WEBVTT - Josh Fox 0:00:08.640 --> 0:00:11.840 This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the thing. 0:00:16.440 --> 0:00:18.919 My guest, Josh Fox didn't set out to be an 0:00:18.960 --> 0:00:23.079 Oscar nominated documentary filmmaker. His family happens to own a 0:00:23.120 --> 0:00:27.160 house in Milenville, Pennsylvania, in the Upper Delaware Valley. He 0:00:27.200 --> 0:00:30.160 tells about what happened there in his film The house 0:00:30.200 --> 0:00:33.640 was built in two when I was born. My parents 0:00:33.680 --> 0:00:35.680 and their hippie friends built it, and my family and 0:00:35.720 --> 0:00:38.519 my brothers and sisters and I grew pretty much the 0:00:38.520 --> 0:00:43.120 same way I did, little by little. There's a stream 0:00:43.159 --> 0:00:46.720 that runs down the property connects to the Delaware River. 0:00:47.560 --> 0:00:49.720 I've been learning more and more about how water is 0:00:49.760 --> 0:00:53.760 all connected. In nineteen that house happens to sit above 0:00:53.760 --> 0:00:58.480 a gigantic deposit of sedimentary rock known as the Marcellus Shale. 0:00:59.160 --> 0:01:02.400 In that shale are tiny bubbles of natural gas, And 0:01:02.520 --> 0:01:06.160 one day a natural gas company offered Josh's family a 0:01:06.160 --> 0:01:09.400 lot of money in exchange for drilling rights, like at 0:01:09.480 --> 0:01:12.120 least my land to this company, and I would receive 0:01:12.160 --> 0:01:15.520 a signing bonus of four thousand, seven hundred and fifty 0:01:15.560 --> 0:01:19.679 dollars an acre, having nineteen point five acres. That was 0:01:19.720 --> 0:01:22.800 nearly a hundred thousand dollars right there in my hand. 0:01:23.920 --> 0:01:27.600 Could it be that easy? Josh Fox's film gas Land 0:01:28.000 --> 0:01:32.280 is about the dangers of hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, 0:01:32.520 --> 0:01:37.600 a process of extracting natural gas from rock using pressure, water, sand, 0:01:37.920 --> 0:01:43.000 and chemicals. The environmental impacts of fracking can include contamination 0:01:43.040 --> 0:01:47.080 of groundwater, depletion of fresh water, and risks to air quality, 0:01:47.440 --> 0:01:50.480 all of which have long term effects on human health. 0:01:51.240 --> 0:01:54.200 Gas Land introduces us to people whose daily lives have 0:01:54.280 --> 0:01:57.680 been impacted by fracking, people like Pat Farnelli, who says 0:01:57.720 --> 0:02:00.360 there were days when four of her kids were out 0:02:00.400 --> 0:02:03.400 sick from school. For Nellie takes a stand for her 0:02:03.400 --> 0:02:06.600 community of Dimmock, Pennsylvania, and the pressure is put on 0:02:06.640 --> 0:02:10.239 it by companies like cabin Oil and Gas. Everywhere there's 0:02:10.240 --> 0:02:12.920 a gap in the trees, there's a well, there's like 0:02:13.000 --> 0:02:17.760 ten Sometimes it bubbles and hisses when it comes out. 0:02:17.880 --> 0:02:22.320 It's highly recommended. I won't drink it. When Cabot and 0:02:22.360 --> 0:02:23.960 them came in to get the weather and they were 0:02:23.960 --> 0:02:25.440 telling me it was like hey to drink I said, well, here, 0:02:25.440 --> 0:02:27.120 go ahead and drink it. And they wouldn't drink it. 0:02:27.760 --> 0:02:31.079 In the interest of full disclosure. I've met Josh Fox before, 0:02:31.400 --> 0:02:34.399 and I'm a supporter of the anti fracking movement. We've 0:02:34.440 --> 0:02:38.280 appeared on panels together. In his first film, gas Land, 0:02:38.680 --> 0:02:42.600 Fox explored the long term damage posed by fracking. In 0:02:42.680 --> 0:02:46.519 Gasland Part two, he details the fracking industry's attempts to 0:02:46.760 --> 0:02:50.480 undermine the growing anti fracking movement. Josh Fox is one 0:02:50.520 --> 0:02:53.480 of the most prominent public critics of fracking, though his 0:02:53.520 --> 0:02:56.400 background may come as a bit of a surprise. I 0:02:56.400 --> 0:03:01.680 had founded a company in Thailand called the International Wild Company. 0:03:01.919 --> 0:03:04.760 I was taken there for an avant garde theater festival 0:03:04.840 --> 0:03:07.680 right after I graduated at college, and then split with 0:03:07.720 --> 0:03:11.040 this American company. And I developed this relationship with actors 0:03:11.040 --> 0:03:13.280 in Thailand that I was fascinated with, and we made 0:03:13.320 --> 0:03:16.960 a play and that play ended up touring all over 0:03:17.000 --> 0:03:19.040 the country. And I said, let's keep this going and 0:03:19.080 --> 0:03:23.440 we'll develop international exchange between artists from all these different countries. 0:03:23.480 --> 0:03:27.400 And it actually worked. I was doing projects, working with actors, 0:03:27.760 --> 0:03:30.320 learning about their lives in different countries and and I 0:03:30.360 --> 0:03:32.600 did a lot of work in Southeast Asia and Japan 0:03:32.720 --> 0:03:36.920 and India and Indonesia, Germany, France, and I was making 0:03:37.320 --> 0:03:40.160 new plays based on people's lives. So in a way, 0:03:40.200 --> 0:03:44.000 it was a documentary type of undertaking. Where'd you grow 0:03:44.080 --> 0:03:47.120 up in Pennsylvania and then later in New York City? 0:03:47.520 --> 0:03:49.480 So I have your family in the business, your mother 0:03:49.520 --> 0:03:53.320 and father, you know, Um, my father's child Holocaust survivors. 0:03:53.480 --> 0:03:55.480 Um went to City College when it was free, so 0:03:55.560 --> 0:04:01.800 did my mom. Um. They're both shrinks, of course they are. 0:04:02.680 --> 0:04:05.480 Of course they are in different ways. My dad deals 0:04:05.520 --> 0:04:08.760 with developmental psychology for for kids, and my mother does 0:04:09.120 --> 0:04:11.880 had a private practice and then started to work with 0:04:12.520 --> 0:04:14.600 You're spending your life pulling the covers on other people 0:04:14.600 --> 0:04:19.719 because your parents were shrinks. Well, um, and there you know, 0:04:20.000 --> 0:04:25.880 both crazy. Um so, but they're wonderful, well, wonderful, intellectual, 0:04:26.120 --> 0:04:30.039 caring people who built this house in the year that 0:04:30.080 --> 0:04:32.560 I was born. What was their connection to that area? 0:04:32.839 --> 0:04:35.480 You know, at some point in time in the past. 0:04:35.600 --> 0:04:37.719 My dad was introduced to that area because he's a 0:04:37.760 --> 0:04:41.680 folk singer and his heroes were Woody Guthrie and Pete 0:04:41.680 --> 0:04:44.720 Seeger and Dave van Wronk. You know, he was playing 0:04:44.760 --> 0:04:48.080 I think that this sort of Jewish summer camp circuit 0:04:48.720 --> 0:04:51.839 and my mother. Seriously, there are pictures of him, you know, 0:04:51.880 --> 0:04:54.240 and they're all those summer camps right there, so he 0:04:54.320 --> 0:04:58.720 knew the area. My mother, uh is the flip side 0:04:58.839 --> 0:05:01.560 from an Italian imigrant family. She was born in New 0:05:01.640 --> 0:05:05.120 York City. My dad was born in Kazakhstan when his 0:05:05.200 --> 0:05:08.240 family was fleeing Poland and fleeing the Nazis, and he 0:05:08.279 --> 0:05:11.800 was sort of born on the road, eventually landed in Pittsburgh, 0:05:11.800 --> 0:05:14.200 and I moved from Pittsburgh to I think the Bronx. 0:05:15.880 --> 0:05:19.200 I have two younger siblings, my brother Alex, who lives 0:05:19.200 --> 0:05:21.960 in Los Angeles, and my sister Oriana, who lives in 0:05:21.960 --> 0:05:24.760 London or either of them in the My my brothers 0:05:24.800 --> 0:05:27.480 and actress a wonderful actor, and my sister is a 0:05:27.560 --> 0:05:31.680 visual artist and painter and filmmaker who does these incredible 0:05:31.800 --> 0:05:35.039 um pieces film pieces about her life and about the 0:05:35.080 --> 0:05:38.000 history of feminist art. And so yeah, we were we 0:05:38.040 --> 0:05:39.880 all have a chip on our shoulder, I think because 0:05:39.880 --> 0:05:42.279 we had I won't go into it so specifically, but 0:05:42.320 --> 0:05:45.320 we did have a rough time during childhood because the 0:05:45.440 --> 0:05:48.159 family did break apart and things happen, but that the 0:05:48.240 --> 0:05:52.480 house um has been really the only consistent home for 0:05:52.600 --> 0:05:54.240 my whole life, and I always thought of it as 0:05:54.279 --> 0:05:56.760 sort of my twin because it was born at the 0:05:56.800 --> 0:05:59.640 same time. And every time I knew I had a 0:05:59.680 --> 0:06:02.200 brother or sister, they would add another room. And it 0:06:02.279 --> 0:06:03.600 was to sort of make it up as you go 0:06:03.640 --> 0:06:05.680 along where you go to high school. I went to 0:06:05.760 --> 0:06:08.920 high school actually write down the block from here, um 0:06:09.000 --> 0:06:12.119 Columbia Prep. During that time that you were in high school, 0:06:12.120 --> 0:06:14.440 you were Columbia Prep. Was it theater and film and 0:06:14.560 --> 0:06:18.320 media and things like them. I had been in public school, 0:06:18.520 --> 0:06:20.960 and I was doing really poorly. I was getting into 0:06:20.960 --> 0:06:24.480 fights every day and kind of failing, and my family 0:06:24.560 --> 0:06:27.280 was at a really rough moment when my parents were 0:06:27.440 --> 0:06:29.960 broken up and everybody was kind of losing their minds. 0:06:30.560 --> 0:06:32.240 I was in a I was in a public school 0:06:32.320 --> 0:06:34.800 called Wagner Junior High School, where there was two thousand 0:06:35.560 --> 0:06:37.320 kids and they were all between seventh and eighth and 0:06:37.400 --> 0:06:39.880 ninth grade. There was the option there to go to 0:06:39.960 --> 0:06:42.479 this private school, and when I showed up there, I 0:06:42.600 --> 0:06:45.320 was like, well, what happens here? You know? I was 0:06:45.360 --> 0:06:48.119 kind of amazed that they were actually teachers who were 0:06:48.600 --> 0:06:50.920 caring and wanted to educate me, and I ate it 0:06:51.000 --> 0:06:54.719 up like crazy. I took more history classes than any 0:06:54.760 --> 0:06:58.719 person in that school had ever taken. I became very, 0:06:58.839 --> 0:07:02.240 very active in learning about the world, and that was 0:07:02.279 --> 0:07:05.200 an amazing, lucky thing to have happened, the education that 0:07:05.240 --> 0:07:08.120 I received there and in college. When you went to Colombia, No. 0:07:08.240 --> 0:07:11.200 I went to Oberlin College and in Oberland, Ohio for 0:07:11.280 --> 0:07:14.440 two years, and I couldn't stand the weather. I mean, 0:07:14.480 --> 0:07:19.400 it's just great. Uh theater. I went for theater um 0:07:19.600 --> 0:07:23.120 and I spent I've always had this competing interest in 0:07:23.160 --> 0:07:26.200 theater and music um. I played drums in a band 0:07:26.240 --> 0:07:29.320 that was in CBGB's played Scott in New York City, 0:07:29.560 --> 0:07:30.880 and I always didn't know if I was going to 0:07:30.960 --> 0:07:33.560 do music. I was going to do theater. At that time, 0:07:33.560 --> 0:07:37.520 I was acting. So I went to Oberlin. My stepbrother, 0:07:37.560 --> 0:07:39.840 who was a year ahead of me in school, had 0:07:39.840 --> 0:07:41.920 also gone to Oberlin, and I visited him for a 0:07:41.960 --> 0:07:44.880 weekend and I just saw this incredible place and I 0:07:44.920 --> 0:07:47.520 fell in love with it. But then realized, you know 0:07:47.560 --> 0:07:50.200 that the sun doesn't come out in Northeast Ohio between 0:07:50.240 --> 0:07:53.560 October and May. I was done with book learning for 0:07:53.600 --> 0:07:56.520 a while. I left to do something else. I wanted 0:07:56.560 --> 0:07:59.160 to be in the theater, and to me, the theater 0:07:59.840 --> 0:08:02.920 was always the place where you could explore the ideas 0:08:02.960 --> 0:08:05.360 of justice. I mean, there's really two kinds of place. 0:08:05.400 --> 0:08:07.360 There's comedy and they're about love, and there's drama and 0:08:07.360 --> 0:08:11.360 that's about justice. And specifically, what I learned was that, 0:08:11.400 --> 0:08:13.880 you know, there is no great play that isn't about 0:08:13.920 --> 0:08:16.920 specifically the politics of its time, and from Macbeth to 0:08:17.160 --> 0:08:20.160 Death of a Salesman, they're always concerned with this particular 0:08:20.200 --> 0:08:22.680 political situation at that moment if you go back and 0:08:22.720 --> 0:08:26.600 research them. So to me, there was something in working 0:08:26.600 --> 0:08:29.440 in drama that was always relevant about this whatever was 0:08:29.440 --> 0:08:31.640 happening right now. And it would be very, very frustrated 0:08:31.760 --> 0:08:35.320 going to the theater seeing things that weren't relevant, seeing 0:08:35.320 --> 0:08:39.040 things that weren't about um, the collision of the human 0:08:39.320 --> 0:08:44.360 experience and the human spirit with the moment right now. 0:08:44.520 --> 0:08:46.760 Like it felt like in the theater, what kinds of 0:08:46.800 --> 0:08:49.480 things did you do initially that that spoke about? Well? 0:08:49.520 --> 0:08:52.360 I did a play called Hurley Burley by David Rabe. 0:08:52.920 --> 0:08:56.280 This was the first second player ever directed. The first 0:08:56.280 --> 0:08:59.679 one was Glass Menagerie UM by Tennessee Williams and we 0:08:59.800 --> 0:09:03.440 atually we ended up, weirdly enough, premiering it on the 0:09:03.520 --> 0:09:07.720 same night as the LA riots started, and we had 0:09:07.760 --> 0:09:11.880 been inhabiting this sort of depraved Los Angeles world in Ohio, 0:09:12.200 --> 0:09:13.880 and then all of a sudden, LA was everywhere on 0:09:13.920 --> 0:09:16.120 the news, and it was a moment in time when 0:09:16.120 --> 0:09:18.640 we were performing this plane all these it was sold 0:09:18.679 --> 0:09:20.679 out like this, and everybody came in and we were 0:09:20.800 --> 0:09:24.000 seeing all these incredibly violent images and it wasn't that 0:09:24.040 --> 0:09:26.480 they had anything to do with the LA riots, but 0:09:26.520 --> 0:09:29.680 it was this feeling that you got that you could 0:09:29.720 --> 0:09:33.120 commune with some sensibility of culture that was in the air. 0:09:33.600 --> 0:09:35.360 And I think that made me aware of the power 0:09:35.440 --> 0:09:38.160 of what can happen when everyone's in one room together 0:09:38.400 --> 0:09:41.520 watching something that is reflective of what's happening right now. 0:09:42.320 --> 0:09:45.880 And then when did you think that picking up a 0:09:45.920 --> 0:09:50.280 camera and making a film was the next inevitable step 0:09:50.320 --> 0:09:53.640 for you? Well, in the theater, the fingers goes away. 0:09:53.720 --> 0:09:56.800 So I would obsessively videotape all my plays and try 0:09:56.840 --> 0:09:58.040 to do it in a way that you can actually 0:09:58.080 --> 0:10:00.400 watch it, and an adviser just agree with you, I 0:10:00.440 --> 0:10:03.080 don't think it necessarily goes away. Well, no, it never 0:10:03.120 --> 0:10:05.480 goes away. Well in the sense that I have people 0:10:05.520 --> 0:10:07.640 who their memories of some of the theater they've seen 0:10:07.800 --> 0:10:09.960 are greater than the films they've seen. Well, I think 0:10:10.040 --> 0:10:12.320 that the impact is less wide, but it's more deep. 0:10:12.480 --> 0:10:15.839 It's not memorialized, but it's but people do remember. Well, 0:10:15.840 --> 0:10:18.120 when you have to apply for grants to make a living, 0:10:19.720 --> 0:10:22.959 you gotta tape your place. So I got really fascinated 0:10:23.000 --> 0:10:25.040 with how this could work with cameras, and I did 0:10:25.720 --> 0:10:27.880 have a video camera. And a friend of mine named 0:10:27.880 --> 0:10:30.920 Morgan Jenness, who was Joe Papp's literary advisor for ten 0:10:31.000 --> 0:10:33.000 years at the Public Theater, she saw me up there 0:10:33.040 --> 0:10:34.520 and she goes, do you everything about making a movie? 0:10:35.200 --> 0:10:38.559 And I said, UM, yeah, but not really. It's too complicated, 0:10:38.559 --> 0:10:40.000 like you have to plan everything, and I don't like 0:10:40.080 --> 0:10:43.040 planning things difficult. I don't like planning every shot. Like 0:10:43.280 --> 0:10:45.600 from making a play, I'm in the room with new people, 0:10:45.679 --> 0:10:47.800 a certain kind of person to do that job. Well, 0:10:48.320 --> 0:10:50.240 there are other ways to make movies, but I didn't 0:10:50.240 --> 0:10:53.040 know that they existed. You know. John Cassavetti's used to 0:10:53.040 --> 0:10:54.840 just get his actors together with the script and then 0:10:54.840 --> 0:10:56.360 they would go and then they would improvise, and it 0:10:56.360 --> 0:10:58.280 would cut, and it would improvise. There was way, there 0:10:58.280 --> 0:11:00.400 are other ways. Mike Lead does the same thing, that 0:11:00.440 --> 0:11:04.720 there's an improvisational backdrop to their working process. But then 0:11:04.760 --> 0:11:07.160 she said, well, why don't you propose something to Jim McKay, 0:11:07.240 --> 0:11:09.480 who's a friend of mine who's a great filmmaker, and 0:11:09.520 --> 0:11:12.120 his partner Michael Stipe. And I'm proposed to make a 0:11:12.160 --> 0:11:15.200 film of a play that I directed where I didn't 0:11:15.240 --> 0:11:17.360 know them, she knew them. How old were you then? 0:11:18.000 --> 0:11:23.920 That was when I was thirty three or something, um, 0:11:24.160 --> 0:11:27.760 thirty two. Uh So it's pretty much theater acting up 0:11:27.800 --> 0:11:31.920 until that. In music, I was the director. I was stopped. 0:11:32.120 --> 0:11:37.200 I stopped acting. Actors are very particular people who never 0:11:37.200 --> 0:11:39.440 stopped being on fire, if you know what I mean. 0:11:39.679 --> 0:11:42.760 I just wanted to see and develop a vision of 0:11:42.800 --> 0:11:46.600 some kind of work. So I've developed a film called 0:11:46.640 --> 0:11:49.720 Memorial Day because I had this insane experience on a 0:11:49.760 --> 0:11:53.400 Memorial Day weekend in Ocean City, Maryland. Ocean City, Maryland 0:11:53.440 --> 0:11:56.720 being like a beach town where everyone just goes mad 0:11:56.760 --> 0:11:59.000 on this spring break or more of day weekend, and 0:11:59.040 --> 0:12:02.480 I was there Memorial Day weekend, two thousand four, four 0:12:02.520 --> 0:12:06.440 weeks after the Abu Grabe pictures came out in the media. 0:12:06.600 --> 0:12:08.440 And this is a holiday that is supposed to be 0:12:08.440 --> 0:12:12.400 about the victims of war, the costs of war are soldiers, 0:12:12.440 --> 0:12:15.840 and also the honor. Yeah, but I'm sitting here watching 0:12:15.880 --> 0:12:19.160 barbecues and you know, wet t shirt contests and people 0:12:19.280 --> 0:12:23.560 vomiting on the beach and weird, incredibly, what the troops 0:12:23.559 --> 0:12:26.240 died for. I was just in this weird place of 0:12:26.880 --> 0:12:30.240 being so obsessed with these photographs of sexualized torture for 0:12:30.400 --> 0:12:33.840 the camera, and then watching this girl's gone wild thing 0:12:33.960 --> 0:12:36.840 happening in Ocean City, where and men, anyone who whipped 0:12:36.840 --> 0:12:38.720 out a camera they would do the most lewd and 0:12:38.800 --> 0:12:41.600 disgusting thing that they possibly could. And I thought, what, 0:12:41.840 --> 0:12:44.319 this is a weird conversation happening. Nobody here is actually 0:12:44.320 --> 0:12:46.400 talking about the war. Nobody's talking about the soldiers. They're 0:12:46.400 --> 0:12:48.679 just celebrating the begning of summer. And then I found 0:12:48.720 --> 0:12:51.719 out that the folks who were the soldiers who were 0:12:51.720 --> 0:12:55.320 in Abu grab had gone to Virginia Beach the weekend 0:12:55.320 --> 0:12:58.319 before they shipped out, had done all the same photographs 0:12:58.440 --> 0:13:00.959 of just to their friends they pull their pants down. 0:13:01.040 --> 0:13:03.920 They took pictures of people naked while they were passed out. 0:13:04.400 --> 0:13:06.040 And then it was interesting because I thought, well, what 0:13:06.080 --> 0:13:09.679 we've done is we've just exported fraternity hazing to this 0:13:09.880 --> 0:13:13.760 prison in Iraq and not bothered to tell the Iraqis 0:13:13.880 --> 0:13:16.160 that this is the what what we're doing, and we're 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:18.240 hazing them. And I felt like we were in a 0:13:18.320 --> 0:13:23.560 moment of extraordinary being disconnected in America to think that 0:13:23.600 --> 0:13:26.280 we're so far away and it were dropping bombs on 0:13:26.320 --> 0:13:29.400 this entire country and we're torturing their citizens. I wanted 0:13:29.400 --> 0:13:31.320 to draw that line closer. So I ended up making 0:13:31.360 --> 0:13:35.280 this feature film with the actors from documentary. Well, some 0:13:35.360 --> 0:13:38.200 of it's sort of guerrilla style, and we did shoot 0:13:38.280 --> 0:13:41.560 one scene which is a horrifying scene of of a 0:13:41.679 --> 0:13:43.839 rape that happens in the back of a van with 0:13:43.880 --> 0:13:47.200 all these people cheering on the actors, cheering on the 0:13:47.240 --> 0:13:49.920 people in the back, and we would shoot. We shot 0:13:49.960 --> 0:13:53.240 the whole thing in traffic, and there are people who 0:13:53.240 --> 0:13:56.080 are not actors, who are cars around our van as 0:13:56.080 --> 0:13:58.280 we're heading down the main Dragon Ocean city who actually 0:13:58.320 --> 0:14:01.280 started cheering on the scene as we were filming it. 0:14:01.880 --> 0:14:04.360 And then Um. We took three or four months off 0:14:04.400 --> 0:14:06.480 and trained with friends of mine who had been in Iraq, 0:14:06.600 --> 0:14:09.680 who were soldiers, who taught us everything about, you know, 0:14:09.760 --> 0:14:12.240 close quarters battle and how to dress and all the things. 0:14:12.280 --> 0:14:15.800 And we took the actress from that crazy debautched first 0:14:16.480 --> 0:14:19.400 a couple of weeks shoot and then we made ourselves 0:14:19.440 --> 0:14:21.640 into soldiers and then took that whole thing to Iraq 0:14:21.680 --> 0:14:23.480 in the second half of the films in Iraq. This 0:14:23.560 --> 0:14:26.080 is the first film that I've made. The film it 0:14:26.160 --> 0:14:27.960 got rejected from every film festival in the face of 0:14:27.960 --> 0:14:30.120 the planet, and then it got into a film festival 0:14:30.160 --> 0:14:33.520 called Sinta Vegas in Las Vegas, which just happened to 0:14:33.520 --> 0:14:36.960 be programmed by Trevor Groth, who also programmed Sundance, and 0:14:37.000 --> 0:14:39.000 he saw this and it started crazy and we had 0:14:39.160 --> 0:14:42.120 fifty people walk out in the first half hour of 0:14:42.200 --> 0:14:45.360 the movie. It was kind of a weird situation because 0:14:45.400 --> 0:14:47.720 they thought it was a beach movie and they end 0:14:47.800 --> 0:14:51.720 up in a torture movie and it was. It was 0:14:51.800 --> 0:14:54.280 kind of Jacket was a recruitment movie. Well it was. 0:14:54.360 --> 0:14:58.000 It got compared to Full Mettle Jacket by Robert blows 0:14:58.000 --> 0:15:01.160 his head off. Yeah, but it was. It was like 0:15:01.600 --> 0:15:04.960 I we got people stormed the box office and said, 0:15:05.080 --> 0:15:07.240 yes they did, Yes they did. They store in the box. 0:15:07.280 --> 0:15:10.160 I said, We're going to burn the casino down if 0:15:10.160 --> 0:15:13.440 you show this again. This is the box office. I 0:15:13.440 --> 0:15:16.480 don't even know what they were thinking. I'm not really sure. 0:15:17.360 --> 0:15:19.320 I think that it was holding a mirror up to 0:15:19.400 --> 0:15:21.920 a very very dark time in America, and people didn't 0:15:21.920 --> 0:15:24.240 want to accept it. It's hard to make a war 0:15:24.360 --> 0:15:28.240 movie that's not glorifying war. You know, there is a 0:15:28.280 --> 0:15:31.080 formula to war movies, even if it's the most anti 0:15:31.160 --> 0:15:33.680 war war movie. So what I wanted to do is 0:15:33.680 --> 0:15:36.480 make a war movie with no battle scenes and and 0:15:36.560 --> 0:15:38.960 just deal with some of the much more difficult moral 0:15:39.080 --> 0:15:42.600 questions that faced soldiers. What's the next time we do 0:15:42.640 --> 0:15:47.840 after that? Well, then is the second film? You mega? Actually, 0:15:47.880 --> 0:15:49.960 in two thousand and eight, I was at home in 0:15:50.040 --> 0:15:54.240 Pennsylvania because I had given the next Landville, had given 0:15:54.280 --> 0:15:56.880 the next two months to Barack Obama to campaign for 0:15:56.960 --> 0:15:59.880 him in the Pennsylvania primary. I felt that strongly about 0:16:00.520 --> 0:16:03.240 um and I watched him lose the Texas and Ohio 0:16:03.320 --> 0:16:05.320 primaries in March, and I said, you know what I'm 0:16:05.360 --> 0:16:07.840 given the next eight weeks to Barack Obama. I'm going home. 0:16:08.000 --> 0:16:09.960 I'm gonna go door to door. And when I was 0:16:10.000 --> 0:16:12.640 starting to go door to door, everyone was talking about 0:16:12.640 --> 0:16:16.080 gas drilling. So in in a map of Pennsylvania near 0:16:16.480 --> 0:16:19.320 the southern tier of New York, Milandville is ware way 0:16:19.360 --> 0:16:21.400 way up north towards the border. Yeah, it's right up 0:16:21.400 --> 0:16:24.920 in the northeast corner. So uh in two thousand and eight, 0:16:25.040 --> 0:16:27.320 right at this all the same time we got the 0:16:27.400 --> 0:16:31.000 letters in the mail in about February saying don't lease 0:16:31.080 --> 0:16:33.720 your land for natural gas drilling yet, because we can 0:16:33.760 --> 0:16:35.520 get you more money. And it was the Northern Wayne 0:16:35.520 --> 0:16:38.120 Property Owners Alliance that was saying, you know, join our 0:16:38.160 --> 0:16:41.040 property Owners Alliance and we will get you the best ghastlies. 0:16:41.520 --> 0:16:47.080 And the crisis was almost immediate. Learning what was happening 0:16:47.520 --> 0:16:50.360 when I was going canvas thing for Obama. People want 0:16:50.360 --> 0:16:52.320 to talk about Obama, and they want to talk about Hillary, 0:16:52.800 --> 0:16:54.880 but they really wanted to talk about gas. What's Obomba's 0:16:54.920 --> 0:16:57.040 position on gasts? What is this stuff about fratie? What's 0:16:57.040 --> 0:16:59.280 going on with this fractic So you were you conscious 0:16:59.360 --> 0:17:02.520 of and aware of hydraulic fracturing before that you would 0:17:02.520 --> 0:17:04.760 never even heard of it, never heard You would never 0:17:05.080 --> 0:17:07.600 even heard of it until two thousand when you started 0:17:07.640 --> 0:17:10.680 the canvas and people are bringing this up their piggyback, 0:17:10.680 --> 0:17:12.640 and that onto the conversation about the election. No one 0:17:12.720 --> 0:17:14.879 has heard about it. No one knows anything about it. 0:17:14.960 --> 0:17:17.240 But but fracting have been going on for years prior 0:17:17.280 --> 0:17:19.560 to about in other parts of the country. Well, yes, 0:17:19.680 --> 0:17:21.520 and no, not that we explained that, because a lot 0:17:21.560 --> 0:17:24.160 of people intimate that fracking is a process has been 0:17:24.160 --> 0:17:26.880 going on for decades. Distinguish if you would, what they're 0:17:26.880 --> 0:17:31.120 referring to to modern fractic This is a totally different 0:17:31.160 --> 0:17:33.200 type of thing from what you you might have called 0:17:33.280 --> 0:17:36.920 fracking fifty years ago. Okay, let me go back. When 0:17:36.920 --> 0:17:40.960 you're drilling an oiler gas well, Traditionally those are vertical wells. 0:17:40.960 --> 0:17:43.320 The well just goes straight down and you're trying to 0:17:43.359 --> 0:17:46.720 tap into an anticline or a dome of natural gas 0:17:46.920 --> 0:17:49.040 or oil. It's a pool that you kind of hit 0:17:49.080 --> 0:17:51.520 and you can suck it up. When you're talking about 0:17:51.640 --> 0:17:55.199 modern hydraulic fracturing, you're into a shale play or a 0:17:55.240 --> 0:17:58.239 tight sands formation, or any of the different formations you're 0:17:58.240 --> 0:18:00.280 talking about gas or oil is trapped in side of 0:18:00.280 --> 0:18:03.359 a rock, and then you have to drill horizontally along 0:18:03.400 --> 0:18:05.760 that rock. This is kind of amazing engineering that you 0:18:05.760 --> 0:18:08.000 can drill down and then torque that drill bit and 0:18:08.040 --> 0:18:10.919 sometimes go out up to two miles right um, and 0:18:10.920 --> 0:18:13.359 in some cases now they're experimenting with even now the gas. 0:18:13.359 --> 0:18:15.520 When you say it's it's embedded in these rocks and 0:18:15.520 --> 0:18:17.960 stuff with the and and and tight sand formations that 0:18:18.400 --> 0:18:22.520 so that people understand this, does it exist like kind 0:18:22.520 --> 0:18:25.200 of like the tar sands are words bubbles and pockets 0:18:25.200 --> 0:18:27.440 and pieces of it and you blow it all out 0:18:27.480 --> 0:18:29.800 of there? Or is it in the rock? Is there 0:18:29.800 --> 0:18:32.000 are big pools of it inside of a rock? Or 0:18:32.000 --> 0:18:35.280 how does it work? It's like Dr. Sanderstein Greber describes 0:18:35.320 --> 0:18:39.639 it as a frozen champagne pop. So that you have 0:18:39.720 --> 0:18:43.120 this spreading out of all these little bubbles all across 0:18:43.160 --> 0:18:46.919 the rock formation. But you do this by injecting high 0:18:46.920 --> 0:18:50.800 pressure water silica which they call sand, but it's actually 0:18:50.840 --> 0:18:55.119 silica which is different water, silica and chemicals and a 0:18:55.160 --> 0:18:58.159 mixture into that formation at such high pressure that you 0:18:58.240 --> 0:19:01.439 fracture the rock. You cause these mini earthquakes along that 0:19:01.560 --> 0:19:04.800 either vertical or horizontal well boar, and you're doing that 0:19:04.960 --> 0:19:09.120 with enormous pressure pressure that rivals the cluster bomb in 0:19:09.160 --> 0:19:12.800 some cases. And that in that mixture of water, is 0:19:12.880 --> 0:19:17.240 this fracking fluids? And then why are those fluids necessary? Why? 0:19:17.840 --> 0:19:20.280 And again I'm not assuming you know every detail of this. 0:19:20.320 --> 0:19:22.679 I don't want to hold you up with some geo physicists. 0:19:22.680 --> 0:19:24.919 But but when they have that, they talk about the 0:19:24.960 --> 0:19:27.480 proprietary nature of their list of chemicals, and they can't 0:19:27.480 --> 0:19:29.960 tell you what's really going into the ground. Why do 0:19:30.040 --> 0:19:31.960 they need this stuff to blow through the rock? What 0:19:32.080 --> 0:19:34.639 is what is it accomplish? There are nine different chemicals 0:19:34.680 --> 0:19:37.720 that we've identified. Many of them are proprietary and we 0:19:37.760 --> 0:19:39.720 don't know enough about them. But the ones that we 0:19:39.800 --> 0:19:43.280 do know a lot about our carcinogenic, their neurotoxins, their 0:19:43.359 --> 0:19:46.640 endocrine disruptors are very bad for people At different stages 0:19:46.680 --> 0:19:48.280 of the process. You need to have that liquid be 0:19:48.320 --> 0:19:52.000 at different viscosities. So to carry the sand down, the 0:19:52.040 --> 0:19:55.000 sand is propping open those cracks, if you will, um 0:19:55.080 --> 0:19:58.000 the s The sand is getting in there so that 0:19:58.080 --> 0:20:00.679 it opens up these cracks. Because when the pressures on 0:20:00.760 --> 0:20:03.600 these fissures are open. When when they turn off those 0:20:03.640 --> 0:20:05.560 FRAC pumps, a lot of it collapses back down and 0:20:05.640 --> 0:20:07.800 all that material is trapped inside the rocks with the 0:20:07.800 --> 0:20:09.760 sand is home. Sand is a prop and it holds 0:20:09.760 --> 0:20:11.720 open the cracks. But if you notice, if you go 0:20:11.760 --> 0:20:15.879 to the beach, water doesn't carry sand. The water won't 0:20:15.880 --> 0:20:18.560 bring it down. So you have to thicken that water 0:20:18.960 --> 0:20:21.720 with a viscosi fire, and that's one kind of chemical. 0:20:21.880 --> 0:20:24.080 So you have a chemical mixture there, and then the 0:20:24.119 --> 0:20:26.399 minute you do the frac you want that condition to 0:20:26.440 --> 0:20:28.879 be very very smooth and slippery and have no friction 0:20:28.880 --> 0:20:30.919 at all, so that there are another chemical and presto 0:20:31.040 --> 0:20:33.399 change though this whole mixture becomes like you know, the 0:20:34.480 --> 0:20:36.240 it was just this was subscribed to me as like 0:20:36.280 --> 0:20:38.679 the jet engine valves on a jet engine, you have 0:20:38.720 --> 0:20:41.320