ECO-PIRATE: THE STORY OF PAUL WATSON directed by Trish Dolman. 110 minutes. An eOne release. Opens Friday (July 22) at TIFF Bell Lightbox. See listing
Many documentary filmmakers go into a project with an idea and, once shooting gets under way, find themselves changing direction.
Trish Dolman had a classic change of heart while making her doc about controversial eco-activist Paul Watson.
“When I first had the idea in 2002, he was ramming driftnet fishing boats,” she says on the phone from her home base in Vancouver. “I thought, ‘Wow, I’ve never heard of people doing that, and that would be great to do a film about because he’s so radical.'”
Once she got deeper into the project, he began looking less like a hero.
“When I was younger I was more naive. Initially I had a lot of admiration for Paul, but I realized that for a lot of people, he’s an unlikeable character.
“What drew me to him was that he elicited such a strong response. Some people were fervent supporters, others detested him.”
How she found her approach to the film:
Using archival footage of early eco-actions, Dolman goes the distance to capture the history of Greenpeace, which Watson helped found in 1973. She also talks to Greenpeace’s co-founders, who eventually threw Watson out of the organization when he refused to maintain discipline during protests.
The challenge of gathering archival footage:
How she chose her other interview subjects for the film:
He famously grabbed a cable pulling seals into a boat and was repeatedly dumped into the icy water – see that in one of the film’s more memorable clips.
But Dolman also tried to find out more about Watson’s emotional life and his family background, which wasn’t easy.
“I wanted to get to a personal place with Watson where no other filmmaker has gone. He’s very media-savvy and aware of the camera and his role, and I wanted to get past that.”
She discovered through interviews that women who are intimate with Watson have to take up his cause and then take second place in his life. And even that doesn’t guarantee that he’ll stay committed.
“You’re not going to get a lot of emotional needs met in a relationship with Paul Watson. Dealing with that issue made a lot of the men on the film crew uncomfortable. I had to fight for that content.
On Paul Watson’s emotional make-up:
“My observation is that Paul is baffled by people. What’s interesting to me is that he’s appears to be complex but is emotionally very simple.”
Typical of Watson’s delusions of grandeur is his insistence on blasting music on his stereo whenever he’s chasing down the villain. In the opening and closing sequences of Eco-Pirate, while pursuing Japanese whalers in Antarctica, he plays Wagner’s Ride Of The Valkyries. Seriously.
I didn’t realize it was Watson playing the music and thought it was Dolman’s bad idea of a soundtrack.
“Oh no. It’s laughable, but Paul’s really playing it. He plays that every time he attacks a ship. He really believes in his own mythology.”
susanc@nowtoronto.com
