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Interview: Director Mike Mills |
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Interview: Executive Producer Cathy Schulman |
There's a new award-winning movie out called Thumbsucker, and even if you're not a fan of coming-of-age films, or Keanu Reeves, or scenes of teenagers exploring their sexuality while blindfolded (yeah, seriously), you should still see it.
Why?
Because it's got the Sierra Club and environmental themes written all over it. And we have prominent billing on the film's website.
Shot in Beaverton, Oregon, Thumbsucker plumbs the psyche of Justin Cobb (Lou Pucci), a 17-year-old who sucks his thumb whenever he feels a disturbance in The Force. His orthodontist (Keanu Reeves) wants to try hypnosis to get Justin to quit the digit. Justin's mom (Tilda Swinton) is a nurse who's got a deep crush on a cheesy television actor, and his father (Vincent D'Onofrio) is still getting over the missed opportunity to be a college football star. Justin hooks up with Rebecca (Kelli Garner) who, when we meet her, is wearing a t-shirt that says, "Club Sandwiches Not Seals."
Early in the film, Rebecca's walking through a forest with Justin and gives the Sierra Club credit for sparing the woods from development and creating a refuge instead. Later, Justin works to win her favor by showing he's done his homework: "The Sierra Club says clearcutting is up 15 percent," he says.
Aside from those references, the film gently touts the importance of wild places and exposes the troubles that are borne of sprawl.
At the Sundance Film Festival it was awarded the Special Jury Prize for Acting (Pucci). Pucci also won the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the Berlin International Film Festival.
This is the first feature-length film for director Mike Mills, a graphic artist
whose commercial work includes Levis, the Gap, Volkswagen, MasterCard, and
Nike. He's also directed music videos for bands such as Zoot Woman, Moby, Yoko
Ono,
Everything But the Girl, and others. He's even designed scarves and fabrics.
Mills also designed the Thumbsucker website,
which, along with its links to cast/director, blog, trailer, and other features,
includes prominent links to pages featuring the Sierra Club and Humane Society
of the United States. Mills is a Life Member of the Sierra Club.
And Thumbsucker executive producer Cathy Schulman is a Sierra Club member
whose husband, Tim Allyn, worked in the Club's Los Angeles office up until
about a year ago.
The film premiered in Hollywood, Toronto, and New York in
September, and at Mills's and Schulman's request,
the Club and the Humane Society of the United States tabled at these
events
and at the CD-release concert at the Hollywood Bowl. Carl Zichella, the Club's
regional staff director for California, Hawaii, and Nevada, and several Los Angeles
office representatives, attended the Hollywood premiere.
We wanted to know: What gives with this potent mixture of
environmentalism and Hollywood? Jenny Coyle spoke with Mills and Schulman to
find out.
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Interview: Director Mike Mills
Q:
What spawned your interest in the natural world?
A: Well, I wasn't a Boy Scout. I grew up in Santa Barbara, which has these dry creekbeds you can follow forever, for a whole day at least. It all became part of my unconscious layer. I didn't realize until I moved to Los Angeles that I wanted to be near nature. I realized I was dying for something other than the concrete world. When I came into money from doing ads, I looked for a Walden-esque place in the woods that I'd have for the rest of my life.
I started looking around the Sierra Nevada and in the process learned a lot about timber and the issues that come up with a 10- to 20-acre piece of land. I learned about the Forest Service and subsidized timber harvests. That's when I became a Sierra Club member. Now I own 60 acres on the western side of the Sierra. I bought an old hydraulic gold mine site with lots of tailings, cliff walls blown down, places where what you're walking on is 100 feet below where it should be, a 6-foot quartz rocking sitting there. It seemed more karmically appropriate to buy a messed-up place—it's beautiful, though—and see what I could do with it. Someday I hope to build a little off-the-grid cabin on it.
Q: We're told you're a Life Member of the Sierra Club.
A: I am. It's funny, they called the other day and asked if I wanted to renew my lifetime membership.Q: Why did you choose the Sierra Club—to join, and to feature in the film?
A: I think the Sierra Club is really successful in its accessibility. Everyone knows about it. And I took note that it was one of the few groups that went after Cheney and who he met with on the energy policy stuff. [The Sierra Club sued Vice President Dick Cheney for inviting industry representatives to participate in closed-door meetings during development of the Bush administration's energy bill.] But I also went to a great workshop by the local Los Angeles Sierra Club about wildlife corridors and building tunnels under freeways so mountain lions can get from one habitat to another. So it's very local, too.Q: Beyond blunt references in the film to the Sierra Club and the importance of wilderness, you seem to comment on sprawling development and its effect on the human psyche.
A: A deep layer of environmental awareness is there in the whole opening sequence of the film, which shows Beaverton, basically the greenbelt of Portland, Oregon. We have a shot where you see several layers of development, and a line of trees.
The parents in Thumbsucker, like most of us, want a home, and these developments provide a home. In their early 20s, they were probably thinking, "If I could just find love, that will fill the hole." And then, "If I just have a kid, that'll fill the hole." And then the house. And in their early 40s they're thinking, "Maybe the hole is bigger than I thought." That sort of unsustainability of the dream has an echo in unsustainable developments. I think a lot of their problems are that they're thinking, "I have everything! I should feel great..."
Q: Did the original book include environmental themes?
A: The Rebecca character in the book was very concerned about fields and nature. It was a way to describe that girl's seriousness and intensity. These scenes were an off-shoot of that. I blew it up. These scenes represent more of my personal concerns.
Q: Why did you want to do that?
A: When you're adapting something for three years, you can't help but personalize it. This movie's been my whole life for a period of time, so I wanted to put my life in there. It's like a mild form of activism. Having the Sierra Club on our website was a form of activism: I was trying to make the most of Sony's advertising dollars for a larger use.
Q: We've seen Hollywood's influence on politics. Do you think Hollywood productions can help influence environmental policy to protect the environment?
A: I've never thought of that, really, but it could totally happen. You'd influence people's consciousness about the environment, and that could lead to changes in environmental policy. If there were a Michael Moore doing something about sprawl, something could really happen. But what really interests me more is in just in everyday ways, how to integrate these parts of your life. It's interesting, the arguments I had to go through to explain why it would be good to have the Humane Society and Sierra Club on our website. Sony was very into it, once I explained why. But almost everybody else was, like, "Why?" Producers, smart people, friends… they just didn't get it. But why separate that kind of perspective on the world from this one we call "entertainment"?
Q: What's next for you? Saving the planet?
A: I'm going to do my part… I'm writing an original screenplay. Basically, Thumbsucker at the bottom line is about the problems of people who love each other. This one is in that same realm. I haven't worked any environmental tack into it yet, but I'm just in the middle.
In terms of film, what excites me most is people's emotional lives. If I could show some involvement and integration for someone's life with an environmental setting, animals as sentient beings, the world before we started manipulating it, and the potential freedom that's there, and the beauty and intelligence that comes with that... if I could integrate that into someone's gooey inner life in a way that made people more conscious of those things, that would be exciting for me.
Q: Anything else you want to say, something along an environmental theme, unlike what someone from, say, Vogue magazine, would ask you about?
A: Oh, this whole thing was way different from Vogue.
I love that the Sierra Club came to the premiere of Thumbsucker and had
tables there with information and embraced the whole thing. I'm someone who
totally
cares about what I'm doing and I have a big investment in it, but I'm just
starting; I'm a beginner, and I don't want to come across as anything else.
It's so important to embrace beginners.
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Interview: Executive Producer Cathy Schulman
Q:
What was your role as executive producer of Thumbsucker?
A: Normally the executive producer gets financing for the picture, which I did. But in this case I've worked much closer with the film. I've been actively involved from start to finish.
Q: So you were on board all the way with the environmental themes. What is your own interest in the natural world?
A: I've been aware of the Sierra Club since college, but it was through my husband's work on forestry issues that I because more interested. We spend a lot of time in California's mountains—we're avid hikers and climbers. We have a love of the outdoors, and a desperate hope that we can protect some wildlands in California. We're discouraged by some of the wilderness bills and other environmental efforts that have failed over the years because of this administration. But on a grassroots level, we have to keep fighting these battles to keep our country beautiful for our children and our children's children.
Q: How does all of that relate to Thumbsucker and the Sierra Club?
A: The whole notion of the picture is a back-to-basics idea. Every family is a collection of human beings doing the best they can within the universe of their family. And I see that connection to the larger universe of the natural world. We like to hope that the direct connectivity to the Sierra Club would encourage young people in particular, and anyone else who is interested, to look at the materials on the website and explore further. There's also the thinking that the film encourages young people to open their minds while we introduce these concepts.
From the very beginning it was our intention to cross-promote with the Sierra Club and Humane Society. In the past we've involved charitable organizations, but usually with a single charity event. Now there's a profound way to make use of the Internet, to link quite literally from one idea to another, so you can you can go learn more about these things. It's a groundbreaking idea. And I've said many times that we should do this on every film, find a way to make these connections.
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