By Scott Bridges

“The average piece of food travels 5,000 miles … everything is here because of oil,” says filmmaker Nicole Torre of Culver City. Her documentary, Houston we have a Problem, is an exposé of the oil industry in the words of Texas oilmen occupying the inner sanctum in the energy capital of the world. In light of the recent disaster in the Gulf, her film would seem eerily prescient.

While working on a separate documentary about Houston socialites, Torre managed to get access to several oil magnates, who opened up about the brutal realities of our nation’s addiction.

“Americans are five percent of the world’s population [and have] used 25 percent of its known energy supply,” a Shell Oil executive tells the camera.

Torre’s film delves into the strange-but-true world of the oil tycoons to confront the hard truths about oil. “For decades American presidents have cried the woes of our nation’s addiction to foreign oil. Hollow campaign promises project a future that can be independent and sustainable.” Yet the truth is, this country’s energy policy has only been a strategy of defense, not offense, according to Torre. We are fighting a cold war on energy and neither Wall Street nor Main Street can offer a solution. On the horizon is a new form of wildcatting in alternative sources of energy, which has the support of many oilmen, who believe that being shackled to cheap oil is destroying our empire. The oil industry must change and it is going to take a new approach to meet America’s future energy needs.

“We’re all shareholders in the environment,” Torre says.

Ultimately what America requires is a paradigm shift, she says. “In the past we transported mass, in the future we must transport current,” she says adding that there is a solar solution, “The answer will come from the sky.”

As a mother of two, living in a city in which Texas oil men already drill and seek to build more wells, Torre is heavily invested. The film is a result of her passion to shine a light into the shadows of our collective conscience. To that end she has worked tirelessly to produce and direct the feature, which she helped cut with her editor, Sean McAllen, in a converted room in her home.

Torre is an unlikely crusader in the vein of an Erin Brockovich and remarkably reminiscent of Holly Hunter in her role as a TV news producer in Broadcast News. Her soft voice and petite frame are incredibly deceptive, for just beneath the gentle exterior beats the heart of a lion.

“First we localize our energy sources then we get rid of poverty,” she confidently asserts.

Torre will be doing a promotional tour for the film this fall on university campuses, at green expos, alternative energy conferences and independent theaters.

For more, go to houstonwehaveaproblemfilm.com