179: "Soylent Green" (1973) - a 2022 SciFi Episode w/ JimD and Ryan

hi you've reached the signal watch movies  television comics and more i'm your host ryan steens join me in our cadre of co-contributors as  we examine cultural artifacts of the 20th century boldly explore the 21st and try to  put it all in perspective stay tuned we're gonna try to make this work they're making our food out of people next thing  they'll be breeding us like cattle for food you gotta tell them you gotta tell them promise tyga i  promise i'll tell the exchange you tell everybody lis

ten to me hatcher you gotta tell him silent  green is people we've gotta stop him somehow hey everybody and welcome back to the signal  watch as always i'm your host ryan steens and with me today is jim deadman welcome back jim  it's so good to have you back man thanks for inviting me i appreciate it um we are covering a  movie because it takes place in the dark future of 2022 and you you this was your suggestion that's  right the movie is technically set in the present and that movie is soylent

green um this  i'm going to confess something this is my first time to have seen so i like green  um i i was on a charlton heston kick in right after college uh because i was really into  the planet of the apes movies and still am um and i was talking to a co-worker who was about 10 15  years older than me about like charlton heston and he's like just turns to me goes soylent green is  people and i was like what he's like yeah that's the ending of soylent green and it's like well  you just told

me the movie and he's like yeah i did and it's not worth watching and based on that  i had never seen soylent green i've owned it for literally 15 years on dvd so i was able to pull  out my dvd and finally watch it but i had not seen soylent green before so you were saying before  we started recording you were on a heston kick i was and i watched omega man again recently and  i had i mean i had seen soylent green back in the 90s there i remember i got a vcr uh my own vcr  around 95 and there wa

s a video store off of mopac i wish i could remember where it was but you could  get five videos for five dollars uh of for the for the non-new releases it was a united video was it  yeah i went there yeah i remember it all right i i uh i went there a lot and i got everything that i  had never seen before from the 70s and and the 60s and the like i mean i just went through all these  movies that i've never had a chance to see and so i saw it then uh and forgot about it and then i  know i watched

it sometime in the last year or two and i'm sure i appreciated then that it was set  close to us but then in the the last few weeks of 2021 people began to to say on twitter and  elsewhere that this was the 2022 movie so i watched it new year's day 2022 it's my first  movie of the new year and uh i i guess that was a good thing because now we can talk about it so  yeah i was really honestly excited that's one of the fun things about doing the podcast is it  it's a little poke in the butt to me

to go actually watch stuff that i've been putting  off like we just did zulu and some other things that i've like thought i need to watch  that at some point i just never get to it um the interesting thing to me about it is is always  going to be well what did they get right and what did they get wrong and and how much of it  actually makes your skin crawl a little bit you know based on what their  they actually anticipated you know i i think that i i obviously  they did not anticipate a lot of

stuff but i'm gonna i feel like this is an  issue where we should cut them a break because in the movie world it is 2022 but  whatever apocalyptic event it is that happened happened decades and decades before and so i  did some math to prepare for this podcast and so you know the movie is released in april of 73  which means it was shot in 72 almost certainly and so heston is not yet 50 heston the actor  which means the character is not yet 50 which means that as a guy in 2022 he's generation  x

because he's born in the early 70s okay and the movie makes clear that heston the 49  year old or whatever it is did not know the world as it existed before the world that edward  g robinson you know uh longs for once again and so whatever it is that happened and i'm not sure  they're clear on the nature of the apocalypse other than it affected the ocean and the  planktons and the environment everything like that it happened sometime in the 60s or 70s because  otherwise hessian would remember a

ll this stuff and so the world didn't get to evolve in the way  that it could have or should have so i'm willing to cut them a break for not having hesitant with  the iphone uh you know and drinking out of a carrot coffee machine and the like but that's  about the only slack i'm gonna give the movie so we can start there so uh we we recently sort  of got a sponsor um sort of and and it's uh south coast media of houston um for all of your media  needs uh and so i'm doing the south coast media uh

synopsis and it'll be really brief because we  kept forgetting to do synopses before the movies we just started talking about them so someone  decided it's important we should talk about what the movies are about so the basic idea  of this is just as jim said um that the the the heston is a cop in 2022 all this environmental  catastrophe has occurred and at this point the world somehow is still totally overcrowded but  also is having a very hard time producing food and um meanwhile a murder occu

rs in one of  the there's very few people who are you're not even in top one percent you're in top point one  percent you know who who can live in what amounts to basically a one-bedroom apartment is considered  to be super luxury because there's so many people um and heston goes to investigate and this guy  turns out was involved with this company soylent that uh is producing all the food for the  population 50 of the food is coming from soylent which is supposedly plankton and soy  based produ

ct um and so yeah people haven't seen like they show us a steak a basic hanger steak and  it's treated like they've just seen the holy grail um and that that sort of thing strawberries 150  for a jar the size of like a small thing of jam and oh uh also concubines have come back into  fashion uh they're however called furniture and they come with the apartment which seems to  me like a bad deal um for everybody involved frankly um so i don't want a furnished apartment  i i certainly don't want to

be told this is your concubine when i move into a place because that's  a another mouth to feed too what if that person's a terrible person so um i don't even want to  get into the other side of that whole equation it isn't good for them um so yeah i i took away  that that some they said something about global warming and climate catastrophe at the beginning  but i definitely got the feeling something else had occurred as well um what it was weird about  the whole movie to me it's a lot there's

a lot of weird things about the movie to me um was  the math didn't really work out of the entire premise of the horror of what he witnesses  at the end it very much had the same sort of problem i had with the matrix when i saw it of  you would need only so many people die every day and the amount of people you would need  to have to process into soylent green astronomically larger than what they're  actually getting in order to feed the population it is now they do have different soylent brand

s  that's true but i think this is one of those movies where when you really critically think  about how the society is supposed to operate socially economically whatever else  it's it's a society that can only exist in a movie it reminds me in that respect of  elysium that matt damon movie where the economics make no sense at all and yet here we are with  this apocalyptic terrible world but i mean at its essence the the craziest thing about soylent  green is that it's really a police procedural

yeah it's like law and order soil and green  and heston is a cop but he's corrupt and uh does questionable things and he steals he takes  advantage of women who are in this oppressive uh societal arrangement and you know that whoever  came up with the term furniture for this was just so proud of themselves for being clever um  i don't know if that was the author of the book or if that was the movie i don't care but it's  just like it's so cringe-worthy with respect to that component of the film

and i think as  a police procedural it doesn't really work either because it can't decide if it wants  to be an open or a closed story because on the one hand you have heston as the investigator  and you've got edward g robinson who's the one character i do like in the movie um trying to  figure this out but you also have some scenes at the beginning of the movie that show the reader  or viewer some things that heston doesn't know and so either we are watching heston learn or  we're omniscient

but it shouldn't be both and so i thought to myself as a procedural they  couldn't really decide what they wanted to do i definitely thought about it as  a procedural and not a good one um heston himself is not the person who  figures things out even at the end of the film he has to be told by um after  g robinson that what's going on um and even after he's kind of already been told  what's been going on um so he's not a good cop i mean you get the idea that the society that the  cops are you kn

ow it's a commentary definitely on the power of the police of you know they can go  into somebody's murder victims apartment and just ransack it as part of their pay um as they're  doing the the investigation um because they're not going to really try and solve most murders  is basically what you you know they said like they're 139 murders this week or today or however  many they said for the purposes of the film um and yeah i i i just i think your point of it being  like it goes back and forth

you know they show this guy being handed the crowbar the meat hook  as they call it and then going in and actually uh and i also thought it was weird  that they were using the term meat hook i was like what would your reference  be for a meat hook in a world with no beef like that's you know i guess it could be a  term that they use for a crowbar or whatever just kind of colloquially but it was  kind of a weird choice to me in a the same movie where they've never seen a stake  before you see the

dark conspiratorial figure provide the assassin with the murder weapon and  you see the murder take place and the murder is of an executive played by joseph cotton  yeah who doesn't get a lot of screen time for being joseph cotton you know and i  mean if you're gonna cast joseph cotton then why cast him as the guy who gets killed 10  minutes into the movie whose murder sets off the uh narrative and what have you um but okay um i i will i'll put in to say i think at this point  joseph cotton was

doing stuff strictly for cash um he is in a lot of very bad movies around this  time so he he's he's in his bruce willis phase at this point yeah i mean he's he's basically um very  very much like i've heard bruce wallace is doing so basically day work right now uh there's some  other stuff going on with him but joseph cotton i don't know if he was short on money wasn't  able to quite retire in the lifestyle he wanted to or what but i've seen him in stuff like  lady frankenstein and other thing

s like that that are just straight up b-movie trash um  and you're talking about one of the original you know movie stars of the of the 30s and 40s i  mean this guy was huge for for a long time there my guess is he just spent everything he made uh  because in his older age he was absolutely showing up for whatever they would slide a paycheck in  front of him to go do but he's fine but he you never know i mean i i thought oh well he must  have still been doing slightly better stuff than i thought

when i saw him show up in the movie and  then he got killed immediately and i was like oh this is this is what he was they were willing to  pay for i guess if you you star in citizen kane in 1941 then you end up in either  soylent green or transformers the movie the cartoon from 1986 in in the case  of orson welles so the curse of citizen kane i mean it's also edward g robinson's final  movie um i don't know where this falls in the career of chuck connors he's he's past  being the rifleman i wo

uld guess at this point um it also stars brock peters who'd been  uh tom robinson and to kill a mockingbird it has i mean he just tells you star trek right  yeah yeah he was he was the admiral right yep um a very young dick van patten of all people shows up  um and i think to pow who's it was is in this too the actress who played to powell but i never did  spot her celia lavsky was is the actress's name um but it it tells you something about the movie  industry in this period too you always hear

like the 70s were really rough there weren't a lot of  big you know studio movies so this would have been a i mean this is clearly an expensive movie even  though like they're mostly yeah i mean for for the 70s i mean this is a movie about the end of  the world a huge corporate conspiracy in which dead people are being turned into food and  half the movie takes place in apartments you know and you know that  i guess they rented some uh construction equipment to to do the scooping  which looks k

ind of ridiculous well that was interesting too because it looked like they'd  fitted garbage trucks with construction stuff yeah i think that um you know there is a  real i i i wondered about whether it was um whether it was uh you know really a big budget movie because it just  doesn't look like lots of money was spent well okay when i say big money i mean for 70s  because in the 70s no one had any money um so i i think i think at this point like this is  as good as someone can do it says here

the budget was 4 million which probably was actually quite a  good a chunk of change i mean it's not you know a 10 million dollar movie but it's not nothing but  i think it all went to getting charlton heston getting you know edward g robinson um getting  chuck connors getting brock peters you know um that seemed to me and they had to have a cast of  literally hundreds in a lot of shots it it did it did and they obviously you know who knows how they  put together the the final sequence where he

ston discovers the factory and and the like um i mean  i i meant to go back and look and see what the reaction was then um to this i mean i think it has  i think more people know the premise of the movie because of the famous premise than they  have actually seen the movie oh yeah by far um and i don't know that the movie is particularly  enjoyable or that holds up particularly well here in 2022 the year in which it is set um you  know i think structurally it has some issues as we talked about b

efore and i mean heston's just  i don't know your protagonist always has to be super sympathetic but you know here we've got this  guy who is a corrupt cop who takes advantage of regular people violently and who doesn't even  figure out the central premise of the movie and so it seems like you know he should  have more to do or to say or to figure out um but uh you know the the heart of the movie as  as other people have written is uh is robinson this sort of older guy who remembers the world  a

s the way it is and has a career as someone who looks at books uh i guess there's no  internet in uh soylent green uh due to the they're powering things by riding a bicycle so i'm  betting yes yes um you know and it makes you like why is everybody in the city why haven't people  spread out uh they've sort of hinted this and say that there's no point to go into the country  but they don't really have time to explain that i mean if this movie were made today i think and you  know i am not suggesti

ng that we need to remake or reboot soylent green but a movie like this being  made today would have people outside much more it would be a lot more epic in scope you'd see the  eiffel tower you know you'd see um you know famous buildings and landmarks and and you know lots of  cgi dead oceans i guess but um not in 1973 i guess yeah i mean the there's a lot going on  there i mean i i almost wondered if um at one point in the film  because of all of that if they if it weren't a conspiracy like to

keep  the people in the cities the things in the that there wasn't going to be some part of the  story of actually the country is countryside is fine but we just tell people it's not worth going  out there and of course i didn't pursue that it's not actually part of the movie i'm not going  to fan theory this um oh i'm gonna fan theory i i'm gonna fan theory and here's my here's my  maybe this isn't fan theory i don't know what all the terms are these days but here's the big  question what is i

t that the soylent corporation is is doing that's so bad you know to play  devil's advocate you know i mean certainly there's a failure to disclose the nature of a food  product but i suspect in this world the fda is not you know on on the ball but you know is is  the soylent green or the soil incorporation i mean they're feeding people  in a society that has no food you know and sure there's great economic  inequality in this world and and there's some food but you get you get the impression th

at uh  this is a very sinister arrangement and of course you know eating dead people is is  gross and and of great concern but i mean i think that you know the soil corporation could  probably make a case and say hey look it's either this or we don't have any food for everybody  you know so so what's what's the reason why uh what's the alternative to this in in this  world as we are shown it it i i think that that is a completely unexplored question of  the film it's taking for granted the horro

r of cannibalism as one should um but at the same  time it's also painted humanity into a corner and and so i think that's part of the horror  of why joseph cotton's character they describe uh cheryl states that you know he he'd just been  staring into space for months you know he was in a bad way um and i think that was kind of where he  was at um that humanity's game was basically up at this point if i was to read into it a  bunch of stuff that the movie did not say because it's also easy to s

ay oh  it's just a horror of realizing that that you know soylent is feeding people to people  but there's also as you said you know there's this question of what what other choice is there i  mean if he stays silent the worst that happens is that people continue to exist people are gonna  die they're they're they're reusing them um and it's you know kind of the same way you  don't really judge people who are in those plane crashes in the andes who have to eat each  other you just don't talk abo

ut it um at least they know though yeah yeah the the citizenry of  soil and green are unaware of what's happening although they are in a situation where if they  were fully informed they might continue to eat the soil in green just because there's there's no  alternative um yeah you know you don't really get an idea though because joseph cotton's character  as this soylent executive who i guess has developed a conscience and and maybe wanting to  tell people what is actually happening leading to

his demise i mean he manages to get beef and other  food products and so where's that coming from and then what is it um about the economy that  is uh is leading this situation i think the movie doesn't have time to explain those those  nuances but i think that there would be a way to make the soil corporation much more  sinister um because you know if they were capturing and killing living people to do  this it's a slightly different movie but here that they're taking people who who  die of na

tural causes or i guess who in the case of of uh robinson choose some type  of assisted suicide and and using those uh bodies yeah i mean i'll be honest that was part of was when i was watching and we this whole  podcast by the way turned into us totally like supporting cannibalism which  i am 1 000 in support of um but the uh yeah i mean it robinson has chosen to go into  this i thought this is going to be about a capture and kill thing of like oh they're clearing  neighborhoods and turning tho

se people into food and but you know there was going to be  some conspiracy of like them saying oh we've put them we've moved them to nebraska to a  neighborhood or something and it turns out nope they're actually feeding them back to you  um and that's not what's happening um so yeah it just seems like there was a way you  know one of the things i i heard recently is like why why are marvel movies like two and  a half hours and why is the like denu mall so long in these movies and they said bas

ically  the audiences are pretty smart and they have the internet and if we don't explain every single plot  thread now people jump online and start teasing apart the movie in a way that we could never have  anticipated so we have to basically sit around and think about every single plot thread and how do  we actually resolve everything that we've shown um and this movie in no way it's it's you know 30  years before all that 40 years before all that so it just leaves all of these things that are

  just open like i was like why wouldn't robinson go and see watch this omni max movie i mean aside from being buddies with heston he  doesn't he lives in a like inefficiency with this guy he doesn't have anything else going  on like he feels the world's left and behind this kind of makes sense this world is horrible  but they're giving them at least a path out that doesn't seem totally awful and they treat  it as if it's this horror show and i'm like i don't really get how this is that bad this

  seems kind of nice honestly as an alternative and he gets to revisit these images in the  assisted suicide chamber of what the world used to look like which seems to surprise  charlton heston who shows up at the last minute endeavor to save him um it really makes  you wonder why all these people who exist in 2022 appear not to have a concept of what the world was  like before i mean because where are all the books where are all the movies where are all the uh  photographs and the like and so i

t i i think that it's not really a movie where you can tell that  they develop this huge backstory i think they just i mean maybe they just work backwards from the  notion all right we want the reveal to be this yeah and uh we're gonna have all these  other set pieces that may or may not make sense i mean thank goodness this  wasn't released when the internet existed so that everybody would pick it apart  yeah um and and such um but uh you know the funny thing is is that you know heston was maki

ng  movies like this and omega man is so much better than this on on every level you can consider this  to be the soil and era of film oh my goodness did you have that one ready to go i i was  given that one to drop into the podcast okay all right there you go there you go but  uh you know i mean it is interesting as sort of an artifact i think and i probably would  not have watched it again but for the 2022 connection um but i mean you have all these actors  in it who were great and many other

things you know heston is such an interesting figure because  of you know the very famous movies that he was in and then of course when we were in high school in  college you know he was in wayne's world and and as you knew i would say he did the opening uh  narration for armageddon in 1998 and wasn't he in tombstone so he was doing those those  cameos in big film then and then of course he took another path outside of hollywood uh that  we can save for a discussion for a different day but uh yo

u know i think that with him and some  of these other actors that you've mentioned particularly robinson i mean it's just interesting  uh to watch these folks um you know in this era but it's just not a particularly great movie and i spent more time sort of puzzling over  how the world worked than following the the plot yeah um and it it has some other commonalities  to some of the other films that heston was doing in this era and i think it was i don't know  if it's intentional or just what was

then kind of the the social norms of the zeitgeist  of the time but um i mean heston is hesitant as heston in these movies whether it's a mega man  or planet of the apes or this um but the the let's pair him who is clearly a guy who is hitting  near grandfatherly age um at this point i mean heston looks like a grandfather here and he's  not yet 50. um he's so good he was born in 1923 okay which means he turned 50 in october  of 73 which meant he was 49 when it was released i mean he is in part

of it is he just  has the california skin at this point he is so tan and his teeth are so white and he and and he also  is acts as if in an older acting style you know which is perfect for the ten commandments it's  still kind of working uh you know through the 50s and then you kind of get him into this era  and i i love heston in this era by the way like i love omega man i love planet of the apes  and um beneath the planet of the apes but he it's he's he's acting at things and i've read  differ

ent things and seen different things in documentaries about stuff heston was in where  they were like don't tell him what the actual movie is about he always would come in thinking  well this is an actioner or this is a police thing and any like what is the movie  saying as like a social commentary was just flying right past him and like  just don't tell him he doesn't need to know because the character that he's portraying doesn't  need to know that this is commentary um and he's just so kind o

f crazy  and over the top in this movie um but he's being met you know because robinson's  being robinson who's you know really really good actor he's doing this kind of subtle nuance  performance and that's just not what you're gonna get out of him i think like him versus chuck  connors is a really good uh comparison and he he definitely comes in at brock peters as the the  loose cannon you know cop talking to the you know um the desk sergeant who's telling him you know  you're you're out of co

ntrol mcclanahan um but yeah it but the then pairing him with a girl who's  like 21 years old at this point and that happens in planet of the apes it happens in omega man and  it happens again here what happens in every movie you know with an aging action star i mean that  that's a hollywood staple um a problem that has been discussed i mean heck it happens in every  sitcom now with every schlubby 45 year old guy uh married to some uh buddy way out of his league  um you know and and here i mean

the the politics of the furniture arrangements is very disturbing  and his character's contentment and abuse of uh you know the actress is uh is is very troubling  and and obviously that that is in part because we're looking at it with modern eyes but even then  i mean essentially what the movie says is that young women are slaves to uh wealthy uh corporate  uh you know uh individuals who have managed to uh get great apartments in this apocalyptic world  and there's really no questioning of that

system at all yeah it's very handmaid's tale um i i've  only read the book i've not watched the show but um there's you know the difference  in handmaid's tale is the handmaid the the there's a suggestion to me that all  of the men moving into these apartments are by design single and in handmaid's tale they might  not be single they might just have their hand made well there's no explanation so so so that actress  names lee taylor young and she plays cheryl um and and she has friends she's fri

ends with other  young women who are trapped in this system but there's no explanation as to why this system has  evolved from this apocalyptic event and the movie is not about her or her uh you know horrible  dilemma it just is sort of window dressing to describe this modern terrible world and you know i  think in other movies you would have a protagonist struggle with that um but heston's just totally  on board with it and as a corrupt cop he sees uh you know his ability to you know steal from

people  uh of all economic stripes and to take advantage of young women who are trapped in the system  as his right as a corrupt police officer and so the movie doesn't really explore that i mean  charleston heston's character uh thorne is a terrible person in every respect and so um do  you feel bad when he discovers how terrible uh everyone's diet is as a result of swelling  green do you feel bad that he's chased down and spoiler alert uh shot and dies in the church um i  don't know i mean yo

u know what what what does he do that is heroic or good in the movie other than  just find something out man i didn't really notice no i mean i think you know when we finished it  jamie and i were talking about like well it shows a lot of these kind of sci-fi ideas or societal  ideas and but then doesn't really do anything with them um there's there's no like oh we've got  to fight the robots that have set up the system or you know there's no there's no legit path out it's  just a discovery of t

hat song like green is people it's entirely comfortable with the uh terribleness  of the world except for one food choice yeah yeah that's and and i i i i get you  know how someone sitting floating in the tub thinking of their story would be like okay so  you know it would be a path out for young women to go be a concubine somewhere you know that's  always been true historically and um i can see how they would have kind of come to that conclusion  what's weird is at the end i mean just from a fi

lm standpoint um him saying to cheryl well  stay with this guy who the movie was out of its way to set up how distressed she is that she's  gonna have a new you know master or whatever and i mean that that's her entire arc is like oh i  have a chance with you and it doesn't do anything for him other than to say he at the end goes  no stay with that guy it's the safe thing to do you know i'm he doesn't explain that he's doomed  or what's going to happen to him to her at all so he he's he really c

onsiders her by the time  it's done he might have been on the verge of beginning to consider her to be something  else as a person but he still isn't there um i mean i don't know if he thinks that  this is going to be a great thing for her there's nowhere to go at the end of  the movie which is a really weird i guess when i struggle with it because i think  stories are supposed to not necessarily have a you know moral lesson and therefore blah blah blah but  if you're just telling a story about

how someone painted themselves into a corner but all you tell  is the story like yep and there they were in the corner or not well then how did they actually  leave the room did they walk across the paint did they you know crawl out a window like that's  the part of the story i want to hear not that they get basically to the setup and then the movie's  over and i i had this there's no consequence to the bad actors in the movie really i mean some  of the the thugs that are employed by the soylent

green corporation meet their end but those are all  relatively anonymous folks you don't see anyone from the government which is complicit you don't  see anybody from the corporation be taken down you don't even see the world discover what the  secret is i mean really the only people who find out are a handful of his colleagues at the  end of the movie and whoever is within earshot in the church and so you know other movies  modern movies would would have the scene in the background where the t

elevision or the radio is  saying you know and today you know the president of the swollen green corporation was indicted for  blah blah blah but they don't they don't bother to assign those consequences maybe i'll go track  down the book out of academic curiosity and see what happened in all my free time um perhaps i'll  do that i i didn't think about like planet of the apes ended up spawning like a television series  like you can just see someone sitting around after this movie made some money

going well  we've got some backlots that are new york like how hard is it to put someone in like sweaty dirty  clothes and say okay they're not charlton heston's character but it's another cop and they're  constantly in battle with the soylent corporation like how how close do you think we came to that tv  series almost happening i wouldn't be shocked if and that's one of the other things it's  supposedly like oh overpopulation is the problem in this but there there's a almost no score the  mov

ie's silent he's constantly walking around empty streets you know empty factories large  open buildings and except when he goes into his apartment building and i think they say well  there's a curfew at night and i'm like really that's really what they're going to do when  there's a massive overpopulation problem um well and massive overpopulation was an issue  of that day i mean yeah some uh books that were published i think zero population growth  was one of them i mean that was sort of the th

e big social issue uh that there was great  debate about then um maybe not great debate but that was that was an issue then and so  maybe this was this this picked up from that fear and said this is the world of overpopulation  we're going to have to uh engage in these types of things but i mean i think i think if you're  going to have an open story then have somebody that works at soylent you know or or whatever  else i mean you know i i'm trying to think about how modern filmmakers would make

this movie  and and maybe rather than having heston be a cop the protagonist is somebody who works for  soylent and and stumbles across it that would actually make way more sense well and we've  seen that movie a million times before where somebody you know discovers that but at least  at least that would make a little bit more sense and and then you know maybe that person  you know is is uh the protagonist and what have what have you but you know i think  i think there's an interesting movie he

re it just seems like you would need to restructure  but where were the rewrites you know so yeah well it's kind of crazy because richard fletcher is the  director um son of famed um animator max flesher uh and but richard richard fletcher has done  movies i quite like um he's the director of twenty thousand leagues under the sea which is hands down  like a a one of my canon films of my childhood um but then he's you know flash four  that's 54 by 85 he's doing red sonia and he also did conan the

destroyer right right um and  he did amityville 3d he did the jazz singer in 83 mr majestic i mean he's got all these oh  he did fantastic voyage which is another you know foundational movie for me as a kid um the narrow margin absolutely one of my favorite  noir um so he has this crazy filmography and i i i'm thinking maybe soylent green was just so out  of his wheelhouse or something or he just was like okay we're making a dystopian movie it just has to  be bad i just need to make everybody u

ncomfortable and that means putting heston into a  football helmet uh with a little visor and and he's going to have a shootout  in the crowd which was actually kind of a brilliant little scene of all the  scenes in the movie to actually show what is overpopulation look like um the kind of  crush for the soil on so on the green tuesday um that was to me that was like one of the few  things that held up to the promise of what they were saying it had the scoops um it had way too  many people it ha

d people kind of scrambling for food everything else in it never really seemed  i'm not sure why the scoops are supposed to be terrifying i mean the scoops are essentially  uh construction equipment that just lifts up people assembled on the street um it looks  kind of silly with with modern eyes you know and i mean really all you got to do is get out  of the way and uh you could even just jump up yeah you could stand on the scoop and not be like  knocked over into the scoop and you'd be you cou

ld run up the front of the scoop truck there was very  little effort i think to make the scoops a bit on the poster man they look terrifying um but yeah i  i i feel like i need to find something nice to say about the movie um because i mean here here we are  you know 50 years after this movie was released and and you know that the people who made this  movie some of them probably wondered what the world was going to be like in 2022 and if we  would be talking about or remembering their movie in

the year that it was set and so um i don't  know how they they couldn't have thought that and and you know i think you know the reviews i've  read and i mentioned this a moment ago you know robinson is the heart of the movie and i think i  really did like his sort of melancholy character i almost wish that heston's character and  robinson's character were kind of the same character you know they had merged them together i  see what you're saying to make a more interesting you know in-depth perso

n you know um you know you  got you've got the cop who remembers the world the way it was before and who doesn't like these these  new rules you know or even heck i mean i i think a modern retelling of this movie would have the  protagonist be someone who was trapped in this system of furniture trying to get out of that and  then discovering this horrible corporate secret but uh i mean it is you know i  mean it is funny to me that a movie that is at best average from 50 years ago we all  still k

now the reference you know we here we are talking about it you know and and people have  been talking about it for two weeks on twitter and it's in in it's because everybody knows the  tag line i guess it's not the tagline but the the revelation at the end so i went green as  people and uh you know is the legacy of the movie just that we remember the punchline um you know  are all of the young people on twitter that are debating uh the snyder verse do they even know  about this movie do they rem

ember this movie um i don't know but uh it is sort of  interesting to me that it does have its place in cinematic history um being remembered for  essentially one line yeah i mean i i think probably for people our age and older the the  idea of like the overpopulation i remember the concerns over that of them running the numbers and  there's no way we'll keep up with food production um with you know energy production and all  the rest of it that you know people seem to keep finding ways to to do

so um because it's all  out of your hands right if you live in the city you have no idea where your power is coming from  you have no idea where your food's coming from it just shows up or it doesn't and we haven't  seen until really covid a period where we didn't you know and then the freeze you weren't  here for the freeze in texas last winter but where you suddenly don't have power  and you have no control over that um so i i think some of those things were really reflect  or were reflective

of of our concerns then i do think generationally and you know this used to  run on cable and whatnot i remember that but it um i don't think people who are younger  than us are going to have the reference or even understand the concerns about  overpopulation in the same way i don't think it's been part of their conversation  but i think the parts of like well the seas are polluted the sea you know the seas can't you  know are too warm and can't handle it or whatever that's all still in the zei

tgeist um especially  with the pacific trash patch um so i i think parts of it still reflect and then you have a  company out there that has the brass cajones to call itself soylent uh that is a food  new nutrition supplement company out there that's only been founded in the last few years  and that was where i was like the people do the people who founded this company i'm sure they  googled the word soylent and up would have come this movie immediately and they just made a  decision saying that

's a 50 year old movie our audience doesn't know what  it is which leads me to believe people until maybe 2022 hit and and people  our age started talking about soylent green the people who are in their 20s and 30s would have  had never heard of this let alone charlton heston there's no reason they would know who charlton  heston is i guess this is the movie you watch in 2022 because it's said in 2022 it's like  logan's run is the movie you watch when you turn 30 right and and there you go and 

so maybe after 2022 we don't have to talk about swollen green anymore it can just  sink into the pop culture either along with lots of other movies and uh you know i i feel like  after watching it and i did i ordered the blu-ray so um it was not costly and uh you you know i  ordered the blu-ray i watched it again in 2022 i feel like i do not need to uh watch it again and  after this uh podcast episode i feel like i can say that i have fully explored soylent green and  and need not uh never never

never have it pass through your brain cells again that's right  you know what other movie took place in 2022 no what's that ray liot is no escape oh my god  well there you go there's your next episode i which i only have seen once at uh hog no  memorial union at ut and the reels were out of order because it was they they were doing a  they used to do these things where they would bring a movie in and you could see it for free  because they're trying to build word of mouth and i thought this mov

ie is  very short as it was ending and then suddenly i realized they must  have swapped the third and fourth reel and suddenly a character who is dead popped up  on the screen again and everybody cheered so um i'd like to see no escape in order at some point  that would be nice uh that movie is from 1994. yep i saw it that's internet research  is correct so almost 30 years ago yep um that is uh i don't know i mean that that's  that's sort of less interesting to me because oh it's it's way longer

time but uh i don't know  i i need to find out if it's streaming anywhere and it doesn't look like uh as i peruse uh the  results from just watch it does not appear to be listed so it's not a great film uh i've heard  people try and defend it and and maybe if we can find it we can we can you you will own it within  a week of today because there's no question about that and i do appreciate your dedication to  physical media that's right i mean i that's that's a conversation for uh another day a

much  longer conversation but i i will tell you that i love streaming i love the convenience of it  but you know every once and again you you you you want to see something elusive and then it  bugs me when i can't find it you know or you can find if it's you know 125 for the dvd on on some  reseller on amazon and you're like oh my goodness but no escape is 21.99 on amazon so that  is that is approximately 15.99 too much um well jim thank you so much for doing this  with me this was a total kick

i'm really glad i finally saw something green um well you know  i i sometimes just enjoy disassembling a movie i don't think is particularly great this is  definitely one of those um but it i you know it's it takes off a a long-standing box for me  and always glad to watch a heston movie and to see edward g robinson's you know final performance  here which of course ironically ends with him like dying on screen in front of a beautiful  vista so and i think he he passed right before the movie was

released didn't he oh my god he seems  like he's in fine shape that's the weird part yeah you know i'll i'll i'll  end with this i i will confess and this is a a terrible thing to say i  had not seen key largo until the pandemic and that's not it is weird i mean i watched it i  i felt like why hadn't i seen this 20 years ago because it was so good yeah i really dug it um and  so i've been seeking out stuff he's been in and so that eased the task a little bit of of  revisiting this just because

he's he's so he's so good and and almost everything yeah um and if  we can do nothing else we can plug key largo on our way out because everyone got it um but all  right thank you so much jim uh all right yeah we'll be back later and we'll do something  else there's no escape from our podcasting that about wraps it up for this edition of  the signal watch a production of the league of melbournes thanks for sticking with us if  you enjoyed the podcast we invite you to drop on by the signal watch

blog where you'll find  write-ups of a wide variety of movies and more we'd love to hear from you so find us online  and let us know what you think whether you prefer email blog comments or social media we'll  be happy to hear from you we'll be back soon with more exceedingly high quality content so until  next time god damn it babies you've got to be kind you