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Daphne Zuniga meets TED
December 10, 2007

When she wasn’t busy voicing the role of Princess Vespa in Spaceballs: The Animated Series or guesting on an episode of Nip/Tuck over this past year, actress Daphne Zuniga kept busy by directing her first feature-

length movie. The film is the documentary TED: The Future We Will Create, which takes a behind-the-scenes look at the 2006 TED (Technology Entertainment Design) Conference in Monterey, CA, wherein a group of the world’s noted intellectuals, innovators, artists, leaders and scientists meet to share ideas for the concerning the future of the world. The doc will be released on disc by Docurama on Dec. 18.

 

Though Zuniga is known as one of the more environmentally conscious and active members of the Hollywood community—she was a founding member of the Earth Communications Office (ECO), an organization that corrals the power of the environmental movement and the entertainment industry, and she recently produced a short film about the organization Communities For a Better Environment (CBE)—the TED directing opportunity wasn’t simply handed to her on a silver platter.

 

“The opportunity to make the documentary certainly didn’t just come my way--it was something I pursued,” Zuniga told us in a recent telephone interview. “I convinced the TED people that I could make a great, accessible film. It was something I had to work hard on!”

 

Zuniga had never attended a TED conference prior to this project and, while there last year, she frequently found

herself torn between covering the symposiums and presentations as a filmmaker and observing others as an interested attendee.

 

“I really found myself torn,” she laughed. “My cell phone would be lighting up because I’d have to meet the crew at a certain time and place while I would be in other conference rooms watching other interviews!”

 

Zuniga is aware of the influence she and her industry have on making TED issues known to the public. And she thinks the time for she and her colleagues to start making some noise is now.

 

“I frankly feel that we are ready for the next step. We have to dig in and walk the walk more than ever,” she said. “The entertainment industry is the megaphone to get the word out. Let’s hope that the [entertainers] that are doing it more as a trend begin to take it more seriously, too. To get in there and get going, you have to work hard, be imaginative and get behind an event or an organization.”

Posted by Laurence Lerman on December 10, 2007 | Comments (0)