SAN DIEGO — Hollywood has just cast SeaWorld as a bad guy. But SeaWorld has
decided to diverge from the story line.
In an unusual pre-emptive strike on the documentary
“Blackfish,” set for release on Friday in New York and Los Angeles by Magnolia
Pictures, SeaWorld Entertainment startled the film world last weekend by sending
a detailed critique of the movie to about 50 critics who were presumably about
to review it. It was among the first steps in an aggressive public pushback
against
the
film, which makes the case, sometimes with disturbing film, that orca whales
in captivity suffer physical and mental distress because of confinement.
Magnolia and the film’s director, Gabriela
Cowperthwaite, shot back with a point-by-point rebuttal in defense of the movie.
The exchange is now promising to test just how far a
business can, or should, go in trying to disrupt the powerful negative imagery
that comes with the rollout of documentary exposés. That kind of dilemma has
surfaced with previous documentaries like “The Queen of Versailles,” which last
year portrayed the lavish lifestyle of the real estate moguls Jackie and David
Siegel, and even with narrative films like “The Social Network,” which took an
unflattering look at Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg in 2010.
Businesses accused of wrongdoing in films often choose
to lie low, hoping the issues will remain out of the public mainstream and
eventually fade away without much fuss. That’s especially true of documentaries,
which generally have small audiences.
SeaWorld, advised by the communications firm 42West,
which is better known for promoting films than punching back at them, is taking
the opposite approach. By midweek, the company was providing top executives and
animal caretakers for interviews about the movie and its purported flaws.
It was also deliberating possible further moves, which
might conceivably include informational advertising, a Web-based countercampaign
or perhaps a request for some sort of access to CNN, which picked up television
rights to “Blackfish” through its CNN Films unit and plans to broadcast the
movie on Oct. 24.
Among other things, SeaWorld claims that “Blackfish,”
which focuses on the orca Tilikum’s fatal 2010 attack on a trainer, Dawn
Brancheau, exceeded the bounds of fair use by incorporating training film and
other video shot by the company. The company also contends that Ms.
Cowperthwaite positioned some scenes to create what SeaWorld executives see as a
false implication of trouble or wrongdoing.
Asked whether SeaWorld was contemplating legal action
against the film, G. Anthony Taylor, the general counsel, said decisions about
any such step would have to wait until executives were able to more closely
assess the movie. “Blackfish” made its debut at the Sundance Film Festival in
January and has since screened at other festivals in the United States and
abroad.
In a telephone interview on Wednesday, Ms.
Cowperthwaite said she stood by the film and described any quarrel with its
construction as an evasion of her inescapable conclusion: “Killer whales are 100
percent not suitable to captivity.”
“For 40 years, they were the message,” she said,
referring to SeaWorld. “I think it’s O.K. to let an 80-minute movie” have its
moment.
Since 1965, SeaWorld has kept and displayed dozens of
orcas in parks here, in Orlando, Fla., and elsewhere. According to Mr. Taylor
and other executives, at least 10 million people a year view some of the 29
whales now held. SeaWorld executives say that without access to the whales —
which are now bred at the parks, rather than captured wild — humans would be
denied a connection to large, intelligent animals with which many feel a bond.
“We’re deeply transformed by them, the killer whale is
an animal that does that,” said Dr. Christopher Dold, SeaWorld’s vice president
of veterinary services, who spoke at the company’s San Diego park on Wednesday.
Dr. Dold, Mr. Taylor and others point out that only
one trainer has died in a whale encounter at SeaWorld parks, though Tilikum has
been associated with three deaths. One of those was at another park, and one
involved a man who somehow wound up in his tank at night.
On watching “Blackfish,” Kelly Flaherty Clark, who
works with Tilikum as the curator of trainers at SeaWorld’s Orlando park, said
she was stunned by the presentation of her testimony at an Occupational Safety
and Health Administration hearing, at which SeaWorld was cited for violating
trainer safety — claiming it was selective in a way that did not accurately
represent her views.
“We sleep and breathe care of animals,” said Ms.
Clark.
(The company is appealing a ruling that bars in-water
contact between trainers and orcas. Such contact was voluntarily suspended
before the ruling. Mr. Taylor said it was unclear how such training would be
revived should SeaWorld win an appeal of the ruling, but new procedures and
technology would be used, he said.)
Ms. Clark said she was also bothered by the movie’s
reliance on interviews with a number of former trainers, whose experience with
Tilikum was either nonexistent or largely confined to the distant past.
Ms. Cowperthwaite, however, said she was very much a
journalist in making “Blackfish.” She said she initiated the project, shortly
after Ms. Brancheau’s death, with an open mind. Only slowly, she said, did she
conclude that orcas like Tilikum may be driven to aberrational — or, in the
words of one the film’s interviewees, “psychotic” — behavior by their captivity.
Ms. Cowperthwaite also said she was shocked that
SeaWorld executives resisted her repeated pleas for interviews.
“I guess I naïvely expected them to say yes,” she
said.
Mr. Taylor said executives had avoided interviews
because they doubted the material would be used in good faith. But the question
now becomes whether fighting back against “Blackfish” will actually help to
promote a film that might normally be seen by only a small fraction of those who
regularly show up at SeaWorld parks.
“It is hard to see this public relations attack as a
good strategy,” said Martin Garbus, a lawyer who represents the director Lauren
Greenfield in an arbitration dispute being pressed against her by the Siegels
and their company over “The Queen of Versailles.”
Mr. Taylor and his associates, speaking jointly on
Wednesday, said they recognized the risks but were motivated by a sense of
outrage at a film that they said belittled their mission. They also say they
feel a responsibility both to their workers and to the animals that often come
through the SeaWorld parks as part of rescues that eventually return them to the
wild.
“I don’t know if ‘reputation’ is the right word,” Mr.
Taylor said when asked if that’s what SeaWorld was defending. “We need to
protect our people.”
Eamonn Bowles, Magnolia’s president, said he was not
unhappy that SeaWorld’s challenge — and particularly the letter to reviewers —
was bringing attention to “Blackfish.”
“From a marketing standpoint, this is turning into the
gift that keeps on giving,” said Mr. Bowles. “Frankly, I’ve never seen anything
like it.”
Still, Mr. Bowles said that the studio worried the
controversy would overwhelm “the actual qualities of the film.”
“We don’t want the elemental nature of the film to be
subservient to advocacy about SeaWorld,” he wrote in an e-mail, “although they
are intertwined.”
*I found this article on The New York Times website. These are not my thoughts, opinions, or my writings*
