March 18, 2024 • 42 mins
Guests: Alex Rivest, Director & Producer of CANARY
and
T. Lindsey Haskin, Producer of RELENTLESS
and
T. Lindsey Haskin, Producer of RELENTLESS
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
I've been up, puffet, upa pirate, a poet, up,
pawn at a king. I've beenup and down and over and out,
and I know one thing each time, I'm I'm flying myself lam flying on
my face. I just picked myselfand kid back in the rain. That
(00:29):
life. Well, welcome, Everybody'sthe special edition of the Bretton Larry Show.
I'm very honored to have my coastwith me today. Larry Delrose.
Yeah, you've been. We werelast night hour. Today we're doing these
daily now. It's pretty bad becauseI'm seeing you more than I see my
own wife. Though, No,you're white here. Sir is our producer.
(00:50):
She's great and there'd be no showwithout her, of course. But
we got light subjects now, sowe're not doing any of our kind of
dark stuff. But these guys thatwe got today kind of got little dark
issues. But it's about the environment, so it's going to be great.
We're going to have a really greatshow. When I watched the stuff that
(01:11):
they're doing, I was like,really impressed. What do you think?
Right? Well, I have tobe honest with you, I have not
seen any of the film yet.I've just been hearing about it. Through,
you know, as most of thepeople talking about it, but you're
in the Is it the fourth annualBlue Water Film Festival? Is that what
it is? Correct? Carthloni?Yeah, yathannel times going by. We
went there last year, remember,right, nice festival. Okay, So
(01:34):
who we want to start with.Let's start with Lindsay. Okay, let's
start with Lindsay. We got LindsayHaskin and he's got a film called Relentless.
So tell us about the film.Give us the tagline. Well,
the tagline is this is about afishery crash that took place in the Great
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Lakes in the nineteen fifties and sixties. That was a big mystery. Nobody
knew what happened to it. There'dbene fishery crashes before, but nothing on
this scale. And the culprits andthe previous fishery crashes were overfishing by commercial
fishermen and pollution from the industrial theindustrialization of the area, you know,
the Great Lakes became the industrial heartlandof North America, and that led to
(02:20):
a lot of pollution. A lotof rivers were dammed that messed up fish
populations as well. They couldn't getinto the rivers to spawn. But all
of a sudden, fish were disappearingin the lakes where there wasn't a lot
of population, where there wasn't alot of damned rivers, and where fishing
wasn't all that much. So peopledidn't know what was going on. So
the fishing community basically looked to theCanadian and federal government Canadian and US governments
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to say, you've got to helpus out here or else we're going to
lose these economies. Small towns acrossthe whole Great Lakes region are to go
under and a lot of family businessesare going to go under too. So
the film tells a story about scientiststhat took up the challenge and struggled for
a long time to see what theycould do about this. I like the
trailer how many Great lakes are?And I love the Great Lakes on it?
(03:05):
Yeah, there's to many five greatlakes name Lake Superior, like Michigan,
Lake Huron, Lake Erie the sameone. So then the Lake Ontario,
Lake Ontario. So what made youpick this topic? Well, I
had made a public television film aboutthe Great Lakes that was on television for
three years starting at twenty ten,and this was a small part of that
(03:27):
that film. That film was calledFreshwater Seas and to trace the history of
the relationship between people in the GreatLakes ecosystem. So it tells told the
story of how people like Andrew Carnegiemade his fortune there. John D.
Rockefeller started the oil industry in theGreat Lakes region. Henry Ford, you
know, started mass production in theGreat Lakes Region, and so all that
happened there because of the natural resources, because of mineral resources are there,
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plus all of the ability to shipthose mineral resources in bulk through the lakes.
But that led to all kinds ofpollution and damaging the lakes and everything.
So the first half of the filmis about how the Great Lakes Region
became the industrial heartland, the greateconomic engine of North America, and the
second half was the damage that wasdone and how people are trying to put
(04:14):
it back together again so that youhave the recreational opportunities for fishing and boating
and those kinds of thing. Thetrailer so we can start out of viewers
so see that and we can getsome ideas off of it. Why don't
you do that, Sarah, Thisis relentless well. The Great Lakes have
a natural organizing force for the peopleof the region. The vastness of them
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is really hard to convey. TheGreat Lakes region holds one fifth of Earth's
surface fresh water. They're very,very important to our economy. We've got
the world's largest source of clean freshwater. Kids grow up and they have
that memory. They associate it withtheir time and their summers with their family
(05:00):
on the shores of Lake Michigan orLake Huron, and fishing is an integral
part of that. The fish thatswim in the water are part of the
lifeblood of the Great Lakes region.The importance of fishing is part of that
full relationship with the natural world.Fishing is my life. I started fishing
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as a young kid. You seeyoung adults, you see women, and
you see men in the old fishingnadis in gentleman. It's just a beautiful
place and a true outdoorsman. Thisis heaven. Fishing in the Great Lakes
is such a valuable resource. Formost of history, people simply assumed that
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the Great Lakes were so vast andpacked with fish that there would always be
plenty to catch. It was justtoo easy to throw a net in the
water and pull money out. Butby the nineteen fifties everything had changed.
The fish most important to people werenearly gone. No one could explain it,
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let alone fix it. Whether youwere in Lake Ontario or Lake Superior,
everywhere in between. It was dire. From small towns up to major
cities. It was people's livelihoods.We were at a loss as to what
we were going to do. Shorton hope, some remarkable people tackled the
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mystery. Their odd discovery still menacesthe Great Lakes today. It's been described
as a moonshot, probably the largestscale species recovery program ever. Their battle
dramatically changed how people from all walksof life connect with these fresh water seas.
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We don't want to lose this,We've got to protect it. Wow.
(07:15):
Yeah, we're filmmakers. We lovefilm and we love documentary. And
I have to tell you the theediting when an into that. I like
the way you mix the old blackand white of what it was before,
the history that was there without becauseI think it adds a lot of I
mean, you did phenomenal with that. I thought. So one fifth of
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the water is from those five lakes. Yes, well, the surface fresh
water. I'm believing in it.So yeah, the only place that's similar
in quantity is the Amazon River Base, and there's a lot of fresh water
there as well. But the twoare, you know, neck and neck.
How many days did it take youto to shoot this? We shot
a lot because when I was commissionedto make the film and when the organization
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decided they wanted to do this,there were only so so many people still
left who had been involved with yourinitial effort to fight this in danger specie
that came in. So the firstthing we did was just go out and
shoot interviews with people. We didn'thave a shooting script, we didn't have
an outline, but we wanted to, you know, get who we could.
And if you see the film,the first credit we have is an
in memorium of people who are inthe film that have passed away since we
(08:26):
started filming. Yeah, we filmedover the course of four years, but
we had well, the thing aboutfilming in the Great Lakes region is you
can only film from like May tillNovember. Otherwise, Yeah, editing too,
or four years including editing we started. We started filming in twenty seventeen
and finished it this past summer.Wow. Yeah, yeah, so it
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was. It was a long project. You'll see there's a lot of computer
animation in that. There's all kindsof things. And one of the things
that I'd really like to mention aswell is we were really really fortunate to
get the jkse him as the Oscarwinning actor to narrate for us. Really,
he's got a great voice. Ithought his voice familiar, so he
as it turns out, he's aDetroit native. He was born in Detroit
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and then interestingly enough, he uhmoved from Detroit to Columbus, Ohio,
and his dad was a music professorat Ohio State University, and so I
happened to go record him right afterthe Ohio Michigan State game Ohio State Michigan
Ohio State Michigan game, and Michiganhad beat Ohio State and he's a big
(09:31):
Ohio State fan, so he wasn'thappy. I was the other buck guys.
I went to school at the Universityof Michigan for two years and then
I moved to California and became aresident that went to cal Berkeley. But
anyway, he was a wonderful guyand it was a wonderful day and one
of the really just magical days ofmy life to work with him on the
I got a chance to just sitaround with him and talk with him for
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a couple of hours. He's justa really really nice guy and he has
family here in San die Yeah,really great, good job job. And
so it's playing now a week fromtoday at two o'clock most of the time,
right now, a week from rightnow at Rford Public Library in La
Joya, right, correct. Okay, So if you people are watching and
(10:16):
you're interested, you want to seethe whole film because you can't see them
anywhere else right now, right,No, it's not streaming anywhere now,
So let me ask you about thatreal quick, because we might pick up
some information ourselves. So I wantto ask you too when we remind me
when we do you also, Alex, So after you go to film festivals,
what is your ideas or hopes ofstreaming? What do you have in
(10:39):
your head? Well, I thinkthe market will determine that. You know,
certain films are going to appeal tocertain exhibitors, They're going to fit
in, you know, someone's program, just like film festivals. You know,
certain film festivals are looking for certaintypes of films. So, but
the key has been for us isto find representation. You know what what
you what you learn when you goout there is if you you know,
every I think every you know,budding filmmakers dream is to get a film
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on Netflix. But I know Netflixwill tell you we're not going to talk
to you. You have to havea distributor, you have an agent.
And so that's one of the thingsthat we've been working for through the festival
route and all these kinds of things, and we've been successful. We've had
a couple of different offers from differentsales agents who want to represent us,
and you know, we're checking ontheir bona few days and we have our
attorneys talking to their attorneys and howmany documentaries? How many documentaries have you
(11:24):
done in your life? Oh,I've done well. I started off here
in San Diego. I started inthe production business in the Colorado in the
eighties, working with a small productioncompany that was a wing of somebody's dad's
advertising agency. But then came hereand I just worked on contract production for
a long time. I worked withagencies, public relations firms, public affairs
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consulting firms, and I got hiredto make films about public issues. I
made a ton of of videos forthe San Diego Catta Water Authority. I
made a lot of videos for theCity of San Diego. I made a
series of videos of about San ClementeIsland for the Navy. And so I
kind of developed this ability and thespecialty and a reputation for being able to
work on subjects about natural you know, nature and editing yourself. Yeah,
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might shoot. I can shoot andedit, and I do the rough edits.
I did the rough edit on thisfilm. But I have an editor
who I work with who does allthe final polishing and all of the color
corrections, and you know, makingsure it fits whatever venue it's going to
be exhibited and that it's fitting theirspecification. So you produce it, you
(12:31):
shoot it, you edit it,and when you say you write it,
I mean we wrote our documentary too. But when you say you write it,
what do you mean when you sayyou write it? Well? This
project, this project was kind ofan offshoot of an oral history project that
was run by the Michigan Water Center, the University of Michigan Water Center Ann
Arbor, and they hired a postgrad to go around who spent the first
year of the project just going aroundand finding everybody he could who was involved
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with the story. So he uhjust traveled all over the place and took
up little video camera and shot somepreliminary interviews of things, and then based
on his work with the people involvedwith the project, including me, we
all sat down and said, Okay, we think this person would be great
to have in the film, Thisperson would be great to have like an
outline or well, no, wejust found you know, where the great
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parts of the story exactly. Itwas a story I was familiar from having
including it in my previous film,and so then you know, we just
basically took it from there and ranwith it, and we came up with
a shooting outline once we had started, had filmed you know, a bunch
of the interviews, we saw kindof where it was going. Then we
developed the shooting outline and just keptgoing from there and looking for more people
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to supplement what our desires were,you know, but the direction we wanted
to go. What are your whatare your plans for the film? For
the film festival. We're in abunch of a more film festivals. So,
like Alexis has headed out of hereto film testuals we're in I'm headed
out on April first to the Midwestwhere we're doing six screenings. We're in
two film festivals there, and thenwe have some organizations back there that we're
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supporting by letting the film be exhibitat different places. One is the Traverse
City International Affairs Forum, and sowe're in the We're in the Detroit it's
called the freek Film Festivals, puton by the Detroit Free Press newspaper.
We're going to be screened there Aprilthirteenth and fourteenth. We're in the Central
Michigan Film Festival, which is we'reI think we're being screened on April third
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there. But then we're we're doingsomething in Susaint Marie, Michigan. We're
doing something in Man of Steve,Michigan. And eventually we're in the Green
Bay Film Festival as well. Sowe're doing a bunch of different film festivals.
So you said you got commission whocommissioned you do? There's a there's
an organization called the Great Lakes FisheryCommission, and that was formed in the
nineteen fifties. It's actually part ofthe story They were formed in like nineteen
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fifty five through an international agreement betweenthe Canadian and US federal governments to form
this agency to go after this basiof specie. It was formed to take
this on and save fisheries. Andso it's called the Great Lakes Fishery Commission.
It's still in existence and it's stilldoing the same thing, fighting this
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in basis species. It's its mainjob. And these are the lampreys.
Yes, you have the crazy likesuction cup teeth right if you. If
you see the logo on our poster, that's that Behind the title is a
there are some of the creepiest lookingcreatures. Yeah. This is our second
guest, folks, Alex Reevest,and we're going to talk about his film
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now. He is the producer,director, and writer and everything of Canary.
So tell us about the tagline andCanary and then we'll go through that.
Canary is the story of what thisguy is known as the real life
Indiana Jones, whose name is LonnieThompson. He is a professor at Ohio
State University, so he did alot of filming there to bring it back
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to Columbus. And this is astory of a guy who grew up in
poverty in coal mining country, WestVirginia, destined to be in the coal
mines, and his mom forced himto get an education and just said,
you need to read, you needto keep working, you need to get
away out of here. And heended up having an opportunity to go to
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school for coal geology, went toAntarctica and fell in love with ice,
and people were drilling ice cores inAntarctica and Greenland. I don't know if
you know what ice cores are,but basically, you go to a glacier
and you drill vertically into the glacierand you pull back an ice like a
cylinder of ice, and contained inthat ice from top to bottom is a
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timeline. So there's most recent yearsat the top, the furthest year back
is at the bottom right, andthe timeline that he can read, a
timeline that he can read. Andso people were doing this in Antarctica and
Greenland, and he was having troublefinding a spot for him there. And
he saw all this ice in themiddle of the planet, tropical glaciers,
and he said, well, whyis no one doing this? And he
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was told it's too high for humansand technology doesn't exist. And plus it's
in the tropics. Ice is notgoing to be contain a record in the
tropics. He found a way todrill ice cores bring them back through the
tropics to tell us a unique historyof the world. And because he was
up in the mountains for so long, not only has he spent more time
above eighteen thousand feet than in personon the planet over four years of his
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life, but he saw the changingplanet before other people did. So he
was at this glacier for fifteen years. One day he crossed over a ridge
and where there used to be aglacier, there was a lake at eighteen
thousand feet and so he started sayingthis, this is not the way it's
supposed to be, and started ringingthe alarm bells about what's changing, and
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here's the data, and went testifyingin front of Congress. And we can
get into some of the nuances ofhis story. Do you go with him?
I did once we filmed with himup at eighteen thousand, seven hundred
feet. We're there for three weeks. I can talk about the training we
had to go through to be ableto film up there. But this is
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in central Peru and the glacier andjust tropical glacier on the planet. We
spent three weeks up there filming.It's got to be hard to get there.
It was hard to get there.Carrying around film equipment at eighteen thousand
feet is no easy task. Didyou take a train to get there?
We flew to Cusco, took acard the end of the road, hopped
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on our feet and horses, andwent another two days, ended up camping
at seventeen thousand feet four three weeks. But he had been up there before,
he knew the drill. I mean, so is the film all of
what you shot during the time youwere there only, or some of his
and some yours. It's all theabove. So we filmed with him there.
We filmed with him at his labin Ohio, We filmed at his
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hometown in West Virginia. We filmedat some award ceremonies with him, went
to China with him to film,and then we have forty years of video
that he took around the planet thatwe've been Yeah, let's show this one,
okay to audience, Let's see thisone. In the old days,
you took a canary into the mine. If it dies, it's time for
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you to flee the mind. Myfirst encounter with Lonnie like I was meeting
at real life Indiana Jones. Lonniewas a visionary him. He saw about
global climate history captured in Newlais.Lonnie was going where no scientists had gone
before. It seemed to be impossible. It's too high for human beings.
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It's dangerous. There's no way you'regoing to drill in this remote part of
the world. You're wasting your time. Science can't only advance when you do
things other people think can't be done. He was on a mission to find
his ways in this world. Ihad no idea what I was getting into.
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I had never claimed the mountain.I had no idea what it would
take. This was a huge departurefrom usual. There was something wrong.
My doctor said, you have oneoption and one option only, and that
is the of a heart transplant.You just keep going. He was in
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denial. I remember watching him struggleto breathe, thinking to myself, and
you're not going to survive this,having gone through these year death experiences.
My message was to help bring togetherthe world. This glacier started disappearing before
Lonnie's eyes. He thought he couldchange something. If he doesn't do it,
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nobody would MONI didn't come to climatechange. Climate change came to him.
The humans can create it, theCubans consult it. I don't believe
there's anything that we cannot achieve.It's a film about a little background on
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me is I used to be ascientist. I did a PhD in neuroscience
in said of I t I dida post doc. I've been involved with
science my whole life, and Ialways felt like science programming felt a bit
more like homework than anything. Ialways wanted to like it more than I
did, and so I quit scienceto try to change the way scientists are
seen on the big screen. AndI this when I talked to Lonnie the
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first time. I was on askype with my partner, my directing partner,
Danie O'Malley. We talk with Lonniewithin five minutes, yet a video
in forty minutes. We were bothcrying, and by the end of the
skype, I just turned to mypartner Danny, and I said, if
there's one story we ever tell,it has to be this one. That's
good story, and the passion comesacross. I mean, it's a it
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is a story about perseverance. It'sa story about purpose, It's a story
about finding who you are in thisworld. And it's a story that I
think not only applies to scientists butall of us. We're all looking for
purpose, We're all looking for somethingthat we wake up need to do.
And how long is the film Canary? It's one hundred and four minutes?
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How long is your nine is ninetyone? Okay, but it's uh,
you know. I there's an interestingthing when you're trying to teach science,
when you talk about things like climatechange. There's a million movies about climate
change, right, and most ofit's kind of disaster porn. Right.
It's like, look at all thisbad stuff. It's going to happen to
us, disaster porns. But thething is is that there's a there's if
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you look at this how to teachscience from a from a an educational standpoint,
there's a whole line of educational psychologythat says, if you teach kids
facts, like one group of kidsfacts, you teach another group of kids
the same facts, but you teachthe struggles scientists went through to get those
facts. These kids learn the factsbetter. These kids, the kids who
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learn the struggles are engaged more broadly, they understand scientific concepts more so what
we do is find stories about thehuman journey of struggle to be able to
relate the facts right and and sothat's that's the brand of science storytelling that
I'm after. And this is myfirst my first film, first film.
Yeah, and so how long tomake? We started filming in twenty eighteen.
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We met Lannie in twenty seventeen.He wasn't going to the glacier until
twenty eighteen. He called us,said, you guys still filming, You
want to go? We had nomoney. We said, yes, absolutely,
and we just made it, madeit happen. So you're a scientist,
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you're all about research while making themovie. I mean, we made
a movie and we understand things happenedyou don't expect. Was there anything that
you learned that you weren't aware ofthat really blew your buying or surprised you?
So when you talk about climate change, when I first saw Inconvenient Truth
back in twenty twenty as Inconvenient Truth, you know, that was the first
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time I was exposed to kind ofthe facts behind climate change. And as
a scientist, I went and Ikind of looked at all the equations.
Okay, if all the glaciers melt, what is sea level rise? I
kind of did all the math,and I've known it my whole life,
and I always just kind of votedthe way, you know, someone believes
in it, someone doesn't believe init. I vote for the person who
believes. That was kind of theend of my climate activist when I went
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with Lannie to Peru. We wentto Cusco, and in Cusco it's five
hundred thousand people. They all gettheir power from water that comes off the
glacier, okay, so that thecity is powered by the glacier. Then
we went to went up the riverto the glacier and you see this bread
basket millions of people supported by lamasalpacas, you know, food sources.
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Two point five million people. Thenwe get up to the glacier, the
largest tropical glacier on the planet,and I asked Lani, when is this
going to melt by? And hesaid, by the time your daughter is
your age, this is gone.And all of a sudden, I had
seen this cascade of events of humanlike like like like like like like like
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and like the the you that's alwaysbeen finding a way to bring people together
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and bridge the gap. So whatwill it take for people to become like
that? Good question, my soone thing I think the hard answer is
that it will be forced to right. It's what I thought when when when
sea level starts rising or in Cornado, I don't know what's Coronado's going to
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be last, right. I mean, if you look at the projections of
serise of Coronado, it's going tobe a different place to get toears.
So when it starts, when theocean starts slapping into your door, you're
going to start thinking differently. Theother thing that I truly believe in is
the power of storytelling. I believeI have storytelling and it's these stories have
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power to be able to say Inever thought about it this way, and
that becomes part of you. Right. One of the things I'd like to
say is, you know, whatI like Alex's film. What I try
to do with my film is thatyou know, with these environmental film festls
that we go to, you know, this is an ocean film festival,
these tend to draw the same people. You know, if you're wanting to
(29:11):
make the world a better place,there, you have to have stories that
get beyond what aren't going to justattract the same people, you know.
And so you know, the peoplethat I'm going to a lot of film
fest and the people who go tofilm festivals tend to be progressive, They
tend to be educated, they andthey tend you know, and especially if
you're going to have a film festivalthat has the word nature or environment,
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and you're going to turn off alarge segment of the population. So one
one of the things that I triedto do with my film was, this
is about fishing. You know,fishing is something that people across the political
spectrum care about and love. Andone of the unique things about the Great
Lakes is that the political representatives there, you know, the congressional delegations all
support Great Lakes, restoration, greatLakes, anything to protect the Great Lakes
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and keep fishing them and all thosekinds of things. So so that to
me is a way where, youknow, by by stressing those aspects of
the story that appeal across those philosophicaland political lines, that's how you get
on a bigger audience for these kindsof films. And what Alex is doing
is you know, he's got afilm about a humans, you know,
about anybody who wants to you know, persevere or overcome some kind of difficulty
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or something like that. It's hardto imagine a more moving story than this
one for anybody, no matter what, you know, what they may be
dealing with. You know, peopleon the far right get cancer, people
on the far right have get hearttransplants, you know. And here's a
guy who's is doing amazing things fromthere. So if we can get these
kinds of stories, you know,I'm you know, agreeing with everything that's
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Alex saying. We have to tellstories that reach across out beyond the normal
audience kinds of films and get theword out. And I think too,
when you're talking about small town economies, right, I mean, this is
what we all talk about is kindof the beating heart of America, right,
And this is something that is thatthere is a universality in that that
we as much as some many ofus live in big cities, we all
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want to have preserve you know theability of that small town field, right,
that thing we grew up with.Yeah, so people want to still
be able to go catch fish,you know, and and and neat fish
get on a boat and you know, and and not have its stink wherever
they go. You don't know thatkind of things. W How did you
pick your title? Canary? Hiscanary, I'm relentless, Okay, how
did you pick your titlelan? Well, it applies to both both parties.
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You know, this this organism,this it's a sea lamprey. It came
in from from the Atlantic Ocean intothe Great Lakes, made its way up
the Saint Lawrence Seaway. It's gota big suction cup with all kinds of
teeth on it. So so itis relentless, and and it just kept
kept going all the way up intothe Lake Superior and then up to all
(31:47):
the tributary. It's it's what's calledanadrom is. It spawns and streams,
and so it's it's just you know, relentless in terms of what it does.
And yours could have been relentless becausethis guy was relentless, really,
but that canary, Well, letme finish the other side of it.
As the scientists who look for away to deal with this thing and save
fisheries and save small town economies andsave fishing in the Great Lakes, they
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were equally as well as tenacious persistent. It took years and years and years
for them to find what is considereda needle in a haystack. You know,
they had no idea that it wouldever come up with something, and
a lot of people were ready tostop, you know, the congressional delegations
in the Parliament of Canada was readyto stop, stop funding their efforts.
But they just kept at it,and so here we are love it.
(32:32):
Canary is I think at the beginningof the trailer, you know, that's
this this old story of guys whouldgo into the coal mines. They would
carry a cage with a canary init, and they're in a coal mine,
canary in the coal mine, andthen the canary if it falls over
or gets sick, first you knowthe air is bad and you know you
should leave. It's the early warningsystem. So the glaciers are our early
(32:54):
warning system for what's happening on theon the planet. Because ice is you
get above thirty two degrees, itmelts, right, it is. It
is. It's literally the first thingthat it starts changing. And so as
the temperature warms on the planet,ice is the first responder. So you
see these major changes happening. Also, Lannie is a canary in his own
(33:15):
right, I mean, speaking forthe glaciers. And you know, it
is about the early warning systems wehave and whether or not we listen to
these things. Right when the canarydies next to us in the coal mine,
are we just sitting in the coalmine and continue drilling or are we
going to get out of there?And it's it's you know, it holds
a mirror up to us. Soa lot of this I think you're the
(33:38):
scientists are of course, we justhave a wide popular, a wide range
of population. We have more populationon the earth right now than we've ever
had. Ye. So even ifwe did get rid of using fossil fuels,
it takes a lot of money tomake things that require batteries. Batteries
(33:59):
require machinery, and there's no machinerythat can make they can do the drilling
that there's nothing that's electric they coulddo that there. I mean it's complicated,
right, to do anything on scaleis going to have environmental consequences,
right, It's a question of whatare the long term consequences of the decisions?
(34:20):
Right, So most of the mininghappens in places that are very politically
unstable, there is you know,there's people being taken advantage of, and
you know East East Congo, whichI've been to, in parts of South
America, it's it's really toxic.That being said, this is that classic
problem of you know, the trainsgoing one way, and you know there's
(34:40):
people who will die if it goesthis way, and then there's more people
die of it that way, andyou have a choice of which lever to
pull. Welcome to humanity. Ithink interesting. As things push forward,
we're going to have to choose fromsome unattractive options. One of them that
is being talked about right now ismaybe to nuclear power. Again, you
(35:01):
know, looking at nuclear reactors,it's a clean source of power. Those
there's a lot of risks that arethat are involved with that. But if
we want to have all these peopleon the planet, and we want to
live the lifestyle that we're living,we want to consume at the rate that
we're consuming, and we want tobe warm in our houses, and we
want to have all these cool electronicthings, and we're going to have AI
and we're going to have all theseyou know, computers doing all kinds of
(35:21):
crazy stuff. We need a lotof power, and so are we willing
to make these kinds of decisions andand you know, make these kinds of
trade offs. You know, where'sthe cost benefit analysis here? And what
kind of risks as a society arewe were willing to? Oh is the
other one? Which other side isnuclear? Oh? Well, you know
more, we can damn more rivers. You know, we can do more
(35:43):
hydro power. We can do allthose kinds of things. But that's going
to impact fish, that's going toimpact you know, all kinds of societal
things. That's going to impact cleanwater. There's you know we can do.
We can do more geothermal. There'salso tidle title uh options for for
generating power. You know, wealready have wind power that's going up offside
off of our coast. You know, do we want is that something that
(36:05):
we want to have off of Martha'sVineyard or off of San Diego? We
we'd like to have a whole justline of wind power generators off off the
coast of San Diego. Is thatsomething that we want to have here?
You know, these are the kindsof decisions we're going to have to consider
if we want to you know,lessen our dependence on fossil fuel and maintain
you know, the energy consumption thatwe've grown accustomed to, maybe maybe a
(36:29):
little of each one. I mean, I we just have to move away
from fossil fuels. It is weare on a path of insanity. And
it is the science is so clear, the physics. It's just physics.
But and I don't disagree with you, but I also know a lot of
the machinery needs fossil fuels to beable to function and work too. Yeah,
I mean, so the complications aremassive. We cement steel. I
(36:52):
mean, these things are just carbonintensive and they require a lot of energy.
Until we develop systems to do thesethings more environmentally friendly, we're going
to have issues. There are amazingthings happening. I love I love your
film, and I love what we'retalking about because your film's encompassed what's going
on in the world, not justwith the ocean, but also how we
(37:14):
have to make these choices coming.And our show is always outside the box.
We always think outside the box.You know, you guys are doing
great stuff, and I know thefilms are going to make impacts and a
whole lot of kids get to seethe films and I really good. You're
both passionate about it too. Letme ask you questions because we are doing
this right now. I'm guessing youguys want to do another documentary hopefully.
(37:37):
How do you find your subject andhow do you pick it? Does it
come to you? You go toit both. I actually there's been subjects
that I've developed and went out andfound the funding to do and you know,
and go to other places. Thisfilm, you know, it was
an offshoot of a film I didpreviously. They like what I did and
came and commissioned me to make thisfilm, which you know, I was
very flattered and you know, honoredto have the opportunity to tell the story
(38:00):
and it was a wonderful challenge,you know as well. So so it's
it's nice when those kinds of thingshappen. So but I do have projects
that I've been developing and and I'mlooking at a few of them to go
back to. But but some otherpeople are talking to me about other films
you know that they might like,So what are you going to do your
second film? For me? Forme, it's going to you know,
(38:21):
this this world of science storytelling isone that as a researcher. I have
a list of six hundred and threescientists that I've done deep dive research into
that, you know, I've I'veplanned out entire TV series of this and
three scientists like your guy you're doingright now. I mean, welcome to
real Indiana, John. I meansome of them are more compelling than others,
but uti fifty seasons ahead of that, he's going to be a busy
(38:44):
guy. I am ready, AndI'm just looking for people who care about
this type of storytelling in a waythat can support it and bring it to
the masses. I want to createan ecosystem of creating scientific heroes really good.
That's just giving me. It justgave me an idea I want to
talk about it. Maybe we needto honor those scientists for the work they're
(39:05):
doing in the environment. Yeah,that's great. Well, the interesting thing
about it is I've made a beenfortunate to build a career basically interpreting what
scientists and engineers do for a generalaudience. And these are amazing people that
aren't comfortable talking much about there.You know, the kinds of people we're
talking about are really in their elementwhen they go off by themselves to tops
of mountains or you know, thebottom of the ocean, or all these
(39:29):
different kinds of things. And sothere's a lot of people that are out
there that are doing amazing things inamazing places that we don't know about it.
So the kinds of stories he's talkingabout are amazing, amazing things,
and hopefully we can inspire more kidsto you know, get off their little
screens and get into the real world, into the natural world, and start
doing science and seeing how cool itis to be out going to these amazing
(39:53):
places and studying the kinds of thingsthat are out there. All right,
it's the Blue Water Film Festival startsnext third stay and you're on the twenty
first, but your films tell themwhat yours on the twenty second teller audience.
So the film Canary is showing atnoon on the twenty second at the
Rifford Public Library in La Joya,And I think it's just followed immediately by
(40:17):
you right after a place to o'clock. You have popcorn that's I don't know,
it's a library that wasn't in thetop. Nice little room, but
it's nice room. But I thinkthe capacity is one hundreds, So Wow.
Yeah, it's a very nice room. Both you did phenomenal work.
(40:37):
The passion shows the creativity, andthank you both for Yeah, you want
to make a statement before we leave, make a closing statement, and you
make one. What do you wantto tell the world. I mean the
number one thing is, uh,I believe in yourself and your dreams,
because you know, I changed mycareer, you know, one hundred and
eighty degrees and went after something.I took inspiration from Lonnie story and Canary
(41:02):
to know that you can accomplish thingsthat are very hard. So just believe
in yourself and have a goal.Well that's a hard one to follow.
But but I just hope people willcome out and see these stories. You
know. Uh, it's hard toget as I was mentioning, it's hard
(41:22):
to get people to come out andfrom from beyond just the core audience of
environmental Uh yeah, the audience forenvironmental and nature films. But but there
they really aren't important. And ifyou do care about things like fishing,
or you care about hunting, oryou know, some of some of the
original conservationists were hunters and fishermen,you know, trout, unlimited, ducks
unlimited, you know, these peoplecare about maintaining habitat out there. Maybe
(41:45):
they don't have the same philosophy asyou know, the Sierra Club or the
National Wildlife Federation or something like that, but at least they're on the same
side of trying to preserve habitat andnatural places. And so I hope that
maybe that's the first place we canstart to build bridges is between conservationists.
(42:05):
You know, the Ducks Unlimited andthe hunters and fishermen are are considered to
be conservationists, and the tree huggersare considered to be environmentalists. So if
we can get conservationists and tree huggerson the same side of things and be
listening to each other and helping eachother preserve, you know, nature,
it'll be good start. What welike to bring to our audience on the
(42:27):
Bratton Larry podcast show is inspirational,passionate people, passionate stories. And we
had two great ones today. ThanksLindsay and thank you Alex very very much.
You both tell you for having rant. Everybody take care and be nice
to each other by everyone
I've been up, puffet, upa pirate, a poet, up,
pawn at a king. I've beenup and down and over and out,
and I know one thing each time, I'm I'm flying myself lam flying on
my face. I just picked myselfand kid back in the rain. That
(00:29):
life. Well, welcome, Everybody'sthe special edition of the Bretton Larry Show.
I'm very honored to have my coastwith me today. Larry Delrose.
Yeah, you've been. We werelast night hour. Today we're doing these
daily now. It's pretty bad becauseI'm seeing you more than I see my
own wife. Though, No,you're white here. Sir is our producer.
(00:50):
She's great and there'd be no showwithout her, of course. But
we got light subjects now, sowe're not doing any of our kind of
dark stuff. But these guys thatwe got today kind of got little dark
issues. But it's about the environment, so it's going to be great.
We're going to have a really greatshow. When I watched the stuff that
(01:11):
they're doing, I was like,really impressed. What do you think?
Right? Well, I have tobe honest with you, I have not
seen any of the film yet.I've just been hearing about it. Through,
you know, as most of thepeople talking about it, but you're
in the Is it the fourth annualBlue Water Film Festival? Is that what
it is? Correct? Carthloni?Yeah, yathannel times going by. We
went there last year, remember,right, nice festival. Okay, So
(01:34):
who we want to start with.Let's start with Lindsay. Okay, let's
start with Lindsay. We got LindsayHaskin and he's got a film called Relentless.
So tell us about the film.Give us the tagline. Well,
the tagline is this is about afishery crash that took place in the Great
(01:56):
Lakes in the nineteen fifties and sixties. That was a big mystery. Nobody
knew what happened to it. There'dbene fishery crashes before, but nothing on
this scale. And the culprits andthe previous fishery crashes were overfishing by commercial
fishermen and pollution from the industrial theindustrialization of the area, you know,
the Great Lakes became the industrial heartlandof North America, and that led to
(02:20):
a lot of pollution. A lotof rivers were dammed that messed up fish
populations as well. They couldn't getinto the rivers to spawn. But all
of a sudden, fish were disappearingin the lakes where there wasn't a lot
of population, where there wasn't alot of damned rivers, and where fishing
wasn't all that much. So peopledidn't know what was going on. So
the fishing community basically looked to theCanadian and federal government Canadian and US governments
(02:44):
to say, you've got to helpus out here or else we're going to
lose these economies. Small towns acrossthe whole Great Lakes region are to go
under and a lot of family businessesare going to go under too. So
the film tells a story about scientiststhat took up the challenge and struggled for
a long time to see what theycould do about this. I like the
trailer how many Great lakes are?And I love the Great Lakes on it?
(03:05):
Yeah, there's to many five greatlakes name Lake Superior, like Michigan,
Lake Huron, Lake Erie the sameone. So then the Lake Ontario,
Lake Ontario. So what made youpick this topic? Well, I
had made a public television film aboutthe Great Lakes that was on television for
three years starting at twenty ten,and this was a small part of that
(03:27):
that film. That film was calledFreshwater Seas and to trace the history of
the relationship between people in the GreatLakes ecosystem. So it tells told the
story of how people like Andrew Carnegiemade his fortune there. John D.
Rockefeller started the oil industry in theGreat Lakes region. Henry Ford, you
know, started mass production in theGreat Lakes Region, and so all that
happened there because of the natural resources, because of mineral resources are there,
(03:51):
plus all of the ability to shipthose mineral resources in bulk through the lakes.
But that led to all kinds ofpollution and damaging the lakes and everything.
So the first half of the filmis about how the Great Lakes Region
became the industrial heartland, the greateconomic engine of North America, and the
second half was the damage that wasdone and how people are trying to put
(04:14):
it back together again so that youhave the recreational opportunities for fishing and boating
and those kinds of thing. Thetrailer so we can start out of viewers
so see that and we can getsome ideas off of it. Why don't
you do that, Sarah, Thisis relentless well. The Great Lakes have
a natural organizing force for the peopleof the region. The vastness of them
(04:35):
is really hard to convey. TheGreat Lakes region holds one fifth of Earth's
surface fresh water. They're very,very important to our economy. We've got
the world's largest source of clean freshwater. Kids grow up and they have
that memory. They associate it withtheir time and their summers with their family
(05:00):
on the shores of Lake Michigan orLake Huron, and fishing is an integral
part of that. The fish thatswim in the water are part of the
lifeblood of the Great Lakes region.The importance of fishing is part of that
full relationship with the natural world.Fishing is my life. I started fishing
(05:21):
as a young kid. You seeyoung adults, you see women, and
you see men in the old fishingnadis in gentleman. It's just a beautiful
place and a true outdoorsman. Thisis heaven. Fishing in the Great Lakes
is such a valuable resource. Formost of history, people simply assumed that
(05:44):
the Great Lakes were so vast andpacked with fish that there would always be
plenty to catch. It was justtoo easy to throw a net in the
water and pull money out. Butby the nineteen fifties everything had changed.
The fish most important to people werenearly gone. No one could explain it,
(06:06):
let alone fix it. Whether youwere in Lake Ontario or Lake Superior,
everywhere in between. It was dire. From small towns up to major
cities. It was people's livelihoods.We were at a loss as to what
we were going to do. Shorton hope, some remarkable people tackled the
(06:27):
mystery. Their odd discovery still menacesthe Great Lakes today. It's been described
as a moonshot, probably the largestscale species recovery program ever. Their battle
dramatically changed how people from all walksof life connect with these fresh water seas.
(06:50):
We don't want to lose this,We've got to protect it. Wow.
(07:15):
Yeah, we're filmmakers. We lovefilm and we love documentary. And
I have to tell you the theediting when an into that. I like
the way you mix the old blackand white of what it was before,
the history that was there without becauseI think it adds a lot of I
mean, you did phenomenal with that. I thought. So one fifth of
(07:39):
the water is from those five lakes. Yes, well, the surface fresh
water. I'm believing in it.So yeah, the only place that's similar
in quantity is the Amazon River Base, and there's a lot of fresh water
there as well. But the twoare, you know, neck and neck.
How many days did it take youto to shoot this? We shot
a lot because when I was commissionedto make the film and when the organization
(08:03):
decided they wanted to do this,there were only so so many people still
left who had been involved with yourinitial effort to fight this in danger specie
that came in. So the firstthing we did was just go out and
shoot interviews with people. We didn'thave a shooting script, we didn't have
an outline, but we wanted to, you know, get who we could.
And if you see the film,the first credit we have is an
in memorium of people who are inthe film that have passed away since we
(08:26):
started filming. Yeah, we filmedover the course of four years, but
we had well, the thing aboutfilming in the Great Lakes region is you
can only film from like May tillNovember. Otherwise, Yeah, editing too,
or four years including editing we started. We started filming in twenty seventeen
and finished it this past summer.Wow. Yeah, yeah, so it
(08:50):
was. It was a long project. You'll see there's a lot of computer
animation in that. There's all kindsof things. And one of the things
that I'd really like to mention aswell is we were really really fortunate to
get the jkse him as the Oscarwinning actor to narrate for us. Really,
he's got a great voice. Ithought his voice familiar, so he
as it turns out, he's aDetroit native. He was born in Detroit
(09:11):
and then interestingly enough, he uhmoved from Detroit to Columbus, Ohio,
and his dad was a music professorat Ohio State University, and so I
happened to go record him right afterthe Ohio Michigan State game Ohio State Michigan
Ohio State Michigan game, and Michiganhad beat Ohio State and he's a big
(09:31):
Ohio State fan, so he wasn'thappy. I was the other buck guys.
I went to school at the Universityof Michigan for two years and then
I moved to California and became aresident that went to cal Berkeley. But
anyway, he was a wonderful guyand it was a wonderful day and one
of the really just magical days ofmy life to work with him on the
I got a chance to just sitaround with him and talk with him for
(09:52):
a couple of hours. He's justa really really nice guy and he has
family here in San die Yeah,really great, good job job. And
so it's playing now a week fromtoday at two o'clock most of the time,
right now, a week from rightnow at Rford Public Library in La
Joya, right, correct. Okay, So if you people are watching and
(10:16):
you're interested, you want to seethe whole film because you can't see them
anywhere else right now, right,No, it's not streaming anywhere now,
So let me ask you about thatreal quick, because we might pick up
some information ourselves. So I wantto ask you too when we remind me
when we do you also, Alex, So after you go to film festivals,
what is your ideas or hopes ofstreaming? What do you have in
(10:39):
your head? Well, I thinkthe market will determine that. You know,
certain films are going to appeal tocertain exhibitors, They're going to fit
in, you know, someone's program, just like film festivals. You know,
certain film festivals are looking for certaintypes of films. So, but
the key has been for us isto find representation. You know what what
you what you learn when you goout there is if you you know,
every I think every you know,budding filmmakers dream is to get a film
(11:01):
on Netflix. But I know Netflixwill tell you we're not going to talk
to you. You have to havea distributor, you have an agent.
And so that's one of the thingsthat we've been working for through the festival
route and all these kinds of things, and we've been successful. We've had
a couple of different offers from differentsales agents who want to represent us,
and you know, we're checking ontheir bona few days and we have our
attorneys talking to their attorneys and howmany documentaries? How many documentaries have you
(11:24):
done in your life? Oh,I've done well. I started off here
in San Diego. I started inthe production business in the Colorado in the
eighties, working with a small productioncompany that was a wing of somebody's dad's
advertising agency. But then came hereand I just worked on contract production for
a long time. I worked withagencies, public relations firms, public affairs
(11:48):
consulting firms, and I got hiredto make films about public issues. I
made a ton of of videos forthe San Diego Catta Water Authority. I
made a lot of videos for theCity of San Diego. I made a
series of videos of about San ClementeIsland for the Navy. And so I
kind of developed this ability and thespecialty and a reputation for being able to
work on subjects about natural you know, nature and editing yourself. Yeah,
(12:11):
might shoot. I can shoot andedit, and I do the rough edits.
I did the rough edit on thisfilm. But I have an editor
who I work with who does allthe final polishing and all of the color
corrections, and you know, makingsure it fits whatever venue it's going to
be exhibited and that it's fitting theirspecification. So you produce it, you
(12:31):
shoot it, you edit it,and when you say you write it,
I mean we wrote our documentary too. But when you say you write it,
what do you mean when you sayyou write it? Well? This
project, this project was kind ofan offshoot of an oral history project that
was run by the Michigan Water Center, the University of Michigan Water Center Ann
Arbor, and they hired a postgrad to go around who spent the first
year of the project just going aroundand finding everybody he could who was involved
(12:56):
with the story. So he uhjust traveled all over the place and took
up little video camera and shot somepreliminary interviews of things, and then based
on his work with the people involvedwith the project, including me, we
all sat down and said, Okay, we think this person would be great
to have in the film, Thisperson would be great to have like an
outline or well, no, wejust found you know, where the great
(13:16):
parts of the story exactly. Itwas a story I was familiar from having
including it in my previous film,and so then you know, we just
basically took it from there and ranwith it, and we came up with
a shooting outline once we had started, had filmed you know, a bunch
of the interviews, we saw kindof where it was going. Then we
developed the shooting outline and just keptgoing from there and looking for more people
(13:39):
to supplement what our desires were,you know, but the direction we wanted
to go. What are your whatare your plans for the film? For
the film festival. We're in abunch of a more film festivals. So,
like Alexis has headed out of hereto film testuals we're in I'm headed
out on April first to the Midwestwhere we're doing six screenings. We're in
two film festivals there, and thenwe have some organizations back there that we're
(14:01):
supporting by letting the film be exhibitat different places. One is the Traverse
City International Affairs Forum, and sowe're in the We're in the Detroit it's
called the freek Film Festivals, puton by the Detroit Free Press newspaper.
We're going to be screened there Aprilthirteenth and fourteenth. We're in the Central
Michigan Film Festival, which is we'reI think we're being screened on April third
(14:26):
there. But then we're we're doingsomething in Susaint Marie, Michigan. We're
doing something in Man of Steve,Michigan. And eventually we're in the Green
Bay Film Festival as well. Sowe're doing a bunch of different film festivals.
So you said you got commission whocommissioned you do? There's a there's
an organization called the Great Lakes FisheryCommission, and that was formed in the
nineteen fifties. It's actually part ofthe story They were formed in like nineteen
(14:48):
fifty five through an international agreement betweenthe Canadian and US federal governments to form
this agency to go after this basiof specie. It was formed to take
this on and save fisheries. Andso it's called the Great Lakes Fishery Commission.
It's still in existence and it's stilldoing the same thing, fighting this
(15:09):
in basis species. It's its mainjob. And these are the lampreys.
Yes, you have the crazy likesuction cup teeth right if you. If
you see the logo on our poster, that's that Behind the title is a
there are some of the creepiest lookingcreatures. Yeah. This is our second
guest, folks, Alex Reevest,and we're going to talk about his film
(15:30):
now. He is the producer,director, and writer and everything of Canary.
So tell us about the tagline andCanary and then we'll go through that.
Canary is the story of what thisguy is known as the real life
Indiana Jones, whose name is LonnieThompson. He is a professor at Ohio
State University, so he did alot of filming there to bring it back
(15:50):
to Columbus. And this is astory of a guy who grew up in
poverty in coal mining country, WestVirginia, destined to be in the coal
mines, and his mom forced himto get an education and just said,
you need to read, you needto keep working, you need to get
away out of here. And heended up having an opportunity to go to
(16:11):
school for coal geology, went toAntarctica and fell in love with ice,
and people were drilling ice cores inAntarctica and Greenland. I don't know if
you know what ice cores are,but basically, you go to a glacier
and you drill vertically into the glacierand you pull back an ice like a
cylinder of ice, and contained inthat ice from top to bottom is a
(16:33):
timeline. So there's most recent yearsat the top, the furthest year back
is at the bottom right, andthe timeline that he can read, a
timeline that he can read. Andso people were doing this in Antarctica and
Greenland, and he was having troublefinding a spot for him there. And
he saw all this ice in themiddle of the planet, tropical glaciers,
and he said, well, whyis no one doing this? And he
(16:53):
was told it's too high for humansand technology doesn't exist. And plus it's
in the tropics. Ice is notgoing to be contain a record in the
tropics. He found a way todrill ice cores bring them back through the
tropics to tell us a unique historyof the world. And because he was
up in the mountains for so long, not only has he spent more time
above eighteen thousand feet than in personon the planet over four years of his
(17:15):
life, but he saw the changingplanet before other people did. So he
was at this glacier for fifteen years. One day he crossed over a ridge
and where there used to be aglacier, there was a lake at eighteen
thousand feet and so he started sayingthis, this is not the way it's
supposed to be, and started ringingthe alarm bells about what's changing, and
(17:36):
here's the data, and went testifyingin front of Congress. And we can
get into some of the nuances ofhis story. Do you go with him?
I did once we filmed with himup at eighteen thousand, seven hundred
feet. We're there for three weeks. I can talk about the training we
had to go through to be ableto film up there. But this is
(17:56):
in central Peru and the glacier andjust tropical glacier on the planet. We
spent three weeks up there filming.It's got to be hard to get there.
It was hard to get there.Carrying around film equipment at eighteen thousand
feet is no easy task. Didyou take a train to get there?
We flew to Cusco, took acard the end of the road, hopped
(18:18):
on our feet and horses, andwent another two days, ended up camping
at seventeen thousand feet four three weeks. But he had been up there before,
he knew the drill. I mean, so is the film all of
what you shot during the time youwere there only, or some of his
and some yours. It's all theabove. So we filmed with him there.
We filmed with him at his labin Ohio, We filmed at his
(18:40):
hometown in West Virginia. We filmedat some award ceremonies with him, went
to China with him to film,and then we have forty years of video
that he took around the planet thatwe've been Yeah, let's show this one,
okay to audience, Let's see thisone. In the old days,
you took a canary into the mine. If it dies, it's time for
(19:02):
you to flee the mind. Myfirst encounter with Lonnie like I was meeting
at real life Indiana Jones. Lonniewas a visionary him. He saw about
global climate history captured in Newlais.Lonnie was going where no scientists had gone
before. It seemed to be impossible. It's too high for human beings.
(19:26):
It's dangerous. There's no way you'regoing to drill in this remote part of
the world. You're wasting your time. Science can't only advance when you do
things other people think can't be done. He was on a mission to find
his ways in this world. Ihad no idea what I was getting into.
(19:47):
I had never claimed the mountain.I had no idea what it would
take. This was a huge departurefrom usual. There was something wrong.
My doctor said, you have oneoption and one option only, and that
is the of a heart transplant.You just keep going. He was in
(20:07):
denial. I remember watching him struggleto breathe, thinking to myself, and
you're not going to survive this,having gone through these year death experiences.
My message was to help bring togetherthe world. This glacier started disappearing before
Lonnie's eyes. He thought he couldchange something. If he doesn't do it,
(20:32):
nobody would MONI didn't come to climatechange. Climate change came to him.
The humans can create it, theCubans consult it. I don't believe
there's anything that we cannot achieve.It's a film about a little background on
(20:56):
me is I used to be ascientist. I did a PhD in neuroscience
in said of I t I dida post doc. I've been involved with
science my whole life, and Ialways felt like science programming felt a bit
more like homework than anything. Ialways wanted to like it more than I
did, and so I quit scienceto try to change the way scientists are
seen on the big screen. AndI this when I talked to Lonnie the
(21:19):
first time. I was on askype with my partner, my directing partner,
Danie O'Malley. We talk with Lonniewithin five minutes, yet a video
in forty minutes. We were bothcrying, and by the end of the
skype, I just turned to mypartner Danny, and I said, if
there's one story we ever tell,it has to be this one. That's
good story, and the passion comesacross. I mean, it's a it
(21:44):
is a story about perseverance. It'sa story about purpose, It's a story
about finding who you are in thisworld. And it's a story that I
think not only applies to scientists butall of us. We're all looking for
purpose, We're all looking for somethingthat we wake up need to do.
And how long is the film Canary? It's one hundred and four minutes?
(22:04):
How long is your nine is ninetyone? Okay, but it's uh,
you know. I there's an interestingthing when you're trying to teach science,
when you talk about things like climatechange. There's a million movies about climate
change, right, and most ofit's kind of disaster porn. Right.
It's like, look at all thisbad stuff. It's going to happen to
us, disaster porns. But thething is is that there's a there's if
(22:27):
you look at this how to teachscience from a from a an educational standpoint,
there's a whole line of educational psychologythat says, if you teach kids
facts, like one group of kidsfacts, you teach another group of kids
the same facts, but you teachthe struggles scientists went through to get those
facts. These kids learn the factsbetter. These kids, the kids who
(22:47):
learn the struggles are engaged more broadly, they understand scientific concepts more so what
we do is find stories about thehuman journey of struggle to be able to
relate the facts right and and sothat's that's the brand of science storytelling that
I'm after. And this is myfirst my first film, first film.
Yeah, and so how long tomake? We started filming in twenty eighteen.
(23:11):
We met Lannie in twenty seventeen.He wasn't going to the glacier until
twenty eighteen. He called us,said, you guys still filming, You
want to go? We had nomoney. We said, yes, absolutely,
and we just made it, madeit happen. So you're a scientist,
(23:32):
you're all about research while making themovie. I mean, we made
a movie and we understand things happenedyou don't expect. Was there anything that
you learned that you weren't aware ofthat really blew your buying or surprised you?
So when you talk about climate change, when I first saw Inconvenient Truth
back in twenty twenty as Inconvenient Truth, you know, that was the first
(23:56):
time I was exposed to kind ofthe facts behind climate change. And as
a scientist, I went and Ikind of looked at all the equations.
Okay, if all the glaciers melt, what is sea level rise? I
kind of did all the math,and I've known it my whole life,
and I always just kind of votedthe way, you know, someone believes
in it, someone doesn't believe init. I vote for the person who
believes. That was kind of theend of my climate activist when I went
(24:18):
with Lannie to Peru. We wentto Cusco, and in Cusco it's five
hundred thousand people. They all gettheir power from water that comes off the
glacier, okay, so that thecity is powered by the glacier. Then
we went to went up the riverto the glacier and you see this bread
basket millions of people supported by lamasalpacas, you know, food sources.
(24:38):
Two point five million people. Thenwe get up to the glacier, the
largest tropical glacier on the planet,and I asked Lani, when is this
going to melt by? And hesaid, by the time your daughter is
your age, this is gone.And all of a sudden, I had
seen this cascade of events of humanlike like like like like like like like
(25:00):
and like the the you that's alwaysbeen finding a way to bring people together
(28:07):
and bridge the gap. So whatwill it take for people to become like
that? Good question, my soone thing I think the hard answer is
that it will be forced to right. It's what I thought when when when
sea level starts rising or in Cornado, I don't know what's Coronado's going to
(28:27):
be last, right. I mean, if you look at the projections of
serise of Coronado, it's going tobe a different place to get toears.
So when it starts, when theocean starts slapping into your door, you're
going to start thinking differently. Theother thing that I truly believe in is
the power of storytelling. I believeI have storytelling and it's these stories have
(28:51):
power to be able to say Inever thought about it this way, and
that becomes part of you. Right. One of the things I'd like to
say is, you know, whatI like Alex's film. What I try
to do with my film is thatyou know, with these environmental film festls
that we go to, you know, this is an ocean film festival,
these tend to draw the same people. You know, if you're wanting to
(29:11):
make the world a better place,there, you have to have stories that
get beyond what aren't going to justattract the same people, you know.
And so you know, the peoplethat I'm going to a lot of film
fest and the people who go tofilm festivals tend to be progressive, They
tend to be educated, they andthey tend you know, and especially if
you're going to have a film festivalthat has the word nature or environment,
(29:32):
and you're going to turn off alarge segment of the population. So one
one of the things that I triedto do with my film was, this
is about fishing. You know,fishing is something that people across the political
spectrum care about and love. Andone of the unique things about the Great
Lakes is that the political representatives there, you know, the congressional delegations all
support Great Lakes, restoration, greatLakes, anything to protect the Great Lakes
(29:53):
and keep fishing them and all thosekinds of things. So so that to
me is a way where, youknow, by by stressing those aspects of
the story that appeal across those philosophicaland political lines, that's how you get
on a bigger audience for these kindsof films. And what Alex is doing
is you know, he's got afilm about a humans, you know,
about anybody who wants to you know, persevere or overcome some kind of difficulty
(30:17):
or something like that. It's hardto imagine a more moving story than this
one for anybody, no matter what, you know, what they may be
dealing with. You know, peopleon the far right get cancer, people
on the far right have get hearttransplants, you know. And here's a
guy who's is doing amazing things fromthere. So if we can get these
kinds of stories, you know,I'm you know, agreeing with everything that's
(30:38):
Alex saying. We have to tellstories that reach across out beyond the normal
audience kinds of films and get theword out. And I think too,
when you're talking about small town economies, right, I mean, this is
what we all talk about is kindof the beating heart of America, right,
And this is something that is thatthere is a universality in that that
we as much as some many ofus live in big cities, we all
(31:02):
want to have preserve you know theability of that small town field, right,
that thing we grew up with.Yeah, so people want to still
be able to go catch fish,you know, and and and neat fish
get on a boat and you know, and and not have its stink wherever
they go. You don't know thatkind of things. W How did you
pick your title? Canary? Hiscanary, I'm relentless, Okay, how
did you pick your titlelan? Well, it applies to both both parties.
(31:26):
You know, this this organism,this it's a sea lamprey. It came
in from from the Atlantic Ocean intothe Great Lakes, made its way up
the Saint Lawrence Seaway. It's gota big suction cup with all kinds of
teeth on it. So so itis relentless, and and it just kept
kept going all the way up intothe Lake Superior and then up to all
(31:47):
the tributary. It's it's what's calledanadrom is. It spawns and streams,
and so it's it's just you know, relentless in terms of what it does.
And yours could have been relentless becausethis guy was relentless, really,
but that canary, Well, letme finish the other side of it.
As the scientists who look for away to deal with this thing and save
fisheries and save small town economies andsave fishing in the Great Lakes, they
(32:09):
were equally as well as tenacious persistent. It took years and years and years
for them to find what is considereda needle in a haystack. You know,
they had no idea that it wouldever come up with something, and
a lot of people were ready tostop, you know, the congressional delegations
in the Parliament of Canada was readyto stop, stop funding their efforts.
But they just kept at it,and so here we are love it.
(32:32):
Canary is I think at the beginningof the trailer, you know, that's
this this old story of guys whouldgo into the coal mines. They would
carry a cage with a canary init, and they're in a coal mine,
canary in the coal mine, andthen the canary if it falls over
or gets sick, first you knowthe air is bad and you know you
should leave. It's the early warningsystem. So the glaciers are our early
(32:54):
warning system for what's happening on theon the planet. Because ice is you
get above thirty two degrees, itmelts, right, it is. It
is. It's literally the first thingthat it starts changing. And so as
the temperature warms on the planet,ice is the first responder. So you
see these major changes happening. Also, Lannie is a canary in his own
(33:15):
right, I mean, speaking forthe glaciers. And you know, it
is about the early warning systems wehave and whether or not we listen to
these things. Right when the canarydies next to us in the coal mine,
are we just sitting in the coalmine and continue drilling or are we
going to get out of there?And it's it's you know, it holds
a mirror up to us. Soa lot of this I think you're the
(33:38):
scientists are of course, we justhave a wide popular, a wide range
of population. We have more populationon the earth right now than we've ever
had. Ye. So even ifwe did get rid of using fossil fuels,
it takes a lot of money tomake things that require batteries. Batteries
(33:59):
require machinery, and there's no machinerythat can make they can do the drilling
that there's nothing that's electric they coulddo that there. I mean it's complicated,
right, to do anything on scaleis going to have environmental consequences,
right, It's a question of whatare the long term consequences of the decisions?
(34:20):
Right, So most of the mininghappens in places that are very politically
unstable, there is you know,there's people being taken advantage of, and
you know East East Congo, whichI've been to, in parts of South
America, it's it's really toxic.That being said, this is that classic
problem of you know, the trainsgoing one way, and you know there's
(34:40):
people who will die if it goesthis way, and then there's more people
die of it that way, andyou have a choice of which lever to
pull. Welcome to humanity. Ithink interesting. As things push forward,
we're going to have to choose fromsome unattractive options. One of them that
is being talked about right now ismaybe to nuclear power. Again, you
(35:01):
know, looking at nuclear reactors,it's a clean source of power. Those
there's a lot of risks that arethat are involved with that. But if
we want to have all these peopleon the planet, and we want to
live the lifestyle that we're living,we want to consume at the rate that
we're consuming, and we want tobe warm in our houses, and we
want to have all these cool electronicthings, and we're going to have AI
and we're going to have all theseyou know, computers doing all kinds of
(35:21):
crazy stuff. We need a lotof power, and so are we willing
to make these kinds of decisions andand you know, make these kinds of
trade offs. You know, where'sthe cost benefit analysis here? And what
kind of risks as a society arewe were willing to? Oh is the
other one? Which other side isnuclear? Oh? Well, you know
more, we can damn more rivers. You know, we can do more
(35:43):
hydro power. We can do allthose kinds of things. But that's going
to impact fish, that's going toimpact you know, all kinds of societal
things. That's going to impact cleanwater. There's you know we can do.
We can do more geothermal. There'salso tidle title uh options for for
generating power. You know, wealready have wind power that's going up offside
off of our coast. You know, do we want is that something that
(36:05):
we want to have off of Martha'sVineyard or off of San Diego? We
we'd like to have a whole justline of wind power generators off off the
coast of San Diego. Is thatsomething that we want to have here?
You know, these are the kindsof decisions we're going to have to consider
if we want to you know,lessen our dependence on fossil fuel and maintain
you know, the energy consumption thatwe've grown accustomed to, maybe maybe a
(36:29):
little of each one. I mean, I we just have to move away
from fossil fuels. It is weare on a path of insanity. And
it is the science is so clear, the physics. It's just physics.
But and I don't disagree with you, but I also know a lot of
the machinery needs fossil fuels to beable to function and work too. Yeah,
I mean, so the complications aremassive. We cement steel. I
(36:52):
mean, these things are just carbonintensive and they require a lot of energy.
Until we develop systems to do thesethings more environmentally friendly, we're going
to have issues. There are amazingthings happening. I love I love your
film, and I love what we'retalking about because your film's encompassed what's going
on in the world, not justwith the ocean, but also how we
(37:14):
have to make these choices coming.And our show is always outside the box.
We always think outside the box.You know, you guys are doing
great stuff, and I know thefilms are going to make impacts and a
whole lot of kids get to seethe films and I really good. You're
both passionate about it too. Letme ask you questions because we are doing
this right now. I'm guessing youguys want to do another documentary hopefully.
(37:37):
How do you find your subject andhow do you pick it? Does it
come to you? You go toit both. I actually there's been subjects
that I've developed and went out andfound the funding to do and you know,
and go to other places. Thisfilm, you know, it was
an offshoot of a film I didpreviously. They like what I did and
came and commissioned me to make thisfilm, which you know, I was
very flattered and you know, honoredto have the opportunity to tell the story
(38:00):
and it was a wonderful challenge,you know as well. So so it's
it's nice when those kinds of thingshappen. So but I do have projects
that I've been developing and and I'mlooking at a few of them to go
back to. But but some otherpeople are talking to me about other films
you know that they might like,So what are you going to do your
second film? For me? Forme, it's going to you know,
(38:21):
this this world of science storytelling isone that as a researcher. I have
a list of six hundred and threescientists that I've done deep dive research into
that, you know, I've I'veplanned out entire TV series of this and
three scientists like your guy you're doingright now. I mean, welcome to
real Indiana, John. I meansome of them are more compelling than others,
but uti fifty seasons ahead of that, he's going to be a busy
(38:44):
guy. I am ready, AndI'm just looking for people who care about
this type of storytelling in a waythat can support it and bring it to
the masses. I want to createan ecosystem of creating scientific heroes really good.
That's just giving me. It justgave me an idea I want to
talk about it. Maybe we needto honor those scientists for the work they're
(39:05):
doing in the environment. Yeah,that's great. Well, the interesting thing
about it is I've made a beenfortunate to build a career basically interpreting what
scientists and engineers do for a generalaudience. And these are amazing people that
aren't comfortable talking much about there.You know, the kinds of people we're
talking about are really in their elementwhen they go off by themselves to tops
of mountains or you know, thebottom of the ocean, or all these
(39:29):
different kinds of things. And sothere's a lot of people that are out
there that are doing amazing things inamazing places that we don't know about it.
So the kinds of stories he's talkingabout are amazing, amazing things,
and hopefully we can inspire more kidsto you know, get off their little
screens and get into the real world, into the natural world, and start
doing science and seeing how cool itis to be out going to these amazing
(39:53):
places and studying the kinds of thingsthat are out there. All right,
it's the Blue Water Film Festival startsnext third stay and you're on the twenty
first, but your films tell themwhat yours on the twenty second teller audience.
So the film Canary is showing atnoon on the twenty second at the
Rifford Public Library in La Joya,And I think it's just followed immediately by
(40:17):
you right after a place to o'clock. You have popcorn that's I don't know,
it's a library that wasn't in thetop. Nice little room, but
it's nice room. But I thinkthe capacity is one hundreds, So Wow.
Yeah, it's a very nice room. Both you did phenomenal work.
(40:37):
The passion shows the creativity, andthank you both for Yeah, you want
to make a statement before we leave, make a closing statement, and you
make one. What do you wantto tell the world. I mean the
number one thing is, uh,I believe in yourself and your dreams,
because you know, I changed mycareer, you know, one hundred and
eighty degrees and went after something.I took inspiration from Lonnie story and Canary
(41:02):
to know that you can accomplish thingsthat are very hard. So just believe
in yourself and have a goal.Well that's a hard one to follow.
But but I just hope people willcome out and see these stories. You
know. Uh, it's hard toget as I was mentioning, it's hard
(41:22):
to get people to come out andfrom from beyond just the core audience of
environmental Uh yeah, the audience forenvironmental and nature films. But but there
they really aren't important. And ifyou do care about things like fishing,
or you care about hunting, oryou know, some of some of the
original conservationists were hunters and fishermen,you know, trout, unlimited, ducks
unlimited, you know, these peoplecare about maintaining habitat out there. Maybe
(41:45):
they don't have the same philosophy asyou know, the Sierra Club or the
National Wildlife Federation or something like that, but at least they're on the same
side of trying to preserve habitat andnatural places. And so I hope that
maybe that's the first place we canstart to build bridges is between conservationists.
(42:05):
You know, the Ducks Unlimited andthe hunters and fishermen are are considered to
be conservationists, and the tree huggersare considered to be environmentalists. So if
we can get conservationists and tree huggerson the same side of things and be
listening to each other and helping eachother preserve, you know, nature,
it'll be good start. What welike to bring to our audience on the
(42:27):
Bratton Larry podcast show is inspirational,passionate people, passionate stories. And we
had two great ones today. ThanksLindsay and thank you Alex very very much.
You both tell you for having rant. Everybody take care and be nice
to each other by everyone
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