VETERAN PRODUCER OF NATURE FILMS DETAILS ADVENTURES AND ABUSES IN NEW BOOK

An excerpt from Chris's book:

“Russ, we strongly recommend that Chris Palmer be fired.” That directive from a senior vice president of the National Audubon Society to Russ Peterson, president of the organization, nearly spelled the end of my career in filmmaking—before it had even begun. It was 1982, and I had just persuaded media magnate Ted Turner to partner with the National Audubon Society to produce wildlife documentaries for television. I’d barely entered the field of wildlife filmmaking, and already I was fighting for survival.

The saga began when a colleague told me that Barbara Pyle, a former Time magazine photographer, had recently joined Ted Turner’s staff to bring conservation-related programming to his cable network, SuperStation WTBS. I knew nothing about the entertainment industry, yet I sensed an opportunity. So I sent Pyle a detailed proposal for a celebrity-hosted show focused on persuading viewers to get actively involved in conservation issues.

One morning shortly thereafter, I was surprised and delighted to receive a call from Bob Wussler, the head of SuperStation WTBS. “Mr. Turner wants to see you and Mr. Peterson. How soon can you come to Atlanta?” I put down the phone, pumped my fist in the air, and let out a whoop. I had a feeling that Wussler’s call would change my life. The world of documentary film production was a far cry from my previous jobs. Starting in 1976, I’d been chief energy adviser to Senator Charles H. Percy of Illinois, worked for President Jimmy Carter’s Environmental Protection Agency, and was now lobbying Congress on energy and environmental issues for the National Audubon Society. In the Audubon job it was not unusual to spend days preparing testimony for a congressional hearing on a critical environmental bill, only to arrive in a Capitol Hill conference room to find one lone senator. The old quip about talking to a brick wall was, in my case, too often true. I credit my career shift to one of the great statesmen of our time, the leather-jacketed, heavy-booted scholar and gentleman known as “the Fonz,” played by actor Henry Winkler. On ABC’s Happy Days, not only was the Fonz charismatic and funny, but he also changed lives. After an episode in which he signed up for a library card, millions of kids swarmed the nation’s libraries and applied for their first cards.

When I heard about that episode, I couldn’t help wondering how the power of television could be used to promote conservation. At the time, TV wildlife documentaries were most often about straightforward natural history (for example, the life cycle of the wildebeest). But I soon became convinced that the way people viewed nature and wildlife could be revolutionized by television documentaries that combined celebrities and good storytelling with an in-depth exploration of the political and social problems that threaten animals’ habitats and our environment in general.

Well-meaning friends ignored my naïveté and spurred me on. I asked Dennis Kane, who had headed National Geographic’s film and television department for twenty years, what television had done for his organization. He replied, “Chris, in 1964 we weren’t on television and we had two million members. Then we got on prime-time television and now, twenty years later, we have eleven million members.” His comment inspired me to press on, even as a tiny sceptical voice inside my head whispered, But how do you know that TV was really the cause of this happy outcome?

When Ted Turner, Russ Peterson, and I first met, Turner was reading the latest volume of the Worldwatch Institute’s State of the World series, which calls for a reassessment of economic and environmental priorities. “This book is incredibly important,” the founder of the country’s largest cable network told us. “I make it required reading for all CNN reporters.”

Over the next ten years, I would learn just how ardent a conservationist Turner is. In the living room of his Montana ranch house hangs a nineteenth-century landscape painting by Albert Bierstadt that portrays the High Plains before Columbus—a landscape teeming with wolves, bald eagles, grizzly bears, bison, prairie dogs, black-footed ferrets, and songbirds. Turner yearns to bring that Bierstadt painting back to life. 

When he bought the 114,000-acre ranch for $22 million in 1989, he immediately announced his intention to sell the four thousand head of cattle that grazed there and return the land to its natural state. The work involved reintroducing bison and removing fences, cattle pens, outbuildings, and overhead power lines. All told, Turner currently owns nearly two million acres in the United States, making him the country’s largest individual landowner. His goal is to revitalize and reintroduce vanished native species on as much of this land as possible.

I learned in our first meeting that Turner’s plans for TBS involved saving the world while making money. He wanted to create not only a commercially successful network but also a forum for conservation and world peace. My ideas about revolutionary television fit right in. Convincing the National Audubon Society to jump at this opportunity was another story.

Russ Peterson was supportive, but senior staff and volunteer leaders at the organization were dubious, believing that television was financially risky and untested as a conservation tool. At the time, the idea of environmental television was still somewhat radical. Greenpeace would occasionally be featured on the news for putting its volunteers between harpoons and a whale, but no environmental organization had an ongoing television show. Nature-oriented cable channels such as Animal Planet and Discovery Channel, movies such as March of the Penguins and An Inconvenient Truth, and concerts such as Live Earth didn’t exist yet.

Barbara Pyle and I spent days pitching our proposal to Audubon leaders and explaining how the organization (and the world!) would benefit from communicating its goals and mission via television. But hostility to the proposed partnership persisted. Donal O’Brien, then chairman of the Audubon board, pulled Peterson aside and told him that I was a “Pepsodent boy”—someone with a bright smile and not much else—and suggested that I was inexperienced and naïve. Three senior vice presidents, representing more than fifty years of collective experience with the organization, warned that my ideas for television programs were distracting the organization from its historic mission, which focused on Audubon magazine as the flagship for advancing the society’s cause. The best thing Peterson could do, they said, was to fire me.

Russ listened to them carefully, then bluntly told them that we would be crazy to give up this opportunity to produce prime-time TV specials. Rather than fire me, he promoted me to a newly created position of vice president of television, reporting directly to him. Our collaboration with TBS became a reality.

Russ Peterson took a big risk. As O’Brien had warned him, I was inexperienced. My knowledge of documentary filmmaking and of television in general was limited to my ability to turn on a TV set. Yet that same year I charged ahead with The World of Audubon, covering everything from black-footed ferrets to California condors. My spirits soared when Oscar-winning actor Cliff Robertson agreed to host our first five one hour episodes.

But even the backing of a celebrity host, a major environmental organization, and a billionaire power player in television did not guarantee smooth sailing. As we began producing shows with strong political content, they immediately resulted in boycotts against TBS. Now Turner had to choose between his commitment to conservation and his network’s interest in revenue. Although I was in television to promote conservation, I was forcefully reminded that advertisers and sponsors had different motives.

Today, twenty-five years later, I’ve worked as a film producer for several different institutions and traveled all over the world producing hundreds of hours of environmental and wildlife television programs and IMAX movies on topics ranging from rainforests to the Galápagos Islands, and whales to wolves. During that time, wildlife filmmaking has grown and prospered, proving itself a useful tool for informing, entertaining, and inspiring a broad segment of the public. I’ve learned a great deal about the art, science, and business of bringing powerful stories about wild animals to the screen. And I’ve learned that animals face not only the huge and obvious threats of habitat destruction, poaching, and pollution, but also threats from filmmakers themselves. Over these twenty-five years, this unexpected discovery would come to haunt me and in large part prompt me to write this book.

For more information, see:

http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Wild-Insiders-Account-Kingdom/dp/1578051487/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_1

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/Shooting-in-the-Wild-by-Chris-Palmer/209826136795?ref=ts

http://www.american.edu/soc/cef/palmer-book.cfm