Green Screen

Sean and Cody wish you a happy and delightfully spooky Halloween as we continue to social distance, and the headlines are far scarier than anything we can find in a highly influential early '70s horror film. In The Wicker Man from 1973, stodgy cop Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward) flies his groovy seaplane to a small Scottish island only to find a bunch of standoffish people who say they've never heard of the missing girl he's looking for. It turns out Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee), the polyester-jacketed, fright-wig bedecked chieftain of the island, is throwing a dinner party for the gods and he's got Howie penciled in as the main course. Environmental issues discussed include the ecological dimensions of Christianization in the early Middle Ages, the influence of the Gulf Stream, how paganism and its back-to-nature vibes were distorted in the 1960s counterculture era, and the role of the harvest in human tradition.

Did the ancient Celts actually burn people alive in giant wicker statues, or was Caesar just making stuff up to make barbarians look bad? How come we know so little about what was going on in the early Middle Ages? What's Zozobra and why is it infamous among college students in New Mexico? Can you grow citrus fruit in the Outer Hebrides? Was Wagner (the composer) a Nazi? If not, why did Hitler like him so much? Did those black metal guys who went around burning churches in Norway in 1992 really believe in anything, or were they just trying to sell records? Is it even fair to list Britt Ekland in the credits of this movie considering you can barely find her on-screen? What was Christopher Lee's favorite subgenre of heavy metal music? All of these questions are ready to go up in smoke in this folk horror-themed episode of Green Screen.

The Wicker Man (1973) at IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070917/ The Wicker Man (1973) at Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/the-wicker-man/

Next Movie Up: Dune (1984)

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Sean and Cody are joined by literature student and documentary expert Ethan Weinstein for a bizarre journey into the heart of Southern womanhood with a side order of nuclear holocaust anxiety. In the classic 1986 documentary Sherman's March, filmmaker Ross McElwee sets out to make a movie about the lingering effects of the Civil War scorched-earth military campaign that made the name William T. Sherman into fightin' words south of the Mason-Dixon line. But he quickly gets sidetracked as a gaggle of white Southern women with various quirky hang-ups parade past his all-seeing camera. Environmental issues discussed include the real Sherman's legacy of destruction, nuclear waste and ecological problems in the modern South, the anti-nuclear protests of the 1980s and cross-generational anxiety about atomic war and, by extension, climate change.

How did a movie about the historical Civil War morph into a reality show about the pitfalls of modern dating? Why is there so much toxic waste in the South? Where does traditional white Southern womanhood come from? Why did millions of people take to the streets in 1982 to protest nuclear weapons? What's the "Red Tide" scenario? Why did Burt Reynolds's career take a nose-dive? Where's Ossbaw Island and who lives there? How do you get distribution for an independent documentary? What's the appropriate thing to say to a woman who announces she's not wearing underpants? Why are the hosts reviewing a documentary when they told you in Episode 12 they wouldn't be reviewing any more documentaries? All these questions are ready to rip through Georgia and the Carolinas like Sherman's army in this unusual episode of Green Screen.

Sherman's March (1986) at IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091943/ Sherman's March (1986) at Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/shermans-march/

Next Movie Up: The Wicker Man (1973)

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Eager to chill out after the last episode's grim antics in the swamps of the South, Sean, Cody and film expert Kris Hill settle down to tea in a pleasant suburban New England and become embroiled in a steamy melodrama with heavy environmental undertones. In Douglas Sirk's 1955 masterpiece All That Heaven Allows, rich matronly widow Cary Scott (Jane Wyman) is powerless to resist the flannel-clad, Brylcreem-pompadoured sizzle emitted by free-spirited arborist Rob Kirby (Rock Hudson) who is some indeterminate number of years younger than her. But when she and Ron start gearing up the wedding machine, the whole town and especially Cary's insufferable adult children rise in outraged revolt to enforce their incoherent vision of 1950s sexual morality. Environmental issues discussed include the physical and social legacy of New England's colonial past, the curious unreality of American suburbs, white flight and racial covenanting, slow living in the hinterlands, and more.

How did patterns of land use from the very beginning of European colonization of New England filter down into the 20th century? What are the many different ways that suburbs came into being, or were deliberately created? Why will environmental historians pounce eagerly on any chance to discuss William Cronon's Changes in the Land? What was the Hays Code and why is it such a big factor in this film? Who coined the term "Make America Great Again" and what, if anything, does it mean? How were the 1950s like the 1980s? Why does the shadow of Ronald Reagan loom so large over this movie even though he's not in it? Is All That Heaven Allows one of the greatest films ever made, right up there with Citizen Kane? If so, why is its ending so hokey? All these questions and more are in the firing line in this unabashedly romantic episode of Green Screen.

All That Heaven Allows (1955) at IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047811/ All That Heaven Allows (1955) at Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/all-that-heaven-allows/

Next Movie Up: Sherman's March (1986)

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After riding the waves in SoCal in the last episode, Sean and Cody set out to navigate the swamps of the South and deconstruct the putrefying secrets that molder in North Carolina's Cape Fear River. In this 1991 thriller by Martin Scorsese, a remake of a 1962 film noir, convicted rapist Max Cady (Robert DeNiro) has a burr up his bum about the crap job that his former lawyer Sam (Nick Nolte) did of defending him decades before. After stalking Sam and his family, poisoning their pooch and babbling metaphysical nonsense to their rebellious teenage daughter Danielle (Juliette Lewis), Max follows the clan to their hideout on the Cape Fear River, setting up a showdown that tests the limits of cinematic credulity and practical special effects. Environmental issues discussed include slavery-era agriculture and its legacies, the interactions of birds and humans, the post-World War II "New South" and more.

Why did scaring birds away become an economic necessity in antebellum North Carolina, and why were they still trying it nearly a century later? What's a "whirligig"? Who was Edward Kalmbach and why was he trying to blow stuff up? What is the Law of Negligent Compounding Peril? How did Juliette Lewis get into Scientology? Did Robert DeNiro really ruin his teeth on purpose to play this role? How do you know a Mafia law firm when you encounter one? Why do the characters quote the wrong legal statutes to one another? Didn't anyone check with a real lawyer first? What's the stupidest argument made by climate change deniers? Which of our hosts never wants to see this film again? All these questions and more come bubbling to the surface. Come out, come out, wherever you are for this terrifying episode of Green Screen.

CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains discussion of sexual assault.

Cape Fear (1991) at IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101540/ Cape Fear (1991) at Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/cape-fear-1991/

Next Movie Up: All That Heaven Allows (1955)

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Surf's up! Sean and Cody have exchanged the deserts of West Texas for the beaches of Southern California, and they're joined by environmental historian and beach expert Elsa Devienne to take apart one of the most beloved action movies of the nineties. In 1991's Point Break, FBI hotshot agent Johnny Utah (Keanu Reaves) and his bonkers partner Pappas (Gary Busey) hit the beaches in pursuit of a bunch of bank robbers in rubber masks, who are actually a gang of surfers led by Buddhist-babbling blonde beefcake Bodhi (Patrick Swayze). Can they stop the money-grabby Ex-Presidents before the summer ends and the waves go flat? Environmental issues discussed include the evolution of beaches in the Los Angeles area, the history of surfing culture, ocean pollution, the manmade monstrosity of the L.A. River, and Hollywood's gender-biased view of men, women and the environment.

When, where and how did surfing become a thing? Why is it accurate to say that famous beaches like Venice and Malibu were made by humans rather than existing as natural features? What's the weird relationship between surf culture, neo-Nazis and white supremacists? Are L.A.'s beaches cleaner today than they were in the 1940s? How did "Tricky Dick" Nixon getting a bunch of oily goo on his beach at San Clemente lead to the modern environmental movement? Why are there so few female action directors? What was the name of Patrick Swayze's hit pop song from 1988? Do law schools have football teams? Did not wearing a motorcycle helmet give Gary Busey cancer? All these questions and more are in the pipeline and ready to be carved in this surf-tastic episode of Green Screen.

Point Break (1991) at IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102685/ Point Break (1991) at Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/point-break/

Next Movie Up: Cape Fear (1991)

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The hosts of Green Screen take a sentimental journey, in Cody's case to the dusty plains of West Texas where he was raised, and in Sean's to a transatlantic flight where he saw this film for the first time while hung over after a heavy metal festival. In Holes, a Disney adventure film made for kids in 2003, Texas teen Stanley Yelnats (Shia LaBeouf) is wrongly accused of swiping some superstar keds from a charity auction and is punished by being forced to dig a bunch of pointless holes at a prison camp in the desert. He thinks it's because of his family's bad luck, but he discovers he's been drafted into the unpaid labor corps of the prison warden (Sigourney Weaver) in her search for the buried treasure of a Wild West outlaw who played kissy-face with a poisonous lizard and cursed the town to 100 years of climate change. Environmental issues include global warming (you should have guessed that), the environment of West Texas, its real-life curse to be ravaged by fracking and other forms of fossil fuel extraction, and the mismanagement of water resources in the modern West.

How is West Texas different from other parts of the state? Why don't environmental historians study it—are they cursed or something? How do you pronounce "Shia LaBeouf"? When did lipstick start to come in tubes? Have we ever seen a Ku Klux Klan rampage before in a Disney film? Why do the hosts of this podcast re-watch this movie at the end of July every year? Why was Europe's biggest heavy metal festival laid low by a disease endemic to cattle? How did the director manage to recreate a Mafia hit sequence from The Godfather and sneak it into a kids' movie? What are the Marfa Lights? All these questions and more are ready to be unearthed in this onions-and-peaches-scented episode of Green Screen.

Holes (2003) at IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0311289/ Holes (2003) at Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/holes/

Next Movie Up: Point Break (1991)

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Coming off the dreary climate change denial in the last episode, Sean and Cody go ape over one of the most iconic monster films in cinema history. In the original 1933 King Kong, greedy producer Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) sails a crew of down-and-out ne'er-do-wells to the distant Skull Island to make a quickie exploitation pic. The whiteys quickly get more than they bargained for when they encounter the island's landlord, a sexually frustrated giant gorilla who seems to have a thing for scream queen Ann (Fay Wray) and a lot of enemies among the prehistoric beasts on the island. Things really go tango-uniform when Kong's headlining tour in the Big Apple takes an unexpected detour to a famous piece of Midtown real estate. Environmental issues discussed include the surprising myths about "jungle" environments, the ethnographic racism of National Geographic, the environmental impact of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, and the checkered history of the Empire State Building.

Do "impenetrable jungles" like the ones seen in this movie really exist, or are they just Hollywood fantasy? Why was it OK to show boobs and wang in National Geographic for most of the 20th century? Why did FDR send people out to plant a bunch of trees in the mid-1930s? How often do the natives of Skull Island sacrifice somebody to Kong? Does it happen every week, every year, or what? Could you really get a set of Scarface plates at your local movie theater in 1931? What's Ingagi and why should you be grateful that you've never seen it? Do you need two hands to climb the Empire State Building? Why was the director of this picture bizarrely obsessed with gorillas? All these questions are ready to be gas-bombed, bound in chains and exhibited on Broadway for your listening pleasure in this monkey-business-filled episode of Green Screen.

King Kong (1933) at IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024216/ King Kong (1933) at Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/king-kong/

Next Movie Up: Holes (2003)

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What starts out as a light-hearted palate cleanse quickly becomes more than Sean and Cody bargained for as they seek to lighten the mood with a classic Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker slapstick comedy. In The Naked Gun 2½, dimwitted Police Squad detective Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) bumbles into a plot where evil White House Chief of Staff John Sununu (Peter Van Norden) is trying to rig George Bush's environmental policy so fossil fuel fat cats like the dapperly mustachioed Quentin Hapsburg (Robert Goulet) can keep killing the planet for profit. But with Drebin, Ed and Nordberg on the case, are the oily baddies finally about to meet their Waterloo? Environmental issues discussed include the evolution of climate change denial as official U.S. policy, the consequences of the George H.W. Bush presidency, the cultural resonance of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster, and the influence of fossil fuel industry lobby groups on public opinion.

Why did John Sununu hate science so much? How did tobacco company shills and defense analysts pushing beam weapons to Ronald Reagan in the '80s prime the pump for the rise of global warming denialism? What was the most embarrassing oil company commercial of all time? Was Hazelwood really drunk when the Exxon Valdez crashed into that reef, or was that an urban myth? How do you stretch an 85-minute comedy into three excruciating hours of television? How did Priscilla Presley get into Scientology? Is The Sound of Music really a Christmas movie? Does anybody remember who Mel Tormé was? Why is this film so damned depressing and enraging? All of these questions are ready to be taken downtown and interrogated in this episode of Green Screen.

The Naked Gun 2½ (1991) at IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102510/ The Naked Gun 2½ (1991) at Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/the-naked-gun-2-the-smell-of-fear/

Next Movie Up: King Kong (1933)

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Parched from their trip to Arabia in the last episode, Sean and Cody exchange sand for surf in a rare double-header episode examining two different films on the same subject. In 1947, six buff Nordic adventurers set out on the Pacific on a tiny raft to prove a questionable theory about where the original settlers of Polynesia might have come from. The tale of their voyage was chronicled in the classic 1950 documentary and a 2012 Norwegian-made dramatic film, both titled Kon-Tiki. Environmental issues discussed include how the Pacific was vegetated and peopled in ancient times, the mysterious legacies of Easter Island, environmental history vs. pseudohistory, and European revisionism of indigenous origins and history.

What was Thor Heyerdahl trying to prove with the voyage of the Kon-Tiki, and did he really succeed? Why does Easter Island attract so many crackpot theories? What's "Pacific island chic"? Who's Velikovsky and what does his infamous book about bad astronomy have to do with the subject of these films? Why did the Nazis want people to believe in ancient aliens? Did J. Edgar Hoover try to tamper with the Academy Awards by loading up one of the categories with anti-Commie propaganda films? Why don't any real Polynesians appear in a film ostensibly about Polynesia? These multi-varied questions and many more are all part of the adventure in this nautical episode of Green Screen.

Kon-Tiki (1950) at IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042650/ Kon-Tiki (1950) at Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/kon-tiki-1950/ Kon-Tiki (2012) at IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1613750/ Kon-Tiki (2012) at Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/kon-tiki/

Next Movie Up: The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear

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Back from the chilly forests of medieval Japan, Sean and Cody put on their COVID-19 approved shemaghs and saddle up the camels for a dusty trip into the desert and the heart of one of the most beloved and acclaimed films of all time. In David Lean's 1962 epic Lawrence of Arabia, pasty British white guy Lawrence (Peter O'Toole) gets sent by khaki-wearing, cocktail-sipping sahibs to scope out the hottest new guerrilla commander in Arabia, Faisal (Alec Guinness in brownface), and see if he'd be up for a bit of Hulk-smash action against the Ottoman Turks, which, of course, he is. The result is an almost 4-hour spectacle atomic-powered by the greatest score in movie history. Environmental issues include the ecological impact of World War I, how desert environments and control of water shapes history and cultures, Western colonialism, and many more.

What effect did the First World War have on the global environment? How is an oasis formed? Can you really sink to your death in quicksand? How about a muddy shell crater? Was the real T.E. Lawrence queer, a sadist, or both? Why did he go around dressed like Jesus? Why is the score to this film so iconic? How do you pronounce the composer's name? What's up with Anthony Quinn's terrible latex nose? Why would this film have been particularly terrible if it was made by the wrong people? Can we give the film a pass on some of its more problematic aspects because it's just so fricking amazing? All of these questions are raised up on the seven pillars of wisdom in this latest episode of Green Screen.

Special thanks to Mark Aitken for permission to use his cover of the Lawrence of Arabia theme.

Lawrence of Arabia at IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056172/ Lawrence of Arabia at Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/lawrence-of-arabia/

Next Movie Up: Kon-Tiki (1950 and 2012)

Website For This Episode