Moopheus Goes to Hollywood

Hot off the release of Moopheus’ latest film, The Meatrix II 1/2, the famous animated cow from The Meatrix series flew to Hollywood for the LA premiere of Fast Food Nation. He wooed (or mooed?) the press as he went down the red carpet, urging consumers to understand that even though there are problems with our meat supply, there are solutions and options out there. Small family farmers all over the world are still producing sustainably-raised food, and Sustainable Table’s Eat Well Guide (www.eatwellguide.org) is an easy way to find these healthier products in the US and Canada.

Executive Producer and Sustainable Table founder Diane Hatz escorted Moopheus to the event. “We’re honored to work with Participant Productions and Fox Searchlight, the producers of Fast Food Nation,” said Hatz. “And Moopheus and I are delighted to be able to use The Meatrix II 1/2 as a way to promote Participant’s social action campaign around the film.”

Eric Schlosser, the author of Fast Food Nation, and Richard Linklater, the director, both attended the event. Other stars from the film that were present included Greg Kinnear, Avril Lavigne, Wilmer Valderrama and Catalina Sandino. And to add to the excitement, Louis Fox, director of The Meatrix films also attended as did consultant for Participant Productions, Lynn Hirshfield.

The film itself is dark, heavy, and something you need to think about. It covers an extremely important subject – meat processing – and how badly the immigrant workers are treated, how unhealthy the conditions are, and how large corporations act. It’s not the people that are the problem – it’s the system that’s been created. And we all can change that system simply by making the right food choices at the supermarket.

The whole movie builds up to the last scene, which is shot inside a real slaughterhouse in Mexico. The extras are real workers at the plant, the clothes and what you see is all what really happens.
And in that final scene, you’re taken onto the kill floor, where you actually see animals being slaughtered and processed. It’s something you won’t forget. And even if you have to watch through your fingers, don’t miss Catalina Sandino’s performance – she deserves an Oscar for how she portrayed her character in that scene. It’s riveting, moving, and very hard, if not impossible, to forget.

The premiere was part of the Artivist Film Festival, where The Meatrix II: Revolting has won an award – more on that later (ceremony and awards are tomorrow; Meatrix 2 film screening tonight)…

Fast Food Nation opens nationwide next Friday, November 17th.