If Al Gore’s docco ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ taught us anything at all it is that sometimes we need to view some environmentalist’s words as a ‘do what I say, not what I do’ dose of medicine. While Gore denies it some say his mansion has lights burning in every room all night, and of course there is always the criticism leveled at how many plane trips he makes every year. But you get an entirely different feeling when you interview British filmmaker Franny Armstrong about her new docco ‘The Age Of Stupid’; a no holds-barred look at the future our Earth has if climate change takes over. When you talk to Franny you get a strong sense that this is a topic very important to her; and it’s obvious that the world should be listening to her.
Even the way that Franny became a filmmaker and how ‘The Age Of Stupid’ came about is proof she is in this to get the truth out there rather than to make a quick dollar. ‘I got into filmmaking completely by accident,’ she laughs. ‘I was perfectly happy as a drummer in a pop group and then I heard about the ‘big’ McDonalds story that led to my first docco ‘McLibel’. My Dad was a filmmaker and I borrowed his equipment and just went out and made it. ‘The Age Of Stupid’ was different though. I first head of Climate Change back in school when it was called The Greenhouse Effect, and I thought ‘that’s pretty serious’. And it stayed in the back of my mind until 2002 when I thought I could use what I call the ‘Traffic’ (named after the film) style of filmmaking with the intertwining stories structure to get the message across.’
This style involved a big risk for Franny because instead of having just a simple narration style docco she invented the idea that the stories are told as an archivist (played by Oscar nominated actor Pete Postlethwaite) sits down in 2050 and looks back at what chance humans had of saving the Earth. But that wasn’t her original idea. ‘Originally it was going to be kids. Kids saying things like ‘look what you did to the Earth’, ‘look what you left for us’, but the first group of people we showed it to absolutely hated it. People don’t want to go somewhere and get berated by teens and that’s when I realised it should be our generation saying ‘look what we’ve done… we could have stopped this.’
So how hard was it to get Pete Postlethwaite involved. ‘Actually it was easier then you imagined. When we came up with this character people asked me who I wanted in the role and I just said ‘Pete Postlethwaite’ because he is my all-time favorite actor, and people were saying to me ‘Franny you can’t just you want him because he’s your favourite’. To be honest I didn’t even know what his opinion was on the environment, but I googled him and found out that he was actually trying to get a wind farm built on his land. He’s obsessedwith climate change. Then I just contacted his agent, and there was another funny story there as well. He said he would do the docco but they hadn’t told him what he was doing so he turned up thinking he just had to do a narration.’
Franny learnt with ‘McLibel’ that sometimes taking on a corporation like McDonalds can lead to some backlash from the company has she received the same treatment from Shell whose awful practices of gathering oil from Nigeria are exposed in ‘The Age Of Stupid’? ‘To be honest no they haven’t. Maybe it’s because the film went number one in the U.K., maybe it’s because they have pulled out of Nigeria now, who knows why? Actually the Nigerian story was a really fascinating one. We searched for someone who was affected by what was happening and we found this girl. She was affected and all she dreamed about was becoming a doctor and helping people… twelve months we go back and she’s now selling diesel. Honestly it was liked we scripted it, because that really did show how people become corrupted by these giants.’
I end the interview by asking Franny how aware of climate change Australians are considering that our interview took place just days after Kevin Rudd’s ‘Environmental Plan’ was not passed due to opposition by the Liberal Party. ‘It is bad but realistically his plan doesn’t go far enough either. He is after a 5-25% reduction when realistically he should be aiming for 40%. A 40% reduction will still only give the Earth a 50/50 chance of survival… that’s like a coin toss This is the Earth we are talking about, so ask yourself two questions. If the Leaders of our country made every decision by the toss of a coin… would we wear that? And also if you were getting on a plane and the airline said to you there was only a 50/50 chance the plane would make it’s destination. Would you still get the plane…of course not… you’d want something done to make the odds higher in your favor.’
‘The Age Of Stupid’ opens on August 20th.