Brownstein: Docuseries tackles tissues and deforestation issues

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The documentary’s title is disappointing. The Issue with Tissue may sound like a comedic take on the hoarding of toilet paper in the age of COVID-19.

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But the film’s subtitle is more telling: A Boreal Love Story.

Montrealer Michael Zelniker spent the early days of the pandemic learning how large forest landscapes across the Canadian boreal forest are being clearcut for the manufacture of toilet paper and all manner of tissue products and the impact that has had on Indigenous communities.

“Is there a more obscene illustration for what’s gone wrong here?” Zelniker asks. “What I came to understand from those I interviewed was that we are literally flushing our forests down the toilet through toilet paper, and in so doing, flushing the futures of our children with it. I felt compelled to learn more.”

And so he did. After four months of intensive research, he flew from his Los Angeles base to Vancouver, quarantined for 14 days and then embarked on a 42-day, 15,000-kilometre journey from coast to coast, across the boreal forest. He met with more than 50 First Nations elders and leaders, prominent scientists and activists, including Senator Michèle Audette, Dr. Suzanne Simard, the late Dave Courchene, Valérie Courtois and Dr. Nigel Roulet.

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Zelniker returned from this odyssey with 125 hours of interview, landscape and wildlife footage and began editing what has morphed into a five-hour-plus, three-episode docuseries and a feature film, which will make it to the festival circuit in the fall. He has been in a Montreal editing room the last month overseeing the final stages of post-production.

This has been a labor of love; apart from the editing, Zelniker produced, wrote, directed and shot the doc.

This is also a far cry from the films, TV and theater performances for which Zelniker is best known. Among more than three dozen acting credits, Zelniker, a graduate of Dawson College’s theater program, received great acclaim for his work from him as trumpeter Red Rodney in Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-winning bio-pic Bird. He also turned in a Genie Award-winning performance in The Terry Fox Story. Among other notable film credits are David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch and Stuart Bliss, which he also co-produced and co-wrote. On stage, he has done everything from Shakespeare to Mamet. He has directed numerous film, TV and stage productions, but The Issue with Tissue marks his first documentary endeavor by him.

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“It all started with an email out of the blue I received in April 2020,” says Zelniker, 67, in an interview from a downtown park. “But what began as a story about trees and toilet paper evolved and emerged into a much deeper story running from trees to toilet paper to treaties, from carbon to climate change to colonization, from birds to caribou to water to the way forward.”

Zelniker may be new to docs, but not to environmental issues. Every day is Earth Day for him. A member of the Climate Reality Project Leadership Corps, former US vice-president Al Gore’s organization, Zelniker served as co-chair of the Los Angeles chapter and is also a Greenpeace and National Audubon Society member.

“The boreal stores more carbon than any other terrestrial landscape on the planet. Something like two billion birds nest in the boreal every year. Perhaps most importantly I learned that it was home to more than 600 First Nations communities that have been there for thousands and thousands of years. I realize that I can never have the same understanding having grown up in the city. But we should all know that the boreal is in significant distress.

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“As we gradually destroy these forests, we’re destroying ourselves. Trees have been on the planet for almost 400 million years. They have something to teach us about longevity and sustainability.”

Zelniker recalls wandering the streets of Montreal as an eight-year-old admonishing people for littering.

“We didn’t have many trash cans on streets back then, so in my indignant way, I ran around, yelling: ‘Stop littering!’ I didn’t grow up in a family of environmental stewards, so I didn’t know where this came from. Now a larger environmental envelope has been opened to me.”

Zelniker is quick to point out there are numerous companies making toilet paper and related products from recycled materials: “In Canada, among others, there is Cascade, and in the US, there’s Who Gives a Crap. And for those who do give a crap, they’re effective.”

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Zelniker doesn’t miss the acting these days. He prefers teaching and directing.

“But there are some great memories. Like the time Herbie Hancock gave me the nicest compliment I’ve ever had in my life for my work from him as Red Rodney in Bird: ‘So you’re a player,’ he told me. I told him: ‘I never touched a trumpet before. I never touched it since the day we finished shooting. It’s such a hard instrument to play. But if you believed, then I did my work well.’

“I always believed as an actor that if you were going to tell a story truthfully, then you had to learn to live that life.”

That message appears to have been carried forward.

“In some ways, I feel that my whole life has been a rehearsal for this moment.”

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