Quick! What happens when you take Willie Nelson‘s Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys (nice to see Willie was giving songs really long names before pretentious emo bands made it cool), get the Yeah Yeah Yeah‘s Karen O to cover it and tie it all into Chipotle’s Boorito day, which benefits farms everywhere? You get this astonishingly beautiful video, which I won’t lie, kinda came out of left field for me. Also: no, I have never tried Chiptole before, mostly because I enjoy my ass not exploding. Still, it’s a cool video, and for a good cause, so I’ll handle the mild intestinal distress for delicious burritos.
Abandoned and its accompanying soundtrack were commissioned by The Chipotle Cultivate Foundation to raise awareness about the economic hardship family farmers face in the increasingly industrialized American agriculture system. In the film, director David Altobelli tells the story of three boys exploring an empty house late one night. The boys break into a farmhouse that was clearly abandoned in a hurry some time ago. As the three explore the house – and even begin to vandalize it – one boy slowly comes to see that the family that lived there was not so different from his own. He realizes that the house they are trashing could foreshadow the future of his own family’s farm and home. A frightening moment in the house sends the boys running back to the comfort of their still-functioning farms.
