The footage that Brown collected over the years has now been assembled in the form of the yet-to-be-distributed documentary “Confessions of an Eco-Terrorist,” for which the cameraman serves as director and narrator. It was shown earlier this year at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and is currently being screened across the country. With the appeal of his own puckish manner and the crew’s penchant for stirring up trouble, Brown hopes the film will be entertaining enough to draw audiences in and revealing enough about the battles being waged to incite them to action. In Brown’s view, it isn’t always enough to simply educate. Capturing people’s imaginations can be just as vital in the attempt to empower them.
     “I tend to want to be proactive,” says the filmmaker of his direct cinema approach, comparable to the style of the famed antagonist Michael Moore. “There’s a tremendous amount of information out there, and I think we have to focus people’s attention. No one cared about the ocean until a guy named Jacques Cousteau was out there. They didn’t just follow the ocean pictures. And no one cares about a lot of these issues unless someone like Paul Watson and other [Sea Shepherd Society] volunteers stand up and do something and sometimes give them solutions.”
     Brown seems to consider the Society’s knack for gaining attention to be its greatest strength, which makes perfect sense. Given the immensity of our oceans and the limitations of its few would-be protectors, the overriding tactic in this conservation campaign logically becomes maximizing the efforts of this small band of ragtag crusaders, and that is most effectively accomplished by gaining media exposure. Missions that don’t receive coverage are often deemed failures, while those that draw reporters are celebrated, even if they don’t produce discernable results.