Corn Again

[November 7th, 2007] Aaron Mesh interviewed King Corn producer and star Curt Ellis by phone last week. Here’s some of what he had to say.

WW : Were you inspired by The Omnivore’s Dilemma?
Curt Ellis: Actually, that book came out just as we were finishing our editing. Michael Pollan was one of our closest advisors on the project, so he was a huge help to us. He was doing his research for Omnivore’s Dilemma while we were doing our research for the film. And then here we are. People are actually going to theaters to watch a movie about watching corn grow, and we’re all shocked.

WW: The movie shows some fascinating stuff about where corn goes. Did you know any of this before you got started?
Ellis: I knew next to nothing about corn. I mean, the first time Ian and I drove across the country together, we were just shocked by how much corn there was—and soybeans, too. And there was this funny moment of realizing, “Wait a second: There’s no way Americans are eating that much corn-on-the-cob or that much edamame. This stuff has to be going somewhere else.”

We knew a few things about food and agriculture from a coastal perspective, because I grew up in Portland and Ian grew up in Boston. So we sort of understood that there were farmers’ markets and organic foods and stuff that were becoming popular, and we got behind those movements as college kids. But we knew nothing about where the bulk of our food was really coming from—which is big crops like corn and soybean and wheat grown in the Midwest on giant, thousand-acre farms.

WW: One of the things that struck me about the movie is that you don’t preach. What effort did you make to try to make [the film] more palatable?
Ellis: Because we lived in Iowa for two years, and we worked really closely with the farmers who are in the film, it seemed really out of place to start pointing fingers at anyone. Just because we got to know these people as friends, and parts of our community. You know, Michael Moore has done incredible things for making documentaries popular, but he hasn’t made documentaries popular in the heartland, and among the people who get documented. And I think that was something that we all cared a lot about, was to make a film that was as respectful as possible. And then if there was blame to place, I think we all have some responsibility for what has happened in our food system.

WW: Which I guess leads to the question that comes up at the end of the movie: What do we do now?
Ellis: Well, it’s a pretty fortuitous time for the film to come out, because the Farm Bill is up for debate in the Senate this week. That legislation that Earl Butz was responsible for changing in the ‘70s to promote production is now being voted on again. That only happens every five years or so. It’s a very unique moment. There’s an 11th-hour attempt to essentially reverse the direction of the Farm Bill. It’s called the FRESH Act. For the first time since Earl Butz was in office, there’s a real interest in making the Farm Bill something that is also a food bill, and getting urban people interested in the way farms work and the way our food system is driven by these policies.

For more of Ellis’ comments—including thoughts on interviewing Earl Butz, not eating corn for a month, and the secret pleasures of Burgerville—listen to this recording of our interview.

Download audio file (cornagain.mp3)