Contacting Chris Paine, Part One

At the very beginning of production (right about when Diego and Alejandro finished the script) I began a long process of trying to contact Chris Paine, the director of Who Killed the Electric Car? Ostensibly the contact was to make him aware of the project and hear his thoughts (if he had any) about the film. I began by contacting organizations he had been affiliated with: the first was contacting Plug-in Partners.com and Chelsea Sexton. Here is the e-mail.

Early this year you and Director Chris Paine came to the University of Central Florida to speak after a screening of Who Killed the Electric Car? It was soon after this screening that the idea came to a few of the film students to make the film Who Stole the Electric Car? Who Stole the Electric Car is a new independent film of which I am the Executive Producer. We are currently trying to spread awareness of the film and are accepting donations via paypal. A teaser trailer is currently available along with a webdoc chronicling production.

We have been trying to contact Director Chris Paine as it was the visit to UCF (University of Central Florida) of Paine and yourself that sparked the idea for this independent film.

Thank you for your time,
Brett Ryan Bonowicz

I never received a response.

I next contacted through Cal-Cars run by Felix Kramer. I received no response. I found a few e-mails that purported to be Paine's personal inbox only to discover if it was his e-mail address, he never found the time to respond.

I've seen Who Killed the Electric Car? probably close to 25 times. It's not an amazing movie, it lacks depth in a lot of it's subject matter and skims through a lot of material, but it is an amazing story. This is what drove me to it again and again. To realize that in my lifetime the electric car was released without me ever knowing about it, and without it ever having a fighting chance just killed me inside. To see technological progress just stopped dead in it's tracks without any of the public even giving a shit, makes it a story for the ages. It's a tragedy and a marvel, sad and hopeful for the things that are yet to come to fruition. To me Chris Paine represented someone who brought light to something in a way maybe no one else could have done.

Part Two of this blog will appear later this month.