Al Gore Hearts Tarantino's Footprint

Al Gore, who hasn’t been getting much attention, lately, is going to get into a few headlines by helping Quentin Tarantino promote his new film, Inglorious Basterds, in Tennessee.

Lawrence Bender, producer for Quentin Tarantino’s new film, Inglourious Basterds, asked the former vice president to host a Nashville movie premiere tonight, and Gore was happy to do it, reports spokeswoman Kalee Kreider.

The connection: Bender was one of the producers behind Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Bender also attended the Nashville Film Festival in 2007, where he received the President’s Award.

I’m looking forward to seeing the flick (can someone explain why “bastards” is spelled with an e, though?), but I cannot help but wonder how Al Gore – Savior of the Planet and Scourge of Carbon Users Everywhere – can reconcile himself with the film and tv industries, which hog so many resources? A Tarantino film is going to have a lot of travel, location scouting and shooting, lots of gun shooting, the release of gunpowder into the atmosphere….

As I wrote a while back:

All of these artists will be covered by deathless television news and infotainment crews, who drive their own trucks, use their own lights. The rockers will be joined in their “awareness event” by people like Leonardo DiCaprio, who makes his living in a medium where klieg lights burn by the hour, limos and trucks shuttle important people and their equipment to-and-fro, enormous amounts of paper and tape are expended for promotion (which also involves lots of air-travel – not commercial, for our little princes and princesses, but private). DiCaprio will tell us to take mass-transportation whenever possible while jetting about guilt-free; he’ll be using his Academy-Award Presenter Gift, free carbon-offsets, as plenary indulgences, so he’s green. Somewhere in the world a tree will be planted.

Am I wrong, btw, or is film petroleum-based? When summer blockbuster films are being made, doesn’t Hollywood create huge explosions, sending all sorts of pollutants into the air? Has anyone ever bothered to calculate just how much damage the film industry inflicts on the environment when they spray fake snow, or take leaves off of trees to “create” winter? [UPDATE: In fact such a study does exist, and it’s not very flattering to Hollywood – admin]

Actually that study I linked to can’t be found online, anymore, but there is this, which is something. The “free carbon offsets” link from Terrapass also no longer works although their website assures that “you will not find better transparency than at Terrapass.

Al Gore’s connection almost turns me off from seeing the film. But I’m a Tarantino fan, so there you go.