Discovery
Group blasts misleading report: A group tasked with protecting the welfare of animals in the film industry blasted as “misleading” Tuesday a report suggesting it turns a blind eye to abuse because it is too cozy with Hollywood.
The Hollywood Reporter listed alleged incidents on films including the Oscar-winning “Life of Pi,” where it said the Bengal tiger which is central to the movie reportedly nearly drowned.
Twenty-seven animals involved in making the first movie of the “Hobbit” trilogy died under its Director Peter Jackson, it said, also listing incidents where a chipmunk was squashed, a husky dog was punched, and fish died in making “Pirates of the Caribbean.”
But the American Humane Association (AHA) said the story “distorts the work and record of a respected nonprofit organization that has kept millions of beloved animal actors safe on film and television sets around the world.”
“The article is misleading and unfortunate,” AHA senior advisor Karen Rosa told AFP. “I really think that the article does not paint a very accurate picture of the program and the hard work that we do out there in the field.”
“The article paints a picture that is completely unrecognizable to us or anyone who knows (our) work,” added the group, which confers the “No Animals were Harmed” stamp listed at the end of films it has monitored. In its latest issue the Hollywood Reporter quotes an AHA monitor about an incident in which Richard Parker, the tiger which shares a shipwrecked lifeboat in Taiwanese director Ang Lee’s “Life of Pi,” allegedly nearly drowned.
In an email, the monitor recounted how the tiger “got lost trying to swim to the side,” adding: “Damn near drowned... I think this goes without saying but don’t mention it to anyone, especially the office!”
“That was unfortunate,” conceded AHA advisor Rosa, referring to the email. “We believe that she exaggerated. But the bottom line was ... the animal did not suffer any harm. “Cats are good swimmers!” she added. The industry journal also cited the case of a horse dying in the making of Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-nominated 2011 film “War Horse,” and dozens of fish washed after special effects explosions on the “Pirates of the Caribbean” set.
A Spielberg spokesman said the Hollywood Reporter story was exaggerated, but essentially accurate in terms of its description of what happened on “War Horse.” (AFP) Ed Begley Jr. wants an App: Should Ed Begley Jr. ever abandon acting and environmental activism for life as a tech developer, what kind of app might he set his mind to inventing? The answer, as it turns out, might not surprise you.
“I would like an app that measures your carbon footprint,” Begley told TheWrap at a recent press gathering for his new series “Betas,” which premiered from Amazon Studios last week. The series, whose cast also includes Jonathan C. Daly (“The Kroll Show”), Charlie Saxton, Joe Dinicol and Karan Soni, revolves around Silicon Valley — or, more precisely, BRB, a startup that’s striving to develop a social media app.
Begley plays George Murchison, an eccentric venture capitalist who, though taking a couple hits to his track record recently, still holds considerable sway in the tech world. As Begley sees it, it was a role that he was born — or at least trained heavily in his youth — to play. “I play a character who lived very large in the 60s and 70s, so for my research, I lived very large in the 60s and 70s,” Begley quipped, when asked about his research for the role.
The series is the second from Amazon Studios (following “Alpha House,” a political comedy that premiered Nov 15). While the genre of original online series is still largely untested outside of the Netflix stable, the cast regards the format as a bold new frontier — but also just another platform on which to practice the classics. (RTRS)