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.

# # #
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

The Green Chain isn’t the only “green” movie hitting the theatres right now…

Actually, it’s not my only “Green” movie.

And I’m really hoping you can check out The Green Film now and vote for it to help a funny Canadian short film win a spot at the Tribeca Film Festival.

The Green Film was also just named as one of only three finalists for the “Slate Award” for “Best Mini Short” in the 2009 California Independent Film Festival.

When we were making The Green Chain we were determined to make a genuinely green film. We used a small crew, filmed locally and bought carbon offsets for our flights. We tried to do most of our promo online and tried to work with recycled and/or FSC approved paper stock for posters and handbills. But can you really make a green movie? That’s what The Green Film is all about.   And you can check it out right here –

https://www.delta.com/marketing/flyinmovies/index.jsp

Please check it out, and please vote for it.

We have until April 12th to score enough votes to win a slot in Tribeca.

But The Green Film is already playing all sorts of other festivals this month.
Upcoming screenings:

- Dawson City International Short Film Festival (April 12)

-  California Independent Film Festival (April 17)

-  The WorldFest in Houston (Sat April 25th)

-  The Newport Beach Film Festival (Sat April 25)

The movie has already played festival screenings at Filmstock in the United Kingdom and The Victoria Film Festival (Canada)

I wrote The Green Film and my comedy duo, Local Anxiety, wrote and performs the closing song — Green Guilt Blues. Yes, we also wrote and performed the closing song for The Green Chain – Tree Farm. This theme thing is becoming a theme with me and I’m currently in the recording studio putting the finishing touches on an all new eco-comedy CD called — what else — Greenpieces.

In other news, my book — Never Shoot a Stampede Queen – was just nominated for the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour.

Here’s a fun piece from my friend Randy Shore at The Vancouver Sun about the wild ride I’ve been on lately.

The movie was produced by Scott Renyard, line producer for The Green Chain. Scott just produced Dissolve — a documentary about drug-facilitated sexual assault being distributed by Moving Pictures Distribution. Renyard also wrote, directed and produced the feature documentary, Who Killed Miracle? which will be completed May, 2009. Renyard just started principle photography on Herring Boned, the story of two environmental groups that are trying to bring back the Pacific Herring, Surf Smelt and Sand Lance — one egg at a time.

The Green Film is directed by Andrew WIlliamson who has produced over 40 shorts and a feature film that went to Sundance.  The Green Film is his return to the directing chair in preparation for directing Our Daily Bread later this year, a romantic comedy written by Yvonne Prinz.

The Green Film stars Jonathon Young (The Englishman’s Boy, Sanctuary) and Lexa Doig (Andromeda, Stargate).
Please check out The Green Film and in the words of the great Al Capone – or maybe it was Richard Daley — “vote early, vote often.”

Mahalo

MLY

Tell the world. Okay, tell everyone you know on Vancouver Island… The Green Chain opens in Victoria tomorrow – Friday, March 20th at the Empire Capitol Cinemas or, as I always knew it when I was living here, “The Capitol 6.”

Two things hit me yesterday as I picked up our handbills at Monks on Fort Street…

1. I remembered picking up handbills and posters at Monks in 1987 when I was here as the writer of “Escape From Fantasy Gardens” the first live show ever to play the Roxy (Movie) Theatre (then the Roxy Cinegogue).

2. As I sat at a window table at Pagliacci’s putting stickers on our postcards, announcing our show’s date and times: 1, 3:40, 6:50 and 9:40 Friday, Saturday and Sunday – evening shows only Monday – Thursday – it hit me that if this is the glamourous life of a movie director, Zach Snyder must be freaking exhausted after opening Watchmen!

I’m doing Q&A sessions Friday and Saturday night after our 6:50 pm show and at all our weekend matinees.

On Sunday our 1 pm show has a very special guest doing a post show Q&A with me. Ken Wu from the Western Canada Wilderness Committee. He gave a fantastic talk after our first Sunday in Vancouver and if you’d like to find out more about his campaigns to help save our Ancient Forests — and/or sign the petition to help save our ancient forests — please click here.

I also just found out that we’ll have some very special guests at our 6:50 pm screening on Friday night — The Raging Grannies, including Alison Acker and Betty Brightwell, the authors of Off Our Rockers and Into Trouble, the story of the original Grannies and two of the inspirations for the Babz Chula character in The Green Chain!

Once again, the stakes for the movie are crazy high. If we do really well here, presumably other theaters in other cities will want to know what the fuss is about. So please, please, please tell everyone you know in Victoria to check out the movie and spread the word.

Also please invite people to attend through our Facebook Event The Green Chain opens Victoria B.C. March 20th.

And if you’d like a proper evite to send out, please zap me and I’ll send one your way.

Meanwhile, if you’re not in Vancouver or Victoria, please tell your local indie theatre operator that it’s time for them to contact our awesome distributor, Kinosmith, about bringing in the movie and tell them the writer/director/poster guy will show up to plug it — although I won’t promise to put up posters in every city.

I’ll be on CFAX radio tomorrow at 8:50 a.m. talking about the Chain with the seriously fun, Al Ferraby.

There’s also a great item on the movie in this week’s Monday Magazine and a terrific story in The Victoria News — with a picture of me and Tricia Helfer.

Onwards up the tree.

MLY

From The Georgia Straight Movies Blog, March 4, 2009

I was sure the scariest thing about making The Green Chain would be climbing 50 feet up a tree, driving on an impossibly narrow logging road on the edge of a mountain just outside of Hope (and ain’t that a shining metaphor for Canadian filmmaking), or maybe interrupting our shoot to scare off a giant black bear before it snacked on us—but nobody warned me about the dangers of opening weekend.

We open Friday, March 6th at the Fifth Avenue Cinemas. I am saying, e-mailing, Facebooking, Myspacing and Twittering these words so often this week that if you’re playing The Green Chain drinking game you’ll need a new liver by Thursday.

Since we’ve won some awards, scored a few decent reviews, and have an amazing cast (Babz Chula, Jillian Fargey, Brendan Fletcher, Tricia Helfer, Scott McNeil, Tahmoh Penikett, and August Schellenberg), theatres across the country have expressed an interest in the movie and have been expressing that interest since we played the festival circuit last year. How cool is that?

And we’ve got an amazing distributor (Kinosmith) that specializes in turning indie films like Up the Yangtze into buzzed about, money-making hits. All good, right?

So when I talked to Robin Smith, the boss at Kinosmith, and asked what the plan was after we opened in Vancouver, I was shell-shocked when he answered, “It depends what happens that first weekend.”

And that’s when I discovered the scariest part about making a movie.

All that interest from all those other theatres across Canada is contingent on how many people show up at the Fifth Avenue Cinemas between 1:30 p.m. on March 6 and 9:10 p.m. on March 8th.

If we do well over those three days, we get to stay at the Fifth Avenue for another week and, if we do well after that, then we get another week and so on. And we start to open in theatres across the country.

If we do really well over those three days, we get to open in a lot of theatres across the country.

If we do really, really well over those three days, U.S. and global distributors will want to see what the fuss is about because they actually watch “per screen box office numbers” and not just overall totals.

Who knew? So if every one of our Facebook friends shows up this weekend and brings a date, maybe we’ll get to subtitle the movie in American and remove any stray “ehs” and “abouts”.

I’m not talking about what happens if we don’t do well—because that way lies madness and makes me want to climb a higher tree or go best two out of three with the bear.

I was asked by our publicist if I’d do “question-and-answer” sessions after a few of the screenings on the weekend. After I found all this out, I said if there’s any chance it’d sell even a few tickets I’d do q&as after every screening this weekend.

So that’s the plan.

I’m also cool to share my popcorn.

And at our 7:10 show on Friday night, it looks like half the cast is joining me.

I’ll also talk about the movie at weddings, bar mitzvahs, and environmental studies classes—join our Facebook Group or our MySpace site to set something up.

Not only do big U.S. movies have hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on advertising, they generally have a year in advance to decide how to spend it. It seems like comic geeks worldwide—and that would include me—have known that Watchmen was opening this weekend since about this time last year.

I’ve known when The Green Chain would open in Vancouver for less time that it took me to read the original 12 Watchmen comics.

And we only knew our dates more than a few days in advance because the patron saint of the Vancouver movie scene, Leonard Schein, gave us the invaluable gift of setting an opening date two weeks in advance. And while that’s no notice by the standards of a big U.S. release, it’s not an easy thing for an indie theatre owner to commit to, so it’s incredibly rare for a small film like ours to get more than a week’s advance notice about an opening date.

That’s not enough time to get stories in magazines, or arrange for school tours, but at least it’s enough time to print the info on the posters saying “opening March 6th at the Fifth Avenue”.

There’s a group that gets how all this works that was started back in 2003 known as The First Weekend Club. They’re the unsung heroes of  the Canadian film scene and are responsible for helping to make sure there is a Canadian movie scene.

Their motto: “See it first. Make it last.”

This weekend they’re supporting three movies. For our movie they’ve put together a green panel for our 1:30 show on Saturday featuring a bunch of great speakers, including reps from Greenpeace and The David Suzuki Foundation doing a post show talkback about all things enviro.

We’ve got another green talk after our Sunday 1:30 show when Ken Wu from the Western Canada  Wilderness Committee will talk about saving our ancient forests.

The First Weekenders are also supporting One Week, starring B.C.’s own Joshua Jackson and Bruce McDonald’s new horror flick, Pontypool.

I hope you’ll catch at least one of these movies this weekend. Okay, I really hope you’ll catch ours and it’d be nice if you caught one of the other ones too…because I can pretty much guarantee that you’ll still be able to check out Watchmen next weekend—no matter how much Alan Moore hates it.

And while you’re on-line, join the First Weekend Club. And don’t just join it… attend those first weekends.

See you at the Fifth Avenue.

British Columbians care about ancient forests.

Last October the Western Canada Wilderness Committee organized a rally at the BC legislature and 2700 people – a mix of environmentalists and forestry workers – showed their support for saving BC’s remaining stands of old growth forest. That ties the rally record set at the height of the protests to save Clayoquot Sound.

And this battle is just beginning.

Ken Wu, the WCWC’s Victoria campaign director, is currently working on, “a major escalation” in the fight to save ancient forests timed to coincide with – and impact on – the BC provincial election.

“We’ll be organizing many rallies and events for ancient forests and to end raw log exports between March 1 to 10 in many communities for the “10 Days of Action for Ancient Forests and BC Jobs,” says Wu. To find out about the rallies, visit www.wcwcvictoria.org

Wu’s also collecting signatures to add to the 30,000-plus people who’ve already joined the cause at www.viforest.org

I met Wu at the Legacy Gallery and Café in Victoria, where we talked about how his environmentalist roots were planted at age three; six thousand year old trees; why saving forests isn’t just for tree huggers any more; how Facebook has changed the face of environmentalism and why “revolution is just around the corner.”

Click here to listen to the Ken Wu podcast interview

I can’t believe how long it has taken to write these words …

And now I can’t believe how soon it’s happening.

The Green Chain premieres March 6th at The 5th Avenue Cinemas in Vancouver.

This movie was born in 1985 when I interviewed a logger in Williams Lake, BC about his new “mill on wheels” and how it did the work of an entire crew, and how it was too bad the damn environmentalists were responsible for putting so many of his friends out of work.

Six years later, in the granite bunker that is the CBC basement, John Juliani and I started talking about telling that story and at least four more as a collection of monologues that John referred to as, “a string of pearls.”

John and I spent the next dozen years looking for ways to bring our string of wooden pearls to life.

In 2004, a year after John passed away, I finally wrote the script for The Green Chain, handed it to Donna Wong-Juliani, and told her that no one in the world would be crazy enough to do this with her husband gone, but I’d always promised I’d write it for him. She told me she was crazy enough to do it, that we’d make a movie and I’d direct it. Tony Wosk said he was crazy enough too.  And in September, 2005, Brendan Fletcher climbed fifty feet up a tree and we were really making a movie.

And “we” is a very long list… It’s tough to imagine a smaller film. Seven cast members. Seven shooting days. But once you get through the magic and madness of post production, I suspect it still took about 100 people to bring it to life and that’s not counting the friends and friends of friends and friendly strangers who helped get this movie to the point where it’s on the big screen.

So… congratulations to everyone who brought this to life.

Thank you… to everyone who helped us climb this tree…

And now it’s time to tell the world… or at least all of Vancouver… to show up at The 5th Avenue the weekend of March 6th.

I’m planning to intro every screening for our first weekend.  We’ll have q&a sessions with me, with the cast and with special guests from the environmental community.

Tell all your friends, tell all your enemies, tell strangers. Invite people to join our Facebook site. Invite people to join the MySpace site. Invite them to subscribe to our blog.

But mostly… invite them to the movie that first weekend when the future of our movie is determined by how many people buy tickets.

Tickets will be on sale March 3rd and we’ll add a sales link as soon as it’s available.

See you at The 5th Avenue.

Mark

John Vaillant podcast…
When I first read John Vaillant’s story about “The Golden Spruce” in The New Yorker I had two simultaneous thoughts… what an incredible story and who the heck is John Vaillant?
I definitely don’t know the work every writer in Vancouver, but I couldn’t believe there was someone in my city who wrote this wonderfully, who I’d never heard of. The article is one be the best I’ve ever read – it’s an amazing story, beautifully told.
But the book rocked my world.
It wasn’t just the rich history of the Spruce or the drama of the renegade logger, Grant Hadwin, that impressed me, it was the way John wove in the history of logging and the BC forests.
When The Tyee agreed to let me do this podcast series, John was the first person I contacted. He not only agreed to be interviewed, he provided me with a list of other people, many of whom you’ll hear me talk to soon.
Most interviews with John focus on the man who killed the Golden Spruce, but I wasn’t interested in Grant Hadwin’s story for this. I wanted to know what a writer from the U.S. saw in Haida Gwaii that all the writers in BC had missed. I also wanted his thoughts on our forests, the way they’re run, and the new story he’s doing for National Geographic — both because it sounds like a fascinating model for land management and because I’m really looking forward to reading it when he’s done.
John and I talked at his kitchen table — so if you hear any squeaks, that would be the sound of wooden chairs on a hardwood floor. And in a podcast about trees, I kind of like the idea of punctuating it with the music of creaking wood.

Severn Cullis-Suzuki was my first podcast – ‘though not my first interview — and she was informative and inspiring. Severn is the editor of Notes From Canada’s Young Activists: A Generation Stands Up for Change and in this interview she talks about why she doesn’t call herself an environmentalist, how she’d run B.C.’s forests, and staying optimistic about the world, no matter how much it heats up.

Kinosmith Distribution just announced that they’ve signed a deal to distribute The Green Chain… which means we finally get to announce that we are thrilled to have signed a deal to be distributed by Kinosmith.

This is the company that helped Up the Yangtze become a smash hit. They take their indie green movies seriously and know how to get them out into the world.

The word from Kinosmith is that The Green Chain WILL be opening in Vancouver sometime between mid-Feb. and mid-March depending on which screens and theatres are available when.

Hmmm… I can’t imagine why anyone claims it’s tough to promote a Canadian film when you can tell everyone in the world that, “It’s opening somewhere, sometime, soon!”  That must be why all those trailers for big US films end with, “Opening eventually. Somewhere.”

As soon as we’ve got a confirmed date, we’ll let you know.

For those of you who don’t know the drill with Canadian films — and I was one of those people until a few weeks ago — the fate of an indie Canadian film is entirely determined by the first weekend box office, which is why The First Weekend Club is the superhero team of the Canadian film biz. If a film doesn’t do well on the first weekend, there is no second weekend. Anywhere.

And because there’s so little advance warning on opening dates, it’s tough to let people know that the first weekend is happening.

If you want The Green Chain to live a long, healthy, happy life in the theatres, don’t just join our Facebook and/or Myspace group, invite all your Facebook and/or MySpace friends to join. And when we FINALLY get our dates, shout them from the rooftops…  Okay, emailing and phoning people might be more effective, but the rooftop thing… that really appeals to me.

Do the rooftop thing and I’ll share my popcorn with you when I see you at the theatre…

Heck, you can share my popcorn anyway… Just ask and I’ll even spring for the extra butter or freaky butter flavoured topping…

Mahalo

Mark

I talked trees with some amazing people in 2008. And I already have several phenomenal interviews lined up for 2009 including 80-year-old activist Betty Krawczyk; the Western Canada Wilderness Committee’s young old-growth campaigner, Ken Wu; Wild Foresting authors, Alan Drengson and Duncan Taylor; global climate expert, Richard Hebda and controversial ex-activist and founder of Greenspirit, Patrick Moore.

We’ll also be featuring an interview with… me… talking about the upcoming release of The Green Chain.

But now that our blog has moved, I want to make sure all the interviews are accessible here too… and on The Green Chain feed on iTunes…

So… here… in order… are a few of our podcasts so far… I’ll add the rest of the missing podcasts soon…

Severn Cullis-Suzuki was my first podcast — ‘though not my first interview — and she was informative and inspiring. Severn is the editor of Notes From Canada’s Young Activists: A Generation Stands Up for Change and in this interview she talks about why she doesn’t call herself an environmentalist, how she’d run B.C.’s forests, and staying optimistic about the world, no matter how much it heats up.

John Vaillant is the author of The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed. It’s a magical book about a magical tree. It’s not only beautifully written, but it captures the soul of BC.

Jean-Pierre Kiekens is the founder, president and editor of Forest NewsWatch and he put our forestry issues into an international perspective. We talked about about how the world sees Canada’s trees, the importance of tree huggers and why rocket science is easy compared to running our forests.

I’ll be posting three more podcasts soon, so stay tuned.

And stay tuned for more Green Chain news. Yes, we really are coming soon to a theatre near you.

Mark Leiren-Young