The Sundance Film Festival has a reputation for fostering important independent filmmaking where breakout low-budget films become Hollywood blockbusters. Another of the festival's attributes, which may not be found in celebrity magazines or Hollywood blogs, is the festival's commitment to honoring documentary films.
Hailey resident Chris Pilaro was part of the producing team that debuted the documentary film "Everything's Cool" at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. The film takes a new look at global warming by turning the controversial issue on its ear to present it as a toxic comedy documentary.
"The idea of a toxic comedy is that too many science films can be really dry," Pilaro said. "Watching an hour-and-a-half-long feature film can put you to sleep. When you infuse entertainment and humor, it can make a difference. A lot of environmental movies beat you into submission, so that you can't do anything because it is such a daunting reality. Making people laugh at that does not negate the issue. It instills some sense of hope.
"The fact that people laugh at this issue brought it down to a human level with real people with real lives so you can relate to it."
"Everything's Cool" is the second project Pilaro has worked on with the film's producer, Daniel Gold, and director, Judith Helfand. Their company, Toxic Comedy Pictures, produced the award-winning documentary "Blue Vinyl" about Helfand's suspicions concerning the synthetic chemicals used in vinyl siding. In turn, that caused her to investigate the polyvinyl chloride, PVC, industry.
"Blue Vinyl" won best documentary film cinematography award at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival, the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema and was also nominated for two Emmys.
Pilaro has worked with Toxic Comedy Pictures on "Everything's Cool" for four and a half years to create and research the film's essential message.
"I am a freelance producer that gets the job done, and I do whatever it takes to accomplish it, which means asking for money, doing field production and identifying stories and characters. It is a very collaborative process." Pilaro said. "Judith is an activist and found film to be her medium. Making this film wasn't just to get people to see it, but to get people to react to it."
"Everything's Cool" follows several characters who are "global warming messengers" who spend their lives dealing with the issue of global warming through activism as well as living a responsible environmental friendly life.
"The other thing about this issue is climate change is totally ongoing," Pilaro said. "For all the characters in the film, it's their lives, and they are dealing with it every day. Rick Piltz is an eco movie star bio diesel maven."
Piltz prepared scientific reports for Congress on the latest research on climate change. Fed up with political censorship, he became an eco movie star by blowing the lid off of the White House's scandalous manipulation of global warming science.
"We have a lot of obstacles. We have found ourselves in this situation for 20-plus years because we were not paying attention. Oil and gas lobbyists have tried and kept climate change a theory," Pilaro said. "We are not a solution film. There is no definitive solution. We are trying to explain how and why we are in this situation, and there are rays of hope."
Sundance was a success for "Everything's Cool" for several reasons. Every screening of the film was sold out. However, more importantly, the film's community engagement campaign, launched in Park City at the festival, captured a great deal of attention. Under the guise of Working Films based in Wilmington, N.C., which was co-founded by Helfand as an activist arm for non-fiction film to leverage the power of film to work grassroots issues, "Everything's Cool" created several outreach opportunities. It teamed up with the National Resources Defense Council, Clif Bar and NativeEnergy.
"The film screened with elementary school kids in Park City with Step It Up, an organizing team trying to get the message out about global warming," Pilaro said. "Bill McGibbon of Step It Up got involved with this campaign to cut carbon emissions. He is orchestrating protests and events to happen on April 14. There's already 200 groups signed up from saving coral reefs to glaciers."
More than 800 students from Treasure Mountain Middle School in Park City helped to spell out "Step It Up" as part of the aggressive outreach activism "Everything's Cool" promotes.
"Aerial photographer John Quigley orchestrates large groups of people to form pictures and works dealing with an issue taking multiple videos and aerial photos he uses as a catalyst. It was a great response," Pilaro said. "We were not only just attending screenings and looking for distribution, we had three additional screenings with high schools where one high school started a light bulb campaign."
"Everything's Cool" outreach offset the CO2 emissions generated by its audience members by an estimated 300 miles of travel to Park City. In addition, Clif Bar Cool Tags were purchased, and 100 percent of the money raised will be used to buy renewable energy credits through NativeEnergy to support the Alaskan Native Village Wind Projects.
"We gave away compact fluorescent light bulbs that were donated by IKEA, which use one-sixth the energy of a regular incandescent light bulb," Pilaro said.
In addition, the film worked with Utah Clean and Native Energy to promote an energy sufficient sustainable reality and passed out information from the Natural Resources Defense Council on how people can be more energy efficient.
Global warming was also taken very seriously by the Sundance Festival, which according to Pilaro went carbon-neutral for the first time.
"Sundance has set aside 20,000 acres of preserves," Pilaro said. "(Founder) Robert Redford is an environmentalist."
"Everything's Cool" will continue its festival run at the South by Southwest film festival March 9 to 17, 2007, in Austin, Texas, in which a new version of the film will be cut.
"This film project is very collaborative and all about outreach and organizing,"
More than 800 middle school students in Park City, Utah, spell out ?Step It Up? at the Sundance Film Festival to promote a nationwide global warming activism event on April 14, 2007. Photo by Chris Pilaro
