Consumed is a dramatic thriller set in the complex world of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). The story focuses on a working-class single mother named Sophie (Zoe Lister-Jones) who is trying to uncover the cause of her son’s mysterious illness. Interwoven in the film are the stories of an organic farmer (Danny Glover) in danger of losing his farm, the CEO of a biotechnology corporation (Victor Garber), two scientists on the verge of a major discovery (Anthony Edwards and Kunal Nayyar), and an ex-cop (Taylor Kinney) who are all involved with this issue. The film also features Griffin Dunne and Beth Grant.
Premiering tonight at the 2015 Los Angeles Film Festival, Consumed is one of the first narrative films to tackle the subject of GMOs in all its complexities. It’s an issue that isn’t going away anytime soon — from the fight over the GMO labeling bill that’s currently in Congress to restaurant chains like Chipotle deciding to go GMO-free. Currently, over 80% of the food we eat in this country contains genetically modified ingredients. While 64 countries around the world label GMOs on food packaging, the United States does not. Regardless of your knowledge on this subject, it affects every one of us every day. Daryl Wein directed Consumed from a screenplay written by him and his actress wife, Zoe Lister-Jones. I talked to this Hollywood power couple just before the film’s world premiere tonight at 8:50 pm at the Regal Cinemas at L.A. Live.
Danny Miller: Zoe, forgive me, but I have to say how much I loved your recurring role on New Girl this year as Councilwoman Fawn Moscato. Every time you opened your mouth as that character, it was perfection. I want Fawn to have her own spinoff series!
Zoe Lister-Jones: Thank you! I want her to have her own series, too, she was so much fun to play.
In this film you obviously play a much more grounded character. What made you two decide to work on this movie together?
Daryl Wein: Zoe and I have been working together for a while now.
Zoe: This is the third film that we’ve written and produced together.
Daryl: We’ve had a great time being writing partners as well as real-life partners. I think it was about seven years ago, after we made Breaking Upwards, that we first read an article about GMOs. We didn’t know much about them at that point but we read that article and we were instantly hooked. A bunch of things jumped out at us — the fact that 80% of the food we eat in America contains genetically modified ingredients but nobody knows it, really, because the foods aren’t labeled. That was pretty shocking to us and made us want to dig a little deeper. We started reading more articles and books and we learned that in the 1980s corporations started patenting living organisms for the first time in history. Farmers across the country were becoming embroiled in lawsuits over patent infringement related to seeds and at the same time these big biotech corporations were saying that their seeds were going to save the world. In the face of all that, average American consumers were eating this food without knowing the effects it might have. To us it seemed like such a compelling landscape for a narrative film. We thought it would be an interesting story and, more importantly, one that could have a real social impact and raise some thought-provoking questions about what this food is doing to the environment and to our health.
Zoe: When you look at great films like Silkwood or Erin Brockovich about chemical pollution and its impact on human health, even though such films are incredibly arresting narratives, it’s easy to walk away from them thinking, “Well, that’s not me” unless you happen to live near a chemical plant. It’s easy to distance yourself from the horror of those stories while this is something that definitely impacts every single one of us. No one can leave the theater thinking, “That’s not me.”
How did you decide on which characters you wanted to focus on?
Daryl: We wanted to make an entertaining movie while weaving in some of the socio-political issues and we thought the best way to do that was to root it in the average mom who typically goes out to buy the groceries for her family. What would happen if her child started to have some kind of reaction to that food? How do we go about trying to figure out what’s wrong with our children when they develop hard-to-diagnose illnesses? We also wanted to include an ensemble of other characters related to the storyline such as an organic farmer going up against a big corporation, scientists working on these foods that will supposedly save the world and running into their own complications, and so on. We wanted to hit it on several fronts while synthesizing the information so that it was easily digestible — no pun intended!
Have their been a lot of mysterious illnesses in children that have been linked to GMOs?
Zoe: The scientific community is really divided on the safety of GMOs. There are definitely people who are working to correlate the rise of food allergies to the introduction of GMOs into our food supply. One of the biggest problems right now is that there have been no long-term safety tests conducted on GMOs so it’s impossible to assess their safety on human health. There are many questions that need to be answered and the motivation behind our film was to raise some of those questions and get people talking.
Would you say that the most important thing right now is to focus on the issue of proper labeling?
Daryl: Yes, I think that’s the number one thing that people should demand right now. At the very least we have a fundamental right to know exactly what’s in our food so that we can make our own decisions about whether we want to eat it. That’s the first step. The second step is also demanding that more safety assessments be done on whether these foods are safe for us and the environment. The truth is that 64 countries around the world currently label these foods and a few of them even ban them outright, and a number of scientific bodies around the world are calling for more pre-market safety assessments.
Do you expect any pushback on the film from corporations like Monsanto or other groups involved with GMOs?
Zoe: Our film is entirely fictional even though it’s set against the backdrop of a very real socio-political issue. Our intention was to create a compelling story that raises questions rather than to attack anyone or any group in particular. I think that we were careful to look at both sides of the argument which is why we included the character of the CEO of the biotech corporation. We really wanted to lend humanity to that character — we’re not interested in vilifying anyone on either side, we’re more interested in raising different points in the debate and ultimately allowing the viewer to come to his or her own conclusions.
As people concerned about GMOs, do you agree that some of the genetic modifications have led to benefits to certain communities or helped the worldwide hunger crisis?
Daryl: No, I don’t agree with that, at least not yet. No foods that have been commercialized have really been used for good. They’re making corn and soy and canola and alfalfa, but those are not the most nutritious foods that could be feeding the world. What’s even more significant is that those crops are mostly going into bio-fuels and to feed cattle, they’re not actually being commercialized for us to eat. The way that we’re being affected is by eating them in the concentrated form of high fructose corn syrup, soy lecithin, and other products that are creeping into processed foods. We are fully supportive of all scientific endeavors but I think it’s disingenuous to say that these foods are saving the world when they’re not actually going towards those aims at the moment.