Feeling warm all over
The winners on stage at the Academy Awards feel all sorts of things. Producer Lawrence Bender felt the BlackBerry in the hip pocket of his tuxedo buzzing nonstop with e-mails.
By the time he checked his computer -- at 6 a.m. Monday after a night of Oscar partying -- he had 260 messages congratulating him on his win this week for “An Inconvenient Truth,” the documentary that chronicles Al Gore’s efforts to raise awareness about global warming.
There were e-mails from members of Congress, the folks at MySpace sent along their regards, so did so the bigwigs at Yahoo. Even Wal-Mart’s environmental guru dashed off a note filled with words warm enough to melt what’s left of the Arctic Circle.
“It was like every single one of my friends was up there on the stage with me,” Bender said.
In Hollywood, there’s entertainment and then there are celebrity causes. Rarely do they come together as they did on Oscar night, when a harmonic convergence of purpose and performance transformed Gore into the glitterati’s folk hero. And the clincher: The ceremony was declared “green,” as in environmentally correct. (Just ask the celebs who were dabbing their tears with organic tissues after the show.)
It was a particularly gratifying night for Bender, who helped turn a former vice president’s environmental passion into an Academy Award-winning fete and along the way sparked the movement of the moment in the entertainment industry.
“Lawrence Bender is a force of nature,” said Michael Feldman, one of Gore’s top advisors. “The man is unstoppable. If we could ever figure out a way to harness his energy, we wouldn’t need fossil fuels.”
Bender, who has produced all of Quentin Tarantino’s movies, including “Pulp Fiction” and the “Kill Bill” duet, has long been interested in politics and environmental causes. Over the last six years, he has become one of Democratic Hollywood’s most influential grass-roots political fundraisers. He single-handedly raised thousands of dollars for Sen. John F. Kerry’s presidential bid in 2004. Last year, he became one of Harold E. Ford Jr.’s most avid Hollywood boosters in the Tennessee Democrat’s Senate race. (Ford was one of the first people to e-mail Bender when he stepped onto the stage at the Kodak Theatre on Sunday night.)
Taking on the Gore project seemed like a perfect fit for the energetic producer, though he didn’t expect it to transform his life. The 49-year-old producer put his movie career on hold as he traveled around the world to promote the film and get the message out on global warming. It turned into something a lot more than a sideline.
Bender’s association with Gore started in early 2005. Longtime environmentalist Laurie David, wife of “Seinfeld” co-creator Larry David, saw Gore’s slideshow on global climate change. She asked Gore to do his presentation again in Los Angeles and New York, where she invited Bender and others to attend.
“Like everybody in the room, I was deeply, deeply affected,” Bender said. “I immediately thought to myself, ‘This has got to be a movie.’ We felt a tremendous sense of urgency.”
They quickly pulled together a team of filmmakers, including director Davis Guggenheim (with many television credits, including episodes of “NYPD Blue”), advertising guru Scott Burns (who created the “Got Milk?” commercials) and Lesley Chilcott (a line producer).
In May 2005, they met Gore in San Francisco to pitch the idea for a documentary. Gore agreed, and filming started almost immediately. The schedule was so grueling that Gore jokingly referred to it as “Kill Al Vol. III.”
By last fall, the group had a rough cut of the movie, featuring a song Melissa Etheridge wrote for the closing credits; she also won an Oscar on Sunday.
Gore, Bender and company took the movie to Sundance, then Cannes, and then almost everywhere in between. They screened the film in churches and schools, at festivals and even at Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. Meanwhile, Bender mobilized Google, Yahoo, Netflix and MySpace.
Actor Leonardo DiCaprio, a champion of environmental issues, took notice and met with Gore. (They stood on stage together at the Oscars, urging the public to take steps to address climate change.)
Bender plans to return to feature films. Meanwhile, for his next environmental act, Bender said he’s planning to produce public service announcements on global warming and additional documentaries.
Two weeks ago, he and officials at Yahoo launched a new environmental initiative to promote switching out standard lightbulbs for energy-saving compact fluorescents. Called the 18 Seconds Movement, the initiative is named for the average time it takes for a person to change a lightbulb. Bender has been urging mayors around the country to participate in the effort. And now a California assemblyman has introduced a bill to ban incandescent lightbulbs in favor of fluorescents by 2012.
“Never in my life have I become so involved,” Bender said. “As a producer, you always get involved with the marketing of a movie. But I’ve never spoken to so many people before -- scientists, religious leaders, lawmakers.”
It changed his life, he said. And it gave him a lot more e-mail to read.