Our “Pig” documentary now in post-production!

There are many ways to tell a story — around a campfire, on the page, and on the screen. A few years ago, my son Josh and I plunged into filmmaking with our first feature horror movie, “Island Zero.” Now we’ve almost completed our second feature film together, a documentary called “Magnificent Beast.”

It was born some years ago while I was on vacation in Turkey during Ramadan. It was impossible to find bacon there, and I wondered why pork was a taboo food for so much of the world’s population. What are the historical roots of the pig as a forbidden animal?

In our hunt for the origins of the pig taboo, Josh and traveled across the U.S and abroad to Egypt and the UK to speak to archaeologists, religious scholars, pig farmers, and pig hunters. We were welcomed into the homes of pet pig owners and visited a pig sanctuary, where abandoned pet pigs can peacefully live out their lives. We delved into all the facets of this highly intelligent and complex animal — an animal with whom we humans have shared an uneasy relationship for thousands of years.