“I had a friend say, ‘Well, if you’re really this passionate about environmentalism, quit acting. But you soon realize that one hand shakes the other, and being an artist gives you a platform.” – Leonardo DiCaprio
Leonardo,
You once had a friend that called your bluff, after you most likely bored them with your incessant talk about global warming, and urged you to walk away from Hollywood and become a full-time environmentalist. You thought about it for a moment, the lifestyle, and punked out. You were completely unwilling to walk away, convincing yourself that maintaining your earth-raping ways is the proper vehicle for sounding the alarm bell about people… people like yourself. (You act as though a Leonardo DiCaprio would have no platform, no voice, if he walked away from making the resource-wasting, polluting, carbon-producing blockbuster every year. Of course you would.)
Let’s be clear. You participate in an industry that is unrivaled, but for a few, in the amount of carbon it produces. The remarkably superfluous nature of your industry, compared to, say, an oil refinery, makes the footprint you produce that much more grievous. This is probably why you give away trophies for your movies, to make them seem important, when deep down you know it’s just a couple of hours of entertainment. What’s a highfalutin puppet show compared to the saving of our planet?
Do you see the energy your industry uses? Of course you do.
The generators are running all night, powering the nighttime shoots, keeping the set warm on colder evenings, keeping the trailers cold during the hot afternoons, whether you’re in them or not. Of course your trailer, even in your absence, is maintained at a constant 68 degrees, lest you have to to wait to cool off like “some civilian” renting a room at a Motel 6. This doesn’t bother you?
How many plates of food are wasted, ones that are provided to the stars, but go untouched because you guys want it in the contract, but think the food is beneath you?
How much water is wasted when you’re faking those rainy night sequences?
How much wood is wasted building sets, sets that are simply torn down once you’ve wrapped?
How many electric cables are run for the sound team, the video monitors, or the make-up trailer?
Speaking of trailers, how many are loaded up with equipment and caravanned to the next locale, the one that you’re going to fly to, or helicopter into, with your entourage?
And this waste is only while the movie is being made. We haven’t gotten to the part where everyone is flown around the world, and then limousined, to promote the picture, each stop having a food platter waiting for you, one that you will not touch. You’ll be in a studio, climate-controlled for your convenience, the lights blaring and aimed just right so that you look good. They’ve been on all day. The weird guy over in the corner? He was sitting in your chair for hours. He was your stand-in. They used him to get everything just so. Looking good has its consequences… for the planet.
Now you get the call from the director. You’ll be flown back to some studio to do some looping because some sound didn’t work out like he planned.
Remember, everything you’re going through you’ll have to multiply by the dozens, because unless you were in Cast Away, you have plenty of other actors that are being coddled, just like you.
Once the movie is ready to be released the studio makes 1000s of prints and they are flown around the world.
Now it’s time for the people to get in their cars and drive to see your masterpiece in a climate-controlled environment.
But it doesn’t end there!
Later comes the DVD, which is made from petroleum, and it’s shipped all around the world in giant planes and trucks, only for the bulk of them to sit on shelves until they are thrown away when people get serious about finally getting rid of their household clutter. That’s what your DVDs become – clutter. And they are thrown in the round file. Particularly J. Edgar. And that magnificent movie, the no one could have ever done without, floats to the bottom of the sea, having been dumped from a garbage barge.
You’ve seen these garbage barges, haven’t you? You’ve seen them from your yacht, the yacht that is paid for by the movie that is currently descending to the ocean’s floor… beneath your yacht. It’s the circle of death.
There’s time, Leo. Don’t be greedy. You’ve lived the dream. Now it’s time to put away childish things and save the planet. Remember, we can always go bowling instead.
You can be an inspiration. Maybe the hypocritical gasbags George Clooney and Robert Redford will do what’s right and stop making earth-raping films, too.
If you guys would just sit in a room, doing nothing, the planet will be much better off.
Do it.
Do it.
-bfh
As soon as the alarmists demonstrate by their lifestyles that there really is reason to be alarmed (I’m looking at you, Al Gore, in your tens of thousands of square feet of beachfront mansion, that sucks at least 10x the energy of my 1,800 square foot home) THEN and ONLY THEN will I start to listen.
Al Gore and Dicaprio say do as I say not as I do. We are afterall entitled elitists and not like you commoner.
These lowlife corrupt elitists all deserve the Mussolini treatment.
Wow. May I send that to my local paper?
And we wonder why everyone want everyone else to look at ME.
I agree 1000% that Hollyweird needs to just go away. Unfortunately the rationale for doing so, as so eloquently laid out above, goes way beyond the 140 character limit.
Bravo!
I rid my house of TV & movies & Hellywood 8 years ago.
BHF, The explosions in the B grade and other action movies utilize
a lot of plain ole gas cause it is cheap and easy
to obtain.Makes a lot of smoke & heat.The carbon goes straight up into
the atmosphere no catalytic converter…
Hold on … “artist?”
Are you fukkin kidding?
An entire career based on aping and parroting is an “artist?”
My wife’s African Grey is an ARTIST!
Who knew?
Aren’t DiCaprio and Gore one and the same person? They have to spend a lot of time in the makeup trailer to pull it off!
lol!
http://media1.break.com/dnet/media/754/006/3006754/the-internet-celebrated-leos-big-oscar-win-by-photoshopping-this-image-image-10.jpg
The only movie he was good in was …….,GILBERT GRAPE. Played a mentally challenged kid. Now that was typecasting!
Stop lying about Southern Alberta Chinook winds Leo.
The hypocrisy is so dense it stops neutrinos
Brilliant. He must be fought with the truth as well. We must never assume that by calling their bluff, they would be right. Ever.
The letter sort of reminded me of the style “I, Pencil” was written in. I think this should be sent everywhere, to show others what the invisible hand of absolute hypocrisy looks like.
This video should haunt the scumbag.The rats at Faux News.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckI9S5AsRjQ
The best part of Titanic was when Rose threw his handcuffed ass off the panel and he drowned.
Inspired, Fur. The stuff of devastating editorials.
I’m torn between spending money to support a movie that will benefit Leonardo and watching a bear rip Leonardo a new one.
The first one, Man In The Wilderness was better.
I could’ve saved you all that writing and give advice to Leo in one word. You want to save the planet?
DIE
I’m sure glad that they finally gave this worthless little back door conquistador a damned Oscar. Now maybe everyone will STFU and forget about him. The reason he didn’t get an award up to this point is that he is a shit actor. He’s the Susan Lucci of Academy Awards! Give it to him so he will FUCK OFF!!
Environmentalists are Watermelons – GREEN on the outside but RED on the inside
Terrifically good letter, but not so good for Lenny himself:
Too many long words.
I would like to offer Leonardo Diario the Yonkers Challenge:
For 30 days you will live in my 800-sq.-ft. apartment. It’s a nice place. I have no air conditioning, television, or CD player.
Check your car keys with the super, dude. The Yonkers Challenge involves walking, buses, and trains. For reasons of personal safety and practicality, you can take a cab if it’s late at night or you’re carrying something that’s too heavy or bulky to schlep to the bus stop.
If my electric bill goes over $50 bucks in a single month, then YOU pay it.
No meat consumed on premises. Hope you like veggie lasagna!
My prediction: he’ll be climbing the walls after the first day.
How I hate these little sanctimonious snotrags lecturing me about how I’M raping the planet.
Mr. Hat,
Logic, reason, and facts are wasted on the hypocrites.
Particularly on the Globaloney Warming Hypocrites.
Your letter is perfect – an apropos admonition against the hypocrisy of Mr. deCrapio, his ilk, and his industry – and as such, will NEVER be ingested.
Their world is fantasy. Pure, infantile, sophomoronic fantasy.
Mildly entertaining, on rare occasions, but sophomoronic fantasy, nonetheless.
One more reason I haven’t been in a theater for 20 years. I won’t watch the feces produced by Hollywood, not even on DVD. Don’t need it, don’t want it, don’t miss it at all.