The Business of Dinner: An Interview with Robert Kenner

by Rebecca Amato and Rahul Hamid

Robert Kenner’s new documentary, Food, Inc., could not appear at a more opportune time. Michelle Obama is planting an organic vegetable garden on the White House grounds and articles about sustainable, local, and pesticide-free food seem to appear every week in newspapers and magazines, not just in the lifestyle pages, but in business sections as well. Westchester, New York-raised Kenner has directed and produced several documentaries for public television. His Peabody Award-winning Two Days in October, based on David Maraniss’s book, They Marched into Sunlight, recounts a moment during the Vietnam War, presenting the simultaneous stories of a tragically miscalculated attack in Vietnam and of a student protest in Wisconsin, against Dow Chemical, the makers of napalm. Kenner also produced The Road to Memphis, directed by Richard Pearce (coproducer of Food, Inc.), one of the seven films that make up Martin Scorsese’s The Blues series. His other films include accounts of the 1918 influenza epidemic, a profile of John Brown, and a film based on letters written by American soldiers in the Gulf War. Kenner’s films have a progressive point of view, but remain committed to a sympathetic and even-handed airing of all sides of an issue. His tone is educational and persuasive. This is particularly welcome when it comes to the popular discourse surrounding food politics, which veers from extreme denial on the part of big industrial food producers to an equally shrill, self-righteous elitism on the part of some food activists.

Food, Inc. is largely based on Michael Pollan’s two books, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals and In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto and Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation. Both authors appear prominently in the film, providing it with its core values. Kenner adds to their voices from numerous other sources. A former industrial chicken farmer, Carol Morrison, reveals an industrial feedlot, where an endless sea of crowded chickens mill about waiting for slaughter. Morrison loses her contract, because she refuses to change her open-windowed chicken houses to the closed, windowless design required by the company. Kenner’s camera pans over acres and acres of industrial cattle feedlots and hog farms. He chronicles the stories of soybean farmers who can no longer save their own seed or plant the varieties they choose due to Monsanto’s near monopoly on pesticide and the genetically modified seeds that are resistant to it. Life-long Republicans Barbara (Barb) Kowalcyk and her daughter, Patricia Buck, lobby Congress for the passage of Kevin’s Law, a bill named in honor of Barbara’s son, who died of E. Coli poisoning at the age of two. As an antidote, we meet the philosophical Joel Salatin, who raises hogs and cattle on an idyllic farm, and waxes poetic about the glories of the land and of treating animals and produce with the respect they deserve.

Though some of these stories are familiar from other films and books, they are compelling and deserve to be told. Where Food, Inc., excels, however, is in its method of framing these complex elements from the point of view of an educated, socially active consumer—presumably its intended audience. Rather than taking a purely didactic position, forcing us to bear witness to the apparent ugliness of the food industry, Kenner urges viewers to become participants in the democratic system and take responsibility for the food supply. In discussing farm subsidies for the overproduction of corn, Kenner explains how corn products appear not just as sweetener, but also in a huge variety of food additives that are a part of a mind-numbing array of processed foods. The film connects this to the idea that these subsidies and overproduction make it substantially cheaper to eat processed and fast foods, leading not simply to diabetes and obesity among the poor, but also making a switch to a healthier diet a financial impossibility. The film briefly profiles an immigrant family facing just these dilemmas.

Taking this question seriously, Kenner looks not only to sustainable farmers and slow food advocates for answers. He introduces Gary Hirshberg, the head of Stonyfield Farm—one of the largest organic yogurt producers—just as Stonyfield is signing a deal to be sold at Wal-Mart. Hirshberg is eloquent about the power of large-scale production, arguing that this deal will introduce healthy products into more homes, particularly lower income homes, than a thousand farmer’s markets. He frankly admits that many of the people with whom he began in the organic movement would see him as a sellout now. The film does not come down on either side of the issue, maintaining a dialectical approach to its subject. In the opening credits, Food, Inc. takes on the flashy advertising of food, using a candy-colored supermarket aisle as the setting, with products on the shelves announcing the film’s title and makers, suggesting a disconnect between the label and the contents of the package. Not satisfied to once again restate the problems surrounding America’s food supply or to disgust the audience with terrible images of industrial slaughter, Kenner ends the film on an optimistic note. With Bruce Springsteen’s soulful cover of “This Land is Your Land” playing in the background, a list of Web sites and organizations dedicated to changing food policy and production standards appear on the screen. Cineaste spoke with Kenner in March about Food, Inc., which is set to open nationally in June.

Cineaste: You have said that you and Eric Schlosser had wanted to make a film out of Fast Food Nation for a long while. During that time Schlosser wrote and produced a fiction film based on the book with Richard Linklater. Did this change your original ideas for the documentary?

Robert Kenner: Eric did Fast Food Nation with Linklater and, as I was developing this and talking about it with people, they felt like they’d already seen Fast Food Nation “the documentary” because of Morgan Spurlock’s film [Supersize Me]. People asked, “Wasn’t that already made?” We began to think, wait a second, this is crazy. We’ve got to hit new ground. Ironically, we were just being funded as this was striking me over the head. So I understood that our original approach had to go—even though I think that Eric’s book was about much more than fast food. I realized that we have to make this about how all food has become industrialized and to integrate a lot of Michael Pollan’s book into this equation. In the midst of synthesizing both Eric and Michael’s books, hopefully we could come out with our own point of view as well. So it was a process of discovery, and a scary one, because I didn’t know where we were going when we started out.

Cineaste: How did you see your role in terms of making the film? Were you aiming at people who had read the books and sort of figuring out a way to visually describe them and punch home their most significant points, or were you just trying to reach a wider audience in general that may or may not have read the books?

Kenner: All three of the books, two of Michael’s and one of Eric’s, were #1 bestsellers. But I had no interest in making a film to convert them; it’s not what I wanted to do. I really wanted to find our own voice, and, as a filmmaker, I wanted to figure out how to make it a filmic event. That was very tricky because, on one hand, there’s so much freakin’ information to deal with, and I wanted to do it without a narrator, and I wanted to try to tell these vérité stories of the characters, but I wanted them to fit into a much bigger picture.

I wanted to figure out how to do it in an entertaining way. That’s where we came up with some of the animation and the style of music and hopefully to inject some touches of humor into a very hard subject.

Organic farmer Joel Salatin

Cineaste: In the movie you show that both the Bush and Clinton Administrations basically silenced the safe food movement in a lot of ways. Do you think there will be more progress under Obama for Kevin’s Law, for stronger food regulation, and for maybe revising the Farm Bill?

Kenner: I think at first some of the people who were being considered for Secretary of Agriculture were not very encouraging. The names were almost off of those business cards in the film. I think Obama is serious about health care. But when one out of every three Americans born after 2000 will contract early onset diabetes, you can’t be serious about health care without changing the food system. Obama’s serious about the environment, but you can’t have these feedlots and be farming with pesticides and also be serious about the environment without changing the food system. I think he’s serious about workers’ rights, but I think you can’t be serious about that and not change the food system. So I really believe that Kevin’s Law is going to pass. I think once that passes, they’ll get on to really turning the Farm Bill into a Food Bill. I am optimistic. Things are looking more and more positive, and I think really good things are going to start to happen.

Cineaste: Let’s hope so. But I want to ask you about some of the darker things in the film. The food conglomerates kept you out for the most part, but you still were able to get really compelling footage. How did you connect with some of the people from Tyson and Perdue who did talk to you?

Kenner: We pursued Tyson for quite a while and told them about everybody else we were filming. They talked to us but ultimately they were not interested in being filmed or representing their point of view. They did lead us to the National Chicken Council. I felt that if somebody was going to talk to us we were going to lean over backwards to represent their point of view. With the man from the Chicken Council we put the line in about, “We grow more chickens on less land for fewer dollars.” What’s wrong with that? I wanted to include his point of view. I think there are things wrong with it, but I also think that it will convince a lot of people. So whenever someone agreed to talk to us we really went out of our way to be fair to them.

But it was amazing how most companies did not want to talk to us. They would spend a lot of time asking what we were filming. Monsanto was very curious to know everyone we were talking to, but ultimately they did not want to appear. It took a year and a half to get Wal-Mart on camera. They would have been a very easy company to make fun of—and we didn’t give them a free ride—but ultimately they can only benefit from being in the film. So it’s not like we’re attacking every corporation.

Cineaste: No, actually I thought it was a smart move on Wal-Mart’s part.

Kenner: I did too. If it weren’t for Gary Hirshberg, I don’t know if they would have shown up, even though we had major connections in their sustainability area who were lobbying for them to film with us. In the area where they are doing good things, I thought, why not try to encourage that? Obviously we’re not going into the other issues about Wal-Mart in this movie. We’ll leave that for other people.

Cineaste: I think one of the most interesting contrasts in the film is the one you make between small, local, sustainable production and big organic. What you show on the small farms is obviously very idyllic, but I think Gary Hirshberg makes a very compelling case for the sheer numbers that you can affect with products like Stonyfield Yogurt and Horizon and even places like Chipotle, which was run by McDonald’s. The film is pretty even-handed about that question but where do you come down on that issue?

Kenner: I didn’t want to do a “puff piece” about any one of the characters. I made a point of keeping in the film the patron of Joel Salatin who said, “We’ve driven 400 miles to come get this chicken, but it’s worth it.” Some of my backers kept saying, “Why are you keeping that in?” It’s because I didn’t want to make Joel just a god, though it sure is attractive and I’d much rather eat his food than anyone else’s. Gary was great because he was totally open and I really was appreciative. At the same time there are things that Gary does that I might question. I certainly think local is as important as organic. Gary is very much into organic and he will potentially have to outsource his materials from all over the world. He runs a large company and that’s part of it. When we showed clips at Slow Food Nation, everyone was very critical of Gary. But I’m not a purist. I think Gary as well as Joel have places to play in this movement. I think there are many spokes to changing this world. I’d rather be able to eat off of Joel’s farm, but it’s not always practical.

A family of Mexican immigrants, forced by the dictates of low pay and hard work to eat fast food, suffer from a variety of health problems

Cineaste: Thinking of the Mexican family in the film that eats almost solely fast food because of their income and their lack of time, what answers right now are there for people like them? That leads to the larger issue of how eating sustainably, eating locally and organically, is related to class. How does one separate this from being something that the affluent middle classes do almost as an esthetic gesture?

Kenner: Well, I think that’s the key. We didn’t want to make an elitist film. These foods are being priced unfairly, and that’s not a coincidence. They’re priced comparatively high because we’re subsidizing corn. It’s not a coincidence that the Mexican family is buying fast food, which is engineered to appeal to people’s tastes for sugar, salt, and fat. They’re spending billions of dollars to market to these people. And it’s artificially cheap. If we were to have a level playing field and we had food stamps that went towards farmer’s markets, we could ship a lot of this food at a competitive price. Today the perception is that it’s elitist to have good food. But we’ve made it that way. It’s now our job—and hopefully this film’s job—to change the way we get our food and to change the artificially low price of this bad food.

I don’t know if bad food is the right word… or even fast food. It goes beyond fast food. It’s the middle road. It’s all those unidentifiable words for ingredients in food products. They’re all corn and soy products that are being artificially subsidized.

Cineaste: I thought that was one of the strongest parts of the film. We were also really struck by the film’s ending and its “call to arms.” I was wondering about your decision to do that.

Kenner: Well, it’s a heavy subject that we’re dealing with but, at the same time, both Eric and Michael are very optimistic. Our characters—including Gary Hirshberg—are also very optimistic. As much as anything, this is a film about freedom of speech. It really starts to transcend food. I wanted to say that we, as consumers, can make a difference, that we get to vote three times a day. It also goes beyond our actions as consumers because we also want the right to know what’s in our food. We have to influence government. It’s a difficult situation, but, because we all eat, people are really curious about this subject. They care about what goes into their stomachs. We can change these companies. I just wanted to empower people on some level to believe that we can make a difference. I thought the Bruce Springsteen song was really helpful. It’s such a powerful anthem. It’s actually a Woody Guthrie song, but Springsteen’s rendition is different than any other.

Cineaste: It’s a rousing rendition. Following up on what you were saying about getting the message out, in what venues is the film going to be distributed? Obviously it’s going to get a commercial theatrical release, but do you have plans to produce educational materials to accompany it or show it in a variety of places to try to get that message out?

Kenner: Prior to our June theatrical release, we’re going to a number of film festivals. We’re going to be showing the film to the Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, and a number of congresspeople and cabinet officers in Washington. We’ll also be showing it to a numbers of chefs and farmers group. That social outreach is as much a part of this program as the making of the film. So we’re really hoping to take on a number of issues—food safety, worker’s rights, school lunches, and turning the Farm Bill into the Food Bill—and that becomes a very important part of the film.

Truth in labeling is also important. That should be a right in a democracy. A woman in the film says that we shouldn’t know whether our food was cloned or genetically modified or not because it only confuses people. I’m not going to say we shouldn’t have these things, but I sure want to know what they are. Why don’t you advertise it?

Barb Kowalcyk, a lifelong republican who became involved in food safety policy after her son, Kevin died of E. Coli poisoning.

Cineaste: Some people would argue that genetically modified food, as the second part of the Green Revolution, is necessary to feed the world or to increase production. Do you think that, without it, the world’s food supply needs can be met?

Kenner: Let me start by saying that the world’s food supplies are not met now. How many people are going hungry today? I think the real radical departure is that we’re now using chemicals. We’ve only used them for fifty years and we know that we’re poisoning the land; we know it’s all based on oil, which is totally unsustainable. It’s a very fragile system we’ve created. It’s a little like the financial system where we think these companies can police themselves and that they’ll do a better job than the government. And all of a sudden our banks are failing. I think this system could lead to a monumental food failure. There’s a potential of it.

I can’t answer about genetically modified foods because I’m not an expert, but what I do know is that a number of farmers I talked to said their yields had gone down with genetically-modified crops… and Troy thought they went up! So there were different points of view. But why are they trying to eliminate competition with all their legal might? If it’s so good, why can’t they play on a level playing field?

Cineaste: In the past, you’ve made documentaries on historical subjects, on war and activism. I was wondering how your process changed when you were working on a contemporary and quite unresolved topic? Or did it at all?

Kenner: The Road to Memphis, which was for the Scorsese movie series, had certain similarities. On some level, Two Days in October was a model that I hoped to follow on this film, which was hearing about an event or two events from all these different points of view. I really thought we could investigate this and talk to everybody, but obviously that process changed because most of these companies didn’t want to talk to me. So I had to keep changing. The last three films I made prior to this did not use narration. I like to work without narration. This was a big, hard subject. I like to make personal films, but it was a challenge to try to make this a personal film. The biggest challenge was taking on this big, information-laden subject and trying to turn it into a film that had humor, that had characters you cared about, and, at the same time, that gave you an overall sense of what’s going on, but to try to do all of that without narration.

Cineaste: I think you did that. The film is really one that can play to a larger audience because you avoided the “gross-out” scenes that other documentaries about the food supply have used.

Kenner: Well, we all know there are disgusting things. Listen, the fact is, as Joel says, we’re totally removed from where our food comes from. The only slaughter scene we see in the film is on this idyllic farm. I made a point of trying to remove any “gross-out” scenes. I felt like that they weren’t going to teach us anything new and would only keep people away.

Rebecca Amato, a PhD candidate in US History at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, teaches social history at New York University.

Rahul Hamid is a Cineaste editor and teaches film in New York City.

To buy Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation, click here; to buy Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma click here and In Defense of Food, click here.

In September, buy Food Inc. on DVD by clicking here.

Cineaste,Vol.XXXIV No.3 2009

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