Aaron Woolf Accepting the 2008 Peabody Award for “King of Corn”
Think of it as “Ian and Curt’s Excellent Agricultural Adventure.” College buddies Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, regular dudes who consume large quantities of junk food and wear their baseball caps backwards, get a wild, post-grad notion that they should grow an acre of corn and observe their harvest as it goes to market and manufacturing. They hook up with an experienced documentary maker, Aaron Woolf, and they find an obliging farmer in Green, Iowa, where both of their great-grandfathers grew up. What follows is a crash course on modern American agronomy and its dietary implications, touching on everything from crop subsidies to animal cruelty to the obesity epidemic.
Read full winner’s citation here: http://www.peabodyawards.com/award-profile/independent-lens-king-corn