HOW TO BOIL A FROG
Written by
Jon Cooksey
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted
7/12/10
Copyright 2010
Fools Bay Entertainment, Ltd.
771 E. St. James Rd.
North Vancouver, BC V7K 3B4
Canada
(604) 836-1095
HOW TO BOIL A FROG
PRE-APPROVED EXCERPTS FOR PROMOTIONAL PURPOSES
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THE SECTIONS OF THE MOVIE THAT ARE NOT HIGHLIGHTED, BELOW,
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WITH SEPARATED TRACKS. THESE CLIPS TOTAL APPROXIMATELY 36
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TITLES
We start over Titles BLACK, and hear: Titles
JON (O.S.)
It started out being around, uh,
the politics of global warming, and
the spin campaign and all that.
CATHERINE BOWLES (O.S.)
Yeah.
JON (O.S.)
But I talked to a lot of very
knowledgeable people and...
We FADE IN on John talking to Catherine Bowles, outside of BC
Hydro. It’s an accidental shot, shaky.
JON (CONT’D)
...after a while I started to get
frustrated ‘cause they would all
say the same thing, which is
basically “It’s really bad and we
need to do this.”
CATHERINE BOWLES (O.S.)
I was thinking that the other day.
I was like “I’m so tired of saying
‘This is really bad.’ We should do
something about it.”
JON
And that’s what everybody said.
“This is really bad, we need to do
something, and here’s what we
should do.” And after a while I
got frustrated and started to say:
“Well, who? Who’s going to do it?
Are you gonna do it?”
The shot pans over to parking meters and fades to BLACK
under:
JON (O.S.) (CONT’D)
“Am I gonna do it? Who’s gonna do
it? When?”
A moment of silence on BLACK, then:
Fools Bay Entertainment card comes up with a giggle.
EXCERPT #1: OPENING TITLES
MUSIC: “Right Here, Right Now” (by Jesus Jones) begins to
play:
CG ANIMATED TITLE SEQUENCE begins: Lou the Frog is relaxing
in what appears to be a hot tub, but turns out to be a beaker
of boiling water. We SPLIT SCREEN with REX WEYLER, cofounder
of Greenpeace International.
REX WEYLER
We all know the story if you drop a
frog in boiling water, it freaks
out and tries to get out, but if
you put a frog in cool water, warm
water and you heat if up slowly
it’ll die before it notices what’s
going on.
Under the above, Lou jumps out of the boiling water, shakes
off, then turns to see the Earth is on fire, heating the
beaker. Curious, he tastes the Earth, but his tongue sticks
to it, and he ends up turning the Earth around to reveal
“signs” sticking out of it with video of oil drilling, coal
mining and other nefarious activities. He yanks out the
signs and plops them in the water, putting out the fire.
Triumphant he leaps off the beaker and rises back into frame
on top of the title:
How to Boil a Frog
Make friends/make fun/make trouble.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 2.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
We go to black, then Lou bounces into frame on the Earth. As
he bounces away into b.g...
INTRO
Jon enters (green screen), watching Lou go. 1-3 Jon is wearin1g- 3
the first HTBAF T-SHIRT: two hands, palm out, with the 5
Problems and 5 Solutions symbols on the fingertips (graphics
from the website). Jon then notices the audience.
JON ON CAMERA
Oh, hi, I’m Jon. You probably know
me from...ah, from uh...well, you
prob-probably don’t know me from
anything, because I’m nobody in
particular.
Under the following, 3 photos slide in: Paris Hilton, Bill
Gates, and Iron Man.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
But that’s kinda the point, because
this isn’t a movie about what
people who are famous or rich or
powerful can do, it’s about what
people like you and me can do.
And, and about that -- there’s one
thing I wanna get straight.
A photo of Earth (the “blue marble”) slides in, then out,
under:
JON
I’m not trying to save the planet.
When people say they’re trying to
save the planet, that just pisses
me off. No matter what we do to
the planet, it’ll survive...
Sequential images of a cockroach, moss, and a clip from “Day
of The Triffids” appear behind him under:
JON ON CAMERA
...even if all that’s left is
cockroaches, moss and geneticallymodified
corn creatures.
They slide out under:
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
We’re the ones who are in danger --
people. So I’m no tree-hugger. I’m
a people-hugger.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 3.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
(MORE)
In fact, c’mere, come on,
c’mon...aww. Is that better?
That’s better. That’s good.
He hugs the camera as a clip appears in the corner of 2
people shaking hands, with the title: “Close-captioned for
the hugging impaired”, which fades away as he releases the
camera and steps back.
JON
Good. So now that we got that out
of the way, I should probably tell
you about my vacation.
Smash zoom into NASA Earth photo ending on Istanbul. MUSIC is
the Muslim call to prayer. This is INTERCUT with photos and
video of Istanbul and Jon’s daughter Mariel from that
vacation.
JON VO
I took a trip to Istanbul with my
family. We saw the mosques, the
Grand Bazaar, the Sufi Dancers...
Photo dissolves to video of Sufi Dancers. Then a photo of
the Archaeological Museum, a stature, then 4 pictures of
cats, under:
JON VO (CONT’D)
The Archaeological Museum was
stunning, but mostly we focused on
the cats. They have a lot of cats
there, and we’re cat people.
Picture of a mosque by the water dissolves to video of going
up the Bosporus, under:
JON VO (CONT’D)
That night we were traveling up the
river -- up the Bosporous -- from
the city to our hotel. As we were
backing out of a dock, I looked
down, and saw there was something
wrong with the water. It was pink.
A photo of Mariel dissolves to home video of Mariel on the
Bosphorus at sunset starts to play.
JON VO (CONT’D)
So I asked my daughter Mariel to
come look with me, and we saw that
the entire surface of the river was
covered with jellyfish.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 4.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
(MORE)
When I came back home I read that
this is happening all over the
world...
Zoom out of Google Earth animation of Istanbul and FLASH to
NASA Earth photo.
FLASH ANIMATION: Cute little bacteria and jellyfish start to
emerge from the ocean with POP sounds.
JON VO (CONT’D)
And the reason is that global
warming is putting so much CO2 into
the ocean that jellyfish and
bacteria are the only things that
are going to be able to live in it.
Back to Jon in front of NASA STOCK PHOTO OF EARTH FROM SPACE,
only now little jellyfish and bacteria from the animation are
starting to pop up on it under:
JON ON CAMERA
Before that trip, I’d heard about
global warming, I mean, is there
anybody left alive who isn’t sick
of hearing about global warming?
But I hadn’t seen it myself.
Suddenly, I was like, hey, why
didn’t somebody tell me about this?
Turns out somebody had.
PHOTO OF AL GORE.
JON VO
Not that guy. Try this guy.
Gore gets knocked off screen by an ENGRAVING of Jean-Baptiste
Fourier.
JON VO (cont'd) (CONT’D)
1824. Smart French dude Jean-
Baptiste Fourier, figures out that
a greenhouse effect is keeping the
Earth warm.
A PHOTO of Svante Arrhénius.
JON VO (CONT'D)
1896. Smart Swedish dude Svante
Arrhénius warns that burning coal
could add so much CO2 to the
atmosphere that we might actually
heat up the whole planet.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 5.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
JON VO (CONT’D)
A PHOTO: Guy Stewart Callendar.
JON VO (CONT'D)
1938. Smart English dude Guy
Stewart Callendar says global
temperature has gone up half a
degree in the past 50 years, as a
result of burning this cool new
thing called oil.
EXCERPT #2: EARLY PREDICTIONS OF GLOBAL WARMING & COFFIN BIT
STOCK VIDEO: Dr. Frank Baxter in Frank Capra’s TV special
“The Unchained Goddess”. The video begins MOS under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
Jump ahead two decades, 1958.
Freakin’ genius dude Dr. Frank
Baxter warns every future baby
boomer in North America about
global warming, right there on TV!
SIDEKICK
This is bad?
DR. FRANK BAXTER
Well it’s been calculated a few
degrees rise in the earth’s
temperature would melt the polar
icecaps.
Baxter’s footage shows glaciers melting into the ocean, and
oceans rising up over a cartoon map of Florida. The clip
goes MOS under:
JON VO
That was 48 years before “An
Inconvenient Truth”!
Jon on camera, dressed in a nice suit, looking in a hand
mirror while combing his hair. Under the following we’ll
reveal that Jon is sitting in a coffin.
JON ON CAMERA
So for two hundred years these guys
have been trying to warn us about
global warming...but we didn’t
listen.
(sighs)
And now it’s too late.
He tosses down the comb and mirror, picks up a lily.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 6.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
So...
(sniffs the lily)
...see ya.
Lies back out of frame as very sad music starts to play. The
camera pans off him, across some flowers to a goofy photo of
Jon, as we want to remember him.
TITLES ON SCREEN: Jon has given up hope. Thank you for
coming.
Then the music stops abruptly as Jon sits back up:
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
But wait! I can’t give up yet.
What about my daughter?
The photo of Jon changes to a photo of Mariel, with some
fairy dust action. Jon looks at camera.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
Dang. Just when you’re ready to
lay down and die.
Looks around at the casket and flowers, frowning.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
Wonder if I can return all this.
STOCK SHOTS of the Nile and a man jumping out of a window
under:
JON VO
OK, so if denial and throwing
myself out a window were no longer
options, I had to figure out what I
could do to stop global warming.
My daughter even got me a bracelet.
SHOT OF BRACELET: STOP GLOBAL WARMING. Split-screens with
Jon relaxing with a bowl of popcorn and the remote, under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
And hey, if you’ve got a bracelet,
you can take the rest of the day
off, right?
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 7.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
A tic-tac-toe grid appears showing MOS footage of people Jon
has interviewed: [Andrew Weaver (climatologist), Stanton
Glantz (Director, Center for Tobacco Control, Research &
Education), Steve Schneider (climatologist), Elizabeth May
(leader, Green Party of Canada), Rick Balfour (urban
planner), Ross Gelbspan (Author, “Boiling Point”), Naomi
Oreskes (science historian), George Monbiot (author, “Heat”),
Anita Burke (sustainability expert), Romina Piccolotti
(Argentinian Environment Minister), Micah Melnyk (Canadian
Youth Climate Coalition), Chris Mooney (journalist), Matt
Simmons (investment banker and author), Torbjorn Lahti
(expert on The Natural Step), Dan Woynillowicz (Pembina
Institute), Angela Reid (Green Party), and Rex Weyler, under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
So I started asking around about
what to do. Turns out people are
pretty eager to talk, even to a
nobody-in-particular, if you’re
really interested in what they have
to say. But the more people I
talked to, the more I realized
something even worse: global
warming isn’t a problem. It’s a
symptom...of a much bigger problem.
4-0 THE FIVE PROBLEMS 4-0
EXCERPT #3: EXPONENTIAL CURVES
We return to Jon on camera, dressed as a stereotypical 1960’s
engineer: wonky hair, glasses, pocket filled with pens,
white short-sleeved dress shirt. (This is the first of a
number of characters we’ll see Jon play.) Under the
following we PULL BACK TO REVEAL that he’s standing in a
science class room with an easel, markers, and a big pad of
paper, we jump between this and Jon in the middle of a
forest.
JON ON CAMERA
This is an exponential curve...
Jon draws an exponential curve.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
...meaning the more time goes on,
the faster it goes up.
(makes arms into an
exponential curve)
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 8.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
(MORE)
Just about everything we do ends up
looking like this, eventually.
Charts illustrating his point zip in and out of FRAME under:
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
Like global warming -- the growth
of CO2 in the atmosphere? Al Gore
showed you that one.
(mimes scissor lift)
But this is also the growth of
China’s economy.
(faster & faster, with
sound effects, tracing a
curve right off the
chart)
The growth of human population?
Worldwide demand for oil? Airline
passenger miles? Traffic on the
internet? Autism spectrum
disorders? iTunes song sales?!
Our entire civilization is based on
this kind of growth - and we have
to keep going up and up forever!
He ends back in the exponential curve position, then settles
back, abruptly calm.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
Now look at this.
Jon draws a bell curve under:
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
This is a bell curve, so-called
because it’s shaped like a bell.
(makes bell shape with
arms)
You may remember these from high
school.
(points at the start,
primly)
These are the people who got A’s...
(points at the end,
gloating)
...and these are the people who got
F’s...
(middle -- whatever)
...and this was everybody else.
The thing about bell curves is,
they’re natural.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 9.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
(MORE)
That’s why the grades spread out
like this, and some people are just
smarter than others. Nature works
in bell curves.
Compares the two:
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
But, if human activity looks like
this, and Nature looks like this,
what do you get when you mix the
two of them together?
(interlocking fingers)
This is the scary part. Are you
ready?
Jon draws a third graph: a bell curve, with a dotted
exponential line going off just before it curves. Presents
chart and waits for a reaction, doesn’t get one.
JON ON CAMERA (cont'd) (CONT’D)
(miffed)
OK, it’s just a picture, it’s not
that scary, but the point is,
Nature takes us to here, and then
we...keep going. So, when did we
go off Nature’s curve?
He makes an X where the 2 curves diverge, and draws a line
down to the bottom. As he does so, the word “1987” zips in
from the side and stops at the bottom of the line.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
Nobody knows the exact date, but
1987 is probably pretty close to
when we should’ve started leveling
off.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
(spreads hands flat)
That’s when the amount of land it
takes to make all the stuff we
consume...
(makes earth shape)
...passed the amount of land there
is on the planet. And where are we
now?
Jon makes an X right at the top of the dotted line, and the
words “YOU ARE HERE” zip in from the side and stop next to
it.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 10.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
Turns out you can go past what
Nature can give you, the same way
you can...
(uncomfortable - a little
close to home)
...keep buying things you can’t
afford by running up your credit
cards.
(draws underline in the
air for graphic)
This is called “overshoot”.
The word “overshoot” zips into frame, then zips back out
under:
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
(circular motion under:)
But what happens if you keep
charging and charging and never pay
off the Visa bill?
(stress abruptly starts to
show)
You get nervous. They come and
take away your stuff! You end up
working all the time, until finally
you just can’t keep it together
anymore, and...
Jon slashes a line straight down from the X past the X axis.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
(this happened to him)
Crash!
Corresponding clip-art symbols with slashes through them come
up at the side of the screen under:
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
You lose your house! Divorce!
Bankruptcy! Sure, you saw the
signs, but you kept on going, and
now you’re screwed.
A moment of sulking self-pity, then bitterly:
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
So...anyway...
Points at the X -- YOU ARE HERE.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 11.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
This is where we are, as a species.
We’ve been living on our ecological
credit card for over 20 years.
A CO2 credit card pops up in the corner.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
Only instead of our ex-wives
getting our brand new wide screen
plasma TV’s, we’re seeing a
different set of symptoms...
(last burst of bitterness)
...from going up and up forever!
(calming down, using left
hand for numbers)
Global warming is one of those
symptoms, but just one of five...
(kid-like)
I boiled them down to five so I
could remember them...
(looks at his right hand)
...one for each finger.
Jon holds out his right hand to camera, and we do a RAMPED
ZOOM IN to show that there are little symbols drawn on them.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
This is the big picture.
ZOOM IN on the Overpopulation symbol till it’s FULL FRAME.
4-1 1) OVERPOPULATION 4-1
Over the Overpopulation symbol:
JON VO
Let’s start with us. Another 147
people are born every minute -- 77
million people a year.
IMAGE: map of Ethiopia.
JON VO (CONT'D)
That’s as many people as there are
in Ethiopia.
FLASH: Map of Africa.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 12.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
JON VO (CONT'D)
Imagine trying to find a spot on
the planet for a new Ethiopia every
year. Where you gonna put it?
Ethiopia lifts off the map and the world turns, so it comes
down and lands on Europe (which it covers up).
JON VO (CONT'D)
Here?
It lifts off, lands on New England, which it covers.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Here? And what about next year,
and the year after that?
Ethiopias quickly cover all of North America (it would take
about 8 Ethiopias to cover the US & Canada).
JON VO (CONT'D)
There are already a little over six
and a half billion of us on the
planet, and we’re expected to add
another three billion in less than
fifty years. But we’re not just
cranking out the babies.
PHOTO MONTAGE/FLASH: We start to pile up photos of the
following, until it’s a big mess.
JON VO (CONT'D)
We’re also turning out 67 million
cars a year, not to mention 800
million cell phones, five and a
half trillion cigarettes, and, oh
yeah, about 25 trillion pounds of
garbage. But some of us put out
more garbage than others.
Smiling FREEZE FRAME of two YOUNG JON’s, one wearing a
coonskin hat and the other an Uncle Sam hat.
JON VO (CONT'D)
I’m a dual citizen, of Canada and
the US, which makes me an average
North American.
YOUNG JON 1
Hi dere.
YOUNG JON 2
How ya doin?
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 13.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
The freeze frame rolls into FOOTAGE of Jon taking the carbon
footprint quiz.
JON VO
I took a quiz to find out my carbon
footprint, and my score was pretty
much in that mid-range, between I
suck and I’m killing the earth.
A pic of a Cambodian slides in, working his rice field.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Numbers-wise, that works out to me
putting out 500 times as much CO2
as the average Cambodian.
Cambodian guy multiplies into 500 Cambodian guys, a picture
of Jon appears in the middle.
JON VO (CONT'D)
That means this Cambodian guy could
have 499 kids, and his family would
still only be causing as much
global warming as me! Apparently
“they” aren’t the real population
problem.
EXCERPT #4: OVERPOPULATION - FIRST WORLD LITE & ST. MATTHEW
ISLAND
PHOTO MONTAGE: 6 and a half happy Jon’s in lederhosen, hat
and with beer stein pop up on screen.
JON VO (CONT'D)
But suppose all 6 and a half
billion of us lived like, say, the
people in Germany -- call it First
World Lite. How many of us could
the earth handle without getting
worse?
Four and a half Jon’s get X’d out with big red X’s, under
gunshots.
JON VO (CONT'D)
That’s right. 2 billion people.
That’s the population mark we
passed in 1925.
STOCK FOOTAGE of 1925.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 14.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
JON VO (CONT'D)
Where’s all this leading? Let’s
watch a movie about reindeer.
ANIMATION: “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”
JON VO (CONT'D)
Not that movie. Although you’ll be
glad to hear there’s been an update
since Al Gore went to the North
Pole.
Rudolph’s nose is now a cartoon red compact fluorescent bulb.
Then:
STOCK PHOTOS by David Klein (courtesy of George Allez),
showing the Coast Guard cutter, a few reindeer, etc.
JON VO (CONT'D)
These are the reindeer I’m talking
about. The Coast Guard cutter
Clover put 29 of them on St.
Matthew Island in 1944. St.
Matthew is a tiny little rock in
the ocean in between Alaska and
Russia.
Photos of St. Matthew island.
JON VO (CONT'D)
If you haven’t had a chance to
visit St. Matthew, it’s known
mainly for its cute little voles
and delicious lichen. Delicious if
you’re a vole.
PHOTOS continue.
JON VO (CONT'D)
The Coast Guard put the reindeer on
the island as an emergency food
source for any soldiers who might
end up fighting the Russkies in the
Bering Sea. Apparently they hadn’t
heard of deep fried vole nuggets.
Stock of deep-fried nuggets on cartoonish TV. Then back to
the reindeer, more numerous now, under:
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 15.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
JON VO (CONT'D)
A few years later, the Coast Guard
abandoned the island, leaving the
reindeer to do...what reindeer do
best. 19 years later, in 1963,
there were 6,000 reindeer on the
island...and no more lichen So
what do you get if you add 6,000
reindeer and no food?
Back to Engineer Jon in the forest: he points at the chart
showing a crash from an exponential curve.
JON ON CAMERA
That’s right -- within 3 years, all
but 42 were dead.
PHOTO of the last reindeer on St. Matthew Island.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT’D)
By 1982, there was just one. She
died ancient, arthritic, and alone
on St. Matthew Island.
We SLOWLY PUSH IN on this picture for a few beats, under sad
music, then:
JON ON CAMERA (CONT’D)
I blame disco.
Go to Jon on CAMERA doing a disco dance around St. Matthew
island-- Saturday Night Fever suit, etc. He’s not good, but
he thinks he is. Over this, we hear a faux-Bee Gees disco
song:
FAUX BEE GEES
He thinks he’s so good
He’s totally bombin’
As he dances to the story of
“The Tragedy of the Commons”.
Yeah.
Yeeeeeah!
ANGLE ON a bust of Aristotle, which we cause to “sing” during
the following quote:
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 16.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
FAUX BEE GEES (cont’d) (CONT’D)
Aristotle laid it out
In a beautiful sonnet
"That which is common to the
greatest number
Has the least care bestowed upon
it."
Course he said it in Greek.
Greeeeeeek
Greek!
An image from “300” pops up under the last word, then gives
way to FOOTAGE of 1970’s disco dancers as the song goes into
an instrumental loop.
JON VO
What Aristotle meant was that if
nobody’s in charge of a common
resource, like, say, a hot disco
chick, then everybody will try to
take a little more, until nobody
gets any.
The last reindeer looks up at a huge bust of Aristotle, as
though worshipping it on Easter Island. (Composite of photo
and green screen element.)
JON VO (CONT'D)
The reindeer had never heard of the
Tragedy of the Commons - I guess
they didn’t speak Greek.
Go to youtube video of reindeer with babies.
JON VO (CONT'D)
So they kept making more reindeer,
until they ate up all the food, and
died.
The earth appears as a disco ball, turning, as the song
climaxes. Video of world population numbers appear, past 6.8
billion.
JON VO (CONT'D)
But that’ll never happen to us. I
mean, we’re smarter than a bunch of
reindeer. Aren’t we?
The music abruptly stops as we go back to the reindeer.
JON VO (cont’d) (CONT’D)
But what happened to the reindeer
is only one kind of overpopulation.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 17.
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(MORE)
The other kind is having too many
people in the wrong places.
Africa SD of Kibera.
JON VO (CONT'D)
This is Kibera, the largest slum in
Africa, right outside Nairobi.
Google Earth photo of Central Park.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Kibera’s around one square mile --
the size of Central Park -- and
about a million people live there.
That works out to 28 square feet
per person, about the same as a
queen size bed.
VIDEO: Queen-sized bed with a cat on it.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Without the bed.
The mattress disappears. Gives way to
EXCERPT #5: OVERPOPULATION - KIBERA, IN KENYA
a hand holding a (fake) human doody. This is composited
against a b.g. of the Kibera slum (green screen composited
with OUR FOOTAGE of Africa). The hand dumps the doody into
a Ziploc bag, zips it, then flings it out of frame with a
FWINNNG sound under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
Kibera invented the flying toilet,
meaning you crap in a plastic bag
and throw it as far away as
possible.
More footage of Kibera.
JON VO (CONT’D)
So overcrowding obviously ups the
disease factor and leads to a lot
of violence, especially from people
who get hit by flying toilets.
The doody bag comes flying in from b.g., lands with an O.S.
SPLAT.
FLYING TOILET VICTIM (O.S.)
Hey!
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 18.
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JON VO (cont’d) (CONT’D)
JON VO
But even with all these factors
together, the population is still
going up! And what’s worse, all
those hungry, thirsty, diseased
people aren’t going to stay in
their war-torn countries -- they’re
going to move where things are
better!
MUSIC: American pioneers start moving West in covered wagons,
under majestic Western music. After a few seconds the MUSIC
CONTINUES down low over STOCK FOOTAGE of climate refugees
(such as from the recent monsoons in India - the northern
states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar – two of the country’s most
populous and poorest states – and the northeastern state of
Assam, near Burma and Bangladesh -- as well as flooding in
China) all under the following:
JON VO (CONT'D)
By 2050, it looks like one out of
every 9 people on the planet is
gonna be some kind of refugee. So
get that spare room ready ‘cause
Jed and his kin are on the way!
But wait! If we know
overpopulation is such a problem,
why can’t we do anything about it?
I mean, China put in that one-child
policy back in 1979 and slowed
things way down. Why can’t we do
that for the whole planet? Two
basic problems.
A picture of the Pope comes up next to two swimming turtles
having sex.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Religion and sex. As long as the
Pope keeps bashing birth control,
there’s gonna be a lot of new
Catholics in all the poorest
countries.
The turtles are replaced by a painting of a sexy nearly-naked
couple known as Adam and Eve. (It appears that the Pope is
reacting to the couple.)
JON VO (CONT'D)
And as for sex, well, dammit, it
feels good! But we’re not
comfortable talking about it.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 19.
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(MORE)
So we don’t, even though we know
where overpopulation has to lead in
the end.
EXCERPT #6: OVERPOPULATION - LAST REINDEER FALLS OVER
End on PHOTO of the last reindeer on St. Matthew Island --
who keels over with a creaking sound under a last reprise of
our disco music.
FAUX BEE GEES
Everybody dies...dies!
PHOTOSHOP/FLASH: The Overpopulation symbol again comes back
up full screen, then recedes to its place on Jon’s finger.
We PAN OVER to the next finger -- the War on Nature symbol...
2) 4-2 THE WAR ON NATURE 4-2
...which MATCH DISSOLVES to the same symbol on a color film
strip on a projector screen. Scratchy martial music starts
playing as the Department of Homeland Security symbol appears
above the symbol, and we hear a stern, clean-cut announcer
voice:
JON VO
The Department of Homeland Security
presents...
The DHS symbol dissolves to the title: “The War on Nature”.
JON VO (CONT'D)
...The War on Nature.
The fish symbol match dissolves into
EXCERPT #7: WAR ON NATURE - FISH & PLASTIC
STOCK of a fish swimming in the ocean, which goes FULL FRAME
as we “enter” the film.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Hundreds of millions of years ago,
fish first evolved in the oceans.
By the mid 20th century, they were
everywhere, invading our
territorial waters.
1950’s STOCK of soldiers at the Pentagon.
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JON VO (CONT'D)
JON VO (CONT'D)
The best military minds were
brought in on the problem, and came
up with a solution. One word:
plastics.
The title: Did you know? Comes up, over the word: Plastics.
Underneath, OUR FOOTAGE of plastic items pop up: a plastic
straw, a plastic dog, and a plastic vibrator (buzzing). Over
this:
JON VO (CONT'D)
Can you guess how long it will take
these plastic items to biodegrade?
The possibilities pop up as bullet-points as he says them:
JON VO (cont'd) (CONT’D)
One hundred years? One thousand
years? Or a bazillion years? Ha
ha, trick question. These plastic
items will never break down.
Jon appears on camera, dressed in a suit. The DHS symbol is
large behind him (green screen). Magic 8 ball, Rolling Stones
record, first Macintosh computer and a woman with implants
appear next to him under the following.
JON ON CAMERA
In fact, every piece of plastic
ever made is still in the
environment, and always will be.
This was the key to our strategy.
STOCK of plastic manufacturing.
JON VO
We make 60 billion tons of plastic
every year. Sure, we recycle a
tiny part of it -- 5% -- but that’s
just for show.
FOOTAGE: Old recycling bucket. A hand ENTERS FRAME, tries
unsuccessfully to fit the recycling bucket in another
recycling bucket for a beat under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
And how do you recycle a recycling
bucket? Ha ha.
STOCK FOOTAGE of fish and a scary-looking moray eel:
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JON VO (cont’d) (CONT’D)
Our real purpose is to put that
plastic into the ocean, where it
can help defeat the scaly, waterbreathing
menace that threatens our
shores.
STOCK FOOTAGE of overweight people carrying plastic bags,
followed by piles of plastic garbage bags.
JON VO (CONT'D)
And North Americans have been
patriotically doing their part,
throwing away half a pound of
plastic a day, per person.
EXCERPT #8: WAR ON NATURE - PLASTIC GYRES
Plastic trash on a beach leads to plastic underwater in the
ocean, and then to a Greenpeace animation at
http://oceans.greenpeace.org/en/the-expedition/news/trashingour-
oceans/ocean_pollution_animation of the Pacific gyre.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Through decades of concerted
action, we’ve managed to create 6
giant whirlpools of plastic, called
gyres -- altogether they cover
540,000 square miles, twice the
size of the brave state of Texas.
Extreme zoom from a plastic fish into microscopic view of
plastic fibers.
JON VO (CONT'D)
The plastic in these whirlpools is
breaking down into fibres just
about the size of plankton...and
now there’s about six times as much
plastic in the water as there is
plankton!
PHOTO of Osama Bin Laden next to a terrorist with an
obviously pasted-on beluga whale head. The title reads:
“Actual photo.”
JON VO (CONT'D)
This has allowed us to go after the
bigger targets. But we’re not just
relying on plastic -- we’re taking
the fight to the enemy -- and
winning.
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STOCK FOOTAGE: Sharks and dolphins entangled and dying in
plastics, trash, and rope.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Half of these finned killers are
already dead -- we’ve wiped out
90% of the large predator fish, who
eat our surfers and young women!
FOOTAGE from Jaws: The Revenge - a shark comes out of the
water to eat a young woman. A scream! This is followed by
tons of fish flowing into the hold of a ship and finally a
PAN of a clip art Titanic sailing past a calving iceberg
under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
We forecast total victory within 50
years -- every last fish will be
gone, and the oceans will be ours!
Triumphant music as we cut to STOCK of a forest:
JON VO (CONT'D)
But we can’t allow ourselves to
become complacent.
EXCERPT #9: WAR ON NATURE - TREES
JON VO (CONT'D)
What about...trees? You probably
have one outside your house or
apartment. Perhaps one is looking
in your window right now.
AERIAL STOCK of forests. Arrow slides in pointing north
labeled “ESKIMOS.” Second arrow slides in pointing south
labeled “MEXICANS” under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
But the fact is that vast armies of
these leafy infiltrators threaten
us from both the north and the
south!
Transitions to ARCHIVAL STOCK of lumberjacks:
JON VO (CONT'D)
Canada is already bravely defending
America’s flank from the so-called
“boreal forest”...
STOCK FOOTAGE of Argentina’s gaucho dancers.
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JON VO (CONT'D)
...while our trusted compadres down
in Argentina are mowing down a
million acres of rainforest every
year!
STOCK FOOTAGE of a bulldozer at work in Argentina.
STOCK PHOTO of earth from space. Under the following, half
the earth falls away to reveal a graphic reading: Mission
(nearly) accomplished. All this under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
But the battle is only halffinished:
of the 20 billion acres
we started with, 10 still remain.
Jon on camera, as DHS agent in front of DHS symbol (green
screen). He’s holding the vibrator, but not aware of it.
JON ON CAMERA
We must be firm and resolute. And
as in any war, there will be
sacrifices!
Realizes he’s holding the vibrator, quickly puts it away.
JON ON CAMERA (cont'd) (CONT’D)
For instance, some of you may have
heard about this so-called “global
heating”, or warming, or whatever
it is. Scientists tell us that
cutting down all these trees causes
a quarter of it, more than all
planes, trains, ships and cars
combined. So that’s probably not
good.
STOCK of endangered species appear, and are revealed to be
part of a Homeland Security December 2100 extinction
calendar. 2D Lou the Frog is also in the calendar. The last
few live ones get X’d out with gunshots under:
JON VO (cont’d)
Fortunately our land-war is having
a cooling effect by eliminating
warm-blooded mammals...and
everything else. We project that
half of all the species on the
planet will be extinct by the end
of this century. It won’t be long
before we have the planet all to
ourselves!
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 24.
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STOCK PHOTO of Sound of Music poster, Julie Andrews singing
on a mountain top alone. STOCK FOOTAGE of a sealer clubbing a
harp seal.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Sure, some of these killers have a
cute face. But the dangers are
real. We must maintain control.
Footage of animals, mountains, rivers (from Flathead Valley
STOCK).
JON VO (CONT'D)
Because Nature is everywhere, and
it never sleeps. Every time we
mount an offensive, Nature’s
operatives all over the world
launch some nefarious counterattack
against us.
EXCERPT #10: WAR ON NATURE - NATURE COUNTERATTACKS
Archival FOOTAGE of industrial agriculture:
JON VO (CONT'D)
For instance, every year we spread
out 2 and a half billion tons of
fertilizer, pesticides and
herbicides to grow our food...
PHOTO: Twinkies.
JON VO (CONT'D)
But Nature counterattacks by
washing all of our precious
chemicals into the ocean, along
with our soil...
NASA animation of dead zones.
JON VO (CONT'D)
...creating “dead zones” that
threaten our vital tourism
industry!
FOOTAGE of 1960’s tourists water-skiing. CUTS TO: endless
rows of stone-faced workers on a factory assembly line.
JON VO (CONT'D)
We set up factories to better the
lives of our citizens...
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STOCK of terrible air pollution around a smoking factory
smokestack.
JON VO (CONT'D)
...and Nature counterattacks by
throwing pollution back in our
faces!
STOCK of happy 1950’s family as they drive down the road.
JON VO (CONT'D)
We raise the temperature of the
atmosphere just a degree or two,
and suddenly there’s droughts
everywhere!
STOCK: thirsty people in a drought-stricken place.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Does Nature care that a billion
people worldwide already don’t have
enough clean water to drink?
Go to Jon-as-DHS agent with a fake beard, looking sad as he
holds up a glass of dirty water. Two more happy, bearded
Jon’s with clean water toast us under:
JON VO (cont'd) (CONT’D)
Or that in 20 years, that’ll be up
to 2 billion -- 1 in 3 people?
STOCK FOOTAGE: Disneyland in the 1960’s.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Even Disney World can’t get all the
water it wants. Nature is
attacking the very soul of America.
STOCK of a guy in a canoe paddling through a river of dead
fish. A title reads: “Welcome to Adventureland!”
JON VO (CONT'D)
And if Mickey isn’t safe, then none
of us are.
CU TO a PHOTOSHOPPED VERSION of Mickey Mouse’s skull,
complete with the bone-white round ears. That image shrinks
back into the projector screen, and goes to “Fin” next to the
Homeland Security Department logo.
We REVERSE TO Jon as he switches off the projector. He’s
sitting in front of a blackboard with writing on it that we
can’t see yet.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 26.
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JON ON CAMERA
Well, OK, it looks like we may be a
little short on animals and trees
and water and air and stuff, but we
have to be realistic, right? I
mean, we can’t do anything that
would hurt the economy.
As he stands, he gathers up his books, which include “Making
World Development Work” by Hall & Leclerc, “Confessions of an
Economic Hitman” by John Perkins, and “The Economics of
Happiness” by Mark Anielski.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
That way when the recovery kicks
in, at least we’ll all have plenty
of money.
We reveal the writing on the blackboard, which is labelled
“HOME EC” at the top. Jon is between two circles of arrows
written on the chalkboard. They are:
RICH PEOPLE: Bonuses --> Failure --> Bailouts -->
YOU: Debt --> Foreclosure --> Live in car -->
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
Or, some of us will.
He exits, and after a beat the Rich Vs. Poor symbol slides in
and then splits the FRAME diagonally...
3) RICH VS. POOR
The splitting frame reveals footage of dump in Nakuru.
JON VO
This is Nakuru, in Kenya - a little
village next to the Eveready
Battery factory.
CU of Eveready battery casings amid the garbage, with footage
of smiling African kids.
JON VO (CONT'D)
They toss their waste in the same
dump where these kids dig for
dinner. Sort of a mercury buffet!
Footage of kids digging in the dump, then we cut to Pastor
Mike Brawan, who grew up there.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 27.
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MIKE BRAWAN
This is the dumping site of the
Nakuru where people dump all their
garbage and other things. We have a
lot of problems in this area.
EXCERPT #11: RICH VS. POOR - THE GINI COEFFICIENT
Images of slum continues under:
JON VO
Half of the people in Kenya live in
poverty, while the richest 10% hold
about 40% the wealth.
STOCK from old Genie movie.
JON VO (CONT'D)
The experts have a way to measure
the difference between how poor the
poor are, and how rich the rich
are. It’s called the Gini
Coefficient.
The Gini Coefficient formula split-screens with archival
footage of Lenin, followed by happy people waving.
JON VO (CONT'D)
A Gini Coefficient of 0% means
perfect income equality. Everybody
gets the same!
STOCK of people bustling around at the stock exchange split
screens with a comedic version of the formula that equals
“you’re screwed”.
JON VO (CONT'D)
One hundred per cent means the rich
got everything, and you got
nothin’.
Back to slum images.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Africa has the most unequal incomes
in the world. Kenya’s Gini
Coefficient is about 45%.
Shocking, huh? But it turns out
that’s about the same as the US!
SPLIT SCREEN: STOCK of rich white people on one side, black
Katrina victims on the other.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 28.
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JON VO (CONT'D)
Except in America, the top 10% are
taking home half of all income --
the same as the other 90%. That’s
the biggest slice the rich have
gotten since the Great Depression.
Who says the good old days will
never come again?
STOCK FOOTAGE: really wealthy people.
JON VO (cont’d) (CONT’D)
Worldwide there are now about 800
billionaires with a combined wealth
of $2.4 trillion dollars - that
works out to about 3 billion per
billionaire on the average.
Cartoon image of a multi-billionaire towering over singlebillionaires.
JON VO (CONT'D)
But I'm sure some of the
billionaires are just scraping by
on a billion or two.
Touching images of poor kids in various countries:
JON VO (CONT'D)
Meanwhile 640 million children
worldwide don’t have a decent place
to sleep. Stop and think about
that - that's twice the population
of the United States. Kids.
A little stick-figure animation of Mariel -- with a photo
face -- inside a stick-figure house. Then the house blows
away:
JON VO (CONT'D)
I’ve got one of those. How poor
are those kids’ parents that they
can’t even afford bunk beds?
EXCERPT #12: RICH VS. POOR - POKER DOGS #1
Jon wears an eye-shade and a studded dog collar -- because he
is situated in the center of a “dogs playing poker” tableau
(green screen).
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 29.
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JON ON CAMERA
(tough guy attitude)
Almost half the people in the world
live on two bucks a day.
(takes out two dollars)
Two bucks! One-fifth of the
world’s population?
(takes away one dollar)
1.1 billion people. Buck a day.
Palms the dollars.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
You got twenty-two hundred dollars
worth of assets -- a laptop and an
iPod, or a nice Rolex -- you’re
richer than half the people in the
world. Way to go! High five.
He looks around, notes dogs are frozen.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
And the news just gets better and
better. Like, while you keep
driving your car around, some other
poor sap gets hit with the global
warming. Guess who?
Jon wiggles the dollar bill at camera. CUT TO MAP showing
the location of Burundi, FOLLOWED BY STOCK FOOTAGE of povery
and drought in Burundi.
JON VO
This is Burundi. Average income is
a hundred bucks a year, average
life span is 45 years -- but not
for long! Global warming is
already causing crop failures and
starvation. Even the hippos are
hungry.
A hippo “howls”, the go to STOCK PHOTO of an average
Burundian, who then multiplies into 66 Burundians.
JON VO (CONT'D)
But 2003 was the first year that
your average Burundian put out any
measurable CO2. Us North Americans
get to put out 66 times what they
put out, and they can’t even afford
the postage to tell us to stop.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 30.
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Under this, we see a postcard with Burundi’s flag on top of a
stack of mail. A hand reaches in, flips it over. We see
it’s addressed to North America, with the message: “Stop!
You’re killing us! Miss you. Burundi.” Then CUT TO
EXCERPT #13: ROMINA PICOLOTTI & POKER DOGS #2
Romina Picolotti, Argentinian Environment Minister.
ROMINA PICOLOTTI
One thing that is happening with
global warming is that,
scientifically now it is clear that
the most vulnerable people of the
world will be more affected. If
you’re poor you don’t have the same
ability to protect yourself vis a
vis environmental damage.
Back to Poker Dogs Jon, picking his teeth with a folded
dollar bill.
JON ON CAMERA
Which brings up a very important
question: so what? Big deal. We
ship all our dirty industries to
Third World countries, so they can
live with the pollution. We let
them work in the sweatshops so we
can buy all that great stuff at Wal-
Mart. And now they’re gonna take
the first hit on global warming
because all they got is two bucks.
(to the dogs)
What am I supposed to do about it --
give away all my money and live in
a doghouse? No offense.
(to camera)
Why should I start caring now? Two
words: T.V.
FOOTAGE: Video of Poker Dogs Jon plays on a TV.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
(playing on the TV)
Back in the old days, if you lived
in Bangladesh or rural China, you
didn’t know what you were missing!
The TV “switches channels” to STOCK VIDEO of poor people
watching TV.
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JON VO
(through the TV)
Now everybody knows exactly what
they’re missing -- all the goodies
that people in North America have.
And they’re pissed off.
The TV again “switches channels” to STOCK VIDEO: Yemen riots
in 2005.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Now I could tell you that the
danger is that social unrest makes
countries unstable, and that
threatens the whole world’s
financial system.
Back to the American pioneers moving west, under a bit of
their majestic Western music.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Or that all the poor people in the
world are going to move to your
neighborhood to get the same
goodies you’ve got.
The Madrid bombing.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Or blow you up because they can’t.
EXCERPT #14: RICH VS. POOR - RICH GUY
Jon on camera on the East Side of Vancouver, near the Union
Gospel Mission. We start in CU on his face.
JON ON CAMERA
But the real danger from the divide
between rich and poor isn’t that
it’s getting worse -- the real
danger is that it’s getting better.
He sips from a martini glass (with olive) and we start to
widen, revealing that he’s in the Downtown Eastside - a rough
part of town. His tone is rather posh -- a hint of James
Mason. We now see that he’s wearing a tux and holding a
cardboard sign that reads “Will work for hors d’oeuvres” (in
calligraphy).
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JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
Not in America, of course, but in
China, India and other Third World
countries, governments are actually
working to improve the lives of
their poorest citizens.
Posh Jon appears in front of a Sikh temple.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
The people in India -- population
1.1 billion -- they’re getting air
conditioning.
Posh Jon appears in front of the Chinese Gate leading into
Chinatown.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
China plans to add 250 million
people to the middle class in the
next decade or so. That’s the same
China that already burns a third of
the coal in the world.
Return to Posh Jon in the Downtown Eastside.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
So I’m afraid it’s time to be
afraid. Once the poorest people on
this planet get rich enough to do
the same damage we’re
doing...that’s a Gini Coefficient
we’ll never get back in the bottle.
Ah ha ha ha.
We CUT to
EXCERPT #15: PEAK OIL - HISTORY TIMELINE
the Peak Oil symbol as the needle goes to empty, and the
words PEAK OIL slide in.
JON VO
But rich or poor, Nature’s got a
bell curve we all need to worry
about.
4-4 4) PEAK OIL 4-4
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 33.
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GRAPHIC: We PAN along the very long line leading to the blip
of petroleum on the “oil in history curve” (showing oil
discovery and depletion as a brief era in the history of the
earth), passing CLIPS of “colonial workers” corresponding to
the dialogue under:
JON VO
For a looooooooong time, we human
beings did things pretty much the
same old way, getting around on
foot or by horse, hunting, growing
our own broccoli, and so on. Then
we discovered oil.
We start to rise up the side of the blip, seeing further
CLIPS to illustrate dialogue, under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
Next thing you know, Henry Ford is
making Model T’s, Hitler’s running
tanks across Africa, and everybody
moves to the suburbs. And the best
part is, it was all going to last
forever!
PICTURE of M. King Hubbert.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Then in 1956, Marion King Hubbert,
a geophysicist who worked for
Shell, predicted that US oil
production would max out around
1970. Most people thought he was a
kook, and America went right on
pumping more oil every year.
Hubbert’s original 1956 graph of US oil production, showing
it peaking in 1970, DISSOLVES to a matching graph showing the
actual peak in that year.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Until 1970, when US production
peaked.
We zip around an Earth map to show the names of several
countries in decline and the year that started under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
The same thing has been happening
in a lot of other countries since
then. Meaning at some point it’s
gonna happen to the whole world.
When?
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PHOTO of Earth as it bumps its head on the top of frame.
JON VO (CONT'D)
How about last Tuesday? Maybe even
2005. Nobody knows the exact date,
but we’re definitely bumping our
head on the ceiling, and pretty
soon it’s all gonna be downhill for
the world’s oil supply. Why should
we care?
TITLES ON SCREEN READ: Things to worry about: 1. Pay visa
bill 2. Get lump checked 3. Peak oil
STOCK IMAGES flash by to illustrate:
JON VO (CONT'D)
Because oil is amazing stuff. You
can ship it and store it at room
temperature, it never goes bad.
FOOTAGE: Jon pops the top of a little oil barrel, sniffs it.
Mmmm. Then back to the STOCK IMAGES:
JON VO (CONT'D)
You can use it to fuel a car, a
tractor, a jet plane. You can use
it to make medicine, makeup,
clothing, paint, carpet, and cute
plastic dollies.
PHOTO: Hideous dolly.
JON VO (CONT'D)
That’s why...
STOCK FOOTAGE of George W. Bush from his State of the Union
address 2007.
GEORGE W. BUSH
America is addicted to oil.
George FREEZES.
JON VO
It’s so good!
Banjo music. Debbie Cook, former Mayor of Huntington Beach
and member of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil,
speaks by an oil-to-food graphic.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 35.
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DEBBIE COOK
And the fact that our fossil fuels
actually created the green
revolution.
STOCK FOOTAGE: Pesticide plane, fertilizer, workers operating
tractor on farm all leads to the 6.5 Lederhosen Jon’s popping
back up under:
JON VO
Pesticides are made from oil and
fertilizer is mostly natural gas --
and all that extra food fuelled the
human population explosion.
Young Jon’s in the hats of various countries slide in over
TIME LAPSE of city crowds under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
Most of us exist because of cheap
oil! And just how cheap is it?
Look at it this way...
EXCERPT #16: PEAK OIL - OIL IS CHEAP
TIMELAPSE of Jon struggling to push his car uphill.
JON VO (CONT'D)
How much would you pay to get out
of pushing your 3,000 pound car one
mile uphill? A hundred dollars? A
thousand dollars? Ten thousand?
Here’s what the gasoline costs to
do that for you.
A hand holding 2 dimes.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Twenty cents. That’s why we suck
the stuff down like reefer.
Laughing people suck joints wildly in “Reefer Madness”.
JON VO (CONT'D)
But if we need it that bad, surely
we’ve gotta be able to come up with
more of it. Little snag there.
Cartoon of oil wells being drilled.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 36.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
JON VO (CONT'D)
See, we’ve already sucked out the
best oil from all the easy places
to get it.
Charlie Hall, professor of Environmental Science and Forestry
at SUNY. He is split screen with clips from the 1930’s, the
1970’s and the present.
CHARLIE HALL
Well in 1930 we would invest one
barrel of oil in looking for oil
and get back a hundred barrels. For
the 1970’s we were getting thirty
to one and now it’s somewhere
around ten or fifteen to one.
Present day clip goes full screen under:
JON VO
And that number is falling fast.
In fact, for a lot of the really
dirty, gunky oil we’re drilling
now, it’s 4 to 1 or less.
ARCHIVAL STOCK of Venezuelan oil industry:
JON VO (CONT'D)
Like the heavy oil down in
Venezuela. They used to use it for
caulking canoes, but then they
joined OPEC and started selling it
to the Americanos.
GRAPHIC of US oil sources. The Venezuelan flag is #3.
JON VO (CONT'D)
There may be billions of barrels of
goo down there somewhere, but it
takes about as much energy to get
it as we get from burning it.
Graphic of oil barrels + pump jack = the same, over and over,
then photos showing oil spills in Venezuela.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Plus it makes kind of a mess. In
the end, most of that stuff is
gonna stay in the ground. But
aren’t there other ways to get more
oil?
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 37.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
GRAPHIC: 66 Burundians + meat grinder = barrel of oil?
Switches to:
STOCK of T Rex in “Jurassic Park”.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Well, we could bioengineer some new
dinosaurs and cook them. But
they’re hard to fit in the oven.
So what happens when demand outruns
supply? Well, first of all...
AFRICA SD: Happy Masai guy followed by Jon at the gas pump.
JON VO (CONT'D)
This guy is going to be fine. He’s
never even heard of oil. For the
rest of us, though, it’ll probably
start at the gas pump.
Julian Darley, Co-founder, Post-Carbon Institute, driving
past in a model car.
JULIAN DARLEY
Thinking in terms of transport, the
common idea is suggested that
prices will just go up and up and
up and this is pretty ugly. I mean
a few people will profit and do
well out of it but most people
won’t.
STOCK of abandoned suburban houses.
JON VO
Exactly how much is a house in the
suburbs worth if you can’t afford
to drive to it?
STOCK FOOTAGE of house falling down.
TIME LAPSE of running a shopping cart through Wal-Mart.
JON VO (CONT'D)
And what about the stuff we buy at
Wal-Mart, that’s always been so
cheap because it was made in China?
TIME LAPSE of a Wal-Mart parking lot.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 38.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
JON VO (CONT'D)
What happens when the cost of
shipping is suddenly a hundred
times more than the toaster oven?
The image FREEZES, then goes into reverse, followed by a
cartoon of factories evaporating as dollars fly up into the
air.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Suddenly Wal-Mart stock goes down,
along with the stock of most of the
corporations on earth, as we
realize that the value of pretty
much everything is really based on
cheap oil.
EXCERPT #17: PEAK OIL - MATTHEW SIMMONS
Matt Simmons, author of “Twilight in the Desert”, as Humpty
Dumpty.
MATT SIMMONS
We’re about to hit the wall and if
we hit the wall and don’t have any
brakes on we’re all going to be in
for a jolt.
STOCK FOOTAGE (MOVIE): Crazed man.
CRAZED MAN
If you fail to understand then the
same incredible terror that’s
menacing me will strike in you!
He FREEZES. Jon walks out in front of him (green screen).
JON ON CAMERA
Okay, okay, by this time you’re
thinking: Could this ever really
happen? I mean, look out the
window!
The scene behind him changes to a normal room with an idyllic
view out the window.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
Everything looks normal.
He turns back to camera, and the view turns to archival
footage of a nuclear blast.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 39.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
JON ON CAMERA (cont'd) (CONT’D)
I had the same problem. So I
thought, what would the warning
signs be?
He turns back, and the view quickly changes back to the
idyllic scene.
CHART: “Oil - net difference between reserve additions &
consumption from DOE report 2005.jpg”
JON VO
Well, first, you’d expect us to be
using more oil than we’re finding.
Actually, that started back in
1985.
ANIMATION of happy First World family getting full service at
a gas station.
JON VO (CONT'D)
And since the poor countries always
get hit before we do, you’d expect
to be seeing gasoline shortages and
blackouts in places like, say...
PHOTOS of riots or social unrest in each of the following
countries pop up under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
(fast)
...Nepal, Argentina, India,
Nigeria, Pakistan, Gambia,
Bangladesh, Kenya, the Philippines,
Sri Lanka, China, Uganda, Zimbabwe,
Ghana, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the
Dominican Republic and even Iran.
Those photos get crowded out by oil company logos under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
Then there are the signs that oil
companies know there isn’t much oil
left to be found, so they start
spending it on other things...
A screen grab (oil company merger chart.bmp) slides up from
the bottom of the screen, allowing us to scan down it as it
rises.
JON VO (CONT'D)
...like merging to boost their oil
reserves...
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 40.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
Another screen grab slides in (Exxon buys back own stock.bmp)
.
JON VO (CONT'D)
...and buying back their own stock.
STOCK FOOTAGE: US soldiers in Iraq.
JON VO (CONT'D)
You’d probably see some clever
attempts to get control of
countries that still have major
reserves left.
ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE: Saudi Arabia - 1950’s footage of bedouins
with camels.
JON VO (CONT'D)
And since it’s the world’s biggest
oil producer, a huge sign would be
that Saudi Arabia’s oil exports had
started to flatten out...
CHART: 2006 decline of 8% slides in.
JON VO (CONT'D)
...which they did in 2006.
REPRISE GRAPHIC: the “oil in history curve” returns, and now
we add an arrow pointing at the top and the flashing words:
“We are here”, under an air raid siren.
JON VO (CONT'D)
But if this is true, it’s a
freakin’ emergency. Isn’t somebody
going to save us from the oily
roller coaster ride down to
Helllllllllll?
Under this, we go over the side of a roller coaster, but
before we hit bottom we run into...
Logos for Exxon , Shell, Suncor, GE, Rosatom, Citi, BP, Bank
of America, and Cameco - they pop up under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
Don’t worry! The world’s
corporations have got your back!
Will they save us from peak oil
with nuclear power?
Nuclear power plant slides in. Over it slides footage of a
Mayan Alarm Clock going off as the hand approaches 2012.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 41.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
JON VO (CONT'D)
Nah. We don't have the 10 years
it'll take to build the plants.
And there are complications.
A 3 eyed frog slides in. They both slide out under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
Nope, the big corporations will
stick with what they know. Like
coal and natural gas - even though
we’re running out of those too.
Charts showing peaks in gas and coal slide in then switch to
EXCERPT #18: PEAK OIL - TAR SANDS & THE DEVIL
a waving Canadian flag under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
Then there's our Canadian
delicacy...
Tar sands footages comes in under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
...tar sands. The #1 source of US
oil imports...and it tastes like
maple syrup!
We show a maple syrup bottle with Athabasca Olde Fashioned
Tar Sands label. Then an Arctic drilling rig comes up from
below.
JON VO (CONT'D)
And as soon as the Arctic finishes
melting, we can get the oil out
from under that too. Shouldn't be
long!
The whole mess “melts”, revealing Jon -- as the Devil --
appears in a burst of flame in front of oil fires (green
screen). He’s holding one of those little cans of oil.
JON ON CAMERA
(positively gleeful)
That’s right! In addition to
giving needy corporations new ways
to make money, these solutions to
Peak Oil have something else in
common: they’re gonna make global
warming worse! And just when
things are really falling apart...
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 42.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
He scoops the last of the oil out of the can with his finger,
like frosting, puts it in his mouth.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
...mmmm...that’s when the tank’s
gonna hit empty.
The scene “explodes” with multiple fireballs and
EXCERPT #19: GLOBAL WARMING - CLAYMATION SEQUENCE
Jon’s thumb emerges from the flames with the Global Warming
symbol on it, over the title GLOBAL WARMING. Over this:
JON VO
So that brings us back around to
the last of our Big 5 Problems...
4-5 5) GLOBAL WARMING 4-5
A starry sky emerges from the flames, and Jon’s hand (with
the Stop Global Warming bracelet) ENTERS FRAME holding the
Devil’s oil barrel. Under the following, Jon’s hand taps out
a clay drop of oil:
JON VO
...and in case you’re having
trouble remembering them all, we’re
going to let Peak Oil take us on a
trip to a little town called
Overshoot.
The oil drop grows huge as it falls into a model of a
peaceful seaside town next to a forest, and lands in the
parking lot of a gas station with a SOYLENT GAS sign on it.
A car zips away under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
Everybody knew Peak Oil would show
up sometime. They just didn’t know
it would be today.
Peak Oil’s symbol appears on his chest, under the vocalized
sound effect “bling”.
JON VO (CONT'D)
And it’s not like they don’t
already have one monster in town.
Abruptly a claymation Global Warming monster (a burning Earth
with a huge mouth) comes around the corner and barrels down
the street, knocking cars aside.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 43.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
JON VO (CONT'D)
Global warming’s been ripping up
the place since the Industrial
Revolution.
Global Warming stops when it sees Peak Oil - the two are
attracted.
JON VO (CONT'D)
But now that we’re in overshoot,
these two are going to get together
and build a new monster, unlike
anything we’ve seen before.
They move together behind the Buy or Die big-box store, and
nuzzle. Global warming giggles.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Because the more we burn the dirty
stuff, the worse global warming
gets.
Global Warming ends up on top of Peak Oil, becoming its head.
It does a joyous spin as it roars under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
But maybe you’re still not sure
Global Warming is really a problem.
CUT TO:
UNFCCC charts about global warming POP up under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
I’ve given you a bunch of numbers
about global warming, but there’s
really only one number you need to
know.
On top of all these appears one number, 11,000,000,000.
JON VO (CONT'D)
11 billion tons. That’s how much
CO2 the earth can absorb every year
without heating up.
That number changes to 31,000,000,000.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Right now we’re at 31 billion and
rising fast.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 44.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
Back to the claymation Global Warming/Peak Oil monster, as it
arrives at a little lake with animals around it.
JON VO (CONT'D)
So unless somebody repeals the Laws
of Thermodynamics, that means
Global Warming is gonna blow us all
away if we don’t do something.
It blows on the lake, and in a puff of steam, the lake
evaporates and all the animals are dead. Over this:
JON VO (CONT'D)
And it isn’t just Peak Oil that’s
raising our chances of ending up
like those fish.
The GW/PO monster turns to see something O.S.
JON VO (CONT'D)
The big picture here is that all of
the other Big Problems are heating
up the planet even faster.
We cut to the Overshoot Drive-in, which has the
Overpopulation symbol on the screen.
JON VO (CONT'D)
In fact, another one of ‘em just
pulled into town.
All the little cars start bouncing up and down.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Those sexy legs belong to one of
the biggest drivers of Overshoot:
overpopulation. Looks like she’s
inspired the local townsfolk to do
a little overpopulating themselves.
An Overpopulation Monster (a giant ovum with wriggling sperm
splayed around her head as hair, and 2 big eye-lashed eyes)
enters the drive-in. Over this:
JON VO (CONT'D)
And this monster’s about to get
lucky too.
The extra sperm wriggle down her legs, and one sperm goes
inside the Overpopulation monster’s head, under:
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 45.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
JON VO (CONT'D)
In you go little fella. Human
population has doubled in the last
40 years, and looks like she’s
about to do it again.
She starts to divide. The PO/GW monster looks shocked, then
happy. Over this:
JON VO (CONT'D)
Sorry, this part’s not appropriate
for children.
It heads toward the drive-in, passing a little bunny which it
covers in oil on the way by. We CUT to the drive-in, and see
the Overpopulation Monster has divided into the 2 Ovettes,
who watch PO/GW approach.
JON VO (CONT'D)
There’s no way we’re gonna stop
climate change when we’re adding
200,000 climate changers a day.
Yup, overpopulation is a big part
of this mega-monster we’re
building.
PO/GW leans over them, absorbing them, and we reveal that the
Ovettes have become its bulging eyeballs. It is now PO/GW/O.
JON VO (CONT'D)
And what does Global Warming spy
with its big new eyes?
We hear machine sounds O.S., and PO/GW/O turns at the sounds
of a bulldozer crashing through the forest next to the town,
crushing the trees.
JON VO (CONT'D)
It’s the War on Nature, victimizing
another defenseless woodland
creature.
Bambi runs out of the forest, terrified. The bulldozer
appears behind the frightened deer.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Yup, we’re bulldozing the trees...
Another bulldozer comes up out of the ocean, spilling trash
all over the beach under...
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 46.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
JON VO (CONT'D)
...and killing off the
phytoplankton in the ocean, the two
things that absorb most of the CO2
we put out.
The two bulldozers pull up side by side, and PO/GW/O looks
them over. Under this:
JON VO (CONT'D)
These guys have just been waiting
to be part of something bigger.
And now they’re gonna get their
chance.
PO/GW/O climbs on top of the bulldozers, trying them out as
feet, and adding another third to its height. With the
addition of the Bulldozers, it is now PO/GW/O/B. It grins
wickedly.
JON VO (CONT'D)
But we’re not done yet!
PO/GW/O/B turns at O.S. crunching sounds. We CUT back to the
town to see a snake-like Consumption monster (with grasping
hands at both ends) coming over the roof of a building,
under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
The last piece of this monster
we’re building is our massive overconsumption.
It steals a tree and disappears. We hear O.S. GOBBLING
sounds. Then it appears halfway up the street and grabs a
flower bed, GOBBLING it under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
Tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanoes
are pretty bad, but there’s nothing
quite as destructive as a Baby
Boomer with a Visa card.
The monster disappears just before a truck ENTERS FRAME and
starts driving toward the monster, who peeks out at it.
JON VO (CONT'D)
And here it comes...
The monster GOBBLES it up.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 47.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
JON VO (CONT'D)
But the days when we could buy up
all the oil and food and iPhones
for ourselves are just about over.
The Consumption Monster starts GOBBLING up stuff at a yard
sale.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Now everybody on Earth is hurrying
to catch up to the North American
lifestyle...
Under the following, PO/GW/O/B revs over to the Consumption
monster, who sees it as something more to consume. The
consumption monster goes in one shoulder and comes out the
other. Over this:
JON VO (CONT'D)
If that becomes part of this
monster, it’ll raise our CO2 output
to more than forty times what the
earth can handle.
PO/GW/O/B is initially alarmed, but then realizes it has
hands, and tries them out. It is now more powerful than
ever.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Oh, maybe I shouldn’t’ve said that.
The new 5-part monster - PO/GW/O/B/C - looks evil under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
Because Global Warming’s already to
the point where it’s about to start
making itself worse.
We hear George Monbiot (Author, “Heat: How to Stop the Planet
from Burning”) begin to speak O.S. We CUT to find Monbiot’s
interview “playing” on the drive-in screen. After 5 seconds
of talk, PO/GW/O/B/C passes in front of the screen, eating a
car.
GEORGE MONBIOT
2 degrees of warming is the really
dangerous tipping point for a lot
of the worst impacts of climate
change.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 48.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
After another 5 seconds, PO/GW/O/B/C appears in b.g.,
rampaging out of the forest, throwing a moose and dropping a
tree. As Monbiot talks, PO/GW/O/B/C faces towards the sky in
the distance and starts to genuflect.
GEORGE MONBIOT (CONT'D)
If we get to 2 degrees, 3 degrees
becomes an inevitability. If we
get to 3 degrees, 4 degrees becomes
inevitable. It is out of our hands
beyond that point.
At that point, we have craned up above the drive-in screen,
and the Earth starts to shrink down as a planet-sized
PO/GW/O/B/C comes up above the horizon. Global warming is
now poised to destroy the Earth.
JON VO
So that’s the face of runaway
global warming. How could it
happen?
CUT TO:
STOCK FOOTAGE: The Siberian Peat Bog.
JON VO (CONT’D)
This is the Siberian Peat Bog. I
know - I’d never heard of it
either. But turns out it’s just
full of billions of tons of frozen
methane that are going to come out
as it starts to melt...
STOCK FOOTAGE: melting Arctic ice.
JON VO (CONT'D)
...just like the ice crystals in
the bottom of our warming oceans...
PHOTOS: Tipped houses on melting permafrost.
JON VO (CONT'D)
...and that permafrost up in the
Arctic.
CARTOON: a giant magnifying glass captures sunlight under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
And methane is more than 20 times
better at trapping heat than CO2.
Once all that’s released, we’re
cooked.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 49.
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PHOTOMONTAGE of 1950’s photo of housewife holding a platter
with Earth roasted instead of a turkey. CUTS TO
EXCERPT #20: GLOBAL WARMING - FOREST RANT
Jon sitting in a car. A NEWSCASTER appears in the drivers
side window, then disappears, under:
JON ON CAMERA
But forget about what’s going to
happen. I don’t know about you,
but when I hear some reporter on TV
say, “The world will end in twothousand
fifty because of global
warming” or whatever, all I think
is: Hey, don’t have to do anything
till two-thousand fifty!
Jon driving:
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
Road trip!
His car accelerates off down the street. GO TO: Jon in the
forest, storm damaged-trees all around him.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
(slowly building to a
furious rant)
So let’s talk about now, because
this mess we’re in doesn’t start in
two-thousand fifty, it doesn’t
start in two thousand thirty, it
doesn’t even start next year. It
started back in 1987, when we went
off Nature’s curve and started
living on our ecological credit
card. Human population passed the
sustainable point more than 80
years ago. The oceans that soak up
half the CO2 we put out are just
about full. Species haven’t been
going extinct this fast since the
last time Earth got hit by an
asteroid. Our situation’s been
dire since before I was born -- we
just didn’t know it yet. And how
does all that make me feel?!
(beat)
Depressed.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 50.
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Jon FREEZES and is PUSHED OUT OF FRAME as we PAN across a
Pearls Before Swine cartoon about the Soap on a Rope hanging
itself out of depression. Funny depression MUSIC.
The fourth “panel” of the strip is Jon at a table,
sorrowfully contemplating his Soap on a Rope (image made to
resemble a line drawing). MUSIC continues.
SUBTITLE: Let’s all take a moment to feel our feelings.
Then music ends and we return to
EXCERPT #21: GLOBAL WARMING - LEARNING TO BE HEROES
Engineer Jon, standing in the stream with his easel:
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
So to sum up...
(follows the dotted line
off the chart)
This is where we think we’re going.
(follows the bell curve)
This is where Nature wants us to
go...and now you know what happens
when you go off Nature’s curve:
(increasing anxiety)
... you get stress and terrorism
and war and epidemics and peak oil
and global warming and no more
harlequin tree frogs...
(calms himself)
...these are all symptoms of
something bigger that has already
happened, based on this idea that
we can go up and up forever!
(makes the exponential
curve shape with his
arms)
We’ve pushed past Nature’s curve...
(points at the crash line)
...and this is where we’re headed
if we don’t start going in a
different direction. But who’s
gonna save us?
(skeptically)
Government? The big corporations?
Personally I had high hopes for
technology, but it looks like all
that’s going to be too little too
late. How about our kids?
HOME VIDEO OF Mariel, around age 10, at a petting farm.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 51.
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JON O.S.
Well, Mariel is good with animals.
And she’s cute, which could help
win votes in the electoral college.
HOME VIDEO slides out, returning us to Jon in the stream.
JON ON CAMERA
Only problem is, we don’t seem to
have the time to wait for my
daughter to grow up. So it looks
like it’s up to you and me to turn
the Titanic around right now, and
when I say right now, I mean, right
now. But what can I do, you’re
saying? I’m just one person!
(shrugs, smiles)
I gave you 5 big problems, right?
Well, I’ve done a little homework,
and I’ve come up with 5 big
solutions to go with them.
Holds out his left hand, and we ZOOM in to see there are 5
symbols drawn on the fingertips.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
This is the part where you and I
learn to be...
(takes off his glasses)
...heroes.
TIME-LAPSE TRANSITION - Jon in front of Esso gas station,
with short reprise of “Right Here, Right Now”.
5-0 THE FIVE SOLUTIONS 5-0
EXCERPT #22: HEADLESS JON SEQUENCE
Jon on camera in front of an enlargement of the two hands
graphic, the Problem and Solution symbols on the fingertips
(green screen).
JON ON CAMERA
Aside from taking account of the
whole bigger picture of our
problems...
He indicates the symbols on the right hand behind/above him.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 52.
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JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
...I figured my solutions would
have to satisfy 3 conditions.
An industrial tube enters frame and sucks Jon’s head off.
His head flies through the tube, and pops out into an
animated machine that turns out to manufacture Jon heads.
Jon’s head travels through the machine as he speaks.)
JON ON CAMERA (cont'd) (CONT’D)
First of all, I don’t want to be a
cog in a machine. I don’t know
about you, but I’m already busy --
I’ve got to work, and pay the
bills, and get the kid to school...
If I’m going to inconvenience
myself -- if I’m going to change my
life -- I don’t want to be just one
little ant putting one more grain
of sand on the beach, and hoping
that will keep the tidal wave from
washing us all away. I gotta know
that what I’m gonna do is going to
make a difference -- the
difference.
The machine dumps Jon’s head down a hole, and he falls to
Earth, bounces down his cul de sac.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
Second of all, there’s gotta be
something in it for me.
(jaded)
I mean, I know the earth gives me
air and food and water...
Jon’s head falls down past stars under:
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
...and a place to stand so I don't
fall through outer space forever...
Jon’s head falls to Earth, bounces off of North America back
into orbit, then falls back to Africa under:
JON ON CAMERA (cont'd) (CONT’D)
...but what’s it done for me
lately? So forget about future
generations -- these solutions have
to make my life better now.
Jon’s head lands on Jon’s empty neck -- Jon is now standing
in front of ostriches (our Africa HD/green screen).
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 53.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
Lastly, I couldn’t ask you to do
anything I hadn’t done myself, or
else I’m full of crap.
Jon looks behind him at the ostriches, sees they’re standing
next to an Exxon sign.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
Let’s get started.
We ZOOM IN on the Exxon sign...
1) DRIVE PAST EXXONMOBIL 5-1 & ESSO STATIONS 5-1
Jon standing in front of an Esso station, but the sign is
initially covered by the Exxon sign. He speaks like a
Southern preacher.
JON ON CAMERA
Our first solution focuses on
ExxonMobil...
The Exxon sign slides out of frame with a whoosh, revealing
the Esso sign underneath.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
...still called Esso here in
Canada. Why them? Let’s review.
CLOSER on Preacher Jon. Under the following, the words
“We’re #1” appear under the Esso sign.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
Global warming has many different
causes, but the oil produced by
Exxon -- just Exxon by itself -- is
responsible for 3% of the warming
since 1882.
A burning Earth GRAPHIC comes up showing a 3% slice labeled
“You Know Who”.
CONGREGATION (O.S.)
Shame.
We cut to Jon in front of a different Esso sign. The graphic
“[heart] Global Warming” appears next to it. Then graphics
relating to Exxon’s misinformation activities appear in front
of him: $2,100,000 to the Center for American Enterprise
Institute, $1,600,000 to the Competitive Enterprise
Institute, and $5.43 to Satan.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 54.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
JON ON CAMERA (cont’d)
They’ve spent $55 million on
lobbyists since the turn of the
millennium to convince us that
global warming is not real. And
when they said that they’d stopped,
brothers and sisters, turns out
they lied.
Jon appears (on green screen) in front of an American flag,
then the stars are replaced by the Exxon logo.
JON ON CAMERA (cont'd) (CONT’D)
For eight long years, they
practically turned the government
of the United States into their
wholly-owned subsidiary.
REVERSE to n 1890’s era black gospel church congregation
listening. Jon seems to be preaching to them.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
And do we believe they won’t try to
do the same with the new
government? No we don’t!
The congregation seems to call back:
CONGREGATION
No we don’t!
Behind Jon we see now see a peak oil graphic based on the
2009 Petrobras figures.
JON ON CAMERA
Finally, they are hiding the truth
from you about Peak Oil...
Under the following, Hellish visuals appear behind Jon to
emphasize his hellfire words.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
...at the same time as they’re
investing in nuclear, coal and all
those other ungodly alternatives!
Jon appears back at the gas station. The Esso sign turns
green, and green smiley faces appear under:
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 55.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
Sure, they’re doing a little bit to
improve their image, but a little
bit is not enough.
A global heat map with the Exxon logo on it comes up under:
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
Exxon has done more than any
company in the world to fry you and
everybody you love, and you have
got to take it personally!
A hellish montage of damage from the Exxon Valdez spill comes
in, capped by an oily bird who belches out a blob of oil.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
Exxon has to atone.
CONGREGANT (O.S.)
Amen!
JON ON CAMERA
So until Exxon becomes the greenest
company on God’s green earth,
here’s what we’re gonna do.
Anytime we see one of these
signs...
He points next to him, and Exxon, Mobil and Esso whoosh into
frame.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
...we’re gonna drive on past.
Drive as much as you want!
ABRUPT CUT TO a CU of Jon with a cigarette in his mouth.
Under the following we do a RAMPED ZOOM out to see he’s on a
diving board above a pool.
JON O.S.
Fill up your swimming pool with
gasoline!
Jon dives into the pool and vaporizes in a ball of flame.
RESUME Jon in from of an Esso station.
JON ON CAMERA
Just don’t buy it here.
He now seems to be preaching to Beatles fans gathered at the
airport.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 56.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
Then behind him appear logos of other oil companies -- not
just so-called “Big Oil” (Chevron, BP, Shell, etc.) but the
real big oil producers: Saudi Aramco, Petroleos Mexicanos,
National Iranian Oil Company (in Farsi), Petronas, Statoil,
etc.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
If a million of us do that
tomorrow, Exxon will get the
message...and so will all those
other oil companies...
As an electric street car goes past with Exxon’s logo on the
front, angels sing.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
They got the money, they got the
know-how -- they’re the ones that
should be leading us into that lowcarbon
promised land.
The beautiful Flathead Valley appears behind Jon as the
promised land, then we return to the gas station.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
And the first one that does that
will get our business. So solution
number one...
He holds up his left hand, and camera ZOOMS IN to the Drive
Past Exxon symbol drawn on his thumb.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
...Drive Past Exxon. Simple! And
we’re already a fifth of the way
through!
Camera PANS to the Lifebulb Changes symbol on the next
finger, and we go to
5-2 2) LIFEBULB CHANGES 5-2
We start on the Lifebulb Changes symbol and WIPE TO news
footage of the day a Walmart employee was trampled to death
by excited shoppers.
TERRENCE HOWARD
They had no control of the crowd,
security guards couldn’t stop the
people from coming in.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 57.
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FEMALE NEWSCASTER (V.O.)
This is cell phone video of EMT’s
surrounding a store employee trying
to save his life. He died after
being trampled by hundreds of Black
Friday shoppers.
A cartoon of people rushing into a theater comes up, then
Mark Anielski, economist appears at bottom of screen.
MARK ANIELSKI
What economists have done is
reduced us to basically consumers,
as as they call us, as opposed to
citizens, as opposed to people who
in our hearts have value.
FEMALE NEWSCASTER (V.O.)
Employees unlocked the doors at 5
a.m. Cops say the crowd of more
than two thousand people poured in.
The shoppers physically broke down
the doors to get inside.
WIPE TO
EXCERPT #23: LIFEBULBS - FAT JON SEQUENCE
Jon seated at a table, with consumer items in front of him on
the table - flat-screen TV, iPhone, Nintendo Wii, iPod. (All
green screen.) “Eats” 2 things on the table dutifully, then:
JON ON CAMERA
Consuming. That’s our job!
He “eats” another item, starts to get fat.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
Mmmm.
(patriotically)
We eat and eat and eat to keep the
economy growing, even if it uses up
all our money and puts us into
debt.
(sees the other side)
Of course all that growth does use
up a lot of stuff we don’t have
enough of, like oil and trees and
water, and makes a lot of stuff --
like global warming -- we already
got too much of...
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 58.
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(MORE)
(eats 4th item
thoughtfully)
So what’s the solution?
Jon continues to “eat” and get fat under:
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
Consume more!
(slyly)
Only now we’ll be “green”
consumers!
(eats joyously again)
Yeah! Oh, yeah, mmm, yeah. Yeah,
we can...we can buy front-loading
washing machines for our organic
cotton jeans...and we can, we can
buy carbon offsets for our ecovacations
in Costa Rica...and don’t
forget to change your lightbulbs!
Oh, yeah. Took care of that!
(eats with a snort,
smiles, then thinks
again)
Well, there are a couple of
problems here. First of all, this
guy...
Masai tribesman from Africa SD.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT’D)
...could never afford to do as much
as this guy.
STOCK FOOTAGE of a smirking Donald Trump.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT’D)
And no matter what this woman does
in her whole lifetime...
STOCK PHOTO of white trash woman...
JON ON CAMERA (CONT’D)
...she could never reduce her
“ecological footprint” as much as
this woman could...
STOCK PHOTO of the Queen of England.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT’D)
...just by closing down a couple of
castles.
Back to big fat Jon, who pats his belly under:
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 59.
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JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
JON ON CAMERA (CONT’D)
Most of us are somewhere in the
middle, so...seems like how much
good you can do by buying different
stuff depends on how much money
you’ve got, and also how much of a
dork you were up until now. Too
complicated.
He picks up the compact fluorescent bulb, looks at it
thoughtfully.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
I say, instead of changing our
lightbulbs, let’s change our
lifebulbs.
Senses skepticism:
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
How do we do that?
Thinks for a moment, then a lightbulb with 2D Lou on it
appears over his head. Idea!
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
Well, here’s three things anybody
can do!
He smiles, then remembers the lightbulb, eats it, goes back
to smiling as we cut to OUR B ROLL of cars on the freeway and
STOCK of a man with a sail on his car.
JON VO
First of all, let’s cut our
emissions. I’m not going to tell
you to buy a hybrid, even if you’ve
got the money, because a zillion
new hybrids on the road isn’t the
answer either. Having said that,
if you own one of these...
STOCK PHOTO: A HUMMER.
JON VO (CONT'D)
...go out right now and mail it to
our troops overseas. Go on. We’ll
wait until you get back.
Stamps appear on the Hummer as it morphs into a wrapped
package, then we switch to FOOTAGE of a cow chewing her cud
peacefully in a field.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 60.
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JON VO (CONT'D)
But we’re not gonna talk about
cars.
EXCERPT #24: LIFEBULBS - DAISY 1
JON VO (CONT'D)
We’re gonna talk about Daisy. She
looks harmless, doesn’t she? Well,
don’t be fooled.
ANIMATION ON FOOTAGE: Daisy’s head turns into a demon, so
she looks monstrous - grows horns, snorts fire, big forked
tongue snakes out.
JON VO (CONT'D)
(dramatically)
Daisy and her vicious cud-chewing
cohorts cause more global warming
than any other animal on earth!
A horrendous oil fire slides in and knocks Demon Daisy offscreen.
JON VO (CONT'D)
(sweetly)
Except us, of course.
A graphic comes up with the number 1,500,000,000, showing 1
cow equal to the 4 members of Kiss.
JON VO (CONT'D)
There are about a billion and a
half cows on the planet now --
that’s right. One for every 4
humans.
PHOTOMONTAGE of Daisy in the guest room, ready to read the
paper.
JON VO (CONT'D)
We keep ours in the guest room.
PHOTO MONTAGE: illustrating VO below. NASA’s earth photo
again. Tiny cows begin to pop up all over it.
JON VO (CONT'D)
But altogether, cows use almost a
third of the earth’s land surface!
Why are there so many of them?
Cut to a fast-food burger on a plate next to the 3-bulb
Lifebulb lamp. All bulbs are dark.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 61.
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JON ON CAMERA (O.S.)
Three guesses. They may be sacred
in India, but they sure are yummy.
(ENTERS FRAME)
Mmmm.
EXCERPT #25: LIFEBULBS - JON TALKS BEEF & DAISY 2
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
Problem is they’re also big fat
planet-heaters. More than ten per
cent of the global warming we cause
comes from cows. In fact the only
thing that you and I do that causes
more global warming than eating
beef is drive. How is that
possible? Here’s what it takes to
get a burger to your plate.
He snaps and the first bulb goes on as a graphic slides in
that reads “No beef”. Cut to...
RAPID FIRE STOCK PHOTOS & FOOTAGE of a fertilizer plant, a
field of cow feed, clearing rainforest in South America with
bulldozers, baby cows, cows getting transported, a
slaughterhouse, cows being chopped, and a guy eating a Deca-
Stacker burger -- all timed to the following dialogue. The
photos & stock pile up in WINDOWS to make it more
overwhelming.
JON VO
They have to produce fertilizer to
grow cow food, get the food to the
cows, clear land for the cows to
live on, raise the cows, move the
cows to the slaughterhouse, chop
them up, and finally send them to
McDonald’s or Burger King or
wherever you eat ‘em.
FOOTAGE: 2 cows standing side by side. There’s a BURRRRP
sound, and one cow looks away. More cow footage.
COW
Scuse me.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 62.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
JON VO
And then there’s the cow burps.
No, it’s not the farts, cows burp
much more than they fart, to the
tune of 500 quarts of methane per
day per cow. Between that and the
cow poop, we’re looking at one
third of all emissions of methane.
Daisy tail swishes. FART NOISE.
JON VO (CONT'D)
And the farts don’t help.
2D ANIMATION: Under the following narration, we return to
Daisy the Cow, but now in live action, standing in the meadow
looking at camera as changes happen around her. A lake has
been added behind her. In rapid succession, the lake goes
dry, the pasture turns to desert, and acid rain starts
falling, dissolving Daisy to a skeleton.
JON VO (CONT'D)
But beef just keeps on giving:
massive water use -- up to five
thousand gallons to produce one 16
ounce steak -- growing deserts from
overgrazing, and remember acid
rain? Yup, that also comes from
cow pee -- ooo, sorry, Daisy. But
in spite of all the damage it does,
we’re eating more beef every year.
In fact, at the rate we’re going,
we’ll be eating twice as much beef
in two-thousand fifty.
CUT to the Taj Mahal, with a “Welcome Hindu Vegan PETA
Members” banner up. Underneath, it reads: “Enjoy karaoke
night.”
JON VO (CONT'D)
So what am I, some kind of Hindu
vegan PETA member? Nope. I eat
chicken, lamb, fish, shrimp...
Under this, PHOTOS of each of those animals come up over a
plate.
JON VO (CONT'D)
...pretty much any kind of meat.
Lambs are kinda cute, too. But I
eat them. Not snails though.
STOCK FOOTAGE of slimy snail comes up on top.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 63.
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JON VO (CONT'D)
I mean, is that really meat? Sorry
France.
The snail and other animals go away, returning us to a freeze
frame of Preacher Jon, only now Daisy is where the Exxon sign
was.
JON VO (CONT'D)
So really it’s just as easy as
driving past that Exxon station.
Eat all the meat you want, just not
Daisy.
Daisy burps. Go to...
Jon in bed, with glass of wine, wearing a beret. A stuffed
cat is tucked in on the other side of the bed, the vibrator
is subtly seen nearby.
JON ON CAMERA
(seductive French accent)
The second thing everybody can do
has to do with a different kind
of...emissions.
He snaps and the second bulb in the Lifebulb lamp goes on, as
a graphic slides in reading “One baby”. Then he toasts the
camera as we go to 1950’s type STOCK FOOTAGE of babies lined
up in cribs in a maternity ward.
JON VO
5,000 more babies have been born
since we talked about
overpopulation, but during that
time every single one of you has
been doing something about that, by
watching this movie instead of
getting pregnant. But the simple
fact is that no matter how much we
do to reduce greenhouse gases, or
plant trees, or make things more
efficient, none of it will make any
difference if we keep piling up the
babies.
EXCERPT #26: LIFEBULBS - BIRTH CONTROL
Footage of kids in the bush in Africa.
REX WEYLER
The first people to starve to death
are always the poorest of the poor.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 64.
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The poor people in east Africa,
nine million people a year, twenty
four thousand a day ... are
starving to death. That’s a
thousand every hour [bing, bing,
bing, bing, bing] starving to death
while we speak. The math is simple,
you know eventually people are
going to starve to death if we
don’t allow the human population to
decline.
REPEAT OF EARLIER VISUAL: Four and a half Jon’s get X’d out
with big red X’s.
JON VO
We can do that the hard way,
through starvation, war and disease
...
We start with six and a half Jon’s again, only now 4 and a
half smiling Jon’s just fade away. To the side, we see a row
of condoms, and archival footage of a diaphragm and a
cervical cap.
JON VO (CONT'D)
...or we can do it the easy and fun
way, with birth control!
STOCK FOOTAGE: 1950’s happy families waving at camera,
playing in the front yard.
JON VO (cont’d) (CONT’D)
If everybody in the world agreed to
have 1 kid per couple from now on,
we’d be back to a sustainable
population of 2 billion people
within a hundred years...
Windows show ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE of happy kids.
JON VO (CONT'D)
...and there’d be plenty more of
everything for the kids we do have!
But wait, you say...
STOCK PHOTO of quintuplets in crib.
JON VO (CONT'D)
I already have more than one child!
Does this mean I have to give some
of them away?
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 65.
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REX WEYLER (CONT'D)
Footage of juvenile delinquents sniffing glue, and hippie
girl dancing.
JON VO (CONT'D)
If they’re teenagers, some of you
may already have considered this.
But better to give them copies of
this movie and let them draw their
own conclusions.
Footage of nuns.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Others of you may be saying you
always wanted a big family! No
problem!
STOCK PHOTOS of happy non-Caucasian kids:
JON VO (CONT'D)
There are plenty of kids around
just waiting to volunteer!
GRAPHIC: baby on a scale with 6 million pound weight. After
a moment both the baby and the weight disappear.
JON VO (CONT'D)
And as for global warming? If you
live in North America, having just
one less child will automatically
save 6 million pounds of CO2
emissions before the end of the
century!
Bathroom. Jon (in his beret) pops out from behind the shower
curtain, dripping wet.
JON ON CAMERA
(French accent)
So at less than a euro apiece, this
is the most effective carbon offset
you can buy.
He holds up a condom as he steps out of the shower, stands
next to a framed photo of Pope Benedictus XVI.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
And remember if the Pope complains?
ZOOM IN to the Pope’s personal ad, with the title: “The
Pope: Celibate & Lovin’ It!”
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 66.
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JON ON CAMERA (CONT’D)
(French accent)
He’s already doing his part!
Go to...TAMMY SIMMONS, wife & mother, playing with her little
girl -- start with her VO over this B ROLL then go to her
talking.
TAMMY SIMMONS
My name is Tammy Simmons,
EXCERPT #27: LIFEBULBS - TAMMY SIMMONS & BACK TO BEING PEOPLE
TAMMY SIMMONS (CONT'D)
I had researched the Compact a
little bit before Christmas. I had
read an article about it and ah, a
Canadian group had been started up
so I joined that.
We see the COMPACT logo, with flags of Indonesia and England,
under:
JON VO
(over B roll)
The Compact started in San
Francisco, but now has members from
Indonesia to England.
Back to Tammy:
TAMMY SIMMONS
It’s just a pact to um... spend
less, um...reduce more and reuse
more, recycle more. The Pact is a
year, after the year you get one
day where you can go and you can
spend, and you can buy new and you
can buy whatever you want that day.
You have one day to kind of throw
it all to the wind and then, and
then the idea is of course that you
go back to that after that.
JON VO
I went to see Tammy when I realized
that any decision we make to buy
anything is warped because the
value of air and water and soil and
life -- even human life -- isn’t
counted in the cost of the stuff we
buy. For instance...
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 67.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
PHOTOMONTAGE: Soylent Gas station, with price sign reading
“Arm/Leg/Both”
JON VO (CONT'D)
It’s shocking how much they’re
charging us for gas, isn’t it?
They should be charging us this
much.
PHOTOMONTAGE changes to: the price sign now shows
$15.14/gallon for Regular.
JON VO (CONT’D)
That’s what the price would be if
we were paying for all the damage
that using a gallon of gas does to
the planet.
STOCK FOOTAGE/OVERLAPPED LAYERS OF STOCK PHOTOS: Hamster
running on a wheel. As he runs, little versions of consumer
items pass by under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
This is why buying more stuff --
even more “green” stuff -- tends to
make our problems worse. Don’t get
me wrong -- I like buying stuff --
I’m just looking for a way to do it
and not feel guilty about it. And
it turns out there are other
reasons to stop keeping up with the
Joneses:
Back to Tammy. Touching stuff of her and her little girls
under the following:
TAMMY SIMMONS
(over B roll as needed)
I think the original idea for the
compact wasn’t to save the planet.
But, um, I think most people take
it into that, into that mind set. I
feel like it’s changed me, I think
it’s, I’m much more aware and I try
and use any moment where something
comes up about the shopping or
about, recycling, or about reusing
things, or about, y’know, trading,
or shopping for used clothes I try
to use it um, as teaching moments
with my kids.
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(MORE)
Cause I think that ultimately it’s
changed me but it’s giving me the
opportunity to change them and to
change who they become and what
they see and, yeah I think it’s
changed how I look at a lot of
different things.
We start CU on Jon, who seems to be outdoors jogging.
JON ON CAMERA
So that’s the third and last thing
everybody can do on a personal
level -- buy anything you want --
just let somebody else buy it
first, at full price, and then you
get it cheap on the rebound.
By the end of this, we reveal that he’s actually running on a
treadmill in his backyard. He’s dressed in sweats pants and
the HTBAF T-SHIRT that reads: “I buy, therefore I am”. He
pours himself a cup of coffee from a high-end coffee maker
under:
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
And the bonus is, that sends a
message to the big corporations
that we’re not just “consumers” --
we’re people!
He turns on the third CFL in the lamp, and a third graphic
slides in reading “Buy used”. Then he looks queasy.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
But wait...what’s that sick feeling
I get when I think about not buying
any new stuff?
(about to barf)
I think something might have to
change on the inside, too. Excuse
me.
He turns away and we see Billy the Singing Bass start to sing
as music starts. After a beat it is replaced by the Change
of Heart symbol and we go to...
5-3 3) CHANGE OF HEART 5-3
We PUSH IN through the Change of Heart symbol and find Jon in
a green space. He’s dressed all in white and has a sort of
hippie/mystic air.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 69.
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TAMMY SIMMONS (CONT'D)
STOCK FOOTAGE of Indian snake charming plays in b.g. FOOTAGE
appears behind him to illustrate Jon’s statements.
JON ON CAMERA
Let’s meditate on...statistics.
Last year wasn’t just one of the
hottest on record. It was also a
banner year for stress and anxiety.
We worked harder than ever
...consumed more...
Jon goes down into the snake basket under...
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
...went deeper into debt...
Jon reappears and gets fat under:
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
...and got fatter.
ARCHIVAL footage of an old woman building her own house...
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
We got closer to retirement...
Depression-era footage of apple-seller...
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
...with less chance than ever of
being able to afford it.
Orphanage...
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
Our sons and daughters saw less of
us...
Kids playing video games. Jon multiplies...
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
...but much more of their TV’s,
computers and video games.
Guy sitting alone at a dining table. Jon goes back to being
one.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
More of us than ever lived single
...
Spam on a computer screen.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 70.
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JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
...yet we saw much less of our
friends and our families because we
were so busy deleting record
amounts of spam...
Toddler banging on a laptop.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
...while trying...to keep up...with
our emails!
Hurricane footage...
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
As the weather went crazy and the
world got more dangerous...
Riots...
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
...we got an increasing sense that
things had gone wrong somehow...
US Debt Clock shows debt spiralling...
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
...but had less of an idea than
ever what to do about it!
People in a lab furiously researching...
EXCERPT #28: CHANGE OF HEART - MEDITATION ON STATISTICS
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
As our cities got more crowded...
Crowded cities...
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
...and traffic got worse...
Traffic...
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
...we downed more
antidepressants...
Piles of pills...
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
...and drugged our children at
record levels...
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 71.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
Archival stock of giving a kid a vitamin...
JON ON CAMERA (cont'd) (CONT’D)
...trying to keep everything under
control
People wrestling with zombies...followed by images that
illustrate the following:
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
...while we hurried on with our
lives -- exhausted, overworked,
underemployed or both, pressured,
unsure -- even hopeless about
whether things would ever get any
easier!
Back in front of the snake charmer’s basket. Jon gets calm,
puts palms together:
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
Well here’s a message for you:
change is coming.
MONTAGE OF PHOTOS of Jon’s dad, some with Jon as a kid. For
the additional VO, we see some similar photos of Jon with
Mariel.
JON VO
This is my dad. He was a lawyer
for oil companies, and took me
travelling a lot when I was a kid.
He was smart, funny, and always
told me he loved me, even when I
was old enough for it to be
embarrassing. I don't think I
really knew how much all that had
affected me until my daughter was
born. The older she got, the more
I understood the gift he'd given
me. And it was maybe all the more
miraculous because my dad was also
an alcoholic. They say in AA that,
when you’re a drunk, you’re either
getting better or you’re getting
worse -- there’s no standing still.
And that’s where we are now --
things staying the same isn’t one
of our options.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 72.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
(MORE)
My dad had a decision to make --
find some kind of way to change, on
the inside, and live, or keep on
doing the same thing and die. He
never did find a way to make that
change, and his alcoholism killed
him when he was 65.
A verse of the song “One Voice” plays over more pictures of
Jon’s Dad playing with Mariel.
Jon on camera - starts in a CU so we can’t tell where he is,
but pulls out till we see, surprisingly, that he’s on train
tracks...
JON ON CAMERA
The third solution is that inside
change, and it’s in the middle
because I wasn’t sure if it has to
happen first, to get you to take
action, or if it happens because
you’re taking action. Maybe both.
But even though it’s kind of a
fuzzy solution, I knew I had to
include it because it kept coming
up with the people that I talked
to...
EXCERPT #29: CHANGE OF HEART - INTERVIEWS
Anita Burke, sustainability consultant.
ANITA BURKE
We just really need to go beyond
organic, we need to go beyond
greening the capitalistic system
and we need to come together as a
collective community at the local
level to address a broader range of
issues because they’re all
interrelated and they’re all
interdependent.
We see a visual FX shot of a boy going through the looking
glass from “The Collector” -- an image of total
transformation under:
ANITA BURKE (CONT'D)
Personal transformation, a constant
state personally of thriving to be
better as a soul and as a human.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 73.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
JON VO (CONT'D)
Gigi Gaskins, founder of Peak Oil Nashville. She is intercut
with images of people building houses, filling sandbags,
making food. Then lastly an image of a woman rushing
frantically into a store to buy things.
GIGI GASKINS
Having interactions with people
that are meaningful, really having
to learn to trust other people,
having to pull together. And to me
I look forward to that and that
process of filling a void I guess,
that I have found lacking in that
other kind of more material world.
Chris Turner, Author, “The Geography of Hope”, appears in B
roll with his daughter and wife, then on camera.
CHRIS TURNER
I don’t think we’re going to get
the kind of change we need if it
only comes sort of under grave
duress. I think the problem will
get beyond our ability to manage it
if we don’t learn to, in a sense,
want these things.
STOCK PHOTOS/VIDEO of Muslim, Buddhist and Christian worship.
JON O.S.
So you can call it a spiritual
change, or a religious awakening,
or say it’s about morals or
values...or you can just call it a
change of heart.
Back to Jon on the train tracks.
JON ON CAMERA
But it’s as real and as important
any of the other solutions, and
I’ll tell you why. Because
EXCERPT #30: CHANGE OF HEART - THE SKYTRAIN SCENE
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
...when this movie’s over, there’s
going to be a moment -- one moment -
- when you think about taking
action.
Under the following, we’ll start to see a train coming
towards him.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 74.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
In that moment, if you believe
there’s no point, then there’s no
point. If you think it’s too late,
then it’s too late. But if you
believe you can make a
difference...
The train “hits” him...and dissolves away.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
...you can.
As the train dissolves away to nothing, we ZOOM IN on the the
Giant-Killing symbol under:
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
And the best news is, you get to do
it by making trouble.
Go to...
5-4 4) GIANT-KILLING 5-4
The Giant-Killing symbol MATCH DISSOLVES from the stick
figure to FOOTAGE of the founds of Greenpeace confronting a
Russian whaling boat and filming it. Titles:
1975
Greenpeace blocks a Russian whaler with a Zodiac boat and a
camera.
The age of Youtube begins.
31 years later...
George Allen in the “macaca” video
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G7gq7GQ71c) which runs MOS
under:
JON VO
In August 2006, George Allen, the
Republican senator from Virginia,
was at a campaign rally when he
referred to an Indian-American man
in the crowd with the racial slur
“macaca”.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 75.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
GEORGE ALLEN
Lets give a welcome to macaca here,
welcome to America and the real
world.
JON VO
The man caught it on video, put it
on youtube, and George Allen went
from being a 2008 presidential
hopeful to being...unemployed.
STOCK PHOTO of Harry Truman holding up a copy the Chicago
daily tribune that reads, Macaca beats Allen.
JON VO (CONT'D)
In fact, that one lost seat gave
the Senate to the Democrats...
STOCK NEWS VIDEO of Jim Inhofe, former chair of the Senate
Environment and Public Works Committee.
JON VO (CONT'D)
...and took control of the
Environment Committee away from the
guy who said:
JIM INHOFE
Man made global warming is the
greatest hoax ever perpetrated on
the American people.
We DISSOLVE TO a SCREEN GRAB (Angry teacher youtube article
11-24-06.jpg) which we PAN under:
JON VO
Two months later, a 13 year old
girl in Gatineau, Quebec used her
cell phone to video an angry
teacher yelling at her friend and
put it on youtube.
Screen grabs of angry teacher youtube videos POP UP under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
Now a search on youtube comes up
with plenty of angry teachers.
Suddenly regular people -- even
teenager people -- had a new and
powerful tool.
EXCERPT #31: GIANT-KILLING - ASSBALL BREAK
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 76.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
Jon in front of the “overturned house” statue near the
Waterfront. He’s wearing the “North American Union” HTBAF TSHIRT
and shorts. He’s kicking something around, but we
don’t see it yet. Thrash metal music plays through his iPodlike
music player -- he’s a total headbanger. He makes devil
horns with both hands (2+2=4th solution).
JON ON CAMERA
Our fourth solution is called Giant-
Killing because “ass-kicking”
sounds kinda rude, but the truth is
governments and big corporations
are never gonna do anything that
really matters about the Big 5
problems...
(shows the symbols on his
right hand fingers)
...unless we kick their ass.
He turns to camera holding a beachball with ASS written all
over it.
JON ON CAMERA (cont’d) (CONT’D)
Assball break!
Video of Jon-Dude waving the Assball at camera from other
takes.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
Assball! Assball! Assball!
Assball break!
Then the video zips back out to show Jon through the video
camera in his cell phone.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
Luckily, we’ve got the greatest
giant-killer of all time on our
side: youtube!
We go to Jon’s cell phone video playing on youtube (i.e., we
film the computer monitor) as it continues to play:
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
If you’ve got a video camera in
your cell phone or whatever, and a
few friends with a deranged sense
of humor, you’re ready to start
giving your local big shots a real
pain in the you-know-what.
Jon waves his ball at the camera.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 77.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
JON ON CAMERA (cont'd) (CONT’D)
So how does it work? Well, first
of all, you pick something that
really ticks you off. Like this:
EXCERPT #32: GIANT-KILLING - COAL
STOCK FOOTAGE of smokin’ dirty coal-fired electricity plants.
JON VO
This is what it looks like when you
burn coal to make electricity. Half
of all the electricity in the US is
made this way. China is starting
up a new coal-fired plant every
week, and India’s running to catch
up.
STOCK FOOTAGE of Indian kids running past. Then back to
STOCK of coal-plants.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Altogether there’s gonna be
hundreds of new coal-fired power
plants built worldwide in the next
five years, each one burning 7
million tons of coal a year.
STOCK FOOTAGE of real mountaintop removal.
JON VO (CONT'D)
That by itself is worth getting
pissed off about, because digging
the coal out of the ground tends to
get a little...messy. Fortunately,
they’re working on the screw-off
mountaintop.
ANIMATION: a giant hand ENTERS FRAME, unscrews the top of a
mountain. Then back to STOCK FOOTAGE of coal plants under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
But what really honks my weasel is
the billions of tons of CO2 all
those power plants are gonna put
into the atmosphere.
Ross Gelbspan rises up out of the screwed-off mountaintop
like bubbles, each bubble with him continuing to talk.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 78.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
ROSS GELBSPAN
In terms of global warming there’s
no question that the inequity is
going to be a huge source of
problems because if we don’t act
we’re going to be buried by the
pulse of carbon coming from India
and China with their coal.
Under this, an animation of the carbon pulse (done by the
Vulcan Project) comes out of the mountaintop, followed by
more Ross Gelbspan bubbles:
ROSS GELBSPAN (CONT'D)
We need to basically reduce our use
of coal and oil by 80% and we need
to do it yesterday.
Under the following logos for GE, Cinergy, Taipower, Reliance
Energy Ltd. of India, Vatenfall (Germany), and Eskom (South
Africa) pop up, then the words “clean coal” float across the
screen.
JON VO
The companies building all those
plants say it’s gonna be okay
because they’ll be “clean coal”
plants.
STOCK PHOTO: Chinese man riding bicycle past a coal plant. A
champagne cork lands in the smokestack.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Basically they plan to catch the
carbon dioxide as it comes out of
the smokestack, and stick it into a
hole in the ground. Simple! Well,
there are a few problems.
The cork pops out of the smokestack, and there’s an O.S.
sound effect of breaking glass. MORE STOCK of dirty
smokestacks.
JON VO (CONT'D)
First of all, there’s a whole lot
of nasty stuff going up the
smokestack that they wouldn’t
catch.
Dr. John Bosomworth (identified by title):
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 79.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
DR. JOHN BOSOMWORTH
Mercury is always going to be with
us if we burn coal. There is no
safe level of mercury, and we won’t
know what it’s doing to us or to
our children.
STOCK of Mexican people acting stupidly.
JON VO
We haven’t been paying attention to
this because mercury is gradually
making us all stupid. This
explains a lot.
STOCK footage of FutureGen, with a cork in the smokestack:
JON VO (cont’d) (CONT’D)
Second, they don’t actually know
how to make the whole “clean coal”
thing work. They were going to
practice on a plant called
FutureGen, but it didn’t work out.
A “NEXT TIME FOR SURE” stamp slams down on PHOTO of
FutureGen, and a cork POPS out of the smokestack. Same sound
effect of breaking glass.
CUT TO FOOTAGE of the BC Hydro building, followed by
beautiful, green B.C. (North Shore mountains)
JON VO (CONT’D)
So when I heard that our local
utility company, BC Hydro, was
planning to build not one but two
coal-fired electricity plants in
British Columbia, where I live, I
got pissed off.
Return to footage of BC Hydro building.
JON VO (CONT'D)
But what was I gonna do? Blow up
their building?
Still images of fireballs appear next to the building, but
that turns out to just be Jon’s thought bubble under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
Good thought, but no.
EXCERPT #33: GIANT-KILLING - UTAH PHILLIPS
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 80.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
STOCK PHOTO of Utah Phillips, which will appear to talk
under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
This is Utah Phillips, activist,
songwriter and sometime hobo. He
said something that really stuck
with me:
JON VO (CONT'D)
(outraged prospector
voice)
The earth is not dying. The earth
is being killed, and the people who
are killing it have names and
addresses.
Back to our B ROLL of the HTBAF Irregulars going to BC Hydro
with a basket of coal, going in.
JON VO (CONT'D)
So I got a bunch of my friends
together, and we took a Christmas
basket of coal to the CEO of BC
Hydro, Bob Elton.
A PICTURE of Bob Elton, CEO of BC Hydro, slides in.
JON VO (CONT'D)
We figured he’d need it to fire up
his new power plant. But he
wouldn’t come down to talk to us.
FOOTAGE of me asking to meet with Bob Elton, being refused.
JON VO (CONT'D)
In fact, not only wouldn’t he talk
to us, he set the dogs on us.
Well, dog.
FOOTAGE of the dog, cameraman Pat Williams filming the dog.
PAT WILLIAMS
(to the dog)
Hey, buddy.
BC HYDRO GUARD
Don’t film the dog.
PAT WILLIAMS
(filming the dog)
Don’t film the dog?
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 81.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
BC HYDRO GUARD
No.
PAT WILLIAMS
Why not?
JON VO
Apparently the dog couldn’t sign a
release.
B ROLL of us being pushed away continues under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
Since Bob wouldn’t talk to us, I
asked some people on the street
what they thought.
STREETER #1
I certainly do believe that there
needs to be a personal and a
corporate sense of social
responsibility.
B ROLL of the towering BC Hydro building.
JON VO
It was exciting for me to take this
first step, but the cooler part was
listening to how my friends felt
afterwards.
FOOTAGE of the group discussing how it felt.
DARIA ELLERMAN
Yeah, I thought it was good.
JON
Did you feel uncomfortable doing
it?
SCOTT MACDONALD
No, not at all, not at all.
CATHERINE BOWLES
It made me want to go in there even
more.
DARIA ELLERMAN
I liked it.
(Laughs)
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 82.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
Continues MOS under:
JON VO
This also had one other side
benefit. My daughter noticed what
I was doing.
Mariel reads her Dear Santa note in front of the Xmas tree.
During this, the title “Sarcastic Re-enactment” rises up.
MARIEL ON CAMERA
Dear Santa. I’ve been very
naughty. So make sure you give me
coal so my daddy can get kicked out
of BC Hydro again.
SCREEN GRAB of article about the coal plant controversy.
JON VO
But momentum was still building to
approve the two coal-fired plants.
Apparently Bob Elton was only
taking orders from somebody higher
up.
PHOTO of grinning Gordon Campbell.
JON VO (CONT'D)
This is Gordon Campbell. He’s the
premier of British Columbia --
that’s like a governor in America.
And who was he taking orders from?
SCREEN GRAB of the Compliance Energy website.
JON VO (cont’d) (CONT’D)
In this case, the company who
wanted to build a plant closest to
where I live was Compliance Energy.
B ROLL of proposed coal-mine site near Princeton.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Compliance had already bought a big
piece of property next to a pretty
little town called Princeton.
B ROLL of Princeton, then the SOS office, and Brad Hope.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 83.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
JON VO (CONT'D)
I heard that there was a group
called SOS in Princeton that was
meeting weekly to figure out how to
fight the plant, so I called up the
head of the group, a guy named Brad
Hope, to see if we could make a
youtube video about them. He not
only said yes, he invited us to
stay at his house.
B ROLL of us eating at Brad’s house.
JON VO (CONT'D)
How often do total strangers invite
you to stay at their house, and
even feed you? Stuff like that has
happened to me a lot since I
started making trouble.
B ROLL of the meeting we filmed, including film of the crew.
JON VO (CONT'D)
So we went to the SOS meeting and I
asked them to do something they
usually don’t do.
JON ON CAMERA
(in the meeting)
And if you want to talk about how
you feel about it and what you
would say to Mister Campbell then
please do.
JON VO
And boy did they.
FOOTAGE of some of the most vehement people in the SOS
meeting, including a slam on Gordon Campbell (from the
Princeton mini-doc, called “A Valentine for Gordon
Campbell”).
SOS MEMBER #1
I am horrified. Horrified! That in
this day and age the premier of
British Columbia would think it was
a great idea to burn coal.
SOS MEMBER #2
Its just one of the worst
environmental horrors you can
imagine.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 84.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
SOS MEMBER # 3
Do you have children, do you have
grandchildren Mister Campbell? Do
you care where they live? Would
you let them live in Princeton?
Continues as B ROLL under:
JON VO
After that, we went home, did a
little cutting and pasting, and
stuck it up on youtube.
Film of the computer screen: the Valentine coming up and
starting to play on youtube. Over this:
JON VO (CONT'D)
This also featured the first
appearance of Lou the Frog. And in
memory of Utah Phillips, we stuck
in the name and phone number of
Compliance Energy’s CEO, John
Tapics.
HD version of Valentine cut in to show the part where John
Tapics’ name and phone number comes up. Then skip to the
finale with the son of Sonya Allison, one of the Princeton
protestors:
SONYA’S YOUNG SON
If he does have kids he would let
this would go into his house and he
would poison his own kids.
...followed by a smiling Lou the Frog coming back up. Then
go to on-screen news item about How to Boil a Frog in the
Tyee online newspaper under:
JON VO
We got a lot of hits, and even a
little bit of press for what became
known as our first “minidocumentary”.
But what was way
more important, we made some people
nervous.
Associate Producer Kari Kondratowicz in her apartment.
JON ON CAMERA
Can you tell us about your second
conversation with John Tapics?
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 85.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
KARI KONDRATOWICZ
Yes, right away he declined the
interview and he told me flat out
that it is not in Compliance
Energy’s interest.
JON ON CAMERA
Well, he may be right about that,
how did he sound on the phone?
KARI KONDRATOWICZ
Very nervous, all nerves.
FOOTAGE of Brad Hope walking in Princeton starts MOS under:
JON VO
We even got to the people in the
government.
Brad Hope, Save our Similkameen.
BRAD HOPE
We get a call from the minister’s
office, would we like to meet? And
they knew there was a documentary,
and interested in the documentary,
how long was the documentary, and
what was it about? But they
obviously knew that it was there
and you realize that uh, when you
do these kinds of things and you
get people organized, it may seem
like nobody’s listening but, they
are.
Jon on CAMERA in a playground, swinging.
JON ON CAMERA
Very important lesson to be learned
here. We could have been a bunch
of kids making prank phone calls,
but it didn’t matter. Just saying
you have a camera is enough to make
people nervous!
Film of the throne speech playing on screen starts MOS under:
JON VO
But most important was this:
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 86.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
IONA CAMPAGNOLO
British Columbia will become the
first jurisdiction in North
America, if not the world, to
require one hundred percent carbon
sequestration from any coal fired
project.
Continues MOS under:
JON VO
In English, that means Compliance
could build their coal plant...as
long as they built it with magic
fairy dust so it wouldn’t emit any
CO2.
ANIMATION: Under this, Frog Fairy Lou flies in, waves his
wand, and flowers sprout out of the coal plant smokestack.
He does a victory loop under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
The plant was dead!
STOCK FOOTAGE: roaring crowds cheering.
JON VO (CONT'D)
We went on from there to tackle a
bunch of other stuff:
"This is Insane Day" ad:
JON VO (CONT'D)
Ads for events like 'This is Insane
Day'...
EVAN ROBINSON
This is insane!
JON ON CAMERA
(as clueless corporate tool)
That’s the spirit!
From the mini-documentary “24 Reasons to do nothing about
Global warming”:
JON VO
More mini-documentaries for the
website...
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 87.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
JAMES MCNAUGHTON
If I don’t drive a big truck,
people might think I’ve got a small
penis.
How to Boil a Frog’s peak oil page.
JON VO
And even a whole page on the
website about peak oil...
FOOTAGE of Vancouver Peak Oil Executive first meeting - a
great party:
JON VO (CONT’D)
In fact, I went from being an
activist in a movie to being an
activist in real life, by starting
up a group called the Vancouver
Peak Oil Executive - really I just
made it up from nothing to have an
excuse to meet new friends and
party. But you never know. We
might just save the world.
Bus goes by with billboard on the side:
What’s your plan?
VancouverPeakOil.org
Go to Jon sitting at a desk, wearing a suit, smoking a pipe.
He’s apparently in a huge corporate office (green screen).
JON ON CAMERA
Another important lesson to be
learned here -- the size of your
organization is only limited by the
size of your imagination.
A zeppelin flies into frame behind him, withe the VPOE logo
on it.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
It also helps to have a cool logo.
More fun B roll in windows of Jon’s journey into activism and
the people he’s met under:
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 88.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
JON VO
So that’s a little bit of the story
about how I got started being a
pain in the ass. It’s turned out
to be really fun, and no matter
what happens with all this stuff I
get to keep my new friends. In
fact, now that I’ve started, I
can’t imagine ever stopping. It’s
something I personally can do that
actually counts. And it is so
freaking cool to get out of bed in
the morning and know that I’m gonna
do something to make this world
better for me and my daughter and
everybody else.
Return to
EXCERPT #34: GIANT-KILLING - LOU & THE DUDE
Jon on camera hanging from the Waterfront Park sculpture.
More thrash metal MUSIC.
JON ON CAMERA
But I can’t do this alone, dudes!
Nope, everybody’s gonna have to get
in on this.
(drops down)
So get out there, kick some ass...
Waves the ball at camera, then peeks over it as the
www.howtoboilafrog.com URL flashes at the bottom of the
screen:
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
...and write us when you put it up
on youtube so we can tell the whole
world about it.
ANIMATION OVERLAY: Jon hops to the left, making room in the
frame as Lou hops onto the screen next to him.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
You can even borrow our mascot
Lou...
(horns)
Louuuuu!!!! ...to let everybody
know you’re part of the How to Boil
a Frog party of a million!
Jon watches as Lou leaps out of frame with a SPROING!
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 89.
Script with pre-approved excerpts highlighted 7-12-10
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
See ya later, little green dude!
(to camera)
Take whatever you love and use it
to tell the high and mighty that
you’re not gonna be their tool
anymore!
Leans close into camera, confidentially.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
‘Cause, frankly, if you’re like me,
you’ve made entirely too little
trouble in your life -- but you’re
gonna love it.
He puts himself in the arms akimbo stance.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
Yeahhhhhhh!!!
We MATCH DISSOLVE to a PULLOUT from his fourth finger to the
Giant-Killing symbol, then into...
5-5 5) TRANSITION 5-5
...a MONTAGE of beautiful STOCK FOOTAGE of sustainable
solutions, and the over that the cool music turns TRIUMPHANT:
wind farms, solar mirrors, wave power, algae-to-oil, solar
panels, tidal power -- a big build-up that says “Everything’s
going to be grand, thanks to technology.” After 10 seconds
or so of this...
JON VO
So we’ve gone out and shown the
corporations and governments who
really wears the pants on this
planet, and their leaders all give
in and decarbonize the energy
supply by building all kinds of
clean green stuff -- so now
civilization is saved, right?
Yeah, that’s kind of what I
expected too.
We see that a meteor is heading toward Earth. NEEDLE SCRATCH
interrupts the music and the meteor freezes.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 90.
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JON VO (CONT'D)
But it turns out even the real
solutions to our situation have
problems.
The meteor continues toward Earth, and an ice trail rises up
behind it that reads “NOT SCALABLE”.
JON VO (CONT'D)
For instance, the best energy
sources, like wind and solar,
aren’t “scalable” -- that means,
they work great for making
electricity for your house, but not
for powering a big city.
A city blows up, then we go to stock of people running
through a destroyed city toward camera. Behind them,
approaching camera, is a meteor-sized piece of coal reading
“Resource Shortages”, all under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
And what are you going to make all
this stuff out of? China is
already using up a third of the
world's steel and half the concrete
to build the equivalent of 4
Manhattans a year.
EXCERPT #35: TRANSITION - ADAPTATION
Various meteorites labeled “China”, “peak oil”,
“overpopulation”, “energy use” hit the planet under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
Oil is peaking, population is
rising, and global energy use is
skyrocketing!
A gigantic meteor labelled “Global Warming” hits the city
under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
Meanwhile global warming’s gonna be
getting worse from the CO2 and
other crap we’ve already put out.
STOCK FOOTAGE - humorous footage of people trying to deal
with an absurd flood in their house.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Some people say that’s no problem --
we can just “adapt”.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 91.
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VIDEOM to illustrate the following - the third video is
ANIMATION ON VIDEO of an Inuit guy carrying giant bananas on
his sled.
JON VO (CONT'D)
But whether it’s floating houses in
the Netherlands, cloud-seeding in
China, or starting to grow bananas
in the Yukon, adaptation still
boils down to the idea that we’re
gonna take all the stuff we’ve got
now and raise it up two feet to
keep it above sea level.
STOCK FOOTAGE: The effort to plug the house leak ends in
disaster.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Problem is, things are about to
start happening so fast that by the
time you’ve adapted to one decade,
you’re going to have to start all
over again to adapt to the next
one.
The Problem symbols gather aroud it and squeeze the image to
nothing with a POP.
JON VO (CONT'D)
And once you toss in the rest of
the Big 5 Problems, things are
gonna go from hard to impossible if
we keep trying to hang on to the
way we’re living for
one...more...year.
EXCERPT #36: TRANSITION - GETTING REAL
Cut to Jon going down down down in a glass elevator. He’s
wearing the future-not-equal-past HTBAF t-shirt.
JON ON CAMERA
Every environmentalist in the world
is trying to figure out the answer
to how to keep things the way they
are, only have them all be green.
But the real answer is there is no
answer -- or rather, the answer is
so freakin’ obvious that nobody
wants to say it out loud. The
solution to overpopulation?
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Less people...one way or another.
The solution to oil going to a
billion bucks a barrel? No more
driving and flying. This isn’t
brain surgery. The reason they
don’t wanna say it out loud is, it
would mean admitting that the world
as we know it isn’t going to last.
But I’m betting, deep in your gut,
you already knew that. The people
I’ve talked to knew it.
Ross Gelbspan, Author/Journalist.
ROSS GELBSPAN
I think we have to rethink what we
think of as social hierarchies. I
think we have to rethink what we
think of as community. I think we
have to very much rethink where we
get our gratifications from and
rather than getting them from
acquisition or social status they
have to come from working together,
from really forming the kind of
bonds that this economy really
militates against. This pushes us
toward privacy and isolation and
exclusiveness and that is very very
destructive, that is a recipe for
destruction, not survival.
Chris Mooney, Author/Journalist.
CHRIS MOONEY
I’m, I’m concerned about the world
I hopefully will live in, you know,
forty more years, something like
that. I’m very concerned we’re not
going to act fast enough, and we’re
gonna unleash something that we
can’t put back in the bag.
Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework
Convention on Climate Change.
YVO DE BOER
I’m terrified.
HOME VIDEO of Mariel from when she was little. HEARTBREAK
MUSIC.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 93.
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JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
JON VO
I guess I knew that things can’t go
on the way they are. I just didn’t
want to know. What’s gonna happen
to my daughter when she grows up?
Does this mean I can’t save her?
Jon in the stream (with his easel) one last time.
JON ON CAMERA
No. But it does mean we have to
get real. We have to forget about
technological fixes and adaptation
and every other way of trying to
keep things the way they are and
talk about this.
He draws a curved path from the end of the exponential curve
that leads back to Nature’s bell curve under:
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
We have to talk about how to get
back on Nature’s curve.
He points at the top of the easel and the Transition symbol
ZIPS INTO FRAME.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
We have to talk about Transition.
The other four solutions symbols come in and meet it in the
middle of the screen, where they’re surrounded by the big
circle of the Transition symbol, under:
JON VO
The only way the other four
solutions are going to have any
meaning is if we change the way
we’re living so we meet those
solutions half way. We’ve gotta
shrink to fit.
Under the end of the above, the 4 symbols shrink and transfer
into the smaller circle at the end of the arrow. AFRICA SD
FOOTAGE: Masai guy.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Does that mean we all have to live
in huts?
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Well, this guy does put out zero
CO2 emissions...but if you’re a
Masai, you have to eat custard made
out of cow’s blood, and when you
croak they toss you out in the
desert to get eaten by hyenas.
PHOTOMONTAGE: Hyena Funeral Home and All You Can Eat
restaurant. A hyena slides in and laughs.
JON VO (CONT'D)
So it isn’t for everybody.
EXCERPT #37: TRANSITION - VISION OF THE FUTURE
We go to a split screen of STOCK FOOTAGE: on the one side
are old-movie images of happy pioneer-type people. On the
other side is two happy kids at a 1960’s-era World’s Fair
demonstrating an absurdly gadgetized-future, where people are
equally happy.
JON VO (cont’d) (CONT’D)
I like to think of the future as
sort of a hybrid of the past and
the present -- we get back a lot of
the fun, fresh air and family time
that’s kinda gotten lost on the way
to life in a cubicle, but we get to
keep all the cool stuff that’s a
big improvement on the Dark Ages,
like modern medicine, hot showers,
and the internet.
Suddenly the split screen goes to a computer error message:
“Civilization Has Encountered a Problem and Needs to
Restart”. Under the following a cursor ENTERS FRAME and
clicks “OK”, and the system reboots under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
In a way, it’s like we’ve been
given a second chance to go back to
the Industrial Revolution and reboot
civilization...only this time
we’ll know in advance about bumper
to bumper traffic, stress, and
getting ourselves into a situation
where a few people end up with all
the money while the rest of the
world goes hungry.
The “computer” comes up inside Second Life, the multi-player
virtual world. (http://secondlife.com/)
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JON VO (CONT'D)
JON VO (CONT'D)
It seems like this is something
we’ve been wanting to do -- even
practicing for in virtual worlds
like Second Life, where you can
start fresh, build your own house,
make a lot of friends, and lead the
life you want to live. Could we do
that in the real world?
B ROLL of WindSong Co-Housing.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Some people have already started.
WINDSONG PERSON #1
Co-housing also, essentially means
that we’re living close together,
so our units are fairly small
compared to North American
standards.
B ROLL continues under:
JON VO
This place is called WindSong.
It’s right in the middle of a
typical suburban subdivision, but
it’s like a whole other world.
Footage shows that they have much more density than separate
houses, yet lots more land, grow a lot of their own food,
take care of each other’s kids, have communal meals together.
WINDSONG PERSON #1
We have two acres of building and 4
acres of green space. Now if you
were to take a normal subdivision
and put houses on here I believe
you would fit about eighteen on
here, and we have thirty four plus
all our wonderful green space.
WINDSONG PERSON #2
If you’re living in your own single
family dwelling the type of
relationship that you have with a
neighbor, there’s always a distance
there because, well, this is my
property and this is their property
and there’s no need for cooperating
as much, till its time to fix the
fence.
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But because we’re living in such
close proximity and all the
decisions are made together you
have to have a relationship with
the other people, of trust. So once
you start experimenting with a
relationship of trust with a
neighbor it starts feeling like a
small town, it starts really
feeling really good.
JON VO
Of course, co-housing isn’t
perfect. For one thing, you have
to actually deal with other people.
Windsong residents in a fractured frame, sitting around
talking. As they talk, the pieces of the fractured frame
unexpectedly come together.
WINDSONG PERSON #2
We’ve really often had situations
where the possible solutions seem
so far apart we couldn’t see any
way of them coming together. And
then something would amazingly
occur that brought a solution that
we never would have expected.
More shots of the Windsong residents in happy community.
JON VO
Weird, isn’t it? These people -
neighbors, strangers, really - are
talking to each other about their
problems. We might have to start
teaching our kids about that.
After all, this is the kind of
conflict resolution they’re
learning.
A violent VIDEO GAME starts playing. After a few beats, this
changes to B ROLL of a communal meal.
JON VO (CONT'D)
So we’d have to give up solving
arguments with semi-automatic
weapons in this new future, but we
get something back: community.
More of that touching WindSong B ROLL plays under SWEET
MUSIC. After several seconds of that...
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WINDSONG PERSON #2 (CONT'D)
JON VO (CONT'D)
Friendship. Conversation. Other
people cooking for us! So how do
we make the places we live work
more like this WindSong place?
Logos for Transition Towns, The Natural Step, and Brazilian
SteamPunk pop up under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
Turns out a lot of smart people
have been working on that.
EXCERPT #38: TRANSITION - CITY-TO-VILLAGE ANIMATION
3D ANIMATION of an urban neighborhood being turned into a
functioning village, with a town square popping up, community
gardens growing where there was a parking lot (all the cars
fade away), a wind turbine sprouting, etc. Over this:
JON VO (CONT'D)
In general, the movement to get
your city ready for the big crunch
that’s coming is called
“relocalization”, which is a big
word for getting small. What it
boils down to is turning your
neighborhood into a small town that
functions on its own. Your own
little village!
City-to-Village animation plays out with joyous music. We
cut to shots of Chernobyl and Kenya. The word
“relocalization” floats by when it’s mentioned in VO
JON VO (CONT'D)
Of course, how relocalization will
work where you live will depend a
lot on where you are and what
you’ve got to work with.
STOCK FOOTAGE of Sweden, land of beautiful bikini girls.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Sweden, for example, has a lot of
geothermal energy...
STOCK FOOTAGE of lush steam pouring from the ground.
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JON VO (CONT'D)
...which means you can get the
steam for your sauna by sticking a
pipe in the ground. They don’t
have a lot of that in, say...
STOCK FOOTAGE of stark, parched desert (one-cactus kind of
stuff).
JON VO (CONT'D)
...Tucson Arizona.
A MONTAGE OF STOCK FOOTAGE of earth from space, showing the
lit-up California coastline, cities in Europe and China, all
at night.
JON VO (CONT'D)
In fact, we’ve pretty much gone out
of our way to build a lot of our
biggest cities in the places that
are going to be dried up,
underwater or too hard to get to
when the cars and trucks stop
running.
STOCK FOOTAGE: Depression-era truck moving away with kids
sitting on the back.
JON VO (CONT'D)
So you might want to order that
moving van before the rush.
EXCERPT #39: TRANSITION - BUTTCRACK CARPENTER
Jon on camera, dressed as a buttcrack carpenter, working on
something not fully seen...
JON ON CAMERA
You may also want to think about
what kind of skills you got that
are gonna make you a good village
member. Once oil tops five hundred
dollars a barrel and all that stuff
stops coming from China, we’re
gonna need to start making our own
stuff again.
(holds up a blender)
For instance, can you make a
blender for twenty bucks? Can you
build a wind turbine? Can you grow
your own food, or sew your own
clothes? Can you play an
instrument?
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(toots a saxophone)
Once my village starts making its
own electricity we’re gonna need a
lot more live entertainment. And
of course, we’re gonna need people
who can build houses.
We PULL BACK to reveal that Jon has built a small house on
stilts. He looks cluelessly proud.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
Adaptation!
In slides Jon wearing a straight jacket in a padded box.
JON VO
OK, it sounds a little crazy, but
what’s the worst that can happen?
GRAPHIC: pastoral cottage inside fire alarm box, goes to WW2
dog-fight under:
JON VO (CONT’D)
We build ourselves an emergency
backup civilization, so if this one
really does go down the dumper we
have something we can jump to. And
if some miracle comes along to
solve our problems...
STOCK FOOTAGE of winged angel rising up from crashed WW1 biplane.
JON VO (CONT'D)
...like, say, we all sprout wings --
PHOTOMONTAGE of Martha Stewart as a blacksmith, making
horseshoes for Christmas.
JON VO (CONT'D)
...then whatever you were gonna do
after the crash can be your new
hobby. And who’s gonna make all
this happen? You are. How?
PHOTO of Jon as uncle Sam pointing at camera.
Go to Jon in time lapse in front of gas station.
JON VO (cont’d) (CONT’D)
Well, I can tell you what I did.
Go to Jon as film noir detective, next to a bottle of booze.
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JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
JON VO (CONT'D)
I started off doing a little
investigating into how screwed we
are, and after getting really
drunk, I read a bunch of books on
the Big Picture.
Books start to pop up on screen: “The Post-Petroleum
Survival Guide and Cookbook”, “Reinventing Collapse”,
“Greenpeace: The Inside Story”, “Climate Coverup”, “How to
Save the World in Your Spare Time”, “When Technology Fails”,
“Food not Lawns”, “The SSP Manual”, “Peak Everything”, The
Transition Handbook”.
Go to Jon on the couch with TV remote and popcorn.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Then I kicked back and watched a
bunch of movies.
Movies pop up: “The End of Suburbia”, “Sharkwater”, “The
Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil”, “The Future
of Food”. “Manufactured Landscapes”, “Garbage Warrior”, “The
Money Masters”.
Go to the grid of experts from Section 1 under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
After that I went out and got
connected to a bunch of people who,
unlike me, knew what the hell they
were talking about.
Cut to Jon at his desk. The words “What’s your plan?” float
across the computer monitor to show Jon behind him.
JON ON CAMERA
Because that’s what this section is
really all about, right?
An airline oxygen mask drops INTO FRAME next to him, and he
breathes into it, under:
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
Figuring out how to put the oxygen
mask over our own faces first, so
we can help other people
afterwards. My plan is still in
progress -- this stuff isn’t easy
to figure out.
WINDOWS with VIDEO of The Collector TV show shooting, under:
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JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
For instance, I write for TV, so
sometimes I get to work at home,
but other times I have to drive
really far away to an office or
other places where we’re shooting.
Go to Jon in front of his house.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
I rent my house...
Jon laying out tin foil on the roof under:
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
...which means I can’t put solar
panels on the roof...
Jon in his fort/bomb shelter in the basement under:
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
...or build a bomb shelter in the
basement or anything.
Resume Jon in front of his house:
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
It’s about a half hour walk from
the shops in my community...
Jon by the water with Vancouver in b.g.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
...and several hours walk from
downtown. Or a heckuva swim.
That’s not good if it gets too
expensive to drive.
EXCERPT #40: TRANSITION - QUESTIONS ABOUT THE FUTURE
Jon does caveman poke at bicycle...
JON VO
This raises the prospect of having
to explore other forms of
transportation. Can I get a
sunroof on this thing? Where’s the
stereo?
...then poking at bus -- what are these strange objects?
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JON VO (CONT'D)
Is this all for me? Will the other
people on it be weirdos? But those
aren’t the only questions.
Cut to Jon on TV:
JON ON CAMERA
Are TV writers still going to be in
demand when the 5 Problems really
kick in? What kind of shows will
be on TV? Coming up next: “Let’s
Walk to Work”, followed at 9 by
“Time to Grow Gills!”
More footage of Jon’s friends, supplemented by STOCK footage
of indigenous people around the world working together:
JON VO
But I have figured out the most
important thing to do: you gotta
start collecting more people. If
you could pick the people who would
be part of your village, that you’d
want to work with and hang out with
every day, who would you pick?
I’ve got some old friends I’d like
to take with me, and I’ve met some
new ones along the way.
VIDEO of Jon in his backyard with Sheila Watkins, master
gardener, starts MOS under:
JON ON CAMERA
And the best part is, they’re the
ones who are going to teach me all
the stuff I need to know. In fact,
the School of Saving My Own Butt
started in my own backyard.
SHEILA WATKINS
First of all I would decide to have
beds that are four foot wide so
that when I need to do anything in
the middle I can lean over and do
it, but you can sheet mulch the
whole area which possibly is easier
and then just define certain parts
of that as being pathways.
EXCERPT #41: TRANSITION - GROWING SOME FOOD
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TIME-LAPSE FOOTAGE of Jon, Mariel and other helpers laying
down the sheet mulch.
JON VO
Yup, lesson one is learning to grow
some of your own food. And if you
don’t have a backyard, you can
start with your balcony, your
window box, your closet...
Jon walks through the North Vancouver community gardens.
JON ON CAMERA
...or grab a spot in your local
community garden. Now if you’re
like I was, the only thing you’ve
ever grown is mold in that tub of
cottage cheese in the back of the
fridge. But right now, the food
you eat travels an average of
fifteen hundred miles to get to
your plate.
Holds out his right hand, palm to camera, and we see the
symbols for the 5 problems are drawn on his fingertips.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT’D)
The 5 Problems are gonna get
together and put an end to that
sometime in the next decade, unless
you’ve got a bazillion dollars.
Personally, I don’t. So I thought
I’d try planting a vegetable
garden...and I invited some of my
friends to help out.
JON VO
This is where we started...
FOOTAGE OF THE GARDEN today. Jon putters. MUSIC continues.
Supplement with footage of Jon showing Mariel something.
JON VO (CONT'D)
...and this is what it looks like
now. I still can’t get over it.
You just walk out there and there’s
free food! Lying on the ground!
Would you work as hard if there
were free food lying around
everywhere? And I found something
else out there too. I guess it’s
life. I don’t know why I never
noticed it before.
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A bit of Jon and Mariel in silence, then...
JON VO (CONT'D)
So the future’s going to be
different, but if we start doing
this stuff right now, we can have a
lot of say about what kind of
different the future will be.
6 SIGNAL 2100 6
CU of Jon on CAMERA in a tanning bed.
JON ON CAMERA
So, changed your life yet? No?
Still think we can get away with
doing things the same old way until
we die and it’s somebody else’s
problem? I totally get that.
As he lies back, we reveal that he’s wearing a woman’s
bikini. The stuffed cat from the bedroom scene is next to
him.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
I mean, don’t we have a right to
our own lifestyle?
He puts the little cover over his eyes under:
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
Beside, the message we get from TV
is, we can worry about that some
other time.
We cut to the TV seen earlier. On it is the newscaster from
4-5, and we hear the same VO over him:
JON VO
The world will end in 2050 because
of global warming...
We cut to a funny Korean commercial, but INTERCUT with clips
and images that recap what we’ve seen: the last reindeer
falling over, a poor African kid, US soldiers in Iraq, a
tipped house in the Arctic. Ends with a laughing cartoon
penguin.
EXCERPT #42: ARE WE DOOMED?
Cut to the Earth in space.
HOW TO BOIL A FROG 105.
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JON VO (CONT’D)
Personally, I like TV, but still,
we might take a moment to ask: Are
we doomed?
The Earth blows up in a fireball.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Will we turn left before we go off
the cliff? Or will it take a
catastrophe to make us change?
Every expert I asked about that
said the same thing:
Naomi Oreskes, science historian:
NAOMI ORESKES
Well I hope not, I hope it won’t
take a catastrophe, although
obviously there is reason to worry
that might in fact be the case.
FOOTAGE of WWII women marching.
JON VO
There had to be something that
would keep us all from marching
right into the fan blades.
FOOTAGE of old driver’s ed class.
JON VO (CONT'D)
That’s when I thought back to
driver’s ed class, and that 1959
film classic produced by the Ohio
State Highway Patrol...
The title of “Signal 30” comes up.
JON VO (CONT'D)
...”Signal 30”.
Cuts to FOOTAGE of train/car crash (part 1 - starting about
8:02 with flames visible), under:
JON VO (CONT'D)
Now the theory with these driver’s
ed films is that if they show you
what happens if you drive like an
idiot and die, then your brain will
think it actually experienced that,
and you won’t do it.
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Go to about 8:59, as they lay down a burnt corpse on some
canvas.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Worked for me. I didn’t want to
see paramedics putting my charred
corpse in a body bag.
Back to the shot of the train, only now the word “overshoot”
is visible on the side of it.
JON VO (CONT'D)
So I started to think, maybe we
need a “Signal 30” for overshoot.
View it so you don’t have to do it.
Back to the archival footage of driving down the highway,
only this time the title “Signal 2100” comes up.
JON VO (CONT'D)
Call it “Signal 2100” for where
we’ll be by the end of the century
if we don’t tackle the Big Five
Problems, and keep driving at full
speed until we all end up in one
big global car accident. What
would that look like? Check it
out.
The film starts to roll from the above title. We mix
gruesome crash footage from "Signal 30", plus modern-day car
crash footage and human aftermath, with stock footage of
past, present and “future” human-caused catastrophes. The
concept is to transfer the audience's natural horrified
reaction to the car crash footage over onto the abstract
problems of global warming, peak oil, etc.
The audio is flat narration, re-mixed in spots for emphasis.
The re-mixes are indicated here as stuttering and repetition.
MALE NARRATOR
What you’re about to see is not
going to entertain you. There are
scenes of human suffering and death
and stark reality. What you see
will be real life, and tragically
in some cases real death. Don’t
ever forget what you see.
We hear the O.S. sound of a crowd at an accident scene,
including the slowly building scream of a young child. The
visuals build to a horrific crescendo, then a brief timelapse
shot of driving too fast into the night.
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The music ends, and we return to a brief reprise of the music
and visuals from the Korean commercial. But the video is
distorted and the penguin’s laugh is chopped up. The message
is: this kind of distraction isn’t going to work on you
anymore.
FADE TO BLACK.
7 JUMPING IN 7
FADE IN:
Jon on camera, on the beach. He’s wearing the “Civilization
needs to restart” HTBAF T-SHIRT.
JON ON CAMERA
So that sucks, right? I don’t want
to live through that.
Mariel pops in and he puts his arm around her under:
JON ON CAMERA (CONT’D)
I sure as hell don’t want my
daughter to live through that.
He gives her a kiss on the forehead and shoves her back O.S.
We hear an O.S. SPLASH under:
JON ON CAMERA (CONT’D)
So let’s not. Let’s change now.
And if you think I’m talking to
somebody else, I’m not -- I’m
talking to you. Because the world
needs leaders. The world needs
somebody -- anybody -- to start the
revolution, because that’s all
we’ve got time for.
“Right Here, Right Now” starts to play in b.g. as Mariel
comes back on-screen, all wet, glaring at him.
JON ON CAMERA (cont’d) (CONT’D)
So get out there and make some
trouble, and send us a video of
whatever it is you end up doing.
(holds out a t-shirt to
Mariel)
If it’s really funny, you might
even get a free t-shirt out of it.
(off her continued glare)
What?
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BUMPER of jellyfish and bacteria under a hyena laugh.
“Expletive deleted.”
WHIP IN FROM THE LEFT...
Jon is on the edge of a cliff, with Mariel, now dry and
wearing the t-shirt.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT’D)
We can do this. I believe that.
MARIEL
But if we don’t start right now,
it’ll be too late.
JON ON CAMERA
So jump.
STOCK FOOTAGE of a cliff jumper getting ready, and then
diving off a cliff...and flying...
JON VO
Your life will never be the same
again, ever. And it’s gonna be
great.
“Right Here, Right Now” comes up full volume and plays
over...
8 CREDITS 8
Credits recap the names and symbols of the 5 Problems and 5
Solutions, while showing behind the scenes video from each of
those sections:
4-1 (MOS) Behind the scenes of Jon disco-dancing and laughing
in front of green screen, and breaking character as the
Engineer. Green screen of throwing the flying toilet, then a
bit more dancing past with Aristotle’s bust.
4-2 - The vibrator dances around on green screen, then clips
of Jon hiding it behind his back. Reprise of recycling a
recycling bucket, and scary trees (with a WOMAN’S SCREAM),
then green screen of sad and glad bearded DHS agent.
4-3 - (MOS) New shots of the purple hoodie girl in Africa,
and her friends, followed by B roll of Pastor Brawan gambling
and laughing.
4-4 - (MOS) 2 plastic oil barrels in the fridge, then a
Venezuelan oil driller nods along to the music.
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Jon gets tired from pushing car uphill, reprise of Masai Guy,
Devil Jon going “blech” from tasting the oil.
4-5 - (MOS) Behind-the-scenes footage of doing the claymation
sequence, ending with the return of the claymation monster.
5-1 - Outtakes of Preacher Jon by Esso station...
JON ON CAMERA
Global warming has many different
causes...
(looks at loud motorcycle O.S.)
...that’s one of them.
...followed by footage of Jon’s performance of the section at
the North Shore Unitarian Church, with the congregation.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT’D)
Drive all you want! Fill up your
swimming pool with gasoline!
(then)
Drive Past Exxon!
CONGREGATION
Drive Past Exxon!
5-2 - Outtakes of French Jon in the shower, including SOUND
and O.S. DIALOGUE. Then outtake of French Jon in bed, then
mistimed snaps of the Lifebulb lamp, leading to a reveal of
Fraser McArter off-camera, turning on the bulb. Laughter.
Then we show all 3 Burger Boyz chowing down, followed by the
outtake from Daisy 2 animation, of Daisy pooping and creating
a dead zone.
5-3 - reprise of Jon getting “hit” by the Skytrain, but
starting on green screen this time.
JON ON CAMERA
If you think it’s too late, then
it’s too late. But if you believe
you can make a difference...
The train “hits” him...and dissolves away.
JON ON CAMERA (CONT'D)
...you can.
5-4 - Further footage of the Paladin Security guard throwing
us out of BC Hydro:
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SECURITY GUARD
Get off the property and I said
don’t film the dog. How many times
I gotta tell you this?
PAT WILLIAMS
I don’t see what we’re doing
wrong...
A shot of the dog looking at camera, then cut to Jon Dude
saying hi to Lou, who isn’t there.
JON ON CAMERA
Lou! Yeah!
(laughs)
Ends with an excerpt from the end of the This is Insane Day
mini-doc.
VANDY SAVAGE
This is insane!
JON ON CAMERA
You may now return to your
regularly scheduled madness.
5-5 - (MOS) Behind the scenes footage of creating the city-tovillage
animation, intercut with further footage of the
garden party and VPOE gatherings - showing how we built
community in the making of the movie.
“Right Here, Right Now” starts to play again, and we go to
home video of Mariel (at 5) climbing up some rocks, to the
summit, and looking around. We can do this.
FADES OUT to text:
“Billions of people, animals, plants and insects were harmed
during the making of this movie.”
Then:
“I think we can do better.”
Then, next to a bobbling flash jellyfish:
“The jellyfish are fine.”
Then the jellyfish gets snatched by the claymation monster.
And finally the last card, next to 2D Lou:
“We're waiting for you at The Pond.”
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With the URL: www.howtoboilfrog.com
This fades out, then Lou pops off to black.
THE END.
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