Blackfish producers to make you feel bad for rats

By Sean O'Neal | September 8, 2014 | 7:52pm

Aux Features Film

After bringing the world to oceans of salty tears that it longed to set dolphins and killer whales free in, the people behind The Cove and Blackfish are now turning their attention to nature’s most endangered sea creature—the rat, an animal so lovably dumb, it doesn’t even know the sea is over there. Instead, every year thousands of adorable rats immigrate to New York from Russia with little but a song in their hearts and the floppy hats on their tiny heads, as chronicled in Robert Sullivan’s book, Rats: Observations On The History And Habitat Of The City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants. There they must contend with roving cat gangs and people who hate them, just because they’re disease-carrying filth.

Sullivan and his book will provide the background for the as-yet-untitled documentary, which will examine some of the many facts of rat life—including, as The Hollywood Reporter salaciously notes, their propensity to have sex up to 20 times a day. New York residents, exterminators, and scientists will then interrupt all that hot rat sex with some boring talking, which you can fast forward through at home. As with Blackfish, it’s hoped that the documentary’s release will lead to the closing of New York’s long-running RatWorld amusement park, which currently covers all five boroughs.