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It’s hard to pick a single production story from the making of “Toxic Soup” because there are hundreds of good ones — all memorable for different reasons. One of my favorites was when we rented a pontoon boat from Pier 54 in Charleston, WV and puttered up the Kanawha River to Blaine Island to video Bayer’s chemical plant there.

Earlier that week, Bayer had hosted a community meeting in Institute, WV due to media backlash following an explosion at the plant that killed two plant workers and came within 80 feet of a stockpile of MIC. MIC is one of the deadliest chemicals on earth, and a leak of it in Bhopal, India in December 1984 resulted in the world’s largest industrial accident and claimed the lives of more than 20,000 Indians.

At the community meeting, West Virginians wanted to know how much MIC Bayer was storing in Institute. Currently, Bayer has reported to the EPA that it stores between 100,000 and 999,999 pounds of MIC. As a point of comparison, between 25,000 and 50,000 pounds of MIC caused the Bhopal catastrophe. However, Bayer’s plant manager refused to get specific, saying that full disclosure would be irresponsible in today’s age. In other words, he blamed terrorists. How original.

To test Bayer’s security, we decided on the pontoon boat stunt. After all, if Bayer is as concerned with the community’s safety as it proclaims, then security surrounding the chemical plant should be top-notch. It wasn’t. We were able to sidle right alongside the plant and could’ve physically landed on the island if we had had such an intention or been brave enough to wade through the foul smelling chemical backwash. The stench was overwhelming.

Initially, our stunt seemed to be going great. The pontoon rental was cheap and we were getting some smooth tracking shots of the chemical carnage surrounding the island. After we idled around the chemical plant documenting everything for a good thirty minutes, however, the Coast Guard roared onto the scene, blaring their sirens and acting tough.

Within minutes, they tied our boat to theirs, confiscated all of our licenses and demanded to know why a rag-tag bunch of independent filmmakers were “endangering the public infrastructure.” In fairness two of the Coast Guards were pretty understanding — it also helps when you have two cameras recording someone’s every move — but there was a shady third guy hiding in the shadows of the boat, asking lots of hushed questions.

And honestly, I can’t really blame him. We were a motley crew. Stratton was rocking a Hawaii driver’s license, I was sporting my Califonia license, Chip had his New York identification, and Sergei had a Belarussian passport. In other words, we weren’t exactly your standard value meal. And though for a while it looked like the Coast Guard was booking us a one-way ticket to Guantanamo Bay, cooler heads prevailed. They did terminate our mission, however, and followed us back to Pier 54 where we docked and abandoned ship.

Perhaps even more legendary was our foray to Wilmington, Delaware with the United Steel Workers for the Dupont annual shareholders meeting. Now I’ve already posted about the worker’s protest outside, but I didn’t give details regarding how we snuck our spy camera inside the Dupont Theater with a little ingenuity and a lot of luck.

Due to ticket restrictions, only three of us were able to attend the shareholders meeting: Stratton Crace, Jimmy Cochrain and me. Now when we stepped inside the theater it was intimidating to say the least. There was every kind of cop imaginable. City cops, state cops, rent-a-cops, there even seemed to be some military looking dudes, not to mention a wall of metal detectors.

When we got to the metal detectors, Stratton and Jimmy headed for one line and I for the other. As Stratton dumped the contents of his pockets into a tray, the security team was alarmed to find a voice recorder among his possessions. Because no recording devices of any kind were allowed into the meeting, Dupont confiscated the recorder and proceeded to give Stratton and Jimmy a serious once-over. Thank God they didn’t have rubber gloves, otherwise Dupont probably would have cavity-searched the two.

As they were distracted, I dumped the contents of my pockets into a tray. First, I tossed the spy camera in. The spy camera was a pretty crappy Chinese job that we had picked up at the International Spy Museum in Washington DC for cheap. Fortunately, though, it looked like a harmless USB drive, so when I dumped my keys, pens and small notebook over the camera, security thought nothing of returning said belongings to me. As I strolled into the theater afterward, I thought my heart was going to explode in my chest. 

Stratton and Jimmy got into the Dupont theater a minute later, but with a surly undercover Dupont gestapo up their ass. The guy ended up sitting next to Kyle and Stratton where he tried to melt them with his glare. Luckily, this meant I had a lot more privacy, enabling me to turn on the spy camera and stash it in the breast pocket of my suit for the duration of the shareholder’s meeting.

That was the longest hour of my life, and at several points I really thought I was going to pass out. But there were more fireworks to come. When the meeting ended, I decided to raise the stakes and took the spy camera out of my breast pocket. With more balls than brains, I clipped the camera to my notebook in an attempt to capture the luxuriousness of the theater’s accommodations. But I was no James Bond.

As I waved the notebook around, the flashing green light on the back of my spy camera caught the attention of Dupont’s security detail. Fortunately, Jimmy was watching my back and spotted a bunch of lugs pointing in my direction and fanning across the room. Cooly, he whispered to me, “Put it away. Put it away now.”

And as cooly as I could, I stashed the spy camera in my pocket, and headed quickly in the opposite direction — all without ever turning around to look at them. But our biggest stroke of luck came next when we ran smack-dab into an emergency exit and escaped the oncoming herd of Dupont henchmen onto the streets of Wilmington.

Who knows what would have happened if Dupont had caught us filming their shareholders meeting? All I know is that I would have sooner swallowed the spy camera sooner than give it Uncle Dupey. The public has a right to know what one of the largest publicly owned and traded chemical corporations and polluters is planning for our future.

If not for such serendepitiy, “Toxic Soup” would have sunk faster than the Titanic. Luckily, karma is on our side and the movie got completed, giving everyday Americans a voice in the fight to keep their blood, water and air free from the debilitating effects of pollution.