Peter Jay Brown discusses his new film, ‘Confessions of an Eco-Terrorist’

Peter Jay Brown, longtime volunteer with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and frequent presence on Animal Planet’s Whale Wars, has always kept his finger on the RECORD button during his more than three decades of trying to save whales and other wildlife with Captain Paul Watson. The TV producer, whose credits include Entertainment Tonight and NBC’s Real People, has now taken his footage from the activist group’s international campaigns and edited it all together into the new documentary, Confessions of an Eco-Terrorist, available on video on demand.

“As you start going on these (campaigns), you get more and more involved,” Brown said recently during a phone interview. “Then in the ’90s, I was very heavily involved. The drift net issue was really my big issue. That’s how I got involved, and I used to give my footage away.”

The original plan was for Brown to retire one day and take all the footage from his life and make a documentary. Fate — and his daughter — had other plans. “I didn’t have time to come home and work another five or six weeks cutting a free film,” he said. “My daughter had lived with the environmental movement her own life, but she had never heard a lot of the stories, because when I came home, of course, I didn’t scare my kids or anybody with stories. I just went back to work.”

But when attending a friend’s wedding and reminiscing with old Sea Shepherd crew members, Brown’s daughter had an idea. “On the way home from the wedding, she said, ‘You know dad? You should do a film about all those stories. That was the funniest conversation I had been involved in.’ Because we were going over all the old stories, and how we duped these people and duped those people, and made people believe we were going to do this. I said, ‘Shannon, I plan to do that when I retire.’ Well, three or four years later, here I am, I broke my thumb and kind of put out of my job, which is making films of indigenous peoples and big, sexy animals that can eat you. And so when your hand is in a cast for a year, basically, you’re kind of stuck.”

Confessions of an Eco-Terrorist plays like a behind-the-scenes seafaring adventure that’s categorized by the many campaigns spearheaded by Sea Shepherd. Controversy is bound to arise with a title that mentions “eco-terrorist.”

“We’ve been dogged by that title forever, for being terrorists or eco-terrorists,” he said. “Paul Watson hated the title, but it wasn’t his film, as he always said. He never got to approve it. He never even saw it until it was done. He hated the term, as a matter of fact. In the beginning, Sea Shepherd wanted no part of it. … But the minute people saw it, it turned around almost immediately. … If a little guy like me with a big smile can terrorize somebody with a camera, I mean give me a break.”

Throughout his directorial debut, Brown narrates the often serious subject matter with his unique sense of humor. He said that’s how he approaches the environmental issue, but he’s also very serious when he needs to be.

“Paul and I are very frank of what his plans are and what he expects to do. I’m very frank about telling him exactly what I’m willing to do. We understand that going in. And I’ll do right up to what I told him, which is basically I’m going to stop them from whaling. … Once I start, we’re playing a world-class game. It’s like war in a way, but it’s almost like a fake war. Because the people that are doing the dying aren’t people, they’re animals.

“I’m always asked, ‘Why do I do it?’ I don’t know. I do it because it’s the right thing to do. I’ve been lucky enough to be involved all these years, and as my daughter says, ‘It’s a lifestyle a rich person would envy.’ How can you go wrong? Gee whiz. When your best friends are Bob Hunter and Paul Watson, and you’re a media person, if you didn’t do this, I’d be remiss. I do it for whatever reasons I do it. Once I sign on, I’m there for the ride. I do a lot of dangerous stuff, and if you can’t have a sense of humor about it, you’ll kill yourself on the way back.”

Looking back on his footage in the documentary, Brown said he’s content with the accomplishments and he still remains an eternal optimist. “I think ultimately for who we were and the size we were and what we were up against, we did a genuine Herculean effort,” he said. “Whether we have minor failures or major failures along the way, quite frankly we have won the war. And it’s not over. The kids have got to learn to govern, as I tell people at universities. We had the fun of the revolution; you guys have to learn to govern, and that sucks. But you better do it quick.”

Brown reminds viewers of his film of the three laws of nature: biodiversity, interdependence and finite resources. “The earth is either going to make the decision for us … or we as humans, as a society, should evolve to the point that we should do it ourselves. And I quite frankly would like to go for the latter. … All you have to do is look at history and see that individuals change the world, not groups or political parties or even countries.”

How about that retirement? Now that’s he finished the film, can Brown kick back and enjoy the earth?

“I’m very lucky, and it would be easy for me to retire to one of these beautiful places and take what little money I have and go live in a third-world country and watch the rainforest. I know about them. I know where I could get hundreds of acres of rainforest and do just that. But you can’t do that. I have children and they have children. You know, the Iroquois nation made decisions (based) on seven generations of their children. That’s how they would make a decision. They would consider seven generations.

“If we as a species are going to survive, then we have to also evolve to that point, that we have to say, ‘OK, we have to start thinking of the future.’ ”

But before any thoughts of retirement enter his mind, Brown said he’s planning on helping Watson with the upcoming campaign to the waters of Antarctica. And for every future initiative, he now has a visual testimony to all the battles that came before.

His parting advice to those who want to take a similar environmental plunge: “You don’t have to be totally crazy. You can be semi-crazy and do something locally.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

• Click here for more information on Confessions of an Eco-Terrorist, distributed by SnagFilms and currently available on VOD on cable systems, iTunes and at Amazon.com