This week on the podcast, Jake and Pete head into the cold, lonely reaches of space to check out Douglas Trumbull’s 1972 sci-fi picture, Silent Running.
Bruce Dern plays Freeman Lowell, a botanist aboard the Valley Forge, where the last remaining forests from Earth are being kept alive inside massive biodomes. When orders come down to blow the forests into oblivion and head back home, Lowell decides the trees are worth saving—even if it means going completely off the deep end.
The boys talk about Trumbull’s impressive effects, a surprisingly screenless vision of the future, three lovable little robots named Huey, Dewey and Louie, and the incredible performers who actually operated them from inside the suits. Meanwhile, Pete tries to find the deeper meaning behind the picture while Jake wonders why Bruce Dern is dressed like Space Jesus and admits that, yes, he may have fallen asleep.
Is Silent Running a thoughtful environmental sci-fi classic, or is it just 90 minutes of a lunatic murdering his coworkers over some trees?
Join Jake and Pete as they find out.
