| Cane Toads: An Unnatural History | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Mark Lewis |
| Written by | Mark Lewis |
| Music by | Martin Armiger |
| Cinematography | Jim Frazier Wayne Taylor |
| Editing by | Lindsay Frazer |
| Release date(s) | 9 June 1988 (Australia), 11 September 1988 (Canada), 30 September 1988 (USA, limited) |
| Running time | 47 minutes |
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
Cane Toads: An Unnatural History (1988) is a 47-minute documentary film about the introduction of Cane Toads to Australia. Cane Toads were introduced to Australia with the aim of controlling a sugar cane pest, but they over-multiplied and became a serious problem in the Australian ecosystem. It is often humorous, and is used in high schools and colleges as a complement to curricula in biology, ecology, environmental science, anthropology, geography, and communication. It was filmed in Cairns and Gordonvale in Queensland.
The film was nominated for a BAFTA Film Award for Best Short Film. It is distributed in the United States by Radio Pictures.
Director Mark Lewis' first encounter with the cane toad happened when he was in his late teens, according to Lewis' essay "The Making - and the Meaning - of 'Cane Toads: The Conquest.'" It was only later, when he was working at the Australian Broadcasting Company that he began collecting newspaper clippings about the cane toads’ heading towards the south. “It struck me as an odd and fascinating story…Over the years I became fascinated by the inconsistent stories, folklore, and myths that I encountered about the cane toad," Lewis wrote. As for the final product, Lewis said, "We tried to tell much of the story from the cane toads’ point of view, using exceptionally low camera angles – in effect, giving a voice to this animal that couldn’t speak for itself yet was at the center of so much controversy. My goal was to create some sympathy for this animal that was so widely reviled.”
A sequel called Cane Toads: The Conquest premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.[1] A completely new feature, almost twice as long as the first film, it is said to be the first Australian 3D digital film. [2] In the years since the first film, the cane toad "multiplied alarmingly" to become a "seemingly unstoppable menace".[3] The sequel/remake was released in Sydney in June 2011.
Both films were written and directed by Mark Lewis. Their cultural impact and moral complexity were explored in an essay by Elizabeth Farrelly.[4]
Inspired by the Australian media's portrayal of the cane toad infestation as an "alien invasion," Lewis said, “I found myself playing off the conventions of the horror movie – for example, with a shower scene stylistically reminiscent of Psycho. That was a result of not just my sense of humor but also of the nature of the media coverage that the cane toad receives.”
Notable: Cane Toads: An Unnatural History is an unusual film that blends several genres with surprising success and sophistication.
Lewis created a film which is humorous, but also enlightening, educational, and socially relevant across time and geography. More uniquely, he has created a nature documentary that attempts to provide the perspective of the animal with minimal assumptions or anthropomorphism, that also demonstrates relationships between humans and animals, and that presents this story through a collection of characters rather then a host or voice over narration. The compelling and universal story and fantastic cast of characters are brought to life by the technical decisions and choices resulting in clever and purposeful camera work. The quirky Cane Toads was a success by most all measures: it was praised by critics, became a fan favorite and cult classic, preformed well in the box office, and was nominated for an award.
In the section on production conditions we will look at innovations and later films and television work that use these conventions and technology. In the section on aesthetics, we will move past the more familiar aspects of nature documentaries that Lewis parodies, and look at some of the earliest examples of humorous wildlife films. In the historical context section we will look at the appropriateness of Cane Toads in the late 1980s through its relationship to narrative eco-disaster comedies popular at the time.
Influence: The use of sardonic and deadpan humor and parody and a diverse cast of absurd characters are traits that other documentary films have incorporated, but few within the subgenre of nature documentary. Lewis’s own later documentaries remain the best examples. He is not without influence however; German director Werner Herzog described his nature documentary Encounters at the End of the World (2008) as ‘a comedy’.[5] Herzog is often cited as being a fan of Cane Toads and one Internet database lists it as his number one favorite film.[6] The influence is evident in Encounters, which is a movie about Antarctica that doesn’t focus just on penguins and cold weather but includes all of the diverse people who work there and the absurd situations that arise. Herzog’s presence however is felt in the film and he offers commentary throughout. Humor without hosting remains one of Lewis’s admirable hallmarks in the documentary world.
Unusual for a film considered a cult classic, Cane Toads preformed very well during its theatrical release. For almost 20 years Cane Toads: An Unnatural History held the title of top grossing non-IMAX documentary for the Australian box office. It remains easily in the top ten today even with the IMAX films included. Released in March 1988, it is recording as bringing in $613,910 Australian dollars (not adjusted for inflation).[7]
Production Elements:
One of the film’s aesthetic and storytelling “innovations” was to try and tell much of the story from the cane toads’ point of view. This was achieved by a number of extremely low angle shots. Lewis’ goal was to give a voice to the toads who were at the center of so much controversy, and “create some sympathy for this animal that was so widely reviled”. [8]
In addition to the unique toad’s point-of-view, there were other challenges with portraying the toads as a lead character. The cameraman for Cane Toads: An Unnatural History, Jim Frazier, also shot for British naturalist David Attenborough and Australian Densey Clyne. He was familiar with the frustrations and limitations with nature photography and developed a set of lenses with exceptional depth of focus, allowing the camera to be extraordinarily close and focused on the toad subjects while also maintaining focus on other objects much deeper in the frame. This lens system later gave rise to what is known as the Panavision/Frazier lens system, which provides massive depth of field. [8] Frazier’s lens was patented in 1998 and has been widely used in Hollywood and wildlife cinematography. This depth of field is something we now take for granted and this level of craft may not be not something the average viewer is conscious of while viewing; in a large part because it is more like our own eyes. It does however remove any cinematic qualities that result from conventional shallow depth of focus, and thus removes one more barrier between the audience and the toad’s perspective. This was a technical choice and innovation that furthered Lewis’ vision.
“First-person” or direct address: A second innovation was to present all of the interviewees in what Lewis refers to as “first-person”. This primarily means having the subjects talk directly to the camera as opposed to an off-stage interviewer. His storytelling goal was to create the sensation that the interviewees are speaking directly to the audience. To facilitate this, Lewis devised a camera accessory which he calls the “mirror box,” which allows the character to speak straight to the camera lens while looking at a projection of Lewis as he interviews (Lewis, 2010, p. 26). The choice of this non-conventional use of direct address also contributes to the deadpan humor of the film. Through direct eye contact with the characters, the viewer is continually reminded that the characters are active participants in the filmmaking, no matter how absurd their statements.
Lewis states that since producing Cane Toads: An Unnatural History, this concept has been used by other filmmakers, most notably Errol Morris. Morris calls the devise an Interrotron but Lewis states it is much the same as his mirror box (Lewis, 2010, p. 26). On his website Morris indicates he first used the Interrotron in the 1997 film Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control (Morris, n.d.). The added value of using direct address for both movies depended on their selection of unusual, fascinating, and quirky characters.
Direct address has also found its way into TV programming: the style is now a hallmark of reality shows, popularized in the early 1990s with Real World’s confessional booth (West, 2007). The mid-2000s’ TV comedy series The Office makes use of the direct address technique as a mockumentary stylistic convention (“The Office,” n.d.).
In Internet media, direct address is almost universal among vloggers (West, 2007). The technical contributions to this phenomenon include web and computer embedded video cameras that make it easy for individuals to record themselves while monitoring their own image. The style has become both reflective and symbolic of social qualities of vloggers: underground/grassroots, no/low budget, and a more direct connection between the on-camera talent and audience.
Funding and distribution:
The film was funded by Film Australia. It was shown in theatres and currently still ranks high in Australian box office records for documentaries. The film was also released on DVD or VHS in Australia, the USA, and the UK (IMDb, 2011a). Excerpts of the film are also available online as teaching aids. Based on Internet comments, the film is still shown in middle school, high school, and college classrooms and is well received. Production Company: Film Australia. Distributors: First Run Features (1999) (USA) (VHS); First Run Features (2001) (USA) (DVD); Umbrella Entertainment (2003) (Australia) (DVD); Unique Films (UK) (VHS) (IMDb, 2011a).
Supporting resources and institutions: Cane Toads: An Unnatural History was funded by Film Australia, which was combined with the Australian Film Commission and the Film Finances Corporation in 2008, and is now know as Screen Australia. By their definition “the former Film Australia was an Australian Government-owned company, whose mission was to create an audiovisual record of Australian life. In its 60 years it became one of the nation's leading producers of television documentaries and educational programs” (Film Australia, n.d.).
While the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s A Place to Think website offers a conflicting story on the origins of Cane Toads (they cite it as a creative solution to a mundane commission from the Department of Agriculture), they also provide their quirky assessment of the film’s benefit to its government sponsor: “Cane Toads is one of Film Australia's success stories - endless commercial screenings, wide publicity, the film on everybody's lips - and the generator of one of the great advertising slogans, ‘For just $49.95, you can have cane toads in your living room’” (ABC, n.d.).
Mark Lewis, director: Cane Toads: An Unnatural History was written and directed by Mark Lewis. He was born in Sydney, Australia and graduated with a Bachelor’s in Economics from Sydney University and later studied direction at the Australian Film and Television School (Weber, 2010, p. 19). After graduating film school, Lewis spent several years as a location sound mixer for a variety of films, before becoming frustrated “because like many technicians, I believed I could do a better job than the director!” (Lewis, 2010, p. 21). He put together a proposal about this “weird amazing story I had been following—the tale of the cane toad,” and received funding from a government entity called Film Australia. Cane Toads: An Unnatural History was his first movie, and he readily acknowledges, “In a very real sense, I owe my career to cane toads” (Lewis, 2010, p. 21). Lewis is currently the head of Radio Pictures, an independent production company (Weber, 2010, p. 19).
Mark Lewis later directed The Wonderful World of Dogs (1990), Rat (1998) and The Natural History of the Chicken (2000). TV documentaries he directed include: Animalicious (1999), Standards of Perfection: Show Cattle (2006), Standards of Perfection: Show Cats (2006), and The Floating Brothel (2006). He also directed several shows for TV series including “The Copy” (1989) and “Santa Claws” (1989) for the Round the Twist series, and “Lords of the Gourd” (2007) for The Pursuit of Excellence TV series. Most recently he directed a 3-D film, Cane Toads: The Conquest (2010) (IMDB, 2011c).
Related film movements and formal qualities Nature films and Cane Toads as a parody: In the preface to Cane Toads and Other Rogue Species an educational companion book to the newly released sequel, Cane Toads: The Conquest (2010), Karl Weber attempts to describe a Mark Lewis movie. He starts with the term “nature documentary” but quickly acknowledges this is “hopelessly inadequate…at suggesting the odd, lovable blend of deadpan comedy, gentle social satire, and subtly parodic genre play that characterizes a film like Lewis’s legendary Cane Toads” (Weber, 2010, p. vii). Despite, or perhaps because of this unique combination, Weber also credits Lewis’s film as tackling “one of the most serious environmental issues of our time—the problem of invasive species and their impact on biological diversity” with the same “sheer educational impact” as a more typical nature movie (2010, p. vii-viii).
Weber lists other reviews of Mark Lewis’s work including: Julie Salamon, New York Times: “He has brought a deadpan sensibility and a vibrantly quirky visual style to the nature documentary.” And New Yorker: “His excellent, funny films end up being less about animals than about humans” (2010, p. 19). Unlike many traditional nature documentaries, Cane Toads: An Unnatural History and Lewis’s later movies feature the relationship between animals and human beings as much as the animals themselves. Lewis also acknowledges that the animals he finds most interesting are the ones intertwined with humans (2010, p. 21).
Including the human relationship is very different from most nature documentaries or wildlife filmmaking, and this becomes one more element that contributes to his parody of the genre. Lewis acknowledges that he finds traditional nature films “pretentious” and that his movies are a way of expressing this and his “cheeky sense of humor.” Lewis lists several specific conventions or clichés that he parodies in Cane Toads, including the “Mating Scene” and the “Fearsome-Predator-Captures-His-Prey Scene” (Lewis, 2010, p. 22).
Lewis also exploits the conventions of horror films, a toad version of the shower scene from Psycho (1960) being the main example. Lewis states that this is not just born out of his sense of humor, but also to parody the nature of the media coverage that surrounds cane toads. He contends that news and science stories about cane toads are designed to provoke anxiety and terror, and that journalists and scientists gravitate towards excessive language such as “war, alien invasion, the implacable enemy” as a way of validating their own work (2010, pp. 22-23).
On a similar note, another diversion from the nature documentary conventions is that Lewis includes many laypeople in his films as opposed to only “experts”. This is another jab at the genre and the pretensions of scientists and also an acknowledgement of the knowledge gained by laypeople through observation (Lewis, 2010, p. 23). His inclusion of so many different perspectives from diverse backgrounds also gives the film a social value, and it doubles as an interesting window into the lives of the Australian “characters” he selected.
Deadpan humor: In addition to parody elements, much of the humor comes from deadpan revelations of comedic or absurd statements. This comedic effect is not only delivered by the audio of the interviewees, but also by the visuals and stylistic choices. The direct address, centered, wide angle, deep depth of field, and contextual interview framing are key elements to the success of Lewis’s particular flavor of comedy.
In a press release for Cane Toads: The Conquest, Radio Pictures reveals their perspective of the legacy of the original Cane Toads:
“The story not only introduced the world to the riddle of the cane toads …it also introduced many to Lewis’s original style of movie storytelling. His hybrid fusion of playful humor, eye-opening facts and offbeat adventure have been described as a collision between Monty Python and National Geographic. By mixing quirky real-life characters with breathtaking nature footage and tongue-in-cheek re-enactments, Lewis crafted a funny, sometimes freaky, but wholly unique experience—one that entertainingly exposed the slippery interplay between human cleverness and the natural world, and its consequences for ecological balance.” (Radio Pictures, 2010)
In addition to the deadpan delivery and fascination with the absurd, the reference to Monty Python is especially relevant in some of the formal qualities of the film. In nature and wildlife films, created scenes are usually deliberately disguised. In historical documentaries, recreations are often used to tell the story. In Cane Toads the re-enactments serve this purpose but also take on a level of Pythonesque humor, becoming more like comedy sketches interspersed throughout the film. The structure also reflects a Monty Python influence: a series of sketches that are generally following along the same plotline, but often with tangents. In Lewis’s later work The Natural History of the Chicken, this sketch-based less-linear storytelling is even more evident. Australia being part of the Commonwealth, makes the references to the British humor cult classic all the more appropriate for the audience.
Historic examples of humorous wildlife films: Derek Bousé provides an extensive review of wildlife and natural history films in his book Wildlife Films. He presents the idea that wildlife films should be considered in an entirely different category then documentary films and that they face a different set of conventions and ethical concerns (Bousé, 2000). On one hand Bousé would likely not consider Cane Toads: An Unnatural History a wildlife film due to the focus on the human relationships. On the other hand Bousé (2000) and environmental studies author Greg Mitman (1999) also propose the need for films that acknowledge the human context of wildlife, and Cane Toads does precisely that.
Bousé provides historical context for humorous wildlife films with two early examples. In 1914, Professor Raymond L. Ditmars, the curator of reptiles at the New York Zoological Park released The Book of Nature. The film concludes with a number of reptiles performing circus type acts—complete with an audience of toads appearing to watch the show. Bousé reports that Motion Picture World praised Ditmars’s “gift of humor”, and they noted, “it is easy to make entertaining pictures educational, but to make educational pictures entertaining is a more difficult problem. Professor Ditmars has solved the problem absolutely…We look and laugh and learn in one process.” (2000, p. 58). Bousé however is less convinced and goes on to cite the consequences as Ditmars’s focus switches from scientist to entertainer (2000, p. 58).
In 1930, one of the pioneers of wildlife film, British Cherry Kearton created a film about an island off the coast of South Africa that is inhabited by Jackass (African) Penguins. The film Dassan: An Adventure in Search of Laughter featuring Nature’s Greatest Little Comedians was “produced and sold as a satirical wildlife comedy” (Bousé, 2000, p. 54). Bousé considers Dassan a failure and significant only in contrast to Kearton’s other work (2000, p. 54). Kearton also had second thoughts about this approach, writing in 1931, “I hope I wasn’t unfair against them, for—like most people—I laugh at them—but I love them too” (Petterson, 2011, p. 83). Dassan was Keaton’s first “tone film” and much of the comedy comes from the unexpected sound effects and music (Petterson, 2011, p. 78).
The use of sound and music for comedic effect was later perfected by the Disney True Life series. Bousé takes issue with Disney’s “drama, laughs, and music” branding with this statement: “The ‘laughs’ he promised could be problematic, for, as Ditmars and Kearton had shown, comedy was hardly there waiting to be found among animals, but had to be projected onto them” (2000, p. 67).
What Lewis achieves that is so different from these early films and the Disney model questioned by Bousé is that the joke is not so much at the expense of the toads but instead targets the situations created by their relationships with humans. Lewis created a sort of nature comedy where the animal, while certainly comical, is not subjected to excessive anthropomorphism.
Historical appropriateness for subject matter, tone, audience, and approach Narrative eco-disaster comedies: Looking at research outside of documentary genres, we can demonstrate that Lewis’s film was created during a time period in which narrative eco-disaster films also took a more comedic approach. Many of the historical explanations for this shift also show the historic appropriateness of the subject matter, tone, and approach of Cane Toads.
In their book Ecology and Popular Film: Cinema on the Edge, Robin Murray and Joseph Heumann note that narrative films dealing with eco-disasters in the 1950s through the 1970s and early 1980s were very serious (2009, p. 110). Examples provided include: Them! (1954), Godzilla (1956), On the Beach (1959), The Birds (1963), Silent Running (1971), Omega Man (1971), Frogs (1972), Soylant Green (1973), The Swarm (1978), Piranha (1978), The China Syndrome (1979), Humanoids from the Deep (1980), and Silkwood (1983). They further make a case that beginning in the late 1980s, films highlighting “similar eco-disasters” look at issues with a more comedic perspective. Their examples include: the Toxic Avenger series (1986 and 1989), Class of Nuke ‘Em High and its sequels (1986-1989), Who Framed Rodger Rabbit (1988), and Naked Gun 2½ (1990) (2009, p. 109).
Murray and Heumann credit the timing of this dramatic genre shift in fictional films in ways that can also be applied to Lewis’s documentary. Murray and Heumann contend that the eco-disaster genre had come of age and could now be satirized through comic versions (2009, p. 110). Likewise, nature documentaries had reached a point in which their conventions were established enough to be successfully parodied by Lewis. Another change noted by Murray and Heumann “relates to a movement from rugged individualism to a more communal approach to solving ecological problems” (2009, p. 110). Lewis likewise includes community representatives in his film, as much to show how overwhelming the problem is and how hopeless Australians are collectively against this eco-disaster. Finally Murray and Heumann suggest that these “films all exploit historical and current events, either explicitly or implicitly, making us laugh within different contexts and with different intentions and results” (2009, p. 110). This assessment may point to why Cane Toads was such a tremendous box office hit. Not only was it an entertaining eco-disaster comedy, but also it was in fact “true”, and thus fully exploiting years of complex Australian history with cane toads and other introduced and invasive species.
Murray and Heumann go on to examine the evolution and value of eco-film comedy, which again is perhaps even more relevant to Lewis’s documentary: “Eco-film comedies…burgeoned from the late 1980s through the present, perhaps because they poke fun at extremists and provide a place where heroes so flawed they become nearly ineffective can show us the positive consequences of placing the good of the community…above the individual” (2009, p. 113). More recent eco-comedy documentaries have embraced this ineffective hero format, Blue Vinyl (2002) being one example. Lewis’s film is unique in that it made the transition to eco-comedy without using a host. It also exploits a nature documentary structure instead of the more common journey story arch used by many recent comedic documentaries.
Further testimony to the power of comedy is also related: “Comedic films are a complex form of cultural expression, which have a history of both perpetrating the social order and attempting to subvert it. Comedies are a way to demonstrate the absurdity of society’s problems and hypocrisies. From the 1980s forward, eco-disasters have served as fodder for comedy because audiences know enough about the issues to laugh about it.” (Murray & Heumann, 2009, p. 114)
This background and often even first-hand knowledge of the cane toad problem is what made Cane Toads so engaging to audiences at the time. Cane toads, which had comparatively less ecological impact then other introduced species such as rabbits, provided a more light-hearted access point to the topic. According to the Australian government, “invasive animals, often called feral animals, and invasive plants or 'weeds' are one of the biggest environmental problems facing Australia today.” (SEWPaC, n.d.) Introduced species are a global problem that still continues, which is why the film is not just a historic cult classic, but still relevant and shown in classes today. (A point not lost on Mark Lewis, who has just released a sequel).
Murray and Heumann conclude their chapter covering eco-disaster comedy films with a statement that the films provide “a space in which we can laugh at eco-disasters, look at environmental catastrophe with a sense of humor, and perhaps, make changes that will serve both humans and the natural world best” (2009, p. 126). Radio Pictures readily acknowledges this aspiration while reflecting on their film, Cane Toads: An Unnatural History: “Despite its international origin the cane toad has become uniquely Australian—yet its story holds universal relevance. As the world wrestles with the idea that we have irretrievably altered our own ecosystem, these bulbous creatures may be the ultimate metaphor for the inevitable path upon which we have set ourselves” (Radio Pictures, 2010). While the content and style film was especially appropriate for the time in which it was released, the cult appeal and educational content have kept it relevant and well loved still today.
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