Club's Message Included on Hoot DVD!

©New Line Cinema & Walden Media, LLC

By Janice Nearing
Director of Public Relations

August 15 has been circled on the Club’s calendar for a special reason! It’s the day the big-screen adaptation of Carl Hiaasen’s acclaimed young-adult novel, Hoot, became available on DVD and the bonus feature on the DVD includes Save the Manatee Club’s TV public service announcement (PSA) with Carl Hiaasen and Hoot’s director Wil Shriner.

Both Hiaasen and Shriner graciously donated their time to participate in the PSA for us back in April. It was then distributed nationally to television and radio stations just before Hoot was released in theatres. View the PSA!

Filmed on location in south Florida, Hoot follows the adventures of three middle-school friends with big hearts who set out to save defenseless burrowing owls from land developers in their community. The conservation message in the movie is applicable to all the precious wildlife many of us care about in Florida, including manatees.  

Here’s another reason to pick up the Hoot DVD. You can sit back in the comfort of your home and enjoy original songs from the Sunshine State’s very own Jimmy Buffett, Save the Manatee Club’s co-founder. Jimmy, who is also one of the producers of Hoot, has a role in the movie, too, as a laid-back science teacher. Watch his classroom scenes carefully and you’ll see some of the manatee items, bumper stickers, and posters the Club was asked to provide for the set design when filming of the movie began many months ago.  Frank Marshall and Jimmy Buffett produced Hoot for New Line Cinema and Walden Media. 

Save the Manatee Club is very grateful to New Line Cinema for including our TV PSA on their DVD release of Hoot. Maybe a future film will be one about manatees! We have our fingers crossed. 

Hoot author Carl Hiaasen (left) and Wil Shriner, director of the movie, at the Hoot public service announcement shoot for Save the Manatee Club in Fort Lauderdale. (Photo courtesy of Terry Nearing.)