Interview with Louie Psihoyos - Director of the film "The Cove"

Written by Alexandra Triantafillopoulos and Seema Arora

Saturday, 15 August 2009 19:00

Award winning Director Louie Psihoyos has been touring the world with his thought provoking documentary entitled "The Cove." For those of you who are unaware of the terrible dangers faced by dolphins, this film will open your eyes and give you an inside look into the root causes of this problem.

Mr. Psihoyos was in Montreal recently and shared some of his experiences with us about this project.

Orcasound: Tell us about your background.

Louie: I started as a still photographer. I wanted to work for National Geographic since I was 6 years old and became the first photographer they hired in 11 years. I did some environmental stories such as a cover story on trash back in April 1983. I was into garbage way before it was popular. I also did cover stories that were very difficult to shoot, like stories on sleep, dreams, and the sense of smell. When I started working there, the managing editor Bill Garret said my pictures are really sophisticated. Maybe too sophisticated for our readership and they really liked them. I said, "What do you mean by that?" He said "We have the highest demographic of any popular magazine in the world and it's only a 12 grade readership." I was just out of college so I said let's take them to college. The point of journalism is to raise the level of discussion, not to give people what they want, not to give yourself what you want. If your expectations are low, they stay low. That story I was referring to (sense of smell) became the most popular story in the magazine's history ever shot by a single photographer. To me, that is why I did a story like "The Cove". I wanted to make it interesting, provocative, to be complex, and have the story all woven together into one little package at the end.

Orcasound: So you were able to bring your experience as a photographer and create wonderful imagery in your film?

Louie: I think "The Cove" is one of the most beautiful underwater documentaries ever made. I think it is also one of the most devastating. People think they can't handle the slaughter scenes, but it's a Disney version of what goes on back there. With the PG 13 rating, a child can see this movie in the States. It is very gentle compared to what it was. We crafted it like an Alfred Hitchcock movie. We used similar techniques. I spent 6 months trying to get 40 hours of footage into 2 minutes that people can watch, that I would want to watch, that is not repulsive. I have watched this movie over a hundred times since Sundance and I still like to go 20 minutes before the end to see people's reaction. It's a straight-ahead staring, they are riveted to the screen.

Orcasound: What are some of the comments you have received from audiences at film festivals?

Louie: I was at the Melbourne film festival last week and there was a guy across from me and I asked him what kind of movies he makes and he said horror movies. I told him "Oh you do horror films? I hate horror films." He said "What kind of films do you do?" I started to describe what "The Cove" was and he said "Sounds like a horror film." I responded by saying, "That's true but what I don't like about horror films is that the violence is gratuitous." The film has been winning audience awards all over the world, from Sidney, Sundance, Seattle, Nantucket, Maui, to Traverse City (Michael Moore's Grand Jury festival award.) It's an audience favorite. People love the movie and it's not because of the violence. When people told me about "Slumdog Millionaire," I thought I would never see the movie because it's about kids being abused in the slums of Bombay, but I saw it 4 times. Thank God they did it because it's a people movie. "The Cove" is a people movie. We don't have a "Terminator: Salvation Day" popcorn movie. This movie is way more important than that. By the way, Pierce Brosnan wrote me this morning. He is a lover of dolphins and whales and he said "I pretend to be a spy in movies, but you're a real spy, you made an important movie."

Orcasound: So "The Cove" has something for everyone, it has a much more universal message.

Louie: "The Cove" is a microcosm of what we are doing to the oceans. It's an adventure story, a tale of espionage. From the second this film opens, you know you are not going to see a normal documentary. The first thing I say is that we tried to do the film legally. You will see a crime and you will see images that will burn your retinas but it will be for a good reason. What I don't like about horror movie is that you are taken on a thrill ride and come back to the same place. With this movie you start with a thrill ride and you end up in a different place.

Orcasound: So when you talk about legalities, what are some of the challenges you encountered while filming?

Louie: We had to make a film in the middle of the night with the police on our tail. It is difficult enough to make a movie in the best of conditions; we were making a movie in the worst of conditions. If we got into the Cove people would want to kill us. If we had the police on our tail they would want to arrest us and we had to mask it in the dark. So I set up an Ocean's Eleven style team. When Rick O'Barry, the trainer of "Flipper" showed me the Cove, he said it would take a Navy Seal or better to get in there. I said I don't know about the Navy Seal, but I can get Mandy-Rae Cruickshank and Kirk Krack both from Vancouver, Canada. Mandy-Rae is a world champion free diver, trained by her husband Kirk. She can go down to 88 metres in one breath and back up on her own power. She can also hold her breath for 6 and a half minutes. They both went into the Cove and set up underwater cameras and hydrophones. Another Canadian (former member of the Canadian Air Force) Simon Hutchins created an unmanned drone with a gyrostabilized camera below it and a blimp with a high definition camera. Industrial Light and Magic (Kerner Optical from the George Lucas Organization) made 3D rocks to hide high definition cameras and microphones. We had my right hand man Charles Hambelton who went to work with Pirates of the Caribbean. I told Gorbinsky, I need a real pirate to come back to work for me. He came up with the idea to set of thermal cameras so we could see the movements of the guards. Originally we were not going to have ourselves in movie, but what happened is that we had set this thermal camera to take night pictures. It was not made for the military originally, it was made for recording so we thought if we made a video, this would be a great recording of a photograph so we did that and then the police were coming and you have all the recording of the chatter. They did not find us but it was very exciting and we got back to the studio the writer/editor said this has got to be the movie. I said no but they drove me kicking and screaming into my own movie. I think because we married the making of the film with it, it doesn't feel like a documentary anymore. It feels like at thriller.

Orcasound: So "The Cove" also goes to show you what one person can accomplish and raising the bar.

Louie: Thank you. It is a feel good film and not a movie about slaughter. The movie proves that one man can make a difference and a like minded team can change the world. You see the concrete results at the end of the movie. The person that gave me the money to put this movie together is Jim Clark. He started Silicon Graphics, Netscape etc.. He is a billionaire but a very good friend of mine. He said, " Just make a difference." I never lost sight of what he entrusted me to do. I thought I could be delusional because it was my first film. I wish I had started this 20 years ago.

Orcasound: You also said this is a universal problem and it's not just a movie about Japan. Are the Japanese people aware of what is going on?

Louie: This film is not an indictment against the Japanese people. They don't even know what is going on. It's the Japanese government that is complicit. The most toxic non-radioactive element in the world is mercury and there is nothing living that has more mercury than a dolphin. And if you go to the Japanese Health and Welfare site right now, the first they advise you is that the mercury in a bottle nosed dolphin is enough in one dose to harm a baby of a pregnant woman. So this film is not an animal rights film. We are exposing an inhumanity to man issue. By allowing this meat to be sold as nutritional, the Japanese government is doing a great disservice by allowing this meat to be consumed by the public, also a disservice to the dolphins as well. I think once the Japanese people find out about this, they will be horrified. Cows and pigs are pretty smart too, but the point is that if this was happening in some other culture..I don't care who it is...Japanese, Greeks, Canadians ... I would want them to wake me up. I gave this information to the Japanese ambassador, minister of health, head of IWC last year. They had a chance to do the right thing and they ignored it. They could have taken the air out of this movie. I went down to the IWC to talk to the minister and thought there is no way anyone is going to see this small CD I have. So I get on a plane from Dallas to Santiago, Chile and I was one of the last people to get on. The seats were completely full, but there was one seat left. One person comes to sit next to me and he is the head of oceanic fisheries, I said to myself, if there is a God, he has a great sense of humor. So for 10 hours I had this guy as a captive audience. I showed him the video; I showed him the preview of the movie. I said this movie is coming out in a year, you have a chance to add something in the epilogue that you are doing the right thing. He saw the toxic levels of mercury, he said "I know about that but I am in charge of food security not food safety." So I talked to the person in charge of food and safety and he said if they followed the recommendations they will probably be fined. The dolphins can have 5 to 50,000 levels of mercury, how much of that poison is safe when you do not know what it is?

Orcasound: As a first time director how did it feel at Sundance when you won the awards?

Louie: First of all I thought I was delusional, wasting a lot of money, wasting a lot of my time. As a first time director when I got to Sundance it was 4 in the morning, I had the final film and everyone in the room was more experienced than me and there is a guy who has done many films, Fisher Stevens. He has done 22 films, the guy that did Sicko edited our movie, I said you think we have a great movie, he said prepare yourself for a disaster. I said I have prepared myself for 4 years of disaster or success. We had 8 public screenings at Sundance and 8 standing ovations. You know the first time I saw it; tears were coming down my face. The first one I thought that's an anomaly, the second time I was talking to someone in the hallway at the library screening, I though there were other films, because I could hear people crying and I thought the movie they were watching must be a tear jerker film. Then I find out it's my film, people are cheering, the waves of emotions. You can't transfer emotion from one person to the next, film is the most powerful medium.