Opinion: Why Leo the MGM Lion Was Really Roaring

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We live in a town where people actually sit through the movie credits. We’re all looking for something –a friend’s name, our own, or maybe the good-human seal of approval, that little ‘’no animals were harmed’’ bug.

The American Humane Association has fielded movie and TV production monitoring units since 1939, when the public was horrified that a horse was forced to jump off a 70-foot cliff – and was killed – just to make a movie. [It was ``Jesse James.’’]

The pact lasted for a while, but some filmmakers still kept the animal welfare reps off their set – at gunpoint, if necessary. In 1979, they blew up a horse to make ‘’Heaven’s Gate.’’ The idea that a horse died for that bomb of a picture renewed the AHA’s authority.

But only here at home. The recent filmmaking flight overseas has done more than generate hand-wringing about runaway production: it’s put movie-making out of reach of American humane monitors, which is why the AHA has singled out Oscar-nominated films that ``contain animal action that appears to have put animals in jeopardy and, in some cases, may have caused the animal’s death.’’

There’s Mel Gibson’s ``Apocalypto,’’ a film drenched in two- and four-legged gore. And the poor sad bear in ‘’Borat,’’ who’s haunted me ever since I saw him. The AHA named ``Blood Diamond’’ and ‘’Last King of Scotland,’’ ``Babel’’ and ``Children of Men,’’ ``Marie Antoinette’’ and ``Notes on a Scandal.’’

The British-made films worry me less; the corgis and the beautiful stag in ``The Queen’’ were, I like to think, given their own trailers and crafts services. The Brits are for the most part much nicer to animals than we are in this country, where yee-haw commercial ranches sell canned hunts to lazy macho louts who slaughter tame or elderly animals point-blank, just to hang their heads on the walls of their dens as conversation pieces. In a just universe, the animals would have opposable thumbs – and firepower.

With runaway production, I don’t think the humane ‘’bug’’ is good enough any more. I think movies need an inhumane bug, too. And put it in the titles, not back in the credits – or better yet, in the ads, right alongside the MPAA rating. I’d know where to spend my $10, which, as you know, ain’t chicken feed.