THOSE OF you with kids
might have seen Free Willy,
the movie about a kid who
frees a ‘‘whale’’ from im-
prisonment in an aquarium.
In fact, it’s a dolphin, an
orcinus orca, just like those
poor creatures kept in the
litte tub down at the Van-
couver Aquarium.

First, let me say that Free Willy
is a fabulous piece of propazanda.
I would like to then be able to
add, ‘I couldn’t have done better
myself.’’ Alas, 1 could have, and
did — back in 1979, when I wrote
a script called Release, about ex-
_ actly the same plot, namely an
. effort to spring an orca from jail.
The sad truth is that Free Willy
is a pathetic movie. This will
sound like sour grapes, and maybe
there’s an element of that involv-
ed, at least so far as I’m con-
cerned. Who knows to what dep-
ths the ego of a scriptwriter
spurned will go?
The bald fact is that | was
ahead of my time, along with
' MuchMusic television guru Moses
|. Znaimer, who now employs me to
‘ do television for him. ] mention
this just-to make sure you know

-.. there's riot an unbiased bone in

:. my body when it comes to the

.” Free Willy movie, Jet alone to the
’ whole issue of orcas in captivity.

_. But I’m going to assume that

the True Reader knows my feel-.

ings about this. If I was running

~ the world I'would have sent

Murray Newman and his ac-
complices at the Vancouver
' Aquarium to Siberia for very long
.termsalongtimeago. -.

They have won so far. They ~
succeeded in keeping Skana and
Hyak in cay tivity long enough for
them to die prematurely, and | am
absolutety certain (certainly if 1
have anything to do with it) that
they will go down in history as the
bad guys, almost as bad as the
heavies in Free Willy. (Why do I
say almost? Worse, in some
regards, since they caused slow, .
lingering deaths, as opposed to

. quick ones. 1 must be getting
_ soft.)

T'll never forget the day, after

’ Skana died, when somebody
anonymously sent me one of the
vertebra from her spine, retrieved
from the dog food company whcre
her body had been sent by the

“aquarium to recoup some of their
costs. ; :

A few of you wil! have pets who
wound up eating part of Skana,
after all her long, awful years in
captivity “‘entertaining” your
families. ;

.. If you ask me, people like the
staff at the Vancouver Aquarium,

_ despite the few bits of good work
they do rescuing wildlife (only to
be exploited later) are as bad as
the jerks who would cut down the
‘magnificent old-growth trees in
Clayoquot Sound.

Free Willy should have been a
“great movie. Too bad. It took a
. mighty, archetypal theme and
réduced it to something that
. Disney would have done far bet-
ter, if for no other reason than
that the Disney people at least
have decent editors.

When Moses and I tried to write
a script about the same subject, .

. nearly a dozen years ago, the ma-

. terial was considered too bloody
weird. It was my introduction to
Hollywood. A fat, cigar-smoking
“*B” movie mogul looked at the
first page of the script for all of
six seconds and yelled: “‘I’m
bored!”” 2

Of course I totally endorse what
the producers of Free Willy were
trying to do, which, if they
weren’t purely into it for the

bucks, was to change people’s
consciousness about the treatment
of wild, wonderful, unknowable

STRICTLY PERSONAL

beings like orcas, and to that end,
they have hopefully succeeded. —

I can’t imagine any kid who has
seen Free Willy getting his or her.
jollies afterwards going to the
Vancouver Aquarium and actually
enjoying seeing captive orcas being
forced to perform upon pain of
not being fed.

The genius of the producers of
Free Willy was that they found a
nearly-broke little horror-pit of
an aquarium in Mexico with a
captive orca that was willing to let

them film the movie without their. -

flacks stepping in to say, “Whoa, .
this'll be bad news for aquariums :
everywhere!”’ ‘ .

The fact is that Keiko, the orca
which appears in the movie, is
trapped in a too-small (they’re all
too small) tank, and her :
“‘owners”’ (read: gulag-masters)
aren’t willing to put up the money
to make the tank larger, but they
did farm the animal out for an
anti-captivity flick to make a few
more pesos. / a

It was a haunting experience to
see the movie, knowing that the
real orca was suffering exactly the
same plight as the make-believe
orca. é

From a scriptwriting point of
view (I have since studied script-
writing at Norman Jewison’s Ca-
nadian Centre for Advanced Film
Studies), the movie sucked at
every level, except: those scenes
actually recording the interaction

- between the child star and the

orca.
As such, it had moments of
being a great documentary, al-
though, after the death of the at-
tendant at Victoria’s Seaworld a
few years ago, I can’t help but
wonder why the boy’s parents |

‘allowed hirn to be put at risk like

that.

However, let’s keep all this in
perspective. Free Willy was a
“surprise blockbuster’’ this sum-
ner. This has far more to do with
people’s growing sensitivity to
issues like captivity of wildlife,
and a general whale consciousness
that.has been decades in the
making, than to any movie magic,
because the plot was lame, banal,
cliche-ridden, utterly predictable
and one-dimensional, which is to
say that any subplot which existed
was so much on the surface that
there was nothing underneath.

Having said all these nasty
things, let me hasten to add that
you should take your kids and go:
see Free Willy. Kids don’t give a
fig about acting or subplot. What
it will be good for them to see is a

‘nice, simple story about another

kid who does something great. He
frees a captive orca, despite the
worst efforts of the human slobs
who have the creature under their
control for profit.

At the end, f couldn’t help
weeping and cheering, no matter
how much I hated it as bad art
and as just another level of
Hollywood exploitation.

Free Willy indeed! And all the
other ‘‘whales’’ penned up by
nefarious money-grubbers.

at

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