Owls, Parrotheads at Preview of Hoot

Weeks in advance of the May 5 opening of Hoot, audiences at 400 theaters saw an advance screening complete with a panel of 6 of the cast and filmmakers being interviewed. If by "interviewed" you mean, "tossed soft-balls that a team of geriatrics could have hit out of the park." For example, no one got a chance to ask Carl Hiaasen how he felt when he saw what Demi Moore had done to his book Striptease. It was slightly ironic seeing the preview in Dublin, California; Hiassen's hugely amusing novels are about the commupance of greedy developers, and there I was in an area where the bulldozers have had a 30-year-long field day.

Hoot is an ecological family pic that encourages civil disobedience to thwart ecocide.  Based on Hiaasen's Newberry-award winning children's book, it's the story of a Montana kid (Logan Lerman) transplanted to Florida.There he befriends a macha soccer-girl (Brie Larsen) and her Huckleberry Finn-ish step brother, nicknamed "Mullet Fingers" (Cody Linley). What draws the three together is a vacant lot inhabited by exceedingly adorable burrowing owls. ...

A slow starter, the movie gets its stride about half-way through, when Michael Chapman's photography shows off what's left of Florida (though his sunsets were vandalized by the digital feed.) And gusty humor by Luke Wilson (Barney Fife-ing it as a local cop) and Tim Blake Nelson (as a clodhopper construction site supervisor) helped the picture out. So did the ending, a heart-felt variation on the money scene in Peter Pan: which instead of asking kids to make noise, asks them to be quiet for 60 seconds to listen to the sounds of nature. For once, a theater full of kids went quiet -- how weird is that?

Afterwards, the ensemble were piped in  "Live from Irvine, California".  Linley, Larson, Shriner, Hiassen and producers Jimmy Buffet and Frank Marshall discussed the film. Buffet,  accompanied by guitar, timbales and conga, performed the theme song "[Sometimes] Good Guys Win."  Buffet bought the rights to Hiaasen's book, negotiating with the author during a short plane flight. (Hiassen, whose books are the air traveller's best friend after dramamine, is nervous in planes.)

Marshall brokered the deal and took it to Walden Media. At the end of the line-up on stage, stars Linley and Larson waited to be asked something, anything. (Eventually, Larson plugged her CD "Finally Out of P.E.,"Lindley claimed that the highlight of the film was "meeting the animals and stuff.")  Naturally, Hiassen had the most interesting things to say: Firstly, the suggestion that writing for children means writing for a smarter audience. Secondly, that the book was based on an incident in his youth, when he watched a colony of burrowing owls wiped out by a parking lot. Writing Hoot, he decided, "This is my book, and it ain't going to end the same way."