The Real Power of Acting

From the set on Wednesday, May 20, 2009.  I am typing this on the upper floor of a large metropolitan newspaper.  Nobody from the paper seems to be working here in the building, however. Is the paper still in business?  We have spread out over the entire building, and encounter room after room of beautiful ergonomically designed cubicles with stunning views of the Columbia River and the mountains to the west, and even Mt. Hood to the east.  But every one of them is empty.  With all the bad news about newspapers, I am somewhat relieved to learn that the paper is troubled, but not defunct.

This is Harrison’s last day on the set, and suddenly time is speeding up. The film wraps in just three weeks, now, and I can’t believe it’s all going to be over so fast.  When I began, it seemed as if this future day was a long, long way ahead. But looking back, it feels like maybe just two or three weeks have gone by since my first day on the job.  Does anyone else feel this time speeding up thing besides me?

There’s also an accompanying feeling of missed opportunities.  Could I have done more with my time than simply paint walls and answer the radio in a timely and professional manner? Just yesterday my mother told me some interesting news about Harrison Ford that I wish I had known earlier, when I could have asked him about it and compared notes.

In 2008, Raul Julia-Levy, the son of the late actor Raul Julia, asked some of his famous acquaintances if they would help with a cause close to his heart.  Harrison Ford, Johnny Depp, and Jean-Claude Van Damme, along with other celebrities put their names behind the Free Lolita campaign.  The Free Lolita campaign has been around for over a decade, but lately had languished in the netherworld of anonymity until the actors names got on the list.  Suddenly I noticed more stories about Lolita than ever before—even national news and magazines have covered it. The campaign has been gaining strength and momentum ever since.

Lolita is an orca who has spent the last 39 years in a tiny tank, illegal by the USDA’s current standards, in Florida’s Miami Seaquarium.  The actors, along with many other people, me included, want to have Lolita brought back to her home here in the Pacific Northwest.  To learn more about Lolita you can visit http://orcanetwork.org/captivity/Support.pdf  or Google Lolita with any of the above actors’ names.  She’s now easy to find, thanks to famous actors who cared.

I have a special interest in Lolita.  Her sole tank mate for over twenty years was a female white sided dolphin.  I don’t remember what Miami Seaquarium called this dolphin, but when I knew her, she had just been caught off the Southern California coast out of the freedom of the Pacific Ocean, and her captors had named her Shy.  Shy was one of the first dolphins I ever knew, and I was the very first human she ever knew.  Through working with her over a period of several months, I learned that dolphins are intelligent conscious beings, not mere animals.  Through her I learned that captivity for dolphins and whales is ethically and morally insupportable.

It was shortly before her death that I learned Shy was still alive, decades later, and that she shared Lolita’s tank as the orca’s sole companion for over twenty years.  At that time Shy was the oldest white sided dolphin in captivity.  Most of the dolphins of her species died less than five years after their capture, surviving for a mere fraction of their normal lifespan.  Lolita and Shy must have been friends—they had no others of their own kind to bond with.

When I learned that Lolita had been caught off the coast of Washington state as a young sub-adult, I realized, as did the people who want her freed, that Lolita has a real chance of retuning to her life and her family.  Orcas, or killer whales, have a matrilineal society, which means that all the offspring of an orca mother will stay with their mother in a family group for the rest of their lives.  These related matrilineal groups have distinctly different dialects from one another, and to this day Lolita vocalizes in her family’s dialect.

Lolita grew up in the wild and learned how to hunt for her own food, which is the salmon that run through the waters around Puget Sound and along the west coast.  If she lived in a sea pen, where the orca experts who want to bring her back propose, she will be able to see and speak to her own family for the first time in over thirty years.  She is only 40 to 45 years old.  Female orcas in the wild live to be at least 90 years old, and probably older, with their reproductive life continuing into their forties.  Lolita’s life could begin anew in the world she was born to, with the family who almost certainly remember her, as she almost certainly remembers them.  She may still be able to give birth to her own new family.

Harrison Ford had heard the story and he lent his name to the petition for Lolita’s release.  Furthermore, my mother informed me, Mr. Ford for over seventeen years has been an active force in Conservation International.  He is also a member of Riverkeepers, and uses his helicopter to patrol the Hudson River checking for pollution problems.   Unfortunately I never knew all this until the day before Harrison was leaving the show.

Folks, I hate to admit this, but I am not impressed by famous actors because they’re famous.  I’m more—how can I describe it? Intimidated, uncomfortable, slightly afraid to even look at them too hard or too long, let alone find myself getting in their eyeline, even during rehearsal.  Whatever the opposite of a stalker is, that’s me.  I would liken this attitude to… well, there’s nothing I can liken it to.  I would rather not deal with actors, lest they think I’m being intrusive and unprofessional.  After all these years on the job working in close quarters with a lot of famous faces I still get uncomfortable, but I don’t get impressed all that easily.

The last scene with Harrison finished, and the room began filling up with crew members, some of them asking to have their pictures taken with Harrison.  I didn’t, because I don’t do that—I don’t know if I’m embarrassed by the fakeness of it all or if I think the actors might be—it’s just plain not going to happen that I’ll ask for a photo or even hang around in the same room with photo ops.  However, as I was slinking quickly out of the set, Harrison said, “Renee, get over here, come on.” And who am I to refuse?

After we smiled at the camera, I managed to say, “Thanks for supporting Lolita.  I hope she gets home, too.”  Harrison looked surprised, and said something in response, grinning, but I didn’t catch it.  There were more pictures to be taken, and we on the crew had to get on to the next set, while Harrison had to get back home.

If I’d had more time I might have told him, “I meet a lot of famous actors, but not a lot of famous conservationists.  Now I’m impressed.”