Valentine’s Flick Is Apparently Very Green
Filed under: film-tv, movies — Luke Warner @ 3:45 pm
November 1st 2009
The upcoming rom-com Valentine’s Day is reported to be one of Warner Brothers’ greenest productions to date. Full details are few but in a recent ABC News article, Shelley Billik, WB’s vice president for environmental initiatives has said that the film’s base camp, where trailers for wardrobe, makeup and the cast are set up, was run on hybrid energy, instead of the gas-guzzling 24/7 generators usually found on sets.
ABC also quotes executive producer, Diana Pokorny, as saying, “Normally you’d walk onto a base camp, and there would be the hum of generators,” she said, “and there were days it would be completely silent ’cause we were running completely on solar power.” Apparently this saved the production 18 metric tons of CO2.
The article included several examples of Hollywood’s attempts to get green and said that “the upcoming star-studded film…was arguably the greenest production yet.” We’ll be interested to see what other steps the production took to lower its impact.
P.S. “Star-studded” is an understatement. This movie has more stars than, well, He’s Just Not That Into You. Want proof? Neither Taylor Lautner nor Taylor Swift are even in the trailer which features Julia Roberts, Jessica Biel, Jennifer Garner, Jamie Foxx, Jessica Albaand others whose names do not begin with “J” including Bradley Cooper, Anne Hathaway, Topher Grace, Patrick Dempsey and Ashton Kutcher!
Judging by the trailer, being green is the only thing this movie has going for it. Non-existence of this film, however, would have been even more green, and I don’t think it would have been much of a cinematic loss. I do like the idea of really bad movies trying to minimize their carbon footprint out of guilt, as if truly good films can justify the environmental cost, but junk like Valentine’s Day cannot.