Isabella Rossellini Reveals the Incredible, Scandalous in ‘Green Porno 3′

Before becoming a model and actress, Isabella Rossellini’s first passion was animals. And, apparently, being filthy, she revealed at the ‘Green Porno‘ film screening and book signing at the Tribeca Barnes & Noble Tuesday evening. “I was always running after my dog, playing with cats, picking up dogs from the street—that was my problem. I took in all the dogs I could find and cats, and growing up in Italy there were many in the streets, and my house was always flea-infested. My father was going nuts.”

After a conversation with Robert Redford about an experimental internet video project that the Sundance Channel was pursuing, Rossellini found an outlet for her childhood interest in animals. And being filthy in an altogether different way. “He said, ‘If there is anything concerning the environment, I will be more inclined to finance it because that’s one of the missions of Sundance.’ And Sundance had a lot of programming called ‘Green House’—how to make your house greener—’Green Kitchen’—how to eat organic—but it didn’t have green porno! So I thought I will make a funny series to make two minutes film about animals that are very common—flies, earthworms, bees… because they mate in incredible, scandalous ways.” And thus Green Porno was born.

Created with Jody Shapiro, Rick Gilbert, Andy Byers, Sam Levy, and Claudio Campagna (the scientific expert introduced in the third series), these scientifically accurate films humorously portray animals’ reproductive methods with deceptively sophisticated construction paper costumes and props. Their artistic combination of the informative and the salacious have scored millions of views. And they’re exactly what would capture the interest and imagination of students. Rossellini noted that Green Porno is shown in some high school biology classes (they’re a good complement to the videos of promiscuous leather daddy carbon molecules for chemistry classes), although schools and sponsors alike have been put off by the name. “The only negative feedback sometimes is the name. Some people think that the name ‘porno’ is too frightening, so when we were looking for sponsors we couldn’t find any. On the other hand,” she explained, “It worked as bait. I don’t know if didn’t have the name porno we could find five million hits on the internet.”

During her remarks before screening videos from the third series of Green Porno, Rossellini explained that the project had unanticipated consequences to her diet. “Now I have the hardest time deciding what to eat, because meat you can’t eat because there’s hormones and antibiotics… Then I started eating a lot of fish thinking that was going to be the healthy choice and was going to stay slim and pretty. And then I found out this news working with Claudio. Now I’m in trouble. I don’t know what to eat.”

So, what’s next? More sex. “I am thinking to continue on the series of sex. I’m interested in animals, but out there people are interested in sex. But I would eliminate the word ‘porno’… I’m going to do sexual selection about how animals seduce each other… I would make an hour-long television show that I’m writing—always about animals, and always about me becoming them or me with them. You know, everything that I dreamt like a little girl I wanted to do. I gotta have it, I gotta get it out of my system now before it’s too late, I either die or become too old to do anything.”

I’ll keep my peepers peeled for her next project, and I hope it includes a segment on the seahorse, one of her favorite creatures. “You know,” she explained, “with the sea horse it’s the male that becomes pregnant. It has this big belly and it shoots out the babies like a cannon. It’s incredible. They go bing, bing.”

Green Porno series 3 is only available on the Sundance Channel website at the moment, but below are films from series 1 (insects) and series 2 (sea creatures).

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