"My Tar Sands Duck Dinner with Andrea” spoof is my contribution as a Cultural Calgary Ambassador to the constructive side of the oil sands story in art.  The film has one showing at 1 PM this Saturday August 11, 2012 at the Plaza Theatre, but you can catch it on Vimeo too.

I think this is the least I can do as a Cultural Calgary Ambassador. 

The oil sands have a 50 year or more heritage of significant investment in technology and responsible environmental management and engineering.  Too many Canadians and others around the world have been swept away by left-wing documentaries, funded by public dollars that have a ‘Dark Green Agenda’.  I want to put a stop to that. 

This indie film is funded by me. You taxpayers didn’t have to pay a dime for my opinion. And it is based on a true story.

Dark Green Agenda is my phrase for the steam roller environmental movement that is turning Western life into an eco-nanny state, burdened with staggering fuel poverty in places like Ontario, B.C., the UK and California while doing nothing practical for the environment and killing industry. 

And honestly, who is NOT an environmentalist? Are you telling me that the oil sands engineers, scientists and technologists are going to work every day with the intention of destroying this planet?  That’s ridiculous.

My film’s premise is simple.  Since Hollywood actors like Robert Redford and Daryl Hanna have decided they are experts on pipelines and oil sands, then those of us who do know a bit more about it than they do will have to become actors. 

I’ll be submitting it to the Sundance Film Festival and the Oscars.  

This film is a metaphor for what’s wrong with the eco-movement. It’s not well done technically but that’s all part of it.  This is a metaphor for the skewed view of oil sands science & engineering excellence that Big Green & Hollywood actors have no skills to assess.  

These Oscar winners are heavily invested in being seen as ‘green’ when they are the biggest eco-hypocrites on earth. You won’t find these jokers up in the Athabasca River at minus 20 C checking water levels – but they are happy to go on camera and babble some goofy green tripe about monitoring or ‘responsibility’.  Funny how they never talk about the heavy oil in California...that is ‘dirtier’ than ours, eh? So I hope this will be a ‘tipping point’ of another kind.

I wrote this as a FRINGE play, but I’m a ‘zoomer’ who is usually at the keyboard or behind the camera.  I didn’t have the jam to perform this play live countless times at Fringe. So this 37 minute performance art version lives on video.

I haven’t been acting since my early 1970’s starring roles in “Sprinkledom” in the dual role as “Carol” and “The Evil Queen” for the Children’s Theatre for Tomorrow. We worked out of the basement of the Shaganappi Golf Course, performing at the Old Pumphouse Theatre.  

In “My Tar Sands Duck Dinner with Andrea” I’m looking forward to collecting an Oscar for pulling the wool off the eyes of the public.  And Don’s performance is...so real. It’s like he’s playing himself!

This is a ‘no-budget’ production. It’s ‘One from the Heart’, not the wallet. 

My roots are deep in Calgary. My grandmother, Annie Jeannie Reeves, came to Calgary in 1912, married my grandfather Frank Holmes in Innisfail and they made the long trip back to Calgary for the first Calgary Stampede for their honeymoon.  I myself was born here. Today I live in a house built in 1912!

Calgary is an amazing city – just to think about 139 years ago it was prairie. And now look at this striking skyline and vibrant entrepreneurial centre – all thanks to those pioneers and then the oil and gas and other resource industries. Today the many thousands of oil and gas engineers and professionals here in this city make a significant contribution in a thousand ways beyond their work day.  I salute them all in this little spoof.

 

Media Contact:

Michelle Stirling   Producer/Director/Writer – Performance Artist    

1-403 704 5518 cell     andrea.andreana@yahoo.ca