Joaquin Phoenix Wants You To Talk About This Movie
Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara host the intro of THE SMELL OF MONEY together at Laemmle Monica Film Center last night. pic.twitter.com/4qLgz5cM7N
- Joaquin Phoenix Updates (@jphoenixupdates) October 15, 2023
Joaquin Phoenix recently attended a screening of ‘The Smell of Money’ in Los Angeles, where he urged people to spread the word about the film and its message.
“A beautiful sunny day, and all of a sudden, you’re starting to feel droplets coming down,” says Elsie Herring in the new documentary The Smell of Money. Herring is a resident of Duplin County, NC, and the droplets she’s referring to are not rain, but hog waste.
North Carolina is one of the top pork producers in the US, but its factory farms are, quite literally, suffocating surrounding communities. According to the documentary, it is one of the only states in the US where it is legal for factory farms to spray untreated hog waste into the air.
"It stinks. It’s forced on us,” continues Herring, who is one of the central figures of The Smell of Money, which is directed by Shawn Bannon, produced by Jamie Berger, executive produced by Kate Mara, and supported by Rooney Mara and Joaquin Phoenix. “It burns your nostrils, makes your eyes water, and you start slobbering and your nose starts running,” Herring adds.
The film explores the legal battle between Herring’s community and Smithfield Foods, one of the largest pork companies in the US. Its central theme is environmental racism; most of the people who live in Duplin County are people of color, and many families have lived in the region since the end of slavery. For them, the pollution is more than just disgusting-it’s deadly.
In 2021, one study evaluated the impact of farm pollution in states like North Carolina and concluded that it contributes to nearly 18,000 deaths a year in the US. Most of that is due to ammonia, which builds up in the air from the huge amounts of pig waste in the area. According to The Smell of Money, more than 10 million pigs are crowded into concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in North Carolina, and together, they create around 10 billion gallons of waste.
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