What are you looking for? People are searching Google for “oil spill in gulf of mexico.” St. Louis, MO is the world’s epicenter for people typing in “how to find a boyfriend.” The number one city searching for “sex” is Delhi, India. The number one city searching for “peace” – Edmonton, Canada.

I’m going to follow the high (Canadian) road and try some Google searches before hoisting a cold drink and paddling a kayak into the Labor Day sunset. Here are my results, not all of them real.

Normally this Google search returns an administration that is wrongheadedly driven to job generation by building more roads, more airports and increasing our dependency on fossil fuels. That’s my read on Laura Tyson’s recent New York Times op-ed piece.

But when I did this Google search, I got something that didn’t suck. My search returned a president who delivers on his promise to build a green infrastructure for America, with solar and wind power. His administration helps move us away from oil, cars and bad mortgages and into something smarter – new online technologies and training and a green economy.

This returns yoga studios that offer classes by donation, like YogaCo and Yogis Anonymous, in Santa Monica. You simply pay what you think the class is worth. Your class is not some recurring charge on your credit card, or a health-club membership, or some other obligation like changing the oil in your car. The health club, credit card model of yoga doesn’t teach us as much about ourselves. As Max Strom writes in A Life Worth Breathing, we can’t use the methods we commonly employ in business and commerce to learn about ourselves. It’s like using a hammer to brush your teeth. Money needs to change hands for yoga classes, but just in a different way.

This search returns links about Bruce Lipton, a biologist who is leading a re-examination of Darwinian evolutionary theory. He spoke at a great event that I attended this week. Bruce says that Darwin’s concept of evolution, the “survival of the fittest,” has led humanity into competition and war. He thinks evolution is really about “survival of the fittingest” – successful species are those that adapt, fit in with nature and play well with other species. If we understand this in time, and stop killing the planet, Mother Nature might not need to cast us out of her garden.

This returns a link to this video, which is coffee porn for the overcaffinated engineer mind. The search does not return any links to Starbucks, which has a good health plan for its employees but teaches them to make an indifferent espresso, a great tragedy for dopamine delivery.

My dream Google search returns news of Architecture for Humanity’s efforts to rebuild in Haiti, Black Entertainment Television’s financing of local housing materials manufacturing in Haiti, and World Shelters’ work here and abroad to put a roof over everyone’s head.

Eastern Nebraska. Huh. Always wanted to know that.

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It might be the heat of this summer day, but do you notice those spectral beings? They look like adults, but they’re not. They are the twenty-somethings who float through college and then boomerang back to live at home, and fifty-somethings who have a mid-life crisis, then morph into Mustang owners who date teenagers. Delaying the onset of responsibility and the start of life is so common now, it’s hardly a trend; more like an epidemic. It can happen at any time, not just when you’re young. Life isn’t in drive so much; often the shifter gets punched into reverse and people are suddenly moving backwards.

First, a little compassion. According to an article by Robin Marantz Henig in the New York Times Magazine, the average 20 year old is going through a lot of changes. One third of 20-somethings change residence every year. Forty percent move back home with parents at least once. Many hold seven jobs through the decade between 20 and 30. That’s a lot of turmoil.

I had a lot of that in my 20s certainly, as my father will attest, but I never moved back home. That simply wasn’t done back then.We wanted to be out in the world, and yes, we held lots of jobs. I worked in restaurants with inflammable chefs and later, when I wrote cartoons, I worked with inflammable executive producers.

Life is supposed to be an old song that goes something like you grow up, go to school, start a career and a family and watch the sun set with a spouse who shares the journey. Everybody experiencing that lately? I didn’t think so.

I’m noticing that there’s no long and winding road. It’s more of a spiral, and it’s not spinning just the 20-somethings until they are dizzy. The dizziness is widespread. Marriages of decades implode and partners become single again. Whole sectors of the economy evaporate and people need to re-train. Natural disasters are taking away homes. Because of these changes from within and outside us, no matter what our age, we’re all adolescents again. Erik Erikson’s eight-stage model of development might turn out to be an infinite-stage model. As had been said before, we’re living life in the first draft.

“The first draft of anything is shit.” – Ernest Hemingway

Have another glass of wine, Papa, and chill. I prefer what Elmore Leonard has to say.

“I try to leave out the parts that people skip.” – Elmore Leonard

It would be great to live in drive all the time, never having to shift into reverse, and it would be great to skip a few boring parts, like Elmore Leonard does in his novels. But life’s first draft turns out to be a pretty bumpy rehearsal for a (hopefully, soon to come) master performance. Surprisingly, for me, I’m feeling for those parents who aren’t encouraging their kids to grow up right away. Some of those parents regret punching the accelerator and rocketing into marriage-career-family-mortgage so soon themselves.

I’ve been trying some breathing exercises lately (called pranayama by the yogis) and some meditation, too, and finding that instead of relentlessly punching the accelerator, a pause now and again has helped me move forward with even more purposeful energy.

Photo by joiseyshowaa via Creative Commons License

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Something weird is happening. I’m noticing that futurists are arriving from the past. Maybe I need to explain that.

There’s a young couple who have started a business empire selling heirloom seeds. The wife looks like she’d be a natural in a bonnet and the guy has Thomas Jefferson’s fashion sense. They don’t look like leading-edge people but they are responding to a leading-edge need: people want real food, and they want to grow it themselves.

Their company, Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, sells 1,400 varieties of heirloom seeds and they run monthly “pioneer town” festivals with crafts, folk music and lots of bonnets – just the kind of event that has always made me want to run away. Maybe it’s the bonnets, or folk music not being sung by Bob Dylan, but old-timey stuff generally brings on in me a kind of nausea that only listening to Radiohead can cure.

But this time, it’s different. I’m willing to welcome spelling conventions like Olde Tyme into this article because of what Monsanto has done.

You know about Monsanto, the company with a long history of fouling natural resources? It got my attention in the movie Food, Inc. with its aggressive attitude about the genetically-modified seeds it produces. Monsanto has created seeds that resist its herbicide called Roundup so that farmers can spray their fields with poison that kills everything but the Monsanto seeds they’ve planted. Cool! Well, kind of cool in an evil way, because it gets convoluted. Monsanto has patented its seeds – turning a life form into a corporate asset. The patent has held up to legal challenges, allowing Monsanto to threaten farmers who try to replant its seeds from season to season. (“Drop that seed spreader and back away from the dirt, mister.”)

Ever since dirt was invented farmers have saved seeds to replant. Monsanto says you can’t do that and reaps great profits from what farmers sow. Oh, and according to the International Journal of Biological Sciences, Monsanto’s genetically-modified corn might be linked with organ failure. So the Monsanto corn on the cob I serve might cause your liver to blow up. Sorry, would you like another Chardonnay instead? You can stay away from what Monsanto is doing by buying organic. Or you can buy your own seeds and plant them.

That’s where the heirloom seed people come in. They’ll sell you purple tomatoes and white pumpkins that look a little like organs themselves but are good for you. Despite last week’s blog, I am not advocating a worldwide return to whittling and wearing gingham, but I will be seeing how many acres of tomatoes I can fit on our porch in Santa Monica.

Photo credit: Bill Ward via Creative Commons License.

On Monday, in Big Sur, California, I walked in a river barefoot. The water was bracingly cold. I must have massaged a couple of special acupressure points because I had a wildly transformational experience. I walked out of the river realizing that everything that is wrong in my life and in yours too is connected to technology.

I hate technology now.

I’m getting rid of every bit of it right after I finish writing this on my computer. I swear, when the battery runs down on this thing I am chucking it in the garbage. Then I will be free, finally, free.

To be fair, it wasn’t just the river that caused this awakening. I read an article that said using your cellphone will make your head explode, and if that doesn’t happen, you will grow another head. That’s what Maureen Dowd said in the New York Times. Nicholas Kristof, another respected columnist, recently wrote that the minerals used to make the electrical capacitors in your iPhone, iPad and iWhatever are sourced by warlords in the Congo who exploit women and children and the waste generated by the disposal of our tech toys is fouling the planet.

But I’m not getting depressed about that, because I see a bright future where we walk everywhere. And we talk to people, really talk to them and get so close we can see the food in their teeth. And when we want to make a film we don’t use cameras and pixels but we just draw really fast on a cave wall using a piece of chalk. When we want to distribute music or ideas or anything at all we just hand it to somebody and tell them, “Run man, run like the wind all over the world and give this to everyone you see until you drop dead from exhaustion.” Man, that’s really exciting. That’s, wow, I, um… you know, I’m kind of rethinking this a little.

We camped out in Big Sur. The tent we used was probably designed on a computer. It was a brilliant design with folding poles that telescoped out of themselves and supported lightweight ripstop fabric that kept us warm and dry. Our flashlights were solar-powered. The camp stove was tiny, backpack-ready, but capable of heating a pot of water in less than four minutes. I didn’t really walk barefoot in the river, either. I was wearing Vibram Fivefingers made of polyamide fabric on top and a TC1 performance rubber compound for the soles. I doubt I would have gotten the same performance by strapping a couple of big leaves to my feet.

Maureen Dowd didn’t actually say your cell phone would make you grow another head. The reason I know is I used technology to check her quote at this link. I mangled the Kristof quote, too. You can check how badly, using technology.

If there’s any doubt how tightly woven technology is in my life, that doubt was erased when, back in Los Angeles on Tuesday, I was talking with the owner of a local yoga studio. It’s a donation-based studio, which means that people pay what they wish for the classes, and that reflects an ancient faith in the basic goodness of people. But he’s also streaming video of the classes live on the web, both as a way of bringing yoga to people everywhere and also to generate a revenue stream for the studio.

Technology is bringing us greater accountability (I can’t fake those quotes), speed of communications (people all over the world read this article instantly) and yes, the fun of scampering along in a river without smashing your toe on a rock.

It’s easy to be a hater, but it’s harder when you really consider what you’re hating. Is it technology that deserves our wrath or just the way we are using it?

You can follow me on Twitter by clicking here, unless you hate technology. Then you can wait until you run into me and I’ll tell you about what I wrote.

500 Words on Thursday | Written by Lee Schneider

It’s better to work for free than for cheap. How’s that? Here are some examples that seem stranger than fiction.

Had an argument with your spouse? Whip out your iPhone and launch “Fix a Fight,” available for $9.99 from the iTunes store. No expensive therapists, no tense appointments with marriage counselors. Just the two of you and your handheld devices. Sound like fiction? “Fix a Fight” is real.

Demand Media is a “content farm.” They’ll pay you six bucks an hour or so for an article they turn around and sell to USA Today or maybe run on Lance Armstrong’s site Livestrong.com. If you make a film for Demand Media they will post it online and you can have what’s left over on the executive editor’s lunch plate. Sometimes it’s pretty good, like half a sandwich or something. Demand Media’s low pay makes professional writers unhappy, but Demand Media is real.

You can send yourself or anyone else an email from the future. Go to futureme.org and write a promise or wish, address it to anybody and date it for sometime in the future. It will be delivered when you are much older than you are now. Futureme.org is real and it’s also free.

Want a video of your company president explaining why your oil rig blew up? Pixability will send you a flip cam in the mail. You shoot some video of your guy apologizing to sea turtles or whatever, then mail back the camera. Pixability edits the video and you put it on line. Cost: $395. Pixibility is real. Those production companies that used to charge $15,000 for similar services? They are now fiction.

By allowing their content to be factory farmed (like Demand Media does) writers are only hurting themselves. By posting their videos for free on YouTube (mostly to Google’s benefit) visual artists are being economically blind. There’s an ugly kind of genius to convincing clients to make their own videos and then charging them for it but that business model can’t make for a pretty picture. There’s a market rate for professional producers, and below that rate you generally get crap. By the way, is saving your marriage really worth only $9.99?

Strange truth: People work harder and value their work more when it is done for free instead of being done for less-than-adequate pay. Rather than play this game, chasing the ever-diminishing dollar amount for online content, I have to wonder: Might it be better to stay away from Demand Media and the like? If you could, wouldn’t you choose to be paid well or else choose to work for free on deserving projects? Digital slavery doesn’t sound good.

Better to find the people who really value your work, whether that value comes from financial riches or in simple appreciation. Lance Armstrong has done lots of charity work for free. He’s been financially well-compensated as a champion. Do you think he’d consent to riding for $6 per hour? Why then would he expect writers to work at that level through Demand Media, which provides content for his site?

Now I’m going to send myself an email from the future. It’s free, but immensely valuable.

Photo credit: Indigotimbre via Creative Commons License.

500 Words on Thursday | Written by Lee Schneider

Now that I am famous I need to share everything with you. I write this from deep within my soul. (“Hey, really dark in here. Can hardly see.”)

As Yogi Berra once said, navel gazing is not a maritime pastime anymore, it’s happening everywhere. Had we known Greta Garbo like we know today’s celebs, we would have learned she could be pretty crabby. But, in her day, she did mystery really well. Made her more interesting than anybody on Jersey Shore and most anybody whose face appears really big on a multiplex screen today.

“The world, you see, no longer has any tolerance for — let alone fascination with — people who aren’t willing to publicize themselves.”  – Ben Brantley, writing in the New York Times

Garbo had a personal brand – but it was all about not knowing her. How’s that possible? For those who have never heard of a great writer named Thomas Pynchon, here’s a photo that might be of him, but I’m not sure.

I read Pynchon because I heard he was good, not because of his headshot. Same with Joyce Carol Oats, Paul Theroux and Joan Didion. Confessional types; but not on TMZ much. Don’t know if they punched a hotel clerk or shagged a starlet. Didn’t matter.

Garbo wouldn’t exist today. So what? We have Mel Gibson instead. I don’t like, however, to dwell on what was, or on Mel Gibson. There’s a bright future ahead, but you’ll have to keep reading to find out what it is. Just don’t skip to the end because that would hurt my feelings. Famous people like me like to be listened to. I go to a famous persons’ support group for that. Sadly, everybody talks over everyone else.

“I don’t have a lot of patience for people who consider themselves gurus, and if you ever ask me about my personal brand, I will stop what I’m doing specifically to invent the technology that will let me stab you in the face over the internet.” – Alison Gianotto, @Snipeyhead

Hey, rough crowd in this 500 words. Just give me a minute to adjust my athletic cup and keep writing.

Snipeyhead’s words resonate with me, but I realize that Martha Stewart, Donald Trump, Deepak Chopra and Richard Branson are all successful personal brands, filling a public need to identify with a person in order to purchase a product. They have also become gurus. Morgan Spurlock and Michael Moore bring reality-tv-show personal branding to documentaries. Picasso had a personal brand. You can still buy the striped fisherman shirts he wore and they are closely identified with him. Try picturing Donald Trump wearing one and you will become nauseous. I’m still getting used to the power of personal branding and surprisingly (even to me) I respect it.

Doing what Garbo (or Didion) did won’t work now. You make a movie, you market yourself. If the noise of the web/highdef/streaming/facebook/twitter-verse bothers you, then set fire to your laptop in an act of defiance. Maybe you can play Adolph Menjou movies on a white sheet in the jungle.

I have a better idea. Board the train (it’s a metaphor, ok?) with me and use technology to reach the people you need to reach. Look at what Crowdstarter, Kickstarter and Participant are doing. That bright future? I met with director Thomas Napper the other day and he said something profound. “The reality shows have forced documentaries to be about something.” Documentaries have to stand out because they need to be about causes. Huh. That’s not about me. Still, it has merit.

What’s small group activism? A writer and a yoga teacher head down to the Gulf to save sea turtles. That’s small group activism. Really small. Just two guys on a mission. They want to charter a boat, haul slimed turtles from the sea, clean them up and transfer them to the right facility.

Here are their qualifications:

Brock Cahill teaches yoga at Yogis Anonymous. He has a passion for the sea and especially sea turtles.

Peter Lawrence also cares deeply about the sea and is an accomplished novelist and screenwriter.

That’s it. Nothing else on their resumes, except that they are tapping into what they believe to be a huge movement of those who are turning away from bureaucracies because they don’t trust them anymore, and are turning instead to small, focused, local action by individuals.

Will you believe BP when it announces that the spill is capped and the bad days are done?

The news folks will gobble that up as fact. Not so, however, with small groups on the ground. Recovery in the Gulf is years away. The crime scene is being run by the criminal – BP – so the crime reports are suspect. BP is using a chemical called Corexit to disperse the oil.   It is likely harming the Gulf and causing cleanup crews to report respiratory distress, dizziness and headaches. As Peter wrote in his email, “Of that chemical, it’s enough to say that BP owns its manufacturer and its use is banned in the UK. Lucky the Brits can use up their stockpiles in their one-time colony.” Brock reported that another small group of activists led by documentary director Josh Tickell experienced burning eyes and skin rashes after exposure to Corexit.

Corexit is “effectively sinking the oil down into the water table where it will be much harder to clean up, and honestly, much harder on all the life in the sea. But it will look better from a satellite picture! Oh man. Shortcuts suck.” – Brock Cahill

I know Brock Cahill because I’ve taken his yoga class. I know Peter because long ago and far away I worked for him when I wrote scripts for a superhero cartoon called ThunderCats. They are both superheroes to me now, and not just because Brock can do yoga poses that I cannot pronounce and Peter is a great writer. They are superheroes because they both recognize that large media organizations have lost sight of their mission to investigate and report, fearlessly. Now the yoga teacher and the writer need to get the job done. Fearlessly.

As I write this, they are on site in the Gulf,  figuring out exactly what can and can’t be done, how to circumvent the bureaucracy of the clean up and achieve Brock’s mission – direct action to save sea turtles. They’re raising money for a boat and assembling a volunteer crew. “We’ll have a marine biologist on board,” Peter wrote. “We’ll be properly equipped…” to save as many turtles as possible.

“We’re independent and determined. This is our world just as much as it is BP’s, Big Oil’s or the government’s which, last time we looked, was financed and elected by us. That is, by individuals exercising democracy. We will not take no for an answer,” Peter wrote.

You can follow Brock Cahill on Twitter for updates. He posts to his blog and Facebook page often.

Photos courtesy Brock Cahill

I am married to a holy vibe chick. Can I discuss this with you? We all know that women like to share. Holy vibe chicks like to share a lot. If they share a whole lot together they have something called a share-gasm. In fact, they are capable of multiple share-gasms, if conditions are right and there are enough lighted candles. It is a little intimidating, as a man, to witness this. Most of us men are capable of only one share-gasm at a time, and after that we have to rest a little before we go again.

Being married to a holy vibe chick (for a year, thank you for the congratulatory notes and checks) has brought many wonderful things into my life. I’ve learned to cook vegetarian and I am proud to say that I’ve stopped eating meat. Well, that’s not true. When I am away from my holy vibe chick I do eat chicken and pork sometimes, and it feels wonderfully illegal. I drink whiskey too, and port, which can seem holy, if it’s vintage 1977 port. After yoga I often get the urge for a good pinot noir, and I almost succeed in convincing myself that pinot after Pincha Mayurasana is spiritual in that it involves spirits. But that rarely works. I settle for organic juice squeezed from the sweat of yaks, which is all that we have in the refrigerator. Then I drink pure water to cleanse my soul, dress all in white and stare at the sun for an hour.

Holy vibers certainly do wear white a lot. This isn’t a problem here in Southern California, but if some holy vibe chicks went out in a snowstorm we might lose them in a blinding, monochromatic whirl of deep meaning. Did I mention that when you are living in the magnetic pull of a holy vibe chick everything has deep meaning? If you have a runny nose, a medical intuitive like Louise Hay will explain that means “inner crying.” I have been working through some running injuries, a balky knee and now a healing heel, which are apparently an expression of the transitions I am undergoing, or plain stupid overtraining. Take your pick. (Hint: Plain stupid overtraining is not the holy explanation.) Various Hindu goddesses have a hand in finding us a good parking space. Spiders and crows are messengers. We place fresh flowers on Lakshmi’s altar and ask her where our new clients will come from.

Consulting goddesses for their advice is novel for me. But I have learned that holy vibe chicks also consult other people about things. I am something of a lone wolf, and also male. I think about something for a minute and then I do it. There was a Seinfeld about this. Men hunt down a shirt and buy it. Women gather to discuss what shirt to buy. In a holy vibe household, few decisions are made alone. That’s the real beauty, of course. We find connection with ourselves and a community. Come to think of it, looking at the world as a place of deep meaning is a good way to live. It builds compassion; it brings focus and passion to life. Self-examination leads directly to self-improvement. Yoga feels good. It’s so true that the holy vibe chick I married is a deep friend who has taught me a lot. I love my holy vibe chick!

Oh my god, I think I just had a share-gasm.

Lakshmi image by Ravi.  Photos by Lee Schneider.

One day in the mid 1970s, a pre-school teacher living in Sweden named Hilde Back decided to sponsor an African student. Hilde, a Holocaust survivor whose parents were killed in the camps, lived modestly as a refugee in the safe haven of Sweden. Every month she put a few dollars in an envelope and sent it to a Kenyan boy named Chris Mburu. This was enough to get Chris through school. (In Kenya, at the time Chris was in school, students had to pay for their primary and secondary school education. Today, primary is free in Kenya, but secondary still costs.) Chris was inspired by his mysterious benefactor who lived so far away. Not only did he become a star student, he moved on from his village to eventually graduate from Harvard Law School. He became a United Nations human rights advocate, a post he holds today.

One small act – a couple of bucks – changed his life. But it gets better. Chris decided to honor the benefactor he had never met. He established the Hilde Back Education Fund to sponsor more Kenyan students, to improve more young lives. Eventually he tracked down the 80-year-old Back and brought her to Africa to see the results of her generosity.

Hilde Back and Chris Mburu

It sounds a little like fiction, but this is the true story told in A Small Act, a documentary directed by Jennifer Arnold. Jennifer attended the University of Nairobi with Chris’s cousin, and experienced firsthand what Kenya was like. She wanted others to have the experience of a prosperous Kenya with a sizable middle class. She set out to make a film about that and discovered even more.

“My mom was Peace Corps. I come from a long tradition in my family of, ‘just do what you can to help other people.’ We all believe in that in my family. Small actions totally make a difference.” – Jennifer Arnold

Jennifer Arnold, director of "A Small Act"

Her film was initially intended to simply show a balanced view of Africa. Along the way, she discovered Chris and Hilde. As their story unfolded before her lens, Jennifer filmed in villages without electricity, using only battery power for the camera, and sometimes couldn’t understand what was being said. (She speaks some Swahili, but many of the people she filmed spoke Kikiuyu.)

A Small Act was accepted at Sundance, and while it screened there with Chris and Hilde in attendance, Jennifer tells this remarkable story: “At Sundance, audience members started handing Chris and Hilde and us checks and cash. They were all donations to the fund. They donated $90,000 over the course of 10 days at Sundance. Then a philanthropist who saw the film just donated a quarter million dollars, just based off seeing the film,” she told me.

What the film has taught her is this simple truth: If you feel like you can make a positive change once, you will do it again.

A Small Act premieres on HBO at 9PM ET, July 12. Working with Jennifer, HBO is launching a campaign called “What’s Your Small Act?” and as part of it, the network has partnered with a website called Network For Good. At selected screenings of A Small Act viewers will receive a $10 gift certificate that they can use to donate to the charity of their choice.

If you want to know more about the Hilde Back Education Fund, click here.

A SMALL ACT Trailer 2010 from Jennifer Arnold on Vimeo.

Acknowledgments: Hilde Back photo, courtesy Hilde Back Education Fund. Chris Mburu and Hilde Back, courtesy Harvard Law School. Jennifer Arnold portrait by Lee Schneider. A Small Act trailer courtesy Jennifer Arnold via Vimeo.

Many nature films build a bridge of empathy between human watchers and animal protagonists, and most nature filmmakers work with charismatic on-camera talent, you know, like Lassie and Flipper and gorgeous supermodels like Bengal tigers.

Mark Lewis doesn’t do any of that.

He doesn’t cast Lassie. He focuses his documentary lens on the bit players of the animal kingdom – the extras – and he turns them into superstars. I didn’t think I could ever like a rat. But after seeing Mark’s film RAT, I never felt so warmly toward vermin. I never thought I could really like a chicken. But Mark’s The Natural History of the Chicken had me thinking of chickens as lead actors. Then you have Cane Toads: The Conquest, his 3D epic about a toad invasion in Australia.

“Ultimately, it’s an entertaining film experience,” Mark said.  “Why 3D?  We wanted to submerge or place the audience into the world of the toad.  3D is the ideal way to do that. I’m not trying to preach, I’m trying to entertain. Nothing gives me greater satisfaction, after the years of work making this, than to see people laughing and cheering as they watch the film.”

The film recently screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival. Also at the LA festival, One Lucky Elephant, Lisa Leeman’s warmly told and heartfelt documentary, ten years in the making, about the relationship between a circus producer and his favorite elephant. I didn’t think I could shed a tear watching an elephant movie, but Lisa’s movie can do that to you. More about elephants later. For now, let’s start small.

“The toad is a heroic character in this,” said Robert DeMaio, the editor of Cane Toads. Turning a tiny toad into a heroic character is no small feat, but the transformation starts with where you put the camera.

“Mark’s approach is to move the camera down,” DeMaio said. “The animal is suddenly on an equal footing with the audience. So there’s no condescension.”

Lisa Leeman (director, on left) and Christina Colissimo (producer, right)

DeMaio edited RAT, The Natural History of the Chicken, and other Mark Lewis films, so he has helped shape storylines that reveal the deep relationship possible between animals and people. This relationship zone is where Lisa Leeman goes so admirably in One Lucky Elephant. In the film, we experience how an elephant becomes a daughter to a circus owner, and how that situation sadly cannot hold when the elephant cannot live among humans any more. Her separation from her human “father” to live among her sister elephants is wrenching, powerful and ultimately redemptive – it makes us question our dominion over animals. Sure, we’re at the top of the food chain – but who’s really in charge?

You could say that the title characters of Cane Toads are insignificant creatures, but in the film they dominate the humans who obsess over them. Viewed through the Mark Lewis lens, the meaningless little toad becomes – literally – huge.

“I think that’s the theme that all these Mark Lewis films have, that there is meaning within the meaningless,” DeMaio said. “You look for those things that are in your day-to-day life invisible, but if you sort of shine a light on them, there’s something to be learned.”

When this hit me (in 3D no less!) I realized I was on to something – a heightened form of empathy. The people in a Mark Lewis film are precisely-framed eccentrics, truly one of a kind. But then I realized the animals are, too. The vermin in RAT, the meal on your plate in The Natural History of the Chicken and yes, the annoying toads are individuals who count. You certainly can’t ignore toads who are taking over your country. This passionately-observed world is unnerving for humans. Masters of the universe? I don’t think so. Not when a lowly toad can rock your world.

Those 3D glasses really did take me to another dimension.

Photos by Lee Schneider