REBELS WITH A CAUSE Press Kit Page 1

They were unpaid and they were crazy. They were…

REBELS WITH A CAUSE HOW A BATTLE OVER LAND CHANGED THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPE FOREVER

a film by Nancy Kelly and Kenji Yamamoto

produced in association with KRCB North Bay Public Media

Running Time: 72 Minutes

PRESS & PUBLICITY CONTACT Nancy Kelly Kelly+Yamamoto Productions (415) 378-8675 nancy@kelly-yamamoto.com http://rebelsdocumentary.org/ DISTRIBUTION U.S. Educational- New Day Films http://www.newday.com/films/rebelswithacause.html 888-367-9154 All other territories are available.

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Short Synopsis A stunningly beautiful documentary narrated by Academy Award winning actress Frances McDormand, REBELS WITH A CAUSE spotlights a ragtag group of rebels who fought to keep developers from taking over the breathtaking landscape of the northern California coast and instead established public parks, the first organic dairy west of the Mississippi and the first agricultural land trust in the US.

Full Synopsis

“What happened here is worth sharing because it shows all of the gains happened in incremental baby step ways. They weren't magnificent, you didn't all of a sudden say, here's a hundred thousand acre park. It wasn't like that. It was all incremental.”

Gary Giacomini, Marin County Supervisor 1972-1996 In REBELS WITH A CAUSE

REBELS WITH A CAUSE is an inspiring model illustrating how ordinary citizens and both parties can successfully work together; that different interests and factions can and have found ways to make American politics work. Beginning in the 1950s, a national bi-partisan movement was born of principles that may seem obvious today. Unconvinced by land developers who promoted residential construction as unmitigated progress, citizens and politicians banded together to preserve open spaces near where they lived. Without these efforts, the Point Reyes National Seashore and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area would not be the coastal wonders they are today. REBELS WITH A CAUSE is the story of the original conservationists, the schemers and dreamers whose efforts proved to California and the whole country that individuals have the power to change the rules. REBELS WITH A CAUSE features interviews with several prominent “rebels”: Stewart Udall, former Secretary of the Interior; Huey Johnson, Co-Founder of the Trust for Public Land and the Founder of the Resource Renewal Institute; Amy Meyer and Edgar Wayburn, Co-Chairs, People for a Golden Gate National Recreation Area; Martin Griffin, Founder, Audubon Canyon Ranch; Phyllis Faber and Ellen Straus, Co-Founders Marin Agricultural Land Trust; Doug Ferguson, lawyer and environmental activist; Martin Rosen, former president of the Trust for Public Land and attorney Robert Praetzel. REBELS WITH A CAUSE had its World Premiere at the 2012 Mill Valley Film Festival and won the Audience Favorite Award for Best Documentary - Active Cinema. It opened theatrically in the San Francisco Bay Area, playing for a record-setting eleven weeks at the Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael. See below for a full list of screenings.

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Screenings

Mill Valley Film Festival- WINNER Audience Favorite Award, Best Documentary - Active Cinema

Limited Nationwide Theatrical Release Cleveland International Film Festival Miami International Documentary Film Festival Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival Sonoma International Film Festival, the Mendocino Film Festival Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capitol United Nations Association Film Festival San Francisco Green Film Festival Ecofalante Environmental Film Festival in Brazil American Conservation Film Festival Architecture and the City Festival Big Water Film Festival Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Fe, NM Philip Glass Days and Nights Festival Red Rock Film Festival Wild and Scenic Film Festival California Historical Society SPUR Unbuilt California Exhibit Marin Country Club

Press Quotes

(select full reviews are included at the end)

“With the help of engaging interviews, excellent graphic maps and Lou Weinert's cinematography - his Bay Area landscape shots are beautiful - filmmakers Nancy Kelly and Kenji Yamamoto translate what was essentially an incremental bureaucratic fight into cinematic terms. In entertaining, brisk fashion, the film chronicles decades of activism that made this region the environmental envy of the planet.” —David Lewis, San Francisco Chronicle http://www.sfchronicle.com/movies/article/Rebels-With-a-Cause-review-history-4563292.php “The Bay Area is a natural place for a big-screen run of Rebels With a Cause…But how much appeal does it have outside the Bay Area? You’d be surprised.” —G. Allen Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle http://www.sfchronicle.com/movies/article/Marin-County-open-space-crusade-4558784.php?t=7329f3b99c331b8bde “Recommended for anyone who’s ever crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and nearly wept with gratitude for whatever blessed benediction has allowed all those gorgeous rolling acres to remain unmolested…some brave citizens told the planned “Marincello” headlands development to go take a hike, and now, breathing ever deeply, we all can do likewise.”

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—Jonathan Kiefer, SF Weekly http://www.sfweekly.com/2013-05-29/film/rebels-with-a-cause-saving-point-reyes-and-other-environmental-challenges/full/ “Kelly and her editor/co-producer Kenji Yamamoto cleverly weave archival footage, interviews, animation and narration by Frances McDormand into an educational and entertaining doc, one that draws us into a nervous sweat, with showdowns rising up over decades again and again in Whack-A-Mole fashion…Defense of the land began here at the grass-roots level where, fortunately, grass still grows and we can dream peacefully. Without these rebels, it’s certain we’d wake up screaming.” —Mal Karman, Pacific Sun http://www.pacificsun.com/marin_a_and_e/film/article_e23d60a4-c8a6-11e2-ad73-0019bb30f31a.html “It’s rare that we stop and think how these open spaces came to be, but filmmakers Nancy Kelly and Kenji Yamamoto do the work largely for us. This inspiring story about citizen action and community organizing showcases the efforts of the prominent Bay Area residents who helped set the precedent for protecting open space and shaped the environmental movement of today.” —Alessandra Bergamin, Bay Nature http://baynature.org/articles/sf-green-film-festival-opens-with-marins-open-space-rebels/

About the filmmakers

Writer/Director/Producer Nancy Kelly Nancy Kelly has been making independent fiction and non-fiction films for more than twenty-five years. Nancy directed and produced a documentary trilogy about the transformative power of art: TRUST: SECOND ACTS IN YOUNG LIVES, about an 18-year-old Honduran teen whose traumatic life story is unveiled in a daring original play; SMITTEN, about art collector Rene di Rosa; and DOWNSIDE UP, an hour-long documentary about the beginning of America’s largest museum of contemporary art, MASS MoCA. Nancy also developed, produced, and directed THOUSAND PIECES OF

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GOLD, starring Rosalind Chao and Chris Cooper, a narrative feature about a Chinese woman sold into slavery during the California Gold Rush. Nancy has also directed the award-winning documentary shorts: COWGIRLS and, SWEEPING OCEAN VIEWS and co-directed A COWHAND’S SONG.

Editor/Producer Kenji Yamamoto In addition to his work on all of Nancy Kelly’s films, Kenji has edited the acclaimed documentaries NEW MUSLIM COOL directed by Jennifer Maytorena Taylor and THIRST, directed by Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman. He is currently editing GRACE, produced and directed by Helen Cohen and Mark Lipman.

Director of Photography Lou Weinert Lou Weinert brings a unique aesthetic and consummate cinematographic skills to REBELS WITH A CAUSE. Among his credits as Director of Photography are the narrative feature films TWISTED by Phillip Kaufman and RUMOR HAS IT…by Rob Reiner and the documentaries SMITTEN and DOWNSIDE UP, both by Nancy Kelly, PHIL LESH AND FRIENDS LIVE AT THE WARFIELD by Jay Blakesburg and Bob Sarles, LOVE IN THE AGE OF FISHSTICKS by Yun Shin, VIRTUE by Camera Obscura, and

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MULLIT by Pat Healy. He was camera operator on the Hollywood feature films THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS by Gabriele Muccino, MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA by Rob Marshall, RENT by Chris Columbus, BEE SEASON by Scott McGehee and David Siegel, I HEART HUCKABEES by David O. Russell. He wrote, directed and edited the short film LARK RHAPSODY, winner of a Gold Plaque from the Chicago International Film Festival and Certificate of Merit from the San Francisco International Film Festival. KRCB North Bay Public Media KRCB TV, Channel 22, has been the local PBS station in Sonoma County for 24 years, supplying quality broadcasting to the viewing public. KRCB has produced or co-produced a number of programs with this philosophy in mind, including the multiple Emmy Award winning Natural Heroes, a nationally aired series on the environment featuring local people working to create change in their own communities, with production support coming in part from Wallace Genetic Foundation and the Sierra Club. KRCB has also produced short, interstitial length programs on local history (Expressions) and on the local environment (Bay Nature on the Air) in conjunction with Bay Nature Magazine.

Credits REBELS WITH A CAUSE A KRCB presentation in association with Kelly+Yamamoto Productions Written, Directed and Produced by Nancy Kelly Edited and Produced by Kenji Yamamoto Narrated by Frances McDormand Director of Photography Lou Weinert Original Music Todd Boekelheide Animation Mark Fiore Title Design Gary Jaeger, Core Studio Archival Research Jane Greenberg

Rebels (in order of appearance) Huey Johnson, Robert Praetzel, Stewart Udall, Amy Meyer, Bill Duddleson, Joe Mendoza, Sr., Katy Miller Johnson, Peter Behr, Martin Griffin, M.D., Martin Rosen, Doug Ferguson, Edgar Wayburn, M.D., Gary Giacomini, Ellen Straus, Phyllis Faber, Jolynn Mendoza-McClelland, Jarod Mendoza, Albert Straus

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Funded by Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation This project was made possible with support from Cal Humanities, an independent non-profit state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities, in partnership with the Skirball Foundation. For more information, visit www.calhum.org Kira and Bradley J. Haas Fund at the Marin Community Foundation LEF Foundation, The Fred Gellert Family Foundation, Drexler Estate Fund at Marin Community Foundation, Susie Tompkins Buell Fund, Loveland Fund, Chris Desser and Kirk Marckwald, Michael Sullivan in memory of Catherine Coffey, Marin County Board of Supervisors, Whale Tail Grants – California Coastal Commission, Audubon Canyon Ranch in honor of Martin Griffin, Nu Lambda Trust, Henry and Glenda Corning, Crankstart Foundation, Pokahu Fund, RMIC Assets, Marin Community Foundation, Marion Weber, The David and Carla Crane Philanthropic Fund, Kalvin and Janne Platt. Starseed Foundation, June Kleider, Springcreek Foundation, Faye D'Opal and Wanden Treanor. Muren Salon, Melinda Estey, Nancy Hult Ganis and Sid Ganis, Tracy Gary, Marin Conservation League, J. Moore Partners, Jean Schulz, Jacqueline Shuirman in memory of Mike Gilbert and many more.

'Rebels With a Cause' review: history

Lou Weinert, Kelly+Yamamoto Productions

Saving Point Reyes National Seashore and other Bay Area open space from developers was a long time coming, the result of unstinting effort by many environmental rebels with a very good cause, as this documentary makes clear. David Lewis May 31, 2013 Rebels With a Cause

Documentary. Directed and produced by Nancy Kelly. Edited and produced by Kenji Yamamoto. Not rated. 72 minutes.

"Rebels With a Cause," about the efforts to preserve open space in the Bay Area, is not a hard-hitting, the-world-is-ending environmental documentary. Instead, it's quite pleasant - an informative, feel-good history lesson that celebrates the natural treasures of the Bay Area. It's easy for us who live here to sometimes take for granted the spectacular park space that surrounds us, but back in the 1950s, developers in rapidly growing California were ready to swoop in and create suburban sprawl in what is now the Point Reyes National Seashore and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The film, in entertaining, brisk fashion, takes us through decades of patchwork agreements that made (and still makes) the San Francisco Bay Area the environmental envy of the world: a teeming urban area that co-exists with its magnificent scenery. With the help of engaging interviews, excellent graphic maps and Lou Weinert's cinematography - his Bay Area landscape shots are beautiful - filmmakers Nancy Kelly and Kenji Yamamoto are able to translate what was essentially an incremental bureaucratic fight into cinematic terms. There are a few unfortunate animated sequences - did we really need cartoons to show us meetings? - but they won't detract from your enjoyment of the film. In the end, you'll probably more appreciate the area we call home - and grab your hiking (or bicycling) gear.

David Lewis is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer: E-mail: davidlewis@sfchronicle.com

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Production Notes No doesn’t work for me. One of the many challenges in making REBELS WITH A CAUSE was that some of the characters in the story, like Congressman Clem Miller who was a prime mover behind passing the Point Reyes National Seashore bill, were dead. In 2004, as Nancy Kelly and Kenji Yamamoto started developing REBELS WITH A CAUSE, Don Neubacher who was then Superintendent of Point Reyes National Seashore, introduced Nancy to Bill Duddleson, who had been Congressman Clem Miller’s legislative aide in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Passing the Point Reyes National Seashore bill was Bill’s number one assignment. Bill introduced Nancy to Stewart Udall who was Secretary of the Interior under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Bill offered Nancy tips on how to approach him, including, “Address him as Mr. Udall not Stewart.” “When I called Mr. Udall to ask whether I could bring a crew to interview him in Santa Fe where he lived, he said no. I honestly didn’t know if I’d have a film without him, so I said in the most polite tone I could muster, ‘Mr. Udall, no doesn’t really work for me.’” Before the conversation ended, Mr. Udall agreed that if Nancy sent him a short description of the film, he would read it. Mr. Udall was at that time well into his 80s and told her he had macular degeneration, so she printed the letter in extra large font and sent it off with very little hope of success. A few weeks later, to Nancy’s surprise, Mr. Udall called to say he was coming to the Bay Area to spend Thanksgiving with his son and would be willing to be interviewed while he was here. Nancy says, “Our interview with Mr. Udall was fantastic, one of the best I’ve ever done in thirty years of filmmaking.”

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Searching for the developer’s model of Marincello As we began filming and moving the project forward, it became clear that the defeat of Marincello, the city of 30,000 that Gulf Oil and developer Thomas Frouge wanted to build in the Marin Headlands, was a defining moment in the story of creation the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA). Marincello was to have multiple high rises on the tops of hills and a mall a mile long. Had Marincello been built, other such projects in the Marin Headlands would likely also have been approved and built, and the vast, contiguous stretch of parkland, open space, and farms stretching from San Francisco to the northern tip of Point Reyes, could never have happened. The few existing photographs of the developer’s model of Marincello simply did not do justice to the proposed development’s scope and scale. REBELS Director of Photography Lou Weinert, who grew up in the Bay Area, mentioned to Director Nancy Kelly that as a kid he’d seen the model. From that moment on, Nancy asked everyone she met who might know if it still existed and when I asked Brian O’Neill, Superintendent of the GGNRA, he waved his hand and said, “It’s around here somewhere.” That vague statement did not inspire much confidence in Nancy, but she kept looking. Their big break came when REBELS WITH A C AUSE Archival Researcher Jane Greenberg, who is also a filmmaker in her own right, met Abby Sue Fisher, Chief, Cultural Resources of the GGNRA at a barbeque. Abby Sue, a petite, fashionable, adventurous person, was new the GGNRA, but did a bit of research and discovered where the model was stored. She invited Nancy to come with her to see the model where it was stored and suggested she bring a couple production assistants with crowbars and hammers. After zipping herself into a protective canvas jump suit, she unlocked the rolling metal door and said lightly, “I hope you aren’t afraid of spiders.” “We walked deep into the building, turning down one narrow hallway after another, passing crates with ‘cruise missile parts’ stenciled on their sides,” Nancy says. “Finally we came to another locked metal door – and as she turned the key, Abby Sue gave them another heads up, “Don’t be shocked by the stuffed sea lion, it’s huge and it’s the first thing you see.” Stacked in that storage room, behind the sea lion (which was indeed huge) and the graffiti, were four large crates holding Thomas Frouge’s Marincello model. When the production assistants pried off the tops, Nancy could see that the model was a bit worse for wear – the Golden Gate Bridge was lying on its side, a rodent had chewed a corner, it was dusty, and had been sawed into five enormous pieces – but she was thrilled because she knew that with it she could bring developer Thomas Frouge’s dream to life. Abby Sue and Nancy came up with a three-part plan: clean and repair the model, film it, and exhibit it publically.

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Abby Sue stressed that the filmmakers had to work with people who would treat the model as the historic artifact it was. The highly-skilled model makers at the now-defunct Kerner Optical in San Rafael, many of who had worked for Lucasfilm on the STAR WARS movies, agreed to treat the model with the appropriate reverence, and they moved the big crates to their studio where they cleaned and repaired the model. Then back into crates it went until the filmmakers raised enough money to film it in the Marin County Civic Center, one of the most stunning mid-century buildings Nancy and Kenji could think of for a location. “Finding, repairing, filming the model took a lot of time, money and effort and some people told me the documentary would work just fine without it, but I never believed that. I knew having it in the story would bring the story of Marincello alive.” Step three, exhibiting the developer’s model of Marincello publicly will happen from September to December 2013 at the California Historical Society, as part of the Unbuilt California exhibit.

Young animals in springtime It was spring and the filmmakers hoped to film the bounty of baby birds, seals, and deer that Natalie Gates, Chief of Natural Resource Management at Point Reyes National Seashore, had described to Nancy. Tim Bernot, Point Reyes National Seashore bio-technician, contacted Nancy and Kenji to say, “There are currently two beautifully spotted fawns that roam around the area just outside of our offices. I see them almost every morning. I call ‘em the lawn fawns.”

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A couple days after she received the tip about the lawn fawns, Director of Photography Lou Weinert and Nancy were out location scouting in the Point Reyes National Seashore. They had just finished looking around the area around Tim Bernot’s offices, figuring out where they would set the camera up when they came back to shoot a few days later. Leaving the Bear Valley headquarters, Nancy turned her car onto Bear Valley Road and almost immediately saw a doe and two spotted fawns crossing the road. They wondered whether those could be the lawn fawns. Nancy says, “As they walked in front of my car, and from out of nowhere, an SUV barreled down the road. Hearing it approach, the doe jumped across the road and into the brush, but the speeding SUV literally creamed the two fawns, catching one underneath its carriage and knocking the other down with its front drivers-side tire. The second fawn leapt up and scampered into the brush after its mother, but we parked the car on the side of the road, got out and helplessly watched first fawn die on the road.” Tim Bernot told Nancy he never saw those twin fawns again, so he assumed both of them died that day. As part of the effort to help us film baby animals in springtime, Dave Press, Point Reyes National Seashore Wildlife Ecologist, took Nancy and her crew to film some baby spotted owls in their nest – each spring, the wildlife biologists at the Seashore monitor a number of nests on a weekly basis. Dave promised to take them to the easiest nest to film, for which Nancy was grateful, since one of their lenses weighed about forty pounds, the camera was a full-sized professional HD camera, and they had to bring an extra heavy tripod to support the lens and camera. But when they reached the tree where the nest was, Dave looked down at where the trunk met the ground and said, “Is that a skull?” And it was – the skull of a baby spotted owl nestled in a few downy white feathers. Some animal had eaten the babies since a few days before when Dave checked on the nest. Nancy says, “As I looked at the skull resting in the feathers – all that was left of the baby spotted owls – I thought about how from the beginning making REBELS had felt like a race against time to capture both people and animals involved in the story. Former Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall was in his late 80s when we interviewed him in

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2007 and he died in 2010. Golden Gate National Recreation Area Co-Founder Edgar Wayburn had just turned 100 when we interviewed him. Point Reyes dairy rancher Joe Mendoza was hale and hearty when we interviewed him in the spring of 2008, but before the end of the year, he passed away. Standing in the redwood forest looking at that skull, I was reminded of all these losses and of having seen the fawns killed only a few days before.” Dave suggested another nest on Inverness Ridge, but cautioned the crew that it was not anywhere near as easy to get to as this nest. He drove them on a fire road as far as possible, and then guided them on a narrow trail and when the trail ended, they bushwhacked, traversing a steep, slippery slope on with the heavy gear. Not only did Nancy and her crew get a shot of the baby spotted owls in their nest, they filmed the mother owl watching over them from a branch above the nest.