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No Animals Were Harmed

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Animals Were Harmed: Hollywood's Nightmare of Death, Injury, and Secrecy Exposed | Hollywood Reporter Exclusive

American Humane Association monitor Gina Johnson confided in an email to a colleague on April 7, 2011, about the star tiger in Ang Lee’s Life of Pi. While many scenes featuring “Richard Parker,” the Bengal tiger who shares a lifeboat with a boy lost at sea, were created using CGI technology, King, very much a real animal, was employed when the digital version wouldn’t suffice. “This one take with him just went really bad and he got lost trying to swim to the side,” Johnson wrote. “Damn near drowned.”

King’s trainer eventually snagged him with a catch rope and dragged him to one side of the tank, where he scrambled out to safety.

As a representative of the American Humane Association — the grantor of the familiar “No Animals Were Harmed” trademark accreditation seen at the end of film and TV credits — it was Johnson’s job to monitor the welfare of the animals used in the production filmed in Taiwan. What’s more, Johnson had a secret: She was intimately involved with a high-ranking production exec on Pi. (AHA’s management subsequently became aware of both the relationship and her email about the tiger incident, which others involved with the production have described in far less dire terms.) Still, Pi, which went on to earn four Oscars and $609 million in global box office, was awarded the “No Animals Were Harmed” credit.

A year later, during the filming of another blockbuster, Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, 27 animals reportedly perished, including sheep and goats that died from dehydration and exhaustion or from drowning in water-filled gullies, during a hiatus in filming at an unmonitored New Zealand farm where they were being housed and trained. A trainer, John Smythe, tells THR that AHA’s management, which assigned a representative to the production, resisted investigating when he brought the issue to its attention in August 2012. First, according to an email Smythe shared with THR, an AHA official told him the lack of physical evidence would make it difficult to investigate. When he replied that he had buried the animals himself and knew their location, the official then told him that because the deaths had taken place during the hiatus, the AHA had no jurisdiction. The AHA eventually bestowed a carefully worded credit that noted it “monitored all of the significant animal action. No animals were harmed during such action.”

And the list goes on: An elderly giraffe died on Sony’s 2011 Zookeeper set and dogs suffering from bloat and cancer died during the production of New Regency’s Marmaduke and The Weinstein Co.’s Our Idiot Brother, respectively (an AHA spokesman confirms the dogs had bloat and says the cancer “was not work-related”). In March, a 5-foot-long shark died after being placed in a small inflatable pool during a Kmart commercial shoot in Van Nuys.

All of these productions had AHA monitors on set.
We hear this refrain a lot from the good intentions crowd, but what of it? Apparently it's not true, and many animals have been killed in the making of movies.
 
We hear this refrain a lot from the good intentions crowd.

I'm just gonna say on this little comment... if you're going to try to make this political, that's just ridiculous.

On the actual story itself... it's pretty bad if true.

But it just goes to show the power of money, in the same way when one looks recently at the revelations at Sea World and that whole nonsense.

We can do more.
 
I'm just gonna say on this little comment... if you're going to try to make this political, that's just ridiculous.

On the actual story itself... it's pretty bad if true.

But it just goes to show the power of money, in the same way when one looks recently at the revelations at Sea World and that whole nonsense.

We can do more.

We have lots of people that have run around for years bitching about the beef industry and every other meat industry, and to have overlooked this for YEARS is the height of hyprocrisy. We're shown dolphins in nets, and all kinds of other "animal cruelty". The implication is that his has gone on in Hollywood for years. And we're fed this disclaimer in every movie containing animal actors, and I myself believed it.
 
And these Hollywood types are oh so liberal and socially conscience. :roll: Yet another in a very long list of their hypocrisy. I recently learned that the horse head in the famous Godfather scene was a real horse head. Wonder where they got that.
 
We have lots of people that have run around for years bitching about the beef industry and every other meat industry, and to have overlooked this for YEARS is the height of hyprocrisy. We're shown dolphins in nets, and all kinds of other "animal cruelty". The implication is that his has gone on in Hollywood for years. And we're fed this disclaimer in every movie containing animal actors, and I myself believed it.
It's different when they do it.
 
Haven't you noticed...It always is! :mrgreen:

Good morning, bubba. :2wave:
Yup ... must be because their heart's in the right place ... hey! they say that too.

How you doin' Pol?
Done snowing?
 
Award for stupidest most pointless, "trying desperately to score political points" thread of the week goes to this one. And it's only Monday.
 
Yup ... must be because their heart's in the right place ... hey! they say that too.

How you doin' Pol?
Done snowing?

Doing well so far! :thumbs:

It's cold, bubba, with a couple of inches of snow on the ground, and it's starting to flurry again! I wonder if we're in the path of that big storm that's headed this way just in time for Thanksgiving traveling! :wow: What are you doing for Thanksgiving?
 
We have lots of people that have run around for years bitching about the beef industry and every other meat industry....
It looks like the AHA has not been doing its job, and as a result animals are getting injured or killed on movie sets. Assuming the report is true, this is unquestionably a situation that needs to be fixed.

However, comparing that to the meat industry makes no sense. The number of animals that are treated cruelly, and in ways detrimental to the health of the humans who consume them, is orders of magnitude larger than all harm done on movie sets.


to have overlooked this for YEARS is the height of hypocrisy.
On the part of the AHA, and the big money telling them to look the other way? Yes.

However, the appropriate reaction ought to be "let's fix this situation." Using it to downplay or excuse other instances of animal cruelty doesn't make sense.

I might add that while I strongly disagree with PETA's tactics, they have been calling out movie-related abuses over the years. And some of the limitations of the AHA have been known for years.

It's also worth noting that some of this abuse might have been avoided, if the AHA were a government agency instead of a non-profit. It is, of course, possible that a government regulator would still be weakened by regulatory capture (which seems to have happened with the AHA), and a US regulatory agency won't have jurisdiction on overseas productions (and neither does the AHA, it seems). But such an agency would probably be better funded, have more teeth, would be more transparent, and would be accountable to elected officials. In contrast, the AHA only has to answer to its donors, and its industry-related revenue streams.
 
We hear this refrain a lot from the good intentions crowd, but what of it? Apparently it's not true, and many animals have been killed in the making of movies.

Compared to those tortured and killed for food?
 
Award for stupidest most pointless, "trying desperately to score political points" thread of the week goes to this one. And it's only Monday.

ooo ooo ... was it mine was it mine !!!!!!
 
It looks like the AHA has not been doing its job, and as a result animals are getting injured or killed on movie sets. Assuming the report is true, this is unquestionably a situation that needs to be fixed.

However, comparing that to the meat industry makes no sense. The number of animals that are treated cruelly, and in ways detrimental to the health of the humans who consume them, is orders of magnitude larger than all harm done on movie sets.



On the part of the AHA, and the big money telling them to look the other way? Yes.

However, the appropriate reaction ought to be "let's fix this situation." Using it to downplay or excuse other instances of animal cruelty doesn't make sense.

I might add that while I strongly disagree with PETA's tactics, they have been calling out movie-related abuses over the years. And some of the limitations of the AHA have been known for years.

It's also worth noting that some of this abuse might have been avoided, if the AHA were a government agency instead of a non-profit. It is, of course, possible that a government regulator would still be weakened by regulatory capture (which seems to have happened with the AHA), and a US regulatory agency won't have jurisdiction on overseas productions (and neither does the AHA, it seems). But such an agency would probably be better funded, have more teeth, would be more transparent, and would be accountable to elected officials. In contrast, the AHA only has to answer to its donors, and its industry-related revenue streams.

The put statements on the end of movies to assure people that animals weren't hurt or killed. The meat industry doesn't make such claims.
 
They get the bonus of political mileage out of that.


I don't see how someone who eats animals (pigs are smarter than dogs), even given their tortured conditions prior to slaughter, has any complaint to make regarding Hollywood (except the "secrecy" part). I just cannot take the concern as genuine. As someone who actually gives a ****, I'd rather have nothing to do with the factory animal industry; comparatively, who cares what Hollywood does, it's dozens to millions.

So what is your point?
 
I don't see how someone who eats animals (pigs are smarter than dogs), even given their tortured conditions prior to slaughter, has any complaint to make regarding Hollywood (except the "secrecy" part). I just cannot take the concern as genuine. As someone who actually gives a ****, I'd rather have nothing to do with the factory animal industry; comparatively, who cares what Hollywood does, it's dozens to millions.

So what is your point?

Claims are made and they are lying about them. In your world it's okay to kick your dog while cooking a steak, because it's the same thing.
 
I like small kitty cats, but tigers are very dangerous and I see no reason why they should be protected rather than hunted to extinction.
 
You'd "prefer a dangerous animal" be hunted to extinction???????
Of course. Are there any good reasons not to?

What do you want to do, lock them all up in cages or let them roam free to eat poor people or what???????

Think!

Tigers are some very evil and dangerous beasts.
 
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Of course. Are there any good reasons not to?

What do you want to do, lock them all up in cages or let them roam free to eat poor people or what???????

Think!

Tigers are some very evil and dangerous beasts.

Humans are far more dangerous.
 
Humans are far more dangerous.
Do you think that the average wild tiger would think twice about killing and eating you???????

What about the average human? Are you afraid that every person on the street is a cannibal who will attack and eat you alive?
 
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