Driving the issues
Laurie DAVID adores her husband, but she really loves her Toyota Prius. So she’s always encouraging Larry David to make room in his “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episodes for a glamorous shot of the 45-miles-per-gallon hybrid car. In a new episode of the show, the prickly comic is in his Prius when he sees a guy driving another one of the hot new cars, which combine a gas engine with a zero-emission electric motor. David gives the man a friendly wave, as if greeting a long-lost frat brother. His pal, Jeff, asks why he’s waving. As Laurie recalls, David explains: “Oh, Prius drivers are a friendly lot. It’s like we’re in a club together.”
Of course, it being “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” the guy doesn’t wave back, David gets angry, races off after him and, well, runs over a dog.
Still, a bigger point has been made. If someone like Larry David, who has enough “Seinfeld” riches to buy a fleet of Escalades or Porsches, is driving a $25,000 Prius in a TV series based on his own life, then hybrid cars must be pretty cool.
The 2004 Prius was recently named Motor Trend’s car of the year. But it has received even better reviews from the entertainment community. With everyone from Leonardo DiCaprio to Cameron Diaz to Warners chief Alan Horn driving one, the Prius has almost as much showbiz cred as cabala strings or Ugg boots. At the Academy Awards, Global Green USA persuaded a host of stars, including best supporting actor winner Tim Robbins, Will Ferrell, Jack Black, Robin Williams, Keisha Castle-Hughes, Marcia Gay Harden and Sting, to take a Prius instead of a limo. Charlize Theron went to Oscar parties in a $3-million Toyota fuel-cell hybrid that creates electricity from a tank of hydrogen.
Of course, a lot of civilians have embraced the Prius too. Like me. For months, people have been honking their horns or stopping at red lights to compare mileage results.
Ferrell, who drives a Prius in real life as well as in “Kicking & Screaming,” a film he’s currently shooting, says, “Other Prius drivers wave at me all the time, just because we all love our car -- they have no idea who I am.”
Still, I’d be lying if I said I bought the Prius of my own accord. Hollywood made me do it. For years, I’d been driving a Ford Explorer with a “Stop global warming” sticker on the bumper. Then I heard about the Detroit Project, a crafty band of showbiz eco-activists who spoofed the Bush administration’s “drug use equals terrorism” ad campaign last year with a series of TV spots suggesting that people who drive gas guzzling SUVs are supporting terrorism themselves.
After all the op-ed pieces and news stories I’d digested on the subject, I finally got the message. If I really cared about the environment, what was I doing driving an SUV that got 15 miles to a gallon? When I went to interview the project organizers, who included Laurie David, columnist Arianna Huffington and film producer Lawrence Bender, I stashed my Explorer blocks away, petrified that they’d catch sight of my guzzler. I bought a Prius last fall. Demand is so heavy that Gary Eckhaus, my salesman at Toyota Santa Monica, says they currently have a four-month waiting list.
The showbiz community hasn’t just helped promote hybrids, they’ve been invaluable supporters of the environment movement. “I can’t tell you how many meetings I’ve gone to where one of the first questions asked is: ‘How can we get a celebrity to help get the attention of the media or an elected official?’ ” says Global Green chief Matt Petersen. “America is obsessed with celebrity, so when a celebrity makes an implicit political statement with a lifestyle choice, like driving a hybrid, it speaks to a lot of people.”
When Global Green held a news conference in 2000 with DiCaprio, who urged President Bush to attend the Earth Summit in Johannesburg, DiCaprio’s presence had such an impact that, according to Petersen, “the White House press office had to put out a statement saying, ‘Well, Leonardo isn’t going either, is he?’ ” Politics is now indelibly shaped by pop culture. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn’t hold news conferences, he makes policy pronouncements on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.” A recent Pew Research Center study found that Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” often has more 18- to 34-year-old male viewers than any network news broadcast.
There are still a few media scolds, like Bill O’Reilly, who dismiss actors as clueless dilettantes. But most political activists are eager to recruit celebrities to their causes. As the veteran record executive and political activist Danny Goldberg points out in his new book, “Dispatches From the Culture Wars: How the Left Lost Teen Spirit,” the right has done a better job than the left of using showbiz values to reach the biggest audience.
“From the start, Rush Limbaugh was an entertainer -- for years he’d use Chrissie Hynde’s ‘Back to Ohio’ to open his show,” says Goldberg. “Even at a serious occasion, like the State of the Union address, Ronald Reagan quoted from ‘Back to the Future.’ When you watch cable news now, you see this huge contingent of tall, attractive blonds, from Ann Coulter to Laura Ingraham, getting the message of the right across.”
For the environmental movement, celebrities serve as a counterweight to the thousands of industry lobbyists who have shaped the Bush administration’s pro-industry tilt on a variety of environmental issues. Last fall, when the Natural Resources Defense Council announced an agreement with the Navy limiting the use of a powerful sonar technology that had been linked to the death of whales and other marine life, it had Pierce Brosnan front and center at its news conference. When the council opened its new offices in Santa Monica in January, DiCaprio was on hand as a media draw. “We thought we had a good story to tell,” says council senior attorney Joel Reynolds. “But the media was there because of who was telling the story. It’s hard to get people to listen to scientists, but they listen to celebrities -- they’re a great messenger.”
Pop culture’s pervasive influence will get a critical test on May 28, when 20th Century Fox launches its summer thriller “The Day After Tomorrow.” The film, directed by Roland Emmerich, who made “Independence Day,” portrays the world on the brink of a global-warming disaster. After a sudden climatic shift, Tokyo is buffeted by hail the size of grapefruit while New York City is buried under a sheet of ice.
Coming at a pivotal juncture in the environmental movement’s battle against the Bush administration’s efforts to roll back key environmental laws, the movie has set off an intriguing tug of war. On one side is Fox, which has kept environmental groups at arm’s length, eager to present the film as an escapist thrill ride. On the other side are eco-activists who see the film as a golden opportunity to publicize global warming -- so much so that the Natural Resources Defense Council recently had “Tomorrow” costar Jake Gyllenhaal in its offices for a briefing so he’d be prepared to discuss the issue on the “Access Hollywood” circuit. The film itself is so cautiously apolitical that for all its lengthy scientific explanations about climatic change, it never mentions that global warming is caused by human activity.
Not that it matters. As we’ve seen with “The Passion of the Christ,” when a film dramatizes a red-meat issue, be it the death of Jesus or climatic disaster, the subject reverberates through the media food chain with frightening velocity. As critic John Powers recently observed, people today “address huge social issues not on news shows, op-ed pages or the campaign trail, but through popular culture.” Sight unseen, “Tomorrow” has already been sneered at by the National Review, applauded by Arianna Huffington. Can Hannity and Colmes be far behind?
Such is the clout of pop culture -- everyone is eager to harness a hit movie to their cause and ride the draft of a box-office hit’s media magnetism.
The Department of Defense recently released a report suggesting that the prospect of global warming poses a greater danger to the planet than international terrorism, but I’m betting a summer popcorn movie will attract more media sizzle than any Pentagon doomsday scenario.
As “Tomorrow” producer Mark Gordon put it: “Even if the movie is just a moderate success, it will do more to provoke people’s thoughts about how we’re destroying the planet than every op-ed article and National Geographic special you’ve ever seen, times a thousand.” Global warming -- get ready for your close-up.
“The Big Picture” runs every Tuesday in Calendar. If you have questions, ideas or criticism, e-mail them to patrick.goldstein@latimes.com.
