The Green Chain is Officially a Blockbuster
June 8th, 2010
Okay, maybe that should read AT Blockbuster… And Rogers… And our good friends at Videomatica in Vancouver and… if you’re a video store carrying the movie — which hits all the best stores June 8th — please post below and steer people your way. You can also buy the DVD from our distributor, Kinosmith, and anywhere DVDs are sold.
And remember, this disc is loaded with special features and extras — writer/director commentary; a behind the scenes doc about the loggers on our shoot; a behind the scenes doc with some of our team (including Tricia Helfer, August Schellenberg, Scott McNeil, Donna Wong-Juliani and Jillian Fargey); two music videos by Local Anxiety (aka Mark Leiren-Young and Kevin Crofton) and a whole bunch of interviews with people talking trees.
We’ve also got a special educational kit for anyone who wants to teach this in schools. Be sure to contact Kinosmith for special classroom deals!
Are we there yet? Are we there now? Now are we there? Now?
For the last few years every time there was something new to do on The Green Chain I felt like a little kid on a road trip, with a bladder full of cola. Every time we turned another corner I kept thinking we have to be there NOW. But there was always something hiding around the corner — the colour correction, the blow-up to film, the post production for the DVD, the DVD extras that needed cutting and, in the case of The Green Chain Song music video, shooting, and, of course, tweaking the interviews for the podcast series. Then there was the completely unexpected spin-off… The Green Chain book.
Sometime last millennium, a husband and wife producing team optioned my screenplay, Blueprints from Space, and told me how special the project was to them. They explained that maybe, if they were lucky, they’d get to make a half dozen movies in their lives. They explained that movies don’t happen quickly and that they will always. always take more time than you could possibly imagine. Even though the movie was never made (and I am working on changing that), that conversation always stuck with me.
The script for The Green Chain was finished in 2004 and in the six years since Tony Wosk, Donna Wong-Juliani and I said, “hey, it’s only monologues, how hard can it be to shoot” my life — all our lives — have turned upside down and inside out.
But finally… finally… with the release of the DVD on June 8th… we’re there.
The wild thing is that I know the ride isn’t really over and hopefully never will be. The movie is still showing on TMN and Movie Central. We’re still waiting to find out if the movie sells to non-pay TV stations in Canada (tell your fave TV station they need us now), it’ll be on iTunes any second now and with luck it’ll show up on (legal) DVD and on other TV stations in the US and around the world. And every few weeks I get an email from somebody who has seen the movie, heard a podcast, or read the book talking about wanting to do their part to save our forests.
But I’m thinking that my work on The Green Chain is finally done until we have the budget to digitally revise it so that Greedo shoots first, Jabba enslaves Tricia Helfer and we replace all the chainsaws with cell phones.
The thing is… because I am getting those emails on a regular basis… and because the whole plan for this movie was to spark conversations about our forests… I’m going to try to post updates and calls for help about forestry and environmental issues from some of the groups that I think are making a difference. I’ll also keep you posted on my next big green projects — and there are a few in the works…
I’ll also keep you up to speed on Local Anxiety’s new cd, Greenpieces — featuring Tree Farm (closing song from The Green Chain) and our version of the opening tune, The Green Chain song. It’s already available on iTunes and through cdbaby.com.
And if other green team members want to send me updates on their adventures I’ll try to plug those here too.
If you’d like to stay tuned to any and all updates about the movie — and our forests — please click the RSS feed option on the blog site or join The Green Chain Gang on Facebook and to stay tuned to what I’m up to beyond my green life please join my new fan page on Facebook.
Yes, we are finally there and thank you all for sharing this unforgettable — and apparently neverending — ride.
Thank you, Babz
May 10th, 2010
The Green Chain Cast & Crew Screening
And because of their active comments section, I think that’s probably a better place to read it. Here’s how it starts…
Babz Chula was not my first choice for the role of “the protester” in The Green Chain.
I wanted someone with Babz’s warmth, Babz’s politics, Babz’s signature feistiness, Babz’s sense of humour, Babz’s ability to light up a screen and Babz’s passion for small Canadian movies, but I wanted someone… old.
I needed someone old.
I’d never seen Babz look old. I couldn’t imagine her looking old.
I first met Babz when I interviewed her a lifetime ago. We met at her place in Kitsilano. I think she spent most of our visit advising me on the responsibilities she felt came with my job as a theatre critic. I recall her telling me that when she was growing up a neighbour named the Barbie doll after her. That doesn’t seem to be true, but I believed it. Wouldn’t you?
For the rest of the story, visit The Tyee...
Avatar and The Green Chain Share Earth Day DVD Launch
April 22nd, 2010
HAPPY EARTH DAY TO YOU!!!!
The green film the world has been waiting for on DVD was finally released today for pre-sale. The Green Chain DVD is now available directly from the distributor, Kinosmith.
The movie is packed full of special features — a commentary track by writer-director Mark Leiren-Young; two music videos by Local Anxiety — including their performance of the movie’s title song, two behind the scenes documentaries featuring conversations with stars Tricia Helfer, August Schellenberg, Scott McNeil and Leo Award Winner, Jillian Fargey and a dozen audio interviews with eco experts.
Order BEFORE the movie hits the stores on June 8th and you can receive a special 35% discount!
Just enter the code: “GREENCHAIN2010″ to receive the special price.
Here’s the full list of the eco-interviews — which were originally conducted by Mark Leiren-Young for his podcast series on thetyee.ca – author George Bowering; activist Betty Krawczyk; Ancient Forest Alliance founder Ken Wu; filmmaker, Velcrow Ripper; climate scientist Dr. Richard Hebda; Adbusters magazine founder Kalle Lasn; PowerUp Canada and Forest Ethics founder Tzeporah Berman; eco-authors Alan Drengson and Duncan Taylor; Forest Stewardship Council of Canada boss Antony Marcil; author of The Golden Spruce John Vaillant; former union spokesman Wade Fisher and treeplanting author Charlotte Gill.
Many of the interviews are also featured in Mark’s new book from Heritage House, The Green Chain — Nothing is Ever Clear Cut.
Green Chain a Clearcut Hit in Williams Lake
February 15th, 2010
Williams Lake, BC (back where it all started) –
The Williams Lake Tribune (Feb 12, 2010)
Gaeil Farrar photo
In the Spring of 1985 I was working as a reporter for the Williams Lake Tribune and I was sent into the bush to interview a logger about his “beautiful new machine” that he described as, “a mill on wheels.” After telling me how many jobs his danglehead processor did, and how many men it used to take to do these jobs, he blamed “the damn environmentalists” for putting his friends out of work.
That conversation was the seed for the movie, The Green Chain, and on Feb 6., 2010 — almost 25 years later — a few hundred people have shown up at the Williams Lake Community Centre on an impossibly sunny Saturday afternoon to see what kind of stories a former reporter for the Tribune is telling about them on-screen.
I wasn’t this nervous about the audience at the world premiere. I remember from my time in Williams Lake that this is a crowd that will tell you exactly what they think and they’re more than capable of interrupting the movie to heckle it if it doesn’t ring true.
Almost as soon as the lights went down, it was clear the audience was tuned into every word. They laughed at every joke the movie’s logger told — the idea of building houses “out of baby seals and whale bones” was a big hit. And there were a lot of knowing chuckles when our logger, played by Scott McNeil, made his crack about loggers with missing fingers.
Eighty-seven minutes later there was a wide-ranging forty minute Q&A session about the movie and about Williams Lake.
Part of the discussion was about how realistic the movie seemed. Some audience members thought The Green Chain was a documentary, others claimed they knew the actors were actors throughout the film, but my favourite response was from a man who worked in forestry who said he went back and forth on whether it was a doc or a drama and finally realized it didn’t matter and he was going to stop worrying about that and enjoy the ride.
I should note that this conversation has been a staple of almost every festival the movie has played and the only times I’ve seen the film when audience members haven’t ended up debating whether it was fact or fiction were at a handful of screenings where the person introducing the movie made a point of mentioning it’s fiction. On a few occasions programmers have accidentally slotted this as a documentary.
But the idea that people in the town that was a huge part of the inspiration for the unnamed town in the movie believed the characters rang true was a bigger thrill than the ecoforester who told me he liked The Green Chain better than Avatar (you think maybe the sequel can feature seven monologues about logging on Pandora?)
One woman who’d grown up in Haida Gwaii territory thanked me for getting across the anger people felt when logger Grant Hadwin chopped down “the Golden Spruce.” She told us the story of the albino raven that appeared not long after the Spruce died and how that gave people hope too – until the raven was electrocuted.
Passions ran high about the issues and the stories definitely pushed buttons. One audience member who works in a mill didn’t want to cut the tree sitter’s tree down, but he did want to shoot him with a paintball or two.
After the screening it seemed like everyone in the audience lined up to buy either a copy of The Green Chain — Nothing is Ever Clear Cut (my new book that collects both the movie’s screenplay and 22 interviews on the real life issues facing our forests) or Never Shoot a Stampede Queen – the memoir about my adventures as a cub reporter at The Tribune. But mostly they wanted to share their own stories about working in the woods, horror stories about the bark beetles gnawing their way through the Cariboo and the fights to keep the logging industry — and their community — alive.
Special thanks to the Williams Lake Film Festival – aka the tireless Krista Wiebe — for her determination to bring the movie home to Williams Lake and for her efforts to raise money to help children with learning disabilities.
The Green Chain launches Greenpieces
November 18th, 2009
The Green Chain has had all sorts of unexpected spin-offs, but perhaps the least expected and wildest bonus is the return of the satirical comedy duo, Local Anxiety.
The media and audience response to Tree Farm, the closing song in The Green Chain, was so overwhelmingly positive that Local Anxiety decided to go back to the studio to record a new all eco-comedy album.
What made the spin-off particularly surreal is that Local Anxiety is Vancouver actor, Kevin Crofton and um… me… Mark Leiren-Young, the writer and director of The Green Chain.
And our new CD, Greenpieces (named after our EarthVision Award winning TV special), will be popping off the presses next week just in time for the launch of the other super unexpected spin-off from the movie, the book The Green Chain — Nothing is Ever Clear Cut. And it’ll be up on cdBaby, iTunes and a jillion other digital download sites just in time for Christmas (we hope).
Both the CD and the book are being launched in Vancouver, November 25th at the Cafe Monmartre on Main St. The book launch is at 7:30, the CD launch and concert kick off at 9.
Since being reborn, Local Anxiety’s Green Guilt Blues has been featured as the closing song in the award-winning short film, The Green Film. And the title song of their first CD, Forgive Us We’re Canadian has been selected as a featured track on the new Songs of Canada CD – a fundraiser for The Association of Artists for A Better World – which is being released any second now! Local Anxiety also did their first live show in… a really long time.. at the celebration of SPEC’s 40th Anniversary.
Greenpieces features more than a dozen tracks including Tree Farm, Green Guilt Blues, I’m White, I’m Straight I’m Sorry, Shoot the Spotted Owl and our own version of Jim Munro’s classic, The Green Chain Song.
It also features our all-new global warming anthem Five Simple Things… and we’ll be donating proceeds from that song to PowerUp Canada.
Writing about Local Anxiety in Maclean’s Magazine Peter C. Newman once declared Local Anxiety: “A couple of new arrivals on the national scene who promise to reorient our national laughtrack… Their satire hits home because it rings true.”
Sterling News Service called Local Anxiety, “Canada’s unofficial court jesters.”
And The Georgia Straight described a Local Anxiety show as:”Like taking a ride on a runaway ice-cream truck with a demented version of the Smother’s Brothers.”
Local Anxiety has been featured on CBC Radio, National Public Radio, CBC’s Sketchcom, Canada AM, Dr. Demento and a whole bunch of fantastic TV and radio shows that are no longer on the air like, you know, Morningside…
For more on Local Anxiety (and to buy our first CD, Forgive Us We’re Canadian, until the second one is available) visit www.localanxiety.com
The Green Chain book – now in stores! Coming soon… The Green Chain Action Figure!?
November 12th, 2009
The Green Chain is now available in a bookstore near you… Nope… Not a DVD store (news on that coming soon)… bookstores… Here’s the scoop! The Green Chain — Nothing is Ever Clear Cut… a new BOOK by Mark Leiren-Young “I love trees and I love this book.” Vanessa Farquharson, author of Sleeping Naked is Green The Green Chain — Nothing is Ever Clear Cut — features 22 interviews (mostly from The Green Chain podcast series on thetyee.com) and the WGC-award-nominated screenplay for The Green Chain. The book is published by Heritage House — publishers of Mark Leiren-Young’s bestselling comic memoir, Never Shoot a Stampede Queen — A Rookie Reporter in the Cariboo.
Interviews in the book include conversations with…
Here’s what people are saying about The Green Chain — Nothing is Ever Clear Cut: Bruce Lourie (Author of Slow Death by Rubber Duck) “The Green Chain is a fascinating, compassionate and humourous account of the characters that make forest issues in BC so lively and relevant for all of us. One can’t help but be enriched by the people in this book and the stories they tell.” Joel Bakan (author of The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power) ”Through the most subtle, yet powerful, form of social commentary—letting people speak for themselves—Leiren-Young weaves an informative, and at times moving, narrative that will inspire thought and action for years to come.” Vanessa Farquharson (author of Sleeping Naked is Green) ”An enlightening and inspiring collection of stories that touches on every aspect of Canada’s forest industry.”
Here are a few easy things you can do to help spread the word (that I borrowed from the people at DeSmogblog from their promo of Climate Cover Up (which you should also be reading!): 1. REVIEW: Write a review on Chapters/Indigo and/or Amazon. Apparently this has a huge impact on online sales. If you don’t have time to write a review, click and give it a great rating! 2. BLOG: If you have a blog, write about The Green Chain. If you don’t have a blog, please send this on to any bloggers you might know who would be interested. 3. TWEET: Post a link on your Twitter account and spread the word. 4. BUY EARLY FOR CHRISTMAS OR CHANAKAH: The mall decorations are already up so somebody must have started Christmas shopping… 5. FACEBOOK: Write a status update, message your Facebook friends about the book or steer them to The Green Chain Gang! http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2432201101&ref=ts 6. Attend the book launch — and we have TWO. The Victoria book launch is Nov 24th at the Fort Street Cafe. The Vancouver book launch is Nov. 25th at the Monmartre Cafe on Main St. and also features the launch of Local Anxiety’s new CD – Greenpieces and a comedy concert featuring Local Anxiety (aka Kevin Crofton and Mark Leiren-Young). Details for both events are available on Facebook via The Green Chain Gang and will be on the blog soon or available by emailing thegreenchain@me.com
Thanks again to everyone who helped make the movie The Green Chain and who helped support the podcast series, which is how the book came to exist… |
The Green Chain Rolls on Pay TV
October 5th, 2009
Time to tune in. The Green Chain is coming to the small screen this month with the world television premiere on Movie Central October 11th. The eastern Canadian TV premiere is Oct 17th in prime time at 9 pm on TMN. Click on the links to check out our other air times.
TMN and Movie Central were instrumental in bringing The Green Chain to life.
The Green Chain is Flying High – On Air Canada
August 12th, 2009
This August and September, The Green Chain, is one of the options for in-flight entertainment on Air Canada.
We’ve had to edit out the extensive airplane chase scenes where the logger’s plane is highjacked by tree sitters… oh, right… those are already on the deleted scenes on the upcoming DVD release… so the movie is playing intact and commercial free.
So if you’re flying this fall, check out the fallers and more.
And if you’re flying on some other airline and are looking for a book to read — Never Shoot a Stampede Queen (winner of the 2009 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour) is still riding high on the BC Bestseller’s list at number six. The book includes some of the stories that inspired me to write The Green Chain.
In other news, the DVD release is coming this Fall to better dvd stores near you. Stay tuned for details.
We have all sorts of other Green Chain news to announce soon, so please subscribe to the newsletter, join our Facebook group The Green Chain Gang, become one of our MySpace buddies, set up the RSS feed for this or join me on twitter (I’m greenpieces).
Meanwhile, enjoy your summer.
Mark
The Green Chain Locks Toronto
June 13th, 2009
The Green Chain
A powerful and important movie that captures the people behind the issues facing our forests – Tzeporah Berman, cofounder ForestEthics
A smart and well-researched film that successfully sees the trees through the forest — Katherine Monk, Vancouver Sun
The Green Chain has locked down a premiere in Toronto – Friday June. 19th – at the Cineplex Odeon Carlton Cinemas at 20 Carlton St — that’s Yonge and Carlton, a slapshot away from Maple Leaf Gardens.
Mark Leiren-Young will be in Toronto doing postshow Q&A sessions (after both of the early weekend matinees and the early evening show the night of the premiere) for the award-winning feature film and we expect to have some major eco-stars joining us to talk trees after our weekend matinees, including Antony Marcil, the president and CEO of the Forest Stewardship Council of Canada (speaking with Mark on Sunday).
The Green Chain received the El Prat de Llobregrat Award at the Barcelona Film Festival, a Leo Award for Jillian Fargey’s performance and was a finalist for the best screenplay of 2008 in the Writer’s Guild of Canada’s Canadian Screenwriting Awards.
Mark (that’s me for those of you reading the blog as opposed to scoping this via Google or some other site) is arriving in Ontario in a few days to accept the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour at an awards ceremony in Orillia, Ontario, June 13th for his book Never Shoot a Stampede Queen. (Previous winners include… practically every Canadian author I’ve ever bought a book by including Mordecai Richler, Robertson Davies, Eric Nicol, Paul Quarrington, Bill Richardson, Ian Ferguson and Will Ferguson).
Stampede Queen has spent the last four weeks on the BC Bestseller’s list and the second edition arrived in stores across Canada this week. For more on Stampede Queen please visit http://www.stampedequeen.ca/
On Wed the 17th at 8 pm Mark is reading from Stampede Queen at This Ain’t the Rosedale Library alongside Michael Wex (Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods) and Laurie Channer (Godblog). Here’s the link to the event page on Facebook.
The night after The Green Chain’s Toronto premiere, The Green Film – a short comedy which Mark wrote, coproduced and performs the music for — receives it’s Toronto premiere the next night — June 20th — at the Royal Ontario Museum as an official selection of the World Wide Short Film Festival. <em>The Green Film</em> recently won a Gold Remi Award at the Houston Short Film Festival and has been accepted into a dozen festivals in France, Japan, the UK and throughout North America. For more on The Green Film visit www.thegreenfilm.com
The Green Chain stars some of Canada’s most acclaimed actors including Gemini Award winner Babz Chula, Tricia Helfer and Tahmoh Penikett from TV’s Battlestar Galactica, Genie and Gemini award winner August Schellenberg (Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee; The New World), Genie and Gemini award winner Brendan Fletcher (RV, 88 Minutes), Scott McNeil (Sleeping With Strangers) and Jillian Fargey (Mount Pleasant).
The Green Chain is distributed by Kinosmith Inc.
To join The Green Chain on Facebook click here.
To join The Green Chain on Myspace click here.
The Green Chain Goes Global For Earth Day
April 22nd, 2009
Happy Earth Day to youuuuuuuuuu!
Big news for Green Chain fans around the world (outside of Canada). The Green Chain is now available online NOW at a website near you to celebrate Earth Day!
Here’s the official scoop from our new global distributor – Cinetic Rights Management - the same group that handles indie films like Little Miss Sunshine, Napoleon Dynamite and the movies of Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock.
CINETIC OFFERS UP ECO-FRIENDLY DIGITAL FILMS FOR EARTH DAY CELEBRANTS
New York, NY (April 13, 2009) – Cinetic Rights Management (CRM), a sister company to US-based Cinetic Media which provides comprehensive film sales representation for digital media, is launching five eco-friendly films digitally in celebration of Earth Day on April 22. The films, which will become available over the next several days leading up to Earth Day, will be downloadable for a small fee on iTunes and Amazon, with the remainder available for free streaming on other sites. These films include:
THE GREEN CHAIN
The battle between loggers and environmentalists is defining, dividing and destroying communities in Canada and around the world. The Green Chain is a film about the conflicts between people on both sides of the battle who love trees — and are willing to risk anything to protect their personal visions of the forest. (will be available on Dailymotion, Hulu and YouTube)
GREASY RIDER
Picture a cross-country road trip powered by vegetable oil in a 1981 Mercedes-Benz. Greasy Rider follows the two filmmakers, Joey Carey and JJ Beck, as they meet with fellow Greasecar drivers. Features Morgan Freeman, Noam Chomsky, and Yoko Ono. (will be available on Hulu and SnagFilms)
THE UNFORESEEN
The American dream of owning a house with a white picket fence goes head-to-head with environmental sustainability in this urgent documentary. When an ambitious real estate developer sets out to transform thousands of acres of pristine hill country around Austin , Texas into a suburban development, the community fights back. In the conflict that ensues, we see in miniature the struggle between development and preservation that today plays out in cities and towns across the country. The Unforeseen is a grand meditation on the destruction of the natural world in pursuit of an often fleeting dream. Produced by Robert Redford. (will be available on iTunes, and Amazon VOD)
BLIND SPOT
Blind Spot is a documentary film that illustrates the current oil and energy crisis that our world is facing. We have put ourselves at a crossroads, which offer two paths with dire consequences: if we continue to burn fossil fuels, we will choke the life out of the planet and, if we don’t, our way of life will collapse. (will be available on SnagFilms, Dailymotion and Joost)
GARBAGE! THE REVOLUTION STARTS AT HOME
A feature documentary about how the family household has become one of the most ferocious environmental predators of our time. Concerned for the future of his new baby boy Sebastian, writer and director Andrew Nisker takes an average urban family, the McDonalds, and asks them to keep every scrap of garbage that they create for three months. He then takes them on a journey to find out where it all goes and what it’s doing to the world. (will be available on Amazon VOD).
“Cinetic wanted to celebrate Earth Day and green initiatives around the globe with a select group of titles on various platforms,” says CRM’s Matt Dentler. “We’re excited to make these films available in one of the most environmentally-friendly ways possible: online.”
Earth Day was founded by Gaylord Nelson, then a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin . April 22, 1970 marked the beginning of Earth Day as a modern environmental movement. For more information on Earth Day, go to www.earthday.net.
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About Cinetic Rights Management (CRM)
Formed in 2007 as a sister company to Cinetic Media, Cinetic Rights Management provides comprehensive film sales representation for digital media. Cinetic has become the industry gold standard through aggressive sales and innovative dealmaking. That reputation now extends to digital platforms through CRM. CRM is dedicated to assessing the universe of licensing opportunities in order to maximize revenue on behalf of filmmakers. CRM maintains up-to-the-minute relationships with and knowledge of all digital retailers, from the large portals serving the broadest audiences to the small sites serving deep niche interests. CRM provides clients with a fully-integrated digital rights management service including: pioneering sales negotiation and strategy, digital encoding logistics, committed grassroots marketing; and collated accounting and reporting. www.cineticmedia.com