We are living in the age of stupid….

Franny Armstrong, award-winning director of McLibel, spent 4 years putting together her latest film The Age of Stupid and it looks set to be a major hit – so is she really going to give up making films? By Kamila Kuc and Kate Vlckova

Kamila Kuc: The Age of Stupid is a very inspirational and moving film. Adding Pete Postlethwaite made it more of a fictional affair than documentary. What prompted you to choose Postlethwaite?

Franny Armstrong: We decided the film should be set in the future and at first it was going to be children or teenagers in the future, the next generation, how they are going to feel about us.
We actually did a test version of that, starring myself and the assistant editor playing the teenagers and screened it to the crew, which was one of the lowest points of the filming because they absolutely hated it. It soon became clear that what the next generations are going to think of us is that they are going to hate us. All the teenagers in the film were saying to our generation: ‘you destroyed the planet, you took all the resources, you didn’t think about us’. Everybody watching the film was annoyed being critised by a couple of teenage brats so that was awful.  After that, we realised that if we look at my generation – how we are going to feel about the future – there would be more regret that we just sat by and did nothing. Sorrow and guilt were much more powerful and at that point, we needed an older actor and to me Pete was the only one who could play the part.

Kate Vlckova: Because he’s interested in environmental issues?

FA: I actually didn’t know that but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this country’s best actor who clearly has a great integrity is also interested in climate change. If you are an intelligent human being then you are interested in climate change because it’s the most important issue of our time.

KK: The film is very eclectic in form and contains plenty of information, yet it is not overwhelming. How would you describe the film’s genre?

FA: I’m waiting for someone to come up with perky adjectives or a perky description because I am not sure what the genre is. The whole spine of it is fiction but on the other hand it has lots of documentary in it – and it has a lot of animation.

KK: Against the backdrop of all the important facts you depict six personal stories. How did you choose these particular people?

FA: I first split the subject matter into themes so there is war, profiting, consumerism and so on and then we had a huge team of researchers. They researched all the different oil wars and all the different consumption/consumer stories – we were looking for a range of characters across the globe, men, women, old, young, so it took a long time.

KV: You raised £450,000 through crowd funding. What made you choose that route?

FA: I made my first film McLibel independently but only by accident. I tried to get a commission from all the standard TV broadcasters but because they had been sued by McDonald’s in the past none of them would commission me so I ended up making it by credit cards and rich boyfriends (I’m joking – about the boyfriends).
By the end of the process I realised what a powerful position you are in if you own the rights to your film because then you control the distribution and I ended up getting 25 million viewers for McLibel and that’s what it’s all about for me.
So when we went into this one, it was never an option to get it commissioned. We are not interested in having somebody telling us that we have to water down our message or that some advertising person would not like it. We wanted the film to be completely independent as the overall aim is that it has an effect on climate change and in order to do that you have to maximise the number of viewers.

KV: In terms of viewing numbers, you’ve said you’d like 250 million viewers to see the film?

FA: Of course anybody would want their film to be watched by a lot of people but in this particular instance there is even more press needed because we have got a very short time to turn climate change around otherwise we will all die. So we are going to aim for 10 times the number that saw McLibel – which makes 250,000,000. I know it may sound ridiculous but it is the end of the world!  Also, with McLibel there was just a tiny team of two or three of us and this time there are hundreds of people backing it, from the investors, the crew, the NGO partners. We are working with Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Stop Climate Chaos – all the big NGOs. We have interns, full-time staff – so it is a much bigger team this time.

KK: What would you say is different about The Age of Stupid that might finally make people take this problem seriously?

FA: I have always thought that the role of the film-maker is to present the argument persuasively, emotionally and coherently and then it is over to the viewer, they are either convinced or not convinced, moved or not moved and they decide whether they will take action or not. This time, though, I have actually changed slightly and we are actually setting up a campaign called NOT STUPID which we are running with Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and all the other big NGOs with the specific aim of first reaching 250 million viewers but secondly taking that moment of being inspired and moved and turning it into action, energising people into, for example, putting pressure on the governments at the Copenhagen summit in December 2009.

KK: The Age of Stupid shows all the signs of becoming a very successful film, but we hear it is to be your last…

FA: You have to take it with a pinch of salt because everybody who is in the middle of a film says it is their last film but on the other hand, no I don’t want to make another film… but actually when I was filming with Pete and he was saying my line on the set that we built… that was pretty thrilling.