Blackfish

And everybody's like...

I, and I love dolphins, don't get me wrong, but, like, killer whales and sperm whales, absolutely fascinating to me, and ev- everybody should go and watch Blackfish if you haven't seen Blackfish.

I think that-

Or The Cove

It's exploring the darker relationship that we can have with it.

I would say the same about Blackfish.

Those are two of my favorite films in this genre, and I do class them in my genre.

They're an animal that possesses great spiritual power not to be meddled with.

I was prioritizing the most engaging story for the audience and the audience are humans.

Director and producer James Reid there.

My Octopus Teacher and Jargo A Life Underwater are available to stream online, as are Blackfish and Grizzly Man.

And if you want to hear more from Werner Herzog about Grizzly Man, listen back to our episode on survival, available on BBC Sounds.

I

haven't been this hit by a documentary since Blackfish, I don't think.

This is hard stuff.

Yeah.

And you're both getting on the show a lot.

So it was just kind of like a lot of me watching Blackfish, the documentary.

Oh, yeah.

That is fully Blackfish era.

Yeah.

I remember one time.

I don't know if people are still going to SeaWorld.

Like I went when I was like really little and then Blackfish came out and then And then I was like, OK, you're not supposed to go there no more.

I think I need to watch Blackfish again to get like a refresh on what happened.

I know they've made some changes since the movie.

Like I think they're not allowed to like breed orcas anymore or something like that.

I don't know.

Since since Blackfish.

Right.

Yeah.

Now, Historically, both scripted films and documentaries have influenced public perception.

Day After Tomorrow and An Inconvenient Truth drew attention to climate change, while the documentary Blackfish was credited with changing perceptions of SeaWorld.

Now we'll see how these films about the tech titans could play into concerns and influence public opinion.

They're certainly part of the public conversation right now.

But the documentary whose name is escaping me about SeaWorlds.

Blackfish? Blackfish.

I remember being like, I know what this movie is going to say.

It was very clear from the advertisements what that was, right? But what I like about documentaries like Nathan Fielder, there's a great documentarian named Robert Green who makes these kind of documentaries that are kind of like What is this? And they're unclassifiable and also are very personality driven.

I don't either it's been it's been a long time coming

Like when you look at Blackfish and the whole SeaWorld thing, I know it's not the same, but animals in theme parks, I expected them to get rid of it at that point, to be fair.

I mean, there's a difference between dogs and birds.

Yeah, but I'm