Screening Green
04/01/2008
At EcoManiacal, a production company blooming in the bowels of Los Angeles’ gritty warehouse district, even the resident dog is recycled. Shambles, a tan-colored, shin-high, former stray scampers around EcoManiacal’s wildly environmental 24,000-square-foot studio, oblivious to the hive of activity buzzing around his new home. Corrugated metal form the walls and roof, while stained concrete makes up the flooring. Offices have been erected in one corner of the facility from remnants of this once dingy and forgettable repository for plastic bags."We’re not just out to do a TV show," says John "J.C." Caldwell, EcoManiacal’s COO (Note: At press time, Caldwell was no longer working for EcoManiacal). "We want to run a company that thinks completely outside of the box."
That company was recently founded by Rick Underhill, a veteran L.A.-based producer and music video director who’d had enough of the Hollywood scene and was aching to make a difference and a splash. His idea was radically simple. Create two television shows: Ultimate Green Machines would take high-end cars and replace their petroleum-based power plants with green engines, while Finding Green would, reality TV-style, chronicle the trials and tribulations of running a production company whose goal was to do everything with eco-standards in mind.
Since Underhill knew L.A.’s ropes well, he thought he’d quickly find takers, particularly for his Pimp My Ride meets An Inconvenient Truth auto-makeover show. Wrong.
"I was a bit disgusted, to be honest," says Underhill, sipping a Diet Coke. "I actually had execs say to me, ‘So, you think global warming is real?’ I was going to throw in the towel. Maybe this was too much to take on."
But fate intervened in the form of Kyoto Planet, a Canadian investment group committed to pursuing projects with positive environmental impact. Seed money quickly fell into Underhill’s lap, allowing him to buy the Studio G warehouse as well as a stable of cars—including a Ferrari 612 Scaglietti, Maserati Quattroporte and an old 1957 Chevy pickup—that would serve as the show’s first stars.
Today, Underhill’s wrenches are busy putting the final touches on the pickup, which will run off a series of batteries that are also used to power a fleet of PT Cruiser taxis in New York. Having shed its heavy, traditional motor and transmission, the newfangled hauler will weigh less than 2,000 pounds. "With about 500 horsepower, it should be pretty fast," says Heidi Van Horne, who has both the technical skills and physical charm to be a breakout star of Ultimate Green Machines. "We’re definitely all learning as we go. It’s exciting."
The cars arrayed around the Chevy will soon get their moment in the green spotlight. Although specifics are still up in the air, the idea is to have each car serve as a guinea pig for a specific type of technology. To that end, a Jaguar XK8 could get a biodiesel engine, the Maserati could see a bolt-on hydrogen-based engine—the same technology that the group will apply to a personal water craft. Meanwhile, an older Acura NSX and Lotus Super 7 are candidates for new cylinder heads that drastically reduce emissions without compromising power—so much so that Underhill hopes to enter both cars in racing events.One car, however, is giving the EcoManiacal gang fits—the Ferrari. "I’ll admit, it makes me a bit nervous," Underhill says with a grin. "I mean, what can we possibly do to improve on what’s here?" And what’s left unsaid is: Do you really want to mess up a gleaming Scaglietti?
But that’s an issue for another day. Currently, Underhill and his staff are busy knocking on doors in cable-TV land, with a few well-known parties interested in perhaps taking the shows—whose first episodes EcoManiacal is actively filming—to viewers in Europe and Australia, with success there helping break open checkbooks and programming schedules Stateside.
In the meantime, Underhill has contingency plans. He’s avidly pushing his green facility as an eco-friendly alternative for production companies looking to film their shows without harming the environment. The sales pitch is straightforward; everything in sight has a green backstory.
The lack of desktop computers? "We only use laptops, which take up less space and energy," says Caldwell. The absence of printers? "We don’t use paper much, relying mainly on e-mailed attachments," he says. The conspicuously limited numbers of TV monitors? "We’ve set up each flat-screen to split off into four images, to make more efficient use of each screen."
And the list goes on. The company doesn’t shoot with video, but rather records everything in a high-definition digital format. The film is then immediately edited on Mac computers. Most of the studio’s lights are LED-based and powered by a biodiesel generator. It will soon be replaced by a $2 million rooftop solar-panel project that promises to power not just this space, but the planned studio next door, while still returning some power to the city’s grid. The turntable-like soundstage—where cars will undergo their green metamorphosis—was built by the same people responsible for the American Idol stage and was hued mainly from recycled steel and aluminum versus wood.
"We want this studio to be a prototype for similar ones we’ll run in New York and other big cities," says Caldwell. "This could be big."
Another similarly sized plan is Underhill’s automotive dream. Dubbed the U1, it’s a vision with Tucker-like audacity—an electric four-door sedan that would boast zero-emissions and a complex engine consisting of a 20,000-rpm jet turbine fueled by hydrogen.
"It’ll be done by March," says Underhill. Which sounds rather incredible, given that a mere few months doesn’t seem like much time to create a groundbreaking sedan that at present exists only as a demonic sketch (picture a Porsche Panamera mated to a Bugatti Veyron) and taped out dimensions on a concrete pad (Underhill says his U1 will be sized like a low-slung Bentley Continental and retail for $160,000). "My goal will be to drive it from L.A. to New York without refueling in any way, and back again," he says.Staring at the sketch, Underhill describes the unique doors, gullwings, one per side, that give immediate access to both front and rear seats. He says elements of the car came from his love of Ferrari’s rakish Enzo, while the cab-forward look—complete with preposterously, but deliciously short front and rear overhangs—was drawn from his enduring appreciation for another Ferrari that hasn’t fared so well over time, the Mondial. "If I start Underhill Motors, I’ll arrange things so that you can come to me to swap out batteries whenever they go bad, or perhaps even change out the entire body if you want something slightly different," he says.
So, is Underhill nuts—or just another visionary, a "DeLorean without the cocaine" as one coworker quips? Hang out with the guy and you get the feeling there are elements of both to this maverick.
Lunch arrives in the form of a catered buffet. But Underhill wants no part of it, waiting instead for delivery of his favored array of McDonald’s delights. Sitting on a recycled couch in one of EcoManiacal’s Spartan offices, the rebel in him radiates from his selected wardrobe (jeans, a ripped hoodie turned inside out, sunglasses and carefully mussed hair) to his choice of words.
"I’m not political or religious, and though I care about the environment I just thought the movement itself was stupid," he says, biting into a burger. "Some people were denying the planet had a problem. And others were sitting in trees. Neither was useful. My thought immediately was, ‘What if I make a TV show that would make the whole green thing cool for younger kids?’" Although Underhill drives an Escalade and owns a Prius, neither car reflects his longstanding passion for exotics. "I always need to drive cool cars," he says. "But why should I have to feel guilty about it? My feeling was, you shouldn’t have to compromise your love of cars to be green."
In thinking about creating a car-makeover show, Underhill immediately set his sights on the boldest statement possible: "I wanted to go way beyond shutting off the water while you brush your teeth. I figured one way to do that would be to be the idiot who tears apart a Ferrari to make it eco-friendly."
Back in the cavernous main studio, Underhill slowly walks past the cars that will soon be transformed, which also include Bentley Continental and Lamborghini Gallardo drop tops, a Millennium Edition Porsche 911, as well as a new Escalade and a vintage fastback Mustang.
While the cars await their fates, surely Underhill must sample the goods? "Sometimes," he says, admitting that he spends most of his time with the Porsche. Underhill says the Ferrari 612 is a bit boy-racerish for him, a bit too showy. A big favorite is the NSX, which, despite being more than a decade old, still manages to thrill.
But he should get his rides in now. Once any of these cars go green, they’ll become, for better or worse, entirely different beasts, Underhill’s personal Frankensteins on a mission to prove you can go on a serious joyride while saving the planet.
EcoManiacal Productions, 213.687.0761, www.ecomaniacal.com