MEATS - Director's Note
My choice to write, direct, produce, and star in MEATS, came about because I wanted to explore how the relationship between humans and their meat-based food is affected if you stare your food in the face. Does it deepen? How does it change? I wanted to use a character with a very emotional connection to meat to raise the stakes for that story, which is why I play a vegan. I wanted to use humor and drama, language and silence, tears and laughter, to make it soar.
In some countries the relationship is very direct between consumers and their food, in others, not as direct. In the United States right now most people are very disconnected from their food and from meat especially. Slaughterhouses are kept secret and hidden. Most people have never killed an animal, despite eating more meat per capita than almost anywhere else on earth. Very few people grow their own produce let alone animals to eat. Myself certainly included! It is hard in the United States to find meat that you can trace to its source, to know that it was treated humanely, and to choose to use every part of the animal for a purpose. To be clear – I eat meat. I love meat. And it is also richly complicated.
I was inspired by an Israeli friend who is a lifelong vegan but ate meat only during her pregnancy. I was also inspired by a brilliant female butcher and “meat thinker” named Camas Davis from her memoir called KILLING IT about her time learning whole animal, seed-to-sausage butchery in Gascony, France before returning to Portland, Oregon to start a meat collective. I’m working right now to turn that book into a television series.
And lastly, as a female director/writer with all that it encompasses, I wanted to take a look at the ethical dilemmas and the pathos that happens when raising children, in relationship to food and meat sources. None of this is simple. All of it is dramatic and compelling to me. I’m proud to share it, and I am honored to World Premiere my first film at Sundance.
- Ashley Williams, writer-director of “MEATS”
