BOBBY CANNAVALE VISITS SLAUGHTER HOUSE

Bobby Cannavale plays the strict supervisor of a meat plant where most of his employees are illegal Mexican immigrants in Fast Food Nation. Bobby was raised on meat by his mother who went to a butcher and made her family burgers from one cow unlike the 400 cows slaughtered every hour for fast food hamburgers according to the book by Eric Schlosser which inspired the film. Bobby discovered what it was like to work in a slaughterhouse.

Bobby was mentally unprepared for the day he had to shoot a scene in an actual working slaughterhouse where he witnessed for the first time the slaughter of 120 cows in just four hours of shooting time.

“I’d never seen anything like that. I spoke to many people who worked; my girlfriend’s father worked for many years in the slaughter houses so I spoke to him a little bit about it. Things haven’t changed much in terms of the technique. These people who work there, they can be working at an auto assembly plant or they can be working at any kind of factory really. The fact that it’s live animals that they’re slaughtering is sort of besides the point. They’re just people who come into work and want to get it done as quick as possible.”

Bobby did not become a vegetarian because of the experience. Believe it or not the first thing he scarfed down at the end of the day was a juicy piece of meat. Fast Food Nation opens Friday in theaters.rn

“But having said that it was pretty shocking the first time I walked in there. We weren’t given the opportunity to rehearse and we had a very limited amount of time in there so the first time I saw that was the first time I see it in the movie. There’s lots of preparation to do there and I looked at a lot of pictures and some documentary footage but there’s not much to see really. I think we’re doing something that hasn’t been done before certainly not a narrative picture.”