ANIMAL INSTINCTS
Isabella Rossellini’s Green Porno show is about more than just mating.
Animals are hilarious. And more often than not, they are just like us humans.
They amuse themselves with entertainment, they take mind-altering substances, they seduce each other with sound and colour, and they have a whole bunch of sex.
“There is something about animals that makes me laugh,” famed actress and model Isabella Rossellini said in a recent phone interview. “I was always interested in animals and animal behaviour. I find them comical. It amuses me.”
That was the main reason Rossellini created the popular web video series Green Porno.
In the series, consisting of three seasons of short two- or threeminute vignettes, Rossellini is seen explaining and re-enacting a variety of creatures’ sexual and social habits (bee, worm, mantis, hamster, sea horse and more) dressed in handmade bodysuits and backed by props constructed out of fabric, cardboard and papier-mâché.
“When I decided to make the films, I decided I was going to try to catch that (comical) aspect because that’s the one that’s never really underlined when you look at National Geographic or NOVA documentaries,” she said. “There is seriousness, the admiration of nature, the splendour of it, and sometimes humour — but not that much. Sometimes (National Geographic narrator) David Attenborough seems to be amused by animals.
“I wanted to emphasize the humour. I’m an entertainer. It wasn’t meant to teach anybody anything, it was just an inspiration to emphasize what was comical about them for me.”
Green Porno began airing on The Sundance Channel in the U.S. in 2008 and it was also posted to video streaming website YouTube, whose popularity was just exploding at the time.
“The original idea started about six or seven years ago when the Sundance Channel and Robert Redford were looking for shows that wouldn’t find easy distribution,” Rossellini explained. “It was a little bit like his festival, which was conceived to be a showcase of independent filmmaking. The television channel had the same principle.
“With the Internet and YouTube, six or seven years ago, Sundance thought it would be wonderful to create content for the Internet. There were films on the Internet but they were mostly amateur films and they became very popular, so they thought, ‘Well if those became popular, if we make a series, we might also find an audience.
“I came up with the idea of Green Porno, and the funny name came about because they had all these shows called ‘Green Homes,’ ‘Green Transportation’ — all about environmental ways to live. So I said as a joke, ‘Well, we don’t have Green Porno.’ And the name stuck, for better or for worse. It was very catchy, but we thought we could never find a sponsor. Some people are intimidated by it and they don’t come. We tried to change it but it was too late. It was too catchy. Everything I do now is called ‘Green Porno.’” Rossellini laughed. The first season of the Green Porno series, which focused mostly on insect life, generated more than 1.3 million views and promptly inspired Sundance to go ahead with a second season mainly devoted to marine life.
The series also spawned two spinoffs: Mammas (about motherhood in the animal world) and Seduce Me (about the rules of attraction of certain species).
The third and final season of Green Porno put a deeper focus on conservation of ocean life and how it relates to the food chain, and featured biologist Claudio Campagna providing insights into the depletion of our oceans.
“In the end, I produced about 40 short films for Sundance,” Rossellini said. “It was my friend Carole Bouquet, who is a French actress, who came up with the idea of a monologue and she introduced me to Jean-Claude Carriere, who is a very prominent screenwriter, and who won an Academy Award for his career this year. Jean-Claude was interested in the subject and helped me translate this series into an hour and 15 minutes monologue.”
Rossellini described the event as being staged like an environment-themed conference that increasingly becomes more zany and entertaining as it unfolds, leading to transforming the podium on stage into a puppet show featuring animal behaviour and Rossellini changing costumes three times.
“It’s not like a Las Vegas thing where I have to travel with a truck full of costumes and makeup,” Rossellini said with a laugh. “(The show) is really meant to entertain. I want people to come and laugh and say after, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that!’”
The show also involves showing stills and clips from the Webby Award-winning series, which has also been immortalized in book and DVD form.
The daughter of legendary Italian filmmaker Roberto Rossellini and Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman, Rossellini is a screen and fashion icon.
Now 62, she was the face of makeup brand Lancome for 14 years, and some of her iconic film roles include turns in Blue Velvet (1986) by David Lynch (whom she dated from 1986 to 1991) and The Saddest Music In The World (2003) by Canadian director Guy Maddin.
Recent roles included a comedic turn on 30 Rock, where she played Alec Baldwin’s character Jack Donaghy’s ex-wife.
Rossellini was the president of the jury at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival in 2011. She was recently named the president of the jury for the “Un Certain Regard” section of the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, which highlights the works of young and innovative filmmakers.
But Green Porno remains the work that most people talk to her about nowadays.
When asked what she thought we could learn about ourselves through animal life, Rossellini said, “Not much, but just that there are many ways of reproducing, that there are many creatures, and they adapt to this planet in different ways. One of the things that could’ve made a long series is that homosexuality was also common among animals, and it isn’t something that was very discussed.
“Often people who are against homosexuality attribute it to upbringing or culture and say that in nature it doesn’t exist. But it does exist in nature and we don’t really know why it exists. But maybe it’s simply that we have attributed the act of sex just for reproduction but that it also has other goals — social goals, hierarchy, bonding, family — like it is for us, really. None of us only mate or make love to reproduce.”
Rossellini explained funding for Green Porno had recently dried up and that Sundance hadn’t renewed the series for a fourth season, which Rossellini said would have probably focused on intelligence.
“That happens to every filmmaker,” she said of the funding issue.
“I thought if I did another season I would do it on intelligence or communication,” she added. “Because that’s a thing a lot of people ask: Do they think? Do they feel? People say, ‘I have a feeling my dog understands me. Am I delusional?’ That’s much more confusing than sex.”