Tuesday, April 28, 2009

You Are What You Animate

We're working on a documentary about veganism.



Early in the Clinton Administration (or was it late in the first Bush Administration?) I stopped eating animals. One Christmas party a few years later, Tissa David was surprised to learn this.

She had been vegitarian for many years, I guess it was a rare diet at one point. She asked me why, and I didn't have a good answer so I made something up. She didn't have a reason, either.

After working with her for sometime -most specifically after she told me all about the shark after PBS shark documentary -I understood why she didn't eat critters, even if she didn't. In talking about the shark, she constantly called the fish "him" as though sharks were a street gang. She had a personal intimacy with the shark ("he is so mean"), over a lifetime of animating chickens and cows and penguins and drum-playing-rabbits I suspect it became difficult to eat the same creatures who she was responsible for bringing to life.

Now it surprises me to see animators lustily consume steaks and burgers and hear them cavalierly discuss grilling the cousins of the cows they animated the week before.


Above: One of a few dozen brief clips from the film

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In other news: "Nursery University" was the top per-theater gross film in the country this weekend!

LINK

3 comments:

Elliot Cowan said...

My wife thinks that wolves and tigers are mean but other animals may be less so.

This is a complicated conversation to have on a blogpost so I will discuss with you at a later date.

Michael Sporn said...

Tissa had arthritis. She heard that eliminating tomatoes would help. She said it did.
Then she learned that meat also helped to irritate arthritis. She gave up meat. Her arthrititic condition improved substantially, and she remained a vegetarian.

roconnor said...

You spoilt my theory, Michael. Curses!

Wolves are "mean" in the slang sense as evidenced by this: http://www.birkoph.com/Wolf_tshirt.htm