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HBO: Why did you want to make this film?
Matthew Galkin: I was very attracted to what I saw as PETA's
David and Goliath struggle to advocate on
behalf of animals. As an organization, they toe
the hard line. They preach a vegan existence,
which is using no animals for anything. And
to me that's a classic epic battle. How do a
couple of hundred upstart animal rights
activists fight the entirety of the human
civilization?
HBO: How did you manage to gain access to such a
notoriously private person as PETA founder
Ingrid Newkirk?
Matthew Galkin: PETA's been around for twenty-seven years
now, and I would say that most of the media
coverage usually paints them in a pretty
negative way. No one had ever approached
them about making a feature film that would
explore them fully, not in a hysterical or
sensationalized way. They were interested in
that as an idea, so after a couple of months
they finally allowed me to sit down with
Ingrid, and we hit it off instantly. She was
very smart and very funny, and very soft-
spoken, which is not what I imagined her to
be at all.
When Ingrid finally gave me the access to her
apartment I was amazed at what lay inside,
which was basically nothing. And it was
remarkable. This is the way she basically has
lived most of her life. When she'd to tell me
that she didn't believe in materialistic things,
and that they meant absolutely nothing to
her, as soon as I walked into her apartment I
realized that she wasn't lying, that really is
the way she lives. She spends every waking
moment of her day advocating on behalf of
animals, and she is basically the CEO of a
corporation, and she works harder than
anyone at PETA.
HBO: Can you talk a little about the origins of
PETA?
Matthew Galkin: PETA started in 1980, and they were a pretty
tried and true animal rights organization for a
brief period. They realized very quickly that
showing people images of animal abuse
seemed to trigger a much more intense
emotional response than just telling people
that this abuse existed, so they would go
inside slaughterhouses, factory farms,
biomedical research facilities and document
what they perceived to be animal abuse, or
animal torture. Prior to PETA, no one had
ever really brought these images to the world
before.
In the late eighties, early nineties, they began
to change their tactics to keep up with trends
in the media; more sex, more violence, taking
a more 'pop' presentation to what they were
doing. They also started to rope in celebrities
to be spokespeople for the organization. So in
the early nineties, PETA started with the "I'd
rather go naked than wear fur" campaigns--
which obviously caught the media's attention-
-with stars being essentially naked in print
and TV ads. That was very popular for
awhile, and I think that started to change the
public perception of PETA, and people started
to look at them as a very savvy, bordering on
offensive organization that seemed to stop at
nothing to get their point across.
HBO: The film has such a provocative title.
Matthew Galkin: I chose that for a number of different reasons.
I think it hooks you, and you know instantly
it's an animal movie. Ingrid's and PETA'S
whole philosophy is that she equates human
suffering and animal suffering. Therefore, by
calling herself an animal she is saying that
the interests of a rat, for example, should get
equal consideration to her own interests. It
also alludes to her aggressiveness when it
comes to advocating, and it seemed
appropriate for a portrait of her.
HBO: But by going to such an extreme in comparing
a rat to the life of a human being, doesn't that
undermine their cause?
Matthew Galkin: Well, for PETA that is the cause. They toe the
hard line, because they want to effect change.
But it's a tricky argument. PETA certainly
had a lot of success early on, convincing
people that testing cosmetics on animals was
unnecessary, and they gained a lot of traction
that way, because it is unnecessary.
The argument gets a little trickier when you
go into fields like biomedical research where
most medications are tested on animals. And
that seems to be the area of PETA's argument
that gets the least amount of support from
people because it's very tricky to convince
people that a research animal is as important
as say their closest relative.
HBO: What do you hope people take away from the
film?
Matthew Galkin: My hope is that people will look at PETA
differently regardless of where they stand on
the issue of animal rights. I feel like there's a
real fight there and we'd like people to
understand that there is some method to
PETA's madness, however offensive they
appear to be sometimes. Of course, it doesn't
always work. I don't agree with everything
they do. There are aspects we explore which
are not always flattering towards Ingrid and
PETA, but it's not often that you find someone
like Ingrid who's willing to put their money
where their mouth is and truly try to change
the world they live in. And she has done that.
She put animal rights on the map, and she
will not stop until she is dead and gone, and
even beyond that.
And I hope that people who are diametrically
opposed to Ingrid as a woman and PETA's
ideology might stop and think a little bit about
what the main struggle is: it's not just PETA's
tactics, but what they're trying to get at. And
I think sometimes their tactics blur the real
message, but I think the real message has a
great deal of validity to it.
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