, a belief in better living through chemistry and technology and a Nazi style of management.
He says that agriculture has changed more in the last 30 years than it had in the previous 30k as this heavliy tested, processed, uniform, gargantuan Disneyite food product grew in popularity. In 30 years we went from a few hundred outlets to 30,000 McDonalds alone. A typical hamburger today contains over 1,000 cows, any one of whom could have mad cow disease or ecoli. The goal is to make a uniform, good-tasting & inexpensive product. It's all one big, bland morass of goo, laden with, literally thousands of chemicals. It reminds me of my 80 Days post about the guy who wanted to find the "average color of Palo Alto". Let's get out the blender to make our melting pot, at least it tastes good and is fast, right?
Now real food can't compete price-wise and the system has been co-opted, again, by a relative few who now have a huge amount of power to direct the food supply. The cost of all this is borne by society who are all but voiceless to a nameless, blameless (but tasty) problem. The poor, of course take it the worst because, we all know what fast food is don't we? It's poor man's food. But, it's spreading, throughout the food chain. You can still cull the top, organic, natural etc., but, I eat out a lot, who knows what's going on there? We're all connected and so is our food.
I was talking about this with a friend last night. He's a biochemist and said the reason kids are maturing at younger ages these days is due to the growth hormones in our food. He also said they had to change the parameters for post-mortem libidity. Dead bodies decay slower now than they used to because of the preservatives we ingest in the foods we eat. So, I would say, avoid McDonalds like the plague if only on the basis that they treat their employees like shit (for example, if a location tries to unionize, they close it). Avoid processed foods, especially those labeled "diet", try to keep everything as natural as you can but hey, every day is a risk. I am at least a moderate, if not high risk taker and I'm sorry, but when it comes to my food, I like it good.... and McDonalds is definitely NOT my idea of good, no matter how you look at it.
There is a ton of important information in this DVD that affects everyone. We live in a world where Mc Donalds and other huge chains literally dominate our landscape. We all eat this food, live off it. Every day, one fourth of our population eats in a fast food restaurant, 40% of which are McDonalds. Why isn't this information getting out there? Why is eating all this stuff not looked upon the way smoking or drinking is looked at? It's clearly a bigger killer. It's the media! No matter what show you produce, it's going to have to go through some major outlet, from ABC to A&E, they all rely on this sector for a huge chunk of their advertising, these commercials are absolutely pervasive in our culture, which is all that sustains these networks. They are often cash cows for the conglomerates that own them because that's where all the big companies plow their profits. McDonalds and Pepsi both spend more than a billion dollars a year on advertising. How do food companies continue to show growth? Well, that's a good question, one not asked my the movie. After all, the population isn't growing. We're just buying more and more food to feed the same amount of people.
A nice fat, drugged out population will sit in front of the TV & watch their commercials. If something goes wrong with your body, and it will, consume some of the many drugs you'll see advertised there. I mean, is this where our economic growth is going? It's where our country is going. Fat and happy Americans electing fortunate son liars to drop bombs around to show our weight.
posted by Intervision at 7:23 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home