Moses

and Voice of the NRA. What more can you say.

Steve: how could you not mention "Soylent Green"?

That movie is alive, I tell ya, and stalking the landscapes of memory.

First time, I saw only the bit at the end of Soylent Green at a stopover in Banff. The part where the plain cop hero (Heston, of course) begins to understand why the population of New York City (having reached 40 million) has to be confined to the city limits. There's nothing left out there.

The ancient professor -- he who keeps the secrets of the world as it once was -- lives with him. But when the old professor learns that the city's foodstuff (Soylent Green) is made from the bodies of those who die -- he can't take it anymore. He marches off to the place where people can apply for assisted suicide and they are allowed to watch a film (with beautiful music) of the world as it once was.

Heston, the good cop, finds him but it's too late to save his old friend. All he can do is watch, with the professor, the scenes of babbling brooks, of deer browsing in verdant forests, fields of tulips. "See?" croaks the dying professor, "didn't I tell you?"

And Heston, mesmerized, mutters "Yeah, you told me. But how could I have known?"

So with his dying breath, the prof says "Soylent Green ... tell the people ... it's being made from dead people. Tell them!" Then he dies and his guerny rattles off down the conveyor belt to become ... Soylent Green ... which will be distributed on Thursdays during the food riots.

At which point, Heston the Good Cop goes nuts ... verifies the story ... gets shot at by the factory-owners' goons ... and the closing shot is of Heston's bloody fist raised as he himself croaks Tell the people!

I've seen "Soylent Green" many times since then, getting more from it each time. The last time hit me even harder, because the current food riots had begun ... because biofuel is more profitable than food. There was bureaucratic corruption, elitism, homelessness ... Soylent Green is an extrapolation of the danger signs of today.

So far as I'm concerned, that's the ONLY movie Charleton Heston made.

BC Mary....

... the awful truth is I've just never seen it. I know it only by reputation as a cult fave and pop culture milestone. And for those of us who haven't seen it, the endless repetition of that famous catchphrase over the years has been a bit of a spoiler.

"It's people!"

I agree about Soylent Green. It's a classic, but it also reinforces Chuck's camp reputation. I can't help thinking of Phil Hartman in SNL doing a brilliant parody of a desperate Heston running around shouting "It's made of people! It's people!" At least as campy as "Get your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!"

As laughable as today's food riots & water shortages

Cripes, you might even call Soylent Green redundant, like every futuristic novel or film ever.

Mad Max? Same story, much narrower theme.

I'm open to a better recommendation, though, if you know of one. But first, please try to see it Steve. Don't be afraid. Look at the world we're heading into ...

See it, and marvel at the challenge to an actor, of that scene where the piece of beef, a tomato, a stick of celery are eaten with the ceremony and relish of someone who hadn't seen such things before. And Heston, damn his gun-lovin' hide, achieved that.

Imagine the challenge of resisting the offer of a hot shower ("Let the water run as long as you like") when people hadn't even enough water to drink.

Remember the ordinariness of Heston's comings and goings from his apartment, stepping over the sleeping bodies of the homeless and starving.

Note the familiar conversations as city bureaucrats try to buy off the chief of police. Note how well the murdered CEO had lived -- as long as he kept the corporate secret.

It's a film which couldn't have been even remotely credible in the hands of unskilled actors. Or if the predictions were without bases. Could have been laughable, in fact.

But Soylent Green isn't laughable. Today's newspapers describe the food riots spreading across the planet. The crises in drinking water.

I can imagine that some boneheads couldn't cope, finding it best to parody the film ... although I had never thought of anyone doing that, until you mentioned it. Do you suppose they're what drove Heston into protective ultra-conservatism? Guess they thought he was a Commie or something?

So you were impressed by the parodies but neglected to see the movie yourself. Please see the film Steve. And ME2.

camp

Mary,

You're right that the topic of the movie is dead serious, and quite prescient. This is not camp in the same way as, say, The Love Boat or Hee Haw are camp. As Susan Sontag would say, these shows are "good because they're awful." But I think that description can apply to Heston's completely campy acting, in Soylent Green or just about any other movie of his. Dustin Hoffman he's not. Too bad that a movie with such a prescient theme was so campy.

Soylent Green is people!

Yup gotta agree Soylent Green is a great film..and when was it made?
Terry Gilliams "Brasil" is a great take on the future then but more and more like now now."

Saw a great little spoof on Soylent Green a few years ago...Actual old black and white footage of Leon Trotsky speaking from the back of a train to a huge mass of people just pre Rev days...he was very animated when he gave a speech..they had overdubbed the vocals and had him shouting "Soylent Green is people! Soylent Green is people!..which I guess is kind of what he was actually trying to say.

It really is, isn't it? About people, I mean.

I don't mean to sound defensive about Soylent Green and Charlton Heston's near-perfect interpretation of his role in it.

But it sorta frightens me, at this moment in history, if sensible people begin to scoff at the message of Soylent Green.

At lunch, I read a story telling the same story and it ain't risible. Here are some excerpts from The coming hunger by Lynda Hurst. Toronto Star (April 12, 2008):

The warning bells are ringing, furiously.

This week, food riots paralyzed Haiti, with angry marchers outside the president's palace shouting "We are hungry!" Five people were killed in the chaos.

In Egypt, a 15-year-old boy was shot and killed this week in two days of violence over food shortages ...

Rice is the staple food of 4 billion people. But the prices for it, along with corn, wheat and other basics, has surged by 40 per cent to 80 per cent in the last three years and caused panicked uprisings in some of the poorest countries on Earth, from Cameroon to Bolivia.

The situation has deteriorated so swiftly that some experts predict the effects of a global food crisis are going to bite more quickly than climate change.

According to the World Bank, 33 countries are now vulnerable to social unrest and political instability because of food insecurity – and that has implications for all the rest ...

The United Nations already provides food for 73 million people in 78 countries worldwide. But the planet is getting hungrier. At least 4 million more people are being added to the list, most of them living in high-density, Third World cities.

The new face of hunger – and thirst – is overwhelmingly urban.

[continued ...]

Soylent Green premiered 1973, plot set in Year 2022.

Internet Movie Data Base gives the year in which Soylent Green premiered: 1973.

The plot is set in the year 2022 -- only 14 years away.

The hero's name is Detective Robert Thorn, who old Professor Sol Roth calls "Thorn!" and it sounds about right.

And here's a review:

A classic even after 30 years, 15 August 2003

Author: Loadmaster from Dallas, TX

This was Eddie Robinson's 101st film and his last, and he died of cancer nine days after shooting was complete. All of which makes his key scene in the movie all the more poignant.

Although some of the hair and clothing styles are a bit dated (also note the video game shown in the film), but the subject of the film is pretty much timeless. Heston said he had wanted to make the film for some time because he really believed in the dangers of overpopulation.

Several things make this film a classic. The story is solid.

The acting is top-notch, especially the interplay between Heston and Robinson, with nice performances also by Cotten and Peters.

The music is absolutely perfect. The medley of Beethoven, Grieg, and Tchaikovsky combined with the pastoral visual elements [the 20-minute video which people could choose to see, at the moment of their assisted suicide, of the beauties of the world as it once was. - Mary.] make for some truly moving scenes. This was the icing on the cake for the film.

And the theme (or the "point") of the film is a significant one. Yes, it's a film about overpopulation, but on a more important note it's a cautionary tale about what can go wrong with Man's stewardship of Earth. It's in the subtext that you find the real message of the film.

Pay attention to what Sol says about the "old days" of the past (which is our present), and note how Thorn is incapable of comprehending what Sol is saying.

This film is one of my top sci-fi films of all time.