Silent Running

Silent Running is a 1972 environmentally-themed American post-apocalyptic science fiction film starring Bruce Dern, featuring Cliff Potts, Ron Rifkin and Jesse Vint. It was directed by Douglas Trumbull, who had previously worked as a special effects supervisor on science fiction films, including 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Andromeda Strain.

Plot

In the future all plant life on Earth has become extinct. A few specimens have been preserved in enormous, greenhouse-like geodesic domes attached to a fleet of American Airlines space freighters, currently just outside the orbit of Saturn. Freeman Lowell (Bruce Dern), one of four crewmen aboard the Valley Forge, is the resident botanist and ecologist who carefully preserves a variety of plants for their eventual return to Earth and the reforestation of the planet. Lowell spends most of his time in the domes, both cultivating the crops and attending to the animal life.^[1]

Orders come from Earth to jettison and destroy the domes (with nuclear charges) and return the freighters to commercial service. After four of the six domes are jettisoned and blown up Lowell rebels and opts instead to save the plants and animals on his ship. Lowell kills one of his crew-mates who arrives to plant explosives in his favorite dome, with his right knee seriously injured in the process. He traps the remaining two crewmen in the other dome, just as it is jettisoned and destroyed.

Enlisting the aid of the ship's three service robots, called drones, Lowell stages a fake premature explosion as a ruse and sends the Valley Forge careening towards Saturn in an attempt to hijack the ship and flee with the last forest dome. He then reprograms the drones to perform surgery on his leg and sets the Valley Forge on a risky course through Saturn's rings. Later, as the ship endures the rough passage, Drone 3 (later nicknamed Louie) is lost, but the ship and its remaining dome emerge relatively undamaged on the other side of the rings.

Lowell and the surviving drones – which he nicknames Huey (Drone 2) and Dewey (Drone 1) after the cartoon characters – set out into deep space to maintain the forest. Lowell also reprograms Huey and Dewey to plant trees and play poker. Huey is damaged when Lowell accidentally collides with him while driving a buggy recklessly, and Dewey sentimentally refuses to leave Huey's side during the repairs. As time passes Lowell is horrified when he discovers that his bio-dome is dying, but is unable to come up with a solution to the problem. When the Berkshire – another space freighter waiting to see if the Valley Forge has survived the trip – eventually re-establishes contact, he knows that his crimes will soon be discovered. It is then that he realizes a lack of light has restricted plant growth, and he races to install lamps to correct this situation. In an effort to save the last forest before the Berkshire arrives, Lowell jettisons the dome to safety. He then detonates nuclear charges, destroying the Valley Forge. The final scene is of the now well-lit forest greenhouse drifting into deep space, with Dewey tenderly caring for it, holding a battered old watering can.

Cast

• Bruce Dern as Freeman Lowell
• Cliff Potts as John Keenan
• Ron Rifkin as Marty Barker
• Jesse Vint as Andy Wolf
• Mark Persons as Drone 1 (Dewey)
• Cheryl Sparks and Steven Brown as Drone 2 (Huey)
• Larry Whisenhunt as Drone 3 (Louie)

Production

In an interview with Starlog magazine in the late 1970s, Douglas Trumbull revealed that the plot of the movie in the original version of the script was quite a bit different from what was actually filmed. In the original version the space freighters were on permanent duty, carrying biological domes. When they are finally told to blow the domes and return to Earth, it is because the freighters are going to be scrapped.

With its cover-plate removed during a shooting break, double-amputee actor Mark Persons is visible inside the tiny Drone 1 (Dewey) costume.

The Freeman Lowell character in the original version was an older, more curmudgeonly man who simply did not want to return to Earth and be forced into retirement, so he steals the Valley Forge and heads off into deep space. As in the filmed version, he reprograms the robots for some companionship. The subplot involving the plants dying due to a lack of light was involved, but his main interest in the plants was simply as a means of extending his limited food supplies. Eventually he receives a signal from an alien ship and decides to approach it, making humanity's first contact with aliens. The conclusion was a race between Lowell, who was trying to contact the aliens, and the human boarding party trying to retake the ship. Finally, in desperation, Lowell detaches one of the domes with one of the robots aboard seconds before he is killed by the boarding party. The dome drifts off into deep space, where it is found by the aliens. The film would have ended with a confused Dewey "introducing" itself to the equally baffled aliens by presenting them with a "family photo" of Lowell and the drones taken earlier in the story.

Trumbull had been involved with creating effects for 2001: A Space Odyssey. Director Stanley Kubrick had wanted the Stargate sequence of that film to be about Saturn, but there were technical difficulties in getting the special effects for it finished in the limited time available. The Saturn idea was scrapped, and Kubrick substituted Jupiter instead. Trumbull developed the sequence after production, and it was recreated for Saturn in Silent Running.

The interiors were filmed aboard the decommissioned Korean War aircraft carrier USS Valley Forge (LPH-8), which was docked at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard in Long Beach, California. Shortly after filming was completed, the carrier was scrapped. The forest environments were originally intended to be filmed in the Mitchell Park Domes in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but the production budget forced the sequences to be shot in a newly completed aircraft hangar in Van Nuys, California. Trumbull stated in the commentary accompanying the DVD release that the geodesic domes containing the last forests of Earth's future on the Valley Forge were based on the Missouri Botanical Garden Climatron dome.

Three freighters are shown in the film, the Valley Forge, the Berkshire, and the Sequoia. Five other ships that carried domes – the Yellowstone, Acadia, Blue Ridge, Glacier, and Mojave — are also mentioned. Each ship features a designation on the hull which notes the area from which some of the flora and fauna samples were taken. The Valley Forge is listed as "Bahia Honda Subtropical", indicating at least some specimens were taken from this area of the Florida Keys.

The model of the Valley Forge was 26 feet (8 m) long, and took six months to build from a combination of custom castings and the contents of approximately 800 prefabricated model aircraft or tank kits. After filming was completed, American Airlines expressed an interest in sending the model on the tour circuit, but this was not feasible due to the fragile nature of the model (in fact, during filming pieces of the model kept falling off). The ship was subsequently disassembled after several years sitting in Douglas Trumbull's personal storage facility. Several pieces, including the domes, wound up in the hands of collectors. Several domes survive, including one that now rests in the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle, Washington, and another which was sold at auction in 2008.

The three drones were played by four bilateral amputees,^[1] an idea inspired by Johnny Eck, a sideshow performer of the early 20th century who had been born without lower limbs. The 20-pound (9-kg) drone suits were custom-tailored for the different actors. The suits are in Douglas Trumbull's personal collection.

The sound effects, including the drones, were created by uncredited composer Joseph Byrd. They were generated on a modified ARP 2600 synthesizer with added Oberheim Expander Modules.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack was written by bassoonist and P. D. Q. Bach creator Peter Schickele.^[2] It contains two songs written by Schickele and Diane Lampert — "Silent Running" and "Rejoice in the Sun" — which were performed by popular folk singer-songwriter Joan Baez.^[3] The two songs were issued as a single on Decca (32890). In addition, an LP was released on Decca (DL 7-9188) and later reissued by Varese Sarabande on black (STV-81072) and green (VC-81072) vinyl. In 1998 a limited-release CD by the "Valley Forge Record Groupe" included an additional track with the spoken introduction "God Bless These Gardens".

Reception

The film has a generally positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with 67% of 27 critics giving good reviews. Praise is mainly focused on the special effects and Bruce Dern's performance, while the weak script and storyline are criticised.^[4] In his New York Times review, Vincent Canby says this "is no jerry-built science fiction film, but it's a little too simple-minded to be consistently entertaining".^[1] UK film critic Mark Kermode has frequently named the film as one of his personal favourites in his BBC blog, on more than one occasion stating his preference for it over 2001: A Space Odyssey.^[5]

In 2008, Silent Running was nominated for AFI's Top 10 Science Fiction Films list.^[6]

Influence on other works

• WALL-E director Andrew Stanton said he was influenced by this film,^[7] as was Duncan Jones in making his feature debut, Moon.^[8]
• Doug Naylor, Rob Grant and Ed Bye cite Silent Running as an inspiration for Red Dwarf, the long-running British science-fiction comedy.
• Shots of the freighters were reused as Colonial agro-ships in the Battlestar Galactica episode "The Magnificent Warriors".
• Shots of the freighters were also used in the 1973 Canadian TV series The Starlost.
• Joel Hodgson states that the film influenced the premise of Mystery Science Theater 3000.^[9]
• John Hodgman's compendium of fictional trivia, The Areas of My Expertise, makes several references to Dern's acting.
• When Mike Rutherford (of Mike + The Mechanics) was looking for a title for a particular song, he says, "I called it "Silent Running", because I remembered that film so well, and our song, had a spacey feel to it."^[10]
• Klaus Schulze's "Silent Running", second track of the album Trancefer, was inspired by the film.
• An alternative soundtrack to the film was composed by the UK band 65daysofstatic for the Glasgow Film Festival and later recorded and released as an album in 2011.^[11][12]
• Universal Pictures claimed that 20th Century Fox's Star Wars had copied Silent Running in a counter-suit to Fox's claim that Universal's Battlestar Galactica had plagiarised Star Wars.^[13]

In popular culture

In 2011, 65daysofstatic, an instrumental post-rock and math rock band, released an alternate soundtrack to the film, Silent Running. It was originally commissioned by the Glasgow Film Festival in 2011 as a live re-score performed by the band. The soundtrack was released as a studio recording in November 2011.

See also

• List of American films of 1972
• Environmentalism
• Science fiction films

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Silent Running.

• Silent Running at the Internet Movie Database
• Silent Running at AllMovie
• Silent Running at Rotten Tomatoes
• Sci-Fi Movie website analysis
• In-depth review of Silent Running at the Space Review