IN THE SPOTLIGHT
never intended to just show 90 minutes of horrific footage smuggled out of inhumane factory farms or their environmental consequences.
“The point was to make something watchable. We want people to see it. You don’t want someone so disturbed that they want to leave or not watch anymore. You want to continue the conversation,” she says.
“The focus of the film is these farming practices that we’ve lost — the traditional, really American ways that really pay attention to the beauty and the detail and the hard work it takes, and the respect for the land and animals that’s really being disrespected.”
While humanity faces huge complicated issues — global warming, education, immigration — Foer and Portman argue the future of factory farms can be decided by individual consumers. Their solution is to get people skip meat every once in a while — multiplied by millions.
Foer, whose other books include “Everything Is Illuminated” and “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close,” and who is a vegetarian (Portman is vegan), knows converting people to a meatless diet is unlikely to happen overnight.
Instead, he asks carnivores to identify when meat is important to them — say Thanksgiving, birthdays, July 4, family reunions and summer barbeques. Eat the meat then, Foer says, but not when it isn’t significant.