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I haven’t eaten meat since like 1983. One book I remember reading, Animal Liberation
by Peter Singer, I think that is an influential book for a lot of people. You think a certain
way, and then you read someone and you’re like, that kind of coalesces what I am unable
to articulate. I think Fast Food Nation the book, is probably that for a whole ‘nother
generation. Fast food is cheap, but you pay later. In a way our society is- you don’t
just pay later, you pay in advance too. We’re subsidizing so much of the industry. The book,
Fast Food Nation, I think, is a brilliant piece of nonfiction that takes you into the
world, gives you the history of that industry and everything. But to do a movie about something,
it really takes you there. I knew I would get to meet people, I knew I would actually
be in the desert, crossing with workers. I’d be in slaughterhouses, I’d be in fast food
restaurants. I think I really wanted that as a life experience too. There’s some people
that don’t wanna know what’s behind everything, people who just accept the policy and go “Okay,
I don’t wanna think too much about it. I’m sure it’s right.” The idealist in my thinks,
people do care or they just don’t know. Like Fast Food Nation, it was important for
me to just say, okay, there it is. If it makes people feel uncomfortable or have to confront
that in themselves, good! If it can get people to think that their consumer dollar choices
and their life choices actually do make a difference. Your individual actions in this
world do count, you know, you’re kinda made to think what you do isn’t important. It’s
up to everybody to say, you know what, I like life. I wanna live longer, I want my kids
to be healthy. I want people I care about to be healthy, I want, you know, our water
to be clean, less cruelty in the world. If you can treat animals so systematically cruel,
then where’s the leap to humans? To the bosses way up the food chain? Do they seem
any different? No. You’re on the line of work on one side of meat but you’re meat
too. The slaughterhouse thing was probably the most intense thing. It was interesting
to feel my own psyche having to battle what I was around. And strangely trying to work
around, the most difficult- we only had a few hours, but some of the most difficult
thing I’ve ever done. But afterwards, I called up Eric [inaudible] And I said, “I
did something today, and I feel like, for the first time, it was something beyond me,
like I shot some stuff that no one ever really gets in movies, that you can’t really get
access to. I feel like a war correspondent who just flashed a picture of something horrific
behind enemy lines, or what I consider. And everything we did in that slaughterhouse environment,
I mean the blood that kinda gets splattered on, that’s real. That was her, that’s
a real tear. That was kinda live; it was weird like putting actors in situations, just right
there, side by side with the workers. When it was over, people took off their hard hats
and we were all out in this parking lot and a lot of them were just like “Whew, I’ll
never eat meat again.” Cause we were going from that into lunch. It’s a good time to
be a vegetarian, actually, so many good alternatives out there. You don’t have to go through
this, like, chain of horror to get to that one patty that’s certainly not good for
you.