When alumni Chris Paine and Roger Gilbertson came home to Menlo School recently, close to 400 people showed up. And had a blast.
No wonder. Mr. Paine, who grew up in Portola Valley, has brought recognition to the school and the community through his award-winning film, “Who Killed the Electric Car?” — which he wrote and directed. And the pair put on a lively program.
Mr. Gilbertson, although not connected with the film, has been involved in a number of projects with Mr. Paine over the years.
“The kids were totally enrapt,” says Peter Brown, a history teacher at Menlo and old friend of Mr. Paine. Here was someone who came from their background and talked about cars and movies and Tom Hanks and Mel Gibson.
Mr. Paine took time out from a hectic schedule to talk about his personal journey from Portola Valley to international success as a film-maker. And success it has been. The film, which premiered last year at Sundance, has been shown in theaters and film festivals around the world; it won awards in Telluride, Canberra and Milan.
Chris Paine describes the real breakthrough: Sony Pictures ran “Who Killed the Electric Car?” as a trailer with Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” which went on to win an Academy Award for best documentary.
“Al Gore said it made ‘a perfect summer double feature,'” Mr. Paine says proudly.
Environmental genes
Chris Paine picked his parents well. In the 1960s and 1970s when he was growing up, Ward and Mary Paine were leaders in the environmental movement that was taking off on the Peninsula. They still are.“We crushed cans and recycled,” Chris Paine remembers, sitting under a giant oak tree behind his parents’ house. “We got tuned into the environment as an important value.”
Chris took up films as a hobby at Menlo School with his friend Roger Gilbertson, then of Woodside. Their first production was a parody, “In Search of the Big Nose,” he says.
Later, Mr. Paine graduated from Colgate College with a degree in international relations, and pursued a career that spanned Internet enterprises, films and political action. He moved to Los Angeles in 1990.
During the 1980s, he worked with environmental activist Lennie Roberts to make a film attacking the proposed freeway bypass of Devil’s Slide on the San Mateo County coast — where a tunnel is now being built.
In 1997, Mr. Paine leased a General Motors EV1 electric car. He loved it; it was fast, quiet, cheap, non-polluting, and you could plug it in at night. Many other Hollywood people, some of whom appear in the film, loved them too.
Then about the time that Mr. Paine decided he wanted to start directing his own films, General Motors took the car back. It cancelled the program in 2003. “A lot of people thought it was a setup,” Mr. Paine says. “I set out to connect the dots.”
His film asked the questions, “What really happened to the electric car? Why is this important? Why should anyone care?”
Making a movie
“We didn’t want to make a conspiracy movie or a Michael Moore movie. We wanted to make it entertaining,” Mr. Paine recalls. “We framed it as a murder mystery.”Three years later, with the help of 200 people, the movie ranked third in U.S. box office receipts for a documentary in 2006. “Movie-making is collaborative. I had a lot of help,” Mr. Paine says.
“Who Killed the Electric Car?” starts with a funeral for a flower-draped EV1. It tracks the fate of hundreds of cars mysteriously sent off to the desert, where it shows them being crushed and shredded. And it gives arguments about six suspects in the murder.
Five of the six suspects are found guilty: oil companies; car companies; government; the California Air Resources Board (CARB!); and hydrogen fuel cells. Batteries were found not guilty.
The film includes some big names. Martin Sheen narrates, and there are appearances by Phyllis Diller, Mel Gibson, Tom Hanks, and Ralph Nader.
Back in Portola Valley, Mr. Paine reflects on the issues explored in the movie. “We thought it was an excellent case study for why it’s hard for America to get out of the 20th century,” he says. “The electric car story has become a kind of metaphor.
“We’re all in this pickle together. We’re all dependent on oil, and we need to work together to get off of it.”
What is Mr. Paine doing next?
“I’m working on a comedy about the end of the world,” he says. “It’s called ‘Nice Try.'”
Do you have any experiences with electric cars? Big ones? Fast ones? or the little neighborhood electric cars that buzz around town? Share your experiences in Town Square at www.AlmanacNews.com.
