Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara Will Pay for You to Rent Environmental Doc ‘The Smell of Money’

Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara so badly want you to see the new documentary film “The Smell of Money,” they will pay back your rental fee out of their own pockets.

Phoenix and Mara, a couple and noted activists for animal rights and environmental causes, will personally reimburse the rental cost for the first 500 people who pre-order the film on iTunes or Google Play ahead of its December 12 digital release date, IndieWire can reveal exclusively. To qualify, you must live in the U.S. and possess a Venmo account; all the fine print can be found here.

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The two actors are not just supporting the film with their wallets — Phoenix and Mara have already hosted a screening of “The Smell of Money” in Los Angeles, and have met personally with some of its subjects.

“We hope once audiences watch this film they are as moved by its important message as we are,” Phoenix and Mara said in a joint statement to IndieWire. “Movies like ‘The Smell of Money’ live or die by word of mouth and we would like to lend our voices and support to help raise awareness. Please share this film with your family, friends, everyone!”

“The Smell of Money” is set in a small rural community in eastern North Carolina near one of the state’s giant pig factories that make much of the world’s bacon and barbecue. The hog farms generate a foul stench of pig waste, and the brutal conditions under which the animals are housed has further polluted the surrounding area’s air, water, and soil, killing other wildlife and making it dangerous for humans.

The doc specifically follows a woman named Elsie Herring, whom the filmmakers met five years into what became her nine-year legal battle with corporate giant Smithfield Foods. The filmmakers were drawn to the lawsuit because of accusations of “environmental racism,” with Smithfield setting up shop nearby where generations earlier her grandfather had purchased back land in North Carolina after being freed from slavery.

Nitrate pollution has made life tough for local residents, director Shawn Bannon told us. In making the film, Bannon’s team had to work around their subjects’ frequent trips to the doctor for cancer treatments.

“Now they can’t grow their own vegetables anymore, they can’t drink their own well water, they can’t even wash their own clothes because they get stained,” Bannon said. “These communities are self-sufficient. One of the things that the communities are most proud of is growing their own food, and now they can’t do that. That’s devastating to see.”

“The Smell of Money” has been screening theatrically for more than a year and a half already, an effort that will continue at festivals, impact screenings, and in educational settings. Even the EPA invited Bannon to screen the doc. But the digital release — and the stars carrying the tab for the earliest adopters — is key to getting the word out more broadly.

“Renting a movie costs a lot of money,” Bannon said. (His costs $14.99.) “Here’s easy access where anybody can watch this movie right away, which is really, really cool. We’re just over the moon about it. It’s very cool of them to do.”

Bannon worked with Mara on “A Ghost Story.” The enigmatic Phoenix barely even promotes his own work, so Bannon knows the Joker is treating this subject very, very seriously.

The doc is directed and produced by Bannon. It was written and produced by Jamie Berger, and has Rooney Mara’s sister Kate Mara, filmmaker David Lowery, Oscar winner Travon Free, Martin Desmond Roe, and DeRay McKesson as executive producers.

“The Smell of Money” is the first project of the newly launched company The Unreasnble, the production banner of Free and Roe, who made the Oscar-winning short “Two Distant Strangers.”

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