Green Screen

After last episode's sobering experience with the graboids, Sean and Cody join forces with academic expert Alex Arreola to go back in time to pre-modern Japan to ride with magic wolves and ward off evil curses in the forest, or something. In the 1997 Japanese-made animated fantasy adventure Princess Mononoke, Prince Ashitaka is minding his own business when a wormy monster tries to make mincemeat of his village and gives him a Dr. Strangelove-style killer arm with a mind of its own. In seeking a cure for the monster's curse, Ashitaka sets out into the forest, meeting a host of creatures and human beings whose complex relationships with the land and each other defy easy explanations. The environmental issues discussed include forestry and silviculture in pre-modern Japan, the relationship of warfare and firearms to the environment, the inequality and vulnerability of different societies to climate change, and how story and narrative can raise environmental consciousness.

Can you guess which of our hosts has never seen a full-length anime movie before? Why did 16th century Japan go gun-nuttier than an NRA convention? What does Godzilla have to do with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima? Remember when the world came to a halt when the Shogun miniseries came on TV 40 years ago? How come so many environmental narratives in movies seem to be made for children, and why is this film different? What did Neil Gaiman and Quentin Tarantino have to do with this movie? Did you grow up on "G Force" and Battle of the Planets? All these questions get sliced and diced with a samurai sword and blasted with a primitive 16th-century musket in this unusual episode of Green Screen.

Princess Mononoke at IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119698/ Princess Mononoke at Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/princess-mononoke/

Next Movie Up: Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

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Eager to escape the drug-addled inner city of the last episode, Sean and Cody tool on out to dusty rural Nevada in search of subterranean beasties that seem to have a taste for almost-leading-man that-guy actors, the dad from Family Ties and an especially fetching Fred Ward. In Tremors, bromatic handymen Val (Kevin Bacon) and Earl (Ward) start finding dead people all over the place, apparently chomped by hungry creatures who have inexplicably decided that humans are their new favorite food. Can Val and Earl rescue the beleaguered denizens of Perfection, Nevada from the hordes of grabby ghoulies, or will they end up as fertilizer? Environmental issues discussed include nuclear weapons testing, cultural fears of the unintended consequences of technology, and the centrality of water infrastructure to the modern West.

How did our hosts (one of whom has a Ph.D.) initially get fooled into thinking Paradise, Nevada was a real place? Are the "graboids" recent arrivals on the scene, or have they always been there, and if they have, how come no one noticed them before? Is the infamous "nuke the fridge" scene from Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull based on a true story? Did Howard Hughes give John Wayne cancer? What happens when you set off a nuke underground? Why should you never underestimate the power of slime? What's a "Weisiger moment"? How many degrees of separation is our podcast's biggest fan away from the real Kevin Bacon? Was the premise of the sitcom Family Ties funny to anyone who wasn't a Baby Boomer? All these questions will be messily devoured in this monstrous episode of Green Screen.

Tremors at IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100814/ Tremors at Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/tremors/

Next movie: Princess Mononoke (1997)

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Sean and Cody descend into the crime-ridden hellscape of early 1970s New York to examine urban environments and how they played on the silver screen at the dawn of "New Hollywood." In The French Connection, a thoroughly unpleasant unhinged racist cop (Gene Hackman) and his surprisingly rational partner (Roy Scheider) spy on a Mafia-connected high roller (Tony LoBianco) and figure that he's up to no good. In fact he's about to bring a huge score of magic white powder over from France, hidden in the innumerable crevasses of one of the ugliest cars ever manufactured. Will the cops shut down the French junk chute in time? Environmental issues discussed include de-industrialization and the decay of American inner cities, white flight and "redlining," the geographic dimensions of the transatlantic trade in heroin, and more.

How did parts of New York, Detroit and other cities wind up resembling the ruins of Dresden after World War II? What did postwar federal mortgage programs have to do with drugs? Why did so much heroin come out of Marseilles in the '60s and where did it end up? How do you disassemble a Lincoln Continental down to the sub-atomic level and then put it back together so that no one notices? Why is Gene Hackman so angry in this movie? How do you film the world's greatest car chase without permits? How did Tricky Dick Nixon rig the drug laws to make life miserable for people he didn't like? What's with that totally insane jazz music on the soundtrack? All of these questions will be thoroughly roughed-up, interrogated and booked on this episode of Green Screen.

Sean's Video on "The Places of the French Connection": https://youtu.be/9MG5KxQxIcA

The French Connection at IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067116/

The French Connection at Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/the-french-connection/

Next Movie: Tremors (1990)

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Life on Earth is too depressing right now, so Sean and Cody blast over to the ice planet of Hoth (which looks suspiciously like Finse, Norway) to figure out how the Star Wars gang handles a cryonic environment. In The Empire Strikes Back, resistance heartthrob Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) gets his face effed up by the Bumble creature from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer while testy Han Solo (Harrison Ford) sells Wookie kisses and the rebellion prepares for an epic space battle with military tactics straight out of 1916. Analysis of The Empire Strikes Back touches not just on icy environments and how to live there, but how science fiction often depicts the environment, the cultural memory of Vietnam, Art Deco design and its socioeconomic assumptions, and how this film in particular evokes the classic "Golden Age" science fiction of yesteryear's pulp magazines.

The idea for this episode started with a single inexplicable question: what do tauntauns eat? In addition to that burning inquiry, numerous others come up. Is the "wampa" monster the astral equivalent of a baby alligator flushed into the New York City sewers? Wouldn't Cloud City be way too cold to just walk around outside? Why do people who work in Antarctica dread touching doorknobs? What can a train ride across Norway teach you about Star Wars? What's the ideology of the Empire? Why are sci-fi planets so often depicted as having only one climate? Is the lining of Lando's cape made of Corinthian leather? Is the "I am your father" thing just a cop-out? We're ready to target all these questions and more on this episode of Green Screen. The shield will be down in moments!

The Empire Strikes Back at IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080684/

The Empire Strikes Back at Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/the-empire-strikes-back/

Next Movie: The French Connection (1971)

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Finding the apocalyptic visions of the last episode too sobering, Sean and Cody liquor up with some California chardonnay to tackle the first comedy on the Green Screen list. In Bottle Shock, wine academy president Stephen Spurrier (Alan Rickman) tries to shake up the Paris wine scene by pitting the snobby old guard French vintners against the rebellious upstarts of California's Napa Valley in a famous 1976 tasting competition. Can the mostly golden but sometimes poop-brown fluid wrought by the awkward father-son combination of Bill Pullman and Chris Pine, as the beleaguered vintners of Chateau Montelena, stack up against the European heavyweights? Environmental issues explored include the history of viticulture, settler colonialism in old California, and peoples' relationship with the land they live and work.

What really happened in the 1976 "Judgment of Paris" competition? Why did California wine have such a terrible reputation for most of the 20th century? How did a handful of Eastern European refugees from Communist oppression save the California wine business? Who wouldn't be flattered to have Alan Rickman play them in a movie? How do you pronounce "terroir"? What was up with those Orson Welles wine commercials from the early '80s? Did Pearl Jam and the Foo Fighters play at Woodstock '94? How can Chris Pine's wig be even worse than William Shatner's in Star Trek IV? Why were you so much more likely to watch this movie on the back of an airline seat than in a theater? The answers to these questions flow like cheap cabernet from a bottle of Two Buck Chuck in this tasty episode of Green Screen.

Bottle Shock at IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0914797/

Bottle Shock at Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/bottle-shock/

Next Movie: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

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It's the end of the world as we know it! Sean and Cody, sequestered together as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, try to get to the bottom of exactly what happened to Earth in the unseen back-story of the Mad Max post-apocalyptic universe. In the film, one-armed truck driver Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) sets out to drive four princesses and one Zoë Kravitz across a bandit-infested desert, with a punked-out army of crazies huffing silver spray paint and driving exhibits from Harrah's automobile museum in hot pursuit. Analysis of Mad Max: Fury Road involves the history of post-apocalyptic literature from 1826 to the Walking Dead; fears of climate change and nuclear war as shared collective anxiety; why Australia is particularly vulnerable to environmental disaster; how editing can make or break a complex movie; and how the world changed in the 30 years since Mad Max was last seen on the big screen in 1985's Beyond Thunderdome.

What's the recipe for survival in a post-nuclear wasteland? Why would you want a blood transfusion while driving? Why does the villain look like an old man inexplicably dressed up like a He-Man action figure? Are all the Mad Max movies unacknowledged sequels to a Gregory Peck film from the '50s? Why is Mary Shelley the literary progenitor of Mad Max? What was the "Blitzkrieg Bunker Bar" and what does it have to do with this film? How does Charlize Theron stack up to Tina Turner? Why do Internet misogynists really, really hate this movie? Is Nicholas Hoult leading man material or is he fated to be another "that guy"? All these and more are fuel in the tank of this fast and furious episode of Green Screen.

Mad Max: Fury Road on IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1392190/

Mad Max: Fury Road on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/mad-max-fury-road/

Next Movie: Bottle Shock (2008)

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Our intrepid duo of hosts face off against an undeniable classic, the John Ford-directed family drama How Green Was My Valley, which beat Citizen Kane for Best Picture at the 1941 Academy Awards. It's a charming nostalgic story of a family of coal miners in Wales at the end of the 19th century seen through the eyes of a young boy (pre-pubescent Roddy McDowall) who watches his beloved green valley turn black and icky because coal mining generally sucks for the environment. Of course we don't actually see the green of the valley because the picture is shot in black and white, a decision ultimately made because Adolf Hitler just had to have Poland. The film touches on the hazards of fossil fuel extraction, the environmental cost of "progress," and the relationship between environmental problems and labor strife.

How did Wales's coal fuel the rise of the British Empire? Was being endowed with generous coal deposits Britain's fortune or its curse? Can falling through thin ice and catching hypothermia really render you a paraplegic? How do you pronounce "Angharad"? Was Walter Pidgeon a beefcake in 1940 or more like a creepy old man? How did the guy who shot this picture win an Academy Award for Best Cinematography when his competition shot Citizen Kane? How do you get Malibu to look like Wales? Why do these miners always sing in such perfect harmony, and more importantly, why won't they stop? These are the burning questions on the table in this inappropriately age-paired and unexpectedly musical episode of Green Screen.

How Green Was My Valley on IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033729/

How Green Was My Valley on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/how-green-was-my-valley/

Next Movie: Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

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Sean and Cody's tickets back from San Francisco somehow don't get punched and they're forced to settle down for another tour of the city by the bay as they discuss and review the 1978 science fiction horror thriller Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the first (and probably best) remake of the classic 1956 film. Directed by Philip Kaufman, the film features Donald Sutherland as a dauntless health inspector, Brooke Adams as his beautiful but badly-matched moll, Jeff Goldblum and Veronica Cartwright as husband and wife mud bath entrepreneurs, and Leonard Nimoy as a self-absorbed pop psychologist and possible alien pod person. After a bunch of strange flowers appear all over the city, San Franciscans start freaking out thinking their neighbors have been replaced with clones. Depending on your point of view, the film could be read as an allegory for Communism, climate change, invasive species, lead pollution, or possibly all of them.

How would the human race react to an invasion by alien plants? How do they reproduce? What does it mean that both L.A. and San Francisco have been destroyed so often by environmental disasters in fiction? How do you keep your house clean if you run a mud bath parlor as your business? Why did San Francisco become such a gay mecca? What does rat poo really look like? Can any real human being less wealthy than Mark Zuckerberg actually afford to live in San Francisco? What's that weird thing on Nimoy's hand? These questions and many more will be answered in this pod-tastic episode of Green Screen.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers on IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077745/

Invasion of the Body Snatchers on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/invasion-of-the-body-snatchers-1978/

Next Movie: How Green Was My Valley (1941)

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Sean and Cody beam up to a smelly Klingon bird of prey to boldly go where the cast and crew of the Star Trek franchise have gone many, many times before. Starring the usual rogues' gallery of Star Trek personnel (William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, Nichelle Nichols etc.) and directed by cast member Leonard Nimoy, the fourth feature-length movie in the franchise sees the enterprising Starfleet gang flashing back from the future to collect a pair of humpback whales that they hope will tell a mysterious space probe to buzz off and stop screwing up Earth's oceans. The environmental premise of the film is that by the 23rd century humpback whales have become extinct, presumably as a result of over-hunting.

Is the humpback whale really that close to the brink (or was it in the '80s?) How did "Save the Whales" become a cliché of environmentalism? Who's James Watt and why did he hate the environment so much? What does Eddie Murphy have to do with Star Trek? Does Scotty really know how to use a first-generation Macintosh from 1984? Is Kirk secretly a fan of trashy Sidney Sheldon novels? Did Spock lift his costume from the bathroom of a Holiday Inn? Does the transporter work or doesn't it? You mean he's just going to hang around the bushes while we eat? These are the burning questions at the heart of this whale of a voyage home on starship Green Screen.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home on IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092007/

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/star-trek-iv-the-voyage-home/

Next Movie: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

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In this, the inaugural episode of Green Screen, Sean and Cody discuss and review the 1979 thriller The China Syndrome, directed by James Bridges, starring Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, Michael Douglas and pre-Quaker Oats and "diabeetus" Wilford Brimley. The film deals with the issues of nuclear power, and famously was released and in theaters only days before the real-life near meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania in March 1979, which effectively killed the nuclear power industry in the United States—though its death throes took a long, long time.

Was The China Syndrome prescient, or just lucky? Are nuke plants really as dangerous as people thought they were in the '70s? Was NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) syndrome a gateway drug to anti-vaxx conspiracy theories and Gwyneth Paltrow health woo nonsense? Is it just coincidence that TMI and The China Syndrome happened during the presidency of Jimmy Carter, who was trained as a nuclear engineer? Did "Hanoi Jane" get a raw deal when she sat on that Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun in 1972? Does sexism count as an environmental hazard? What's the deal with Michael Douglas's bell bottoms? And, most importantly, how nuts do you have to be to let a turtle crawl around on your bed? All of these questions will be exhaustively interrogated in the very first episode of Green Screen.

The China Syndrome at IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078966/

The China Syndrome on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/the-china-syndrome/

Sean's article on Three Mile Island and nuclear power: https://seanmunger.com/2017/03/28/gone-fission-the-three-mile-island-accident-and-the-death-of-u-s-nuclear-power/

Next film: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

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