HOLLYWOOD FOX

Hollywood Fox (2006) is a film I made with Parthenon Entertainment, a UK based production and distribution company. It was made for National Geographic International, Animal Planet US, NDR, Germany and VOOM TV. I spent the better part of a year filming in and around Bakersfield, California with most days well over 100 degrees F. I was even bitten by a rattlesnake one evening while filming kangaroo rats. It was an amazing experience, working with great people around remarkable wildlife.

The San Joaquin Kit Fox is the second smallest of the world’s foxes; a tiny cat sized predator from the desert valleys of California. Over the past century real-estate developments shot up throughout the State and the kit fox looked doomed to failure – they needed to change – shape up, or ship out – but the fox seems to have risen to the challenge.

In this unusual blue chip one hour special we will follow the trials and tribulations of a brother and sister, kit foxes who have left their parents territory to set out on their own – it’s a story of survival, but also of rags to riches, of making it in Hollywood; while the brother stays in the country, struggling to make a living in the traditional way, his sister is drawn in by the bright lights of the city – this is the classic ‘American Tale’ of one pioneer striking out, and perhaps saving her kind.

In Bakersfield the endangered kit fox has shown its immense adaptability – amid houses it is free from predation, and the mess created by humans supports a healthy rodent population for it to feed upon. When people settled they tried to get rid of all predators, including the kit fox, but at the eleventh hour the tables were turned, now it seems that people may have created a fox paradise and that these new urban foxes may hold the key to safeguarding their cousins in the wild. Join us as we reveal the amazing lives of the Hollywood Fox.