Before becoming a model and actress, Isabella Rossellini’s first passion was animals. And, apparently, being filthy, she revealed at the ‘Green Porno
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.”
