The actor David Duchovny is the author of Holy Cow: A Modern-Day Dairy Tale.From his Q & A with Anna Silman for Salon:
Where did the idea for this whole thing come about?--Marshal Zeringue
I guess I’ve always been aware of— I read this [book] back in college and it had all these details about the way that livestock is kept in this country, so it was always in the back of my mind. I just had a thought one day that if I were a cow, I’d want to get to India, and that seemed funny to me. I just kind of stuck with it, and I thought about where other animals might go to not get eaten, which led naturally to a pig in Israel and a turkey in Turkey. Then I had my three heroes, so I thought, what’s the story here? and I let the characters take me on a journey.
Who do you see as your target audience?
It’s an interesting question: I had the idea, many years ago in L.A., that this felt like an animated film. I did pitch it to wherever you can pitch something like that— two or three places— and they felt it wise to pass, because it has some likely political issues, likely drug issues, likely lifestyle issues. Animated films don’t want to offend anybody; they have to cast a wide net, you know? I figured it was a long shot anyway.
So aside from knowing that my audience was not just kids, I never...[read on]