Not content with being labelled as a moral polluter, Hollywood now finds itself exposed as a literal one too. A recent study claims that the entertainment industry ranks second only to the oil refineries in poisoning the atmosphere in Los Angeles, annually pumping out some 140,000 tonnes of toxic hot air. I'm guessing that this confirms what many people have long suspected: that the by-product of crap is always going to be more crap.
But is the news really that surprising? Anyone who has spent any time on a film set will testify to its inordinate capacity for generating waste. It's like an ill-disciplined army riding roughshod across the land, or some cacophonous shantytown in the developing world (albeit one awash with millionaires).
There is nothing remotely glamorous, or even obviously artistic about your average movie set. For all the talk of how digital cinema is going to make film-making more cheap, light and portable, most Hollywood productions still operate like a hangover from the industrial revolution. They are a surging mass of trucks and trailers, lights and generators.
I'm sure there must be numerous stories of the more specific destruction wrought by movie shoots. Tales of historic homes being casually vandalised during the making of some genteel costume drama, or fragile ecosystems destroyed by blundering riggers. But all I can think of is the apocryphal story of the amateur archaeologists who thought they had uncovered a perfectly preserved pioneer settlement in the deserts of California, only to realise that it was an abandoned movie set from the silent era. Those toxic fumes are playing havoc with my memory.
