Louie Psihoyos Guardian of The Cove

Documentary filmmakers, especially first-time directors, often have lofty ambitions that their film will expose and bring about change. In the case of Louie Psihoyos’ acclaimed The Cove, originally released in theaters over the summer and now available on DVD — mission accomplished. His film was instrumental to suspending the senseless, annual slaughter of bottlenose and common dolphins in Japan, as well as halting the distribution of toxic dolphin meat as part of a school lunch program.

“That’s the dream!” Psihoyos says of The Cove, short-listed for an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary. “You want to make a film that’s actually going to change things. When we went to the Tokyo Film Festival and I realized flying over there, there were several hundred dolphins roaming free below me that would have been on supermarket shelves a year ago. That’s a great feeling.” Named best documentary by the National Board of Review, Psihoyos, an acclaimed photographer who has shot for National Geographic, Fortune Magazine, Smithsonian, Discover, Time, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, and The New York Times Magazine, among others, calls The Cove an epic story, one with real and metaphoric value.

“I set out to make a film that was interesting and entertaining and didn’t dumb down the storyline. I wanted to make a complicated film that achieved all the high values that I set for myself.” 

Quickly adding, “We, as a culture, have to turn our back on the success we’ve had at the expense of the environment.”

Originally from Dubuque, Iowa, Psihoyos is a man of conviction, so much so that five years ago he cut off the cables to all his televisions and since then he and his family haven’t watched TV at home.

 Closely followed by Japanese police everywhere while filming The Cove in the town of Taiji, where once a year corralled dolphins not sold to aquariums around the world are routinely butchered, the small crew, including activist and former “Flipper” trainer Ric O’Barry, worked very cloak-and-dagger on the eye-opening documentary.

 “It was extremely dangerous,” Psihoyos admits. “There’s an arrest warrant out for me now in Japan for trespassing, conspiracy to disrupt commerce, and photographing undercover police without their permission. And I went to the Tokyo Film Festival knowing that there was a really good chance I would be arrested, but I felt it was really important to show it there. It’s one thing to make a film about this problem but I felt I had to stand up for my film in the culture where I was showing it. Surprisingly, the Japanese people like it as much as any audience. But in the audience were a lot of the bad guys in the film with their attorneys but they filed out after the screening because they were so embarrassed.”

 An avid filmmaker now, the new director already knows what his next film will be. “I want to do a documentary on extinction. We’re going through one right now, but it’s human-caused. Habitat destruction and pollution are causing one of the biggest extinction events in the history of the planet and I want to do a film about that, but I want to make it almost a comedy because the solutions are so simple but people perceive the choices as being very, very tough.” Having brought about actual change with The Cove, Psihoyos says much more needs to be done. “They stopped killing bottlenose dolphins and common dolphins but they’re still killing pilot whales which are large dolphins, and other dolphins as well. To me, The Cove is a metaphor for what is going on in the ocean. They’re still killing dolphins and porpoises in the northern parts of Japan. There is still a lot of work to be done.” ▼