TURBO
2013, Twentieth Century Fox

My 7-year old son is thrilled with the trailers of Turbo (2013), set for release in July. It’s a racing movie about an underdog snail, nicknamed Turbo, who has unlikely dreams of being fast.  Though the trailers only reveal some snippets, one of the dramatic scenes shows the snail getting sucked into the air intake of a souped-up street car that has been modified with nitrous oxide boosters for illegal drag races.

While within the car’s engine, a montage shows clichéd icons for radioactivity to imply that some sort of atomic energy exposure mutates Turbo’s DNA to become part snail and part racecar.  This kind of atomic-energy-induced mutation is reminiscent of Dr. Bruce Banner’s transition to a superhero (the Incredible Hulk, 2008) and Dr. Otto Octavius’ nuclear fusion reactor accident transforming him into a villain with metallic arms fused to his back (Spiderman 2, 2004).  It also relates to Back to the Future (1985) where a nuclear fuel—plutonium—transforms a car into a time machine.

Later in the trailer, when Turbo the snail shows off all sorts of unexpected, atomically-charged abilities, one of his comrades (voiced by Snoop Dogg) asks suspiciously “Are you radioactive, homey?”

It’s as if all of these movies are telling us that nuclear energy can give us superhuman benefits.

I can’t wait to see the movie in 3D.

As my alma mater and professional home, seeing the The University of Texas in movies makes me proud, but are the repeated references in oil and gas movies fitting?

UT, founded with a land grant, owns millions of acres of land that happen to be rich in oil and gas. That means UT has been able to gain practical production experience without having to go beyond its own property. This mineral abundance has also translated into financial wealth (UT’s endowment is the third-largest in the nation, trailing only Harvard and Yale), enabling it to become a leading research institution, especially on energy.

In fact, ever since UT first struck oil in 1923, it has established an excellent international reputation in related fields of engineering (petroleum, chemical, mechanical, civil) and sciences (chemistry, geological).  This expertise, and its connections as the flagship university in an oil and gas state, have translated into UT serving as a pipeline of talent to the energy industry.  I remember hearing once from a friend at ExxonMobil that they hire more new employees from UT than from any other university or institution (by the way, I’ve never fact-checked that claim).  And, it’s not just new hires that are from UT. It’s the executives, too. Rex Tillerson (CEO of ExxonMobil), Marvin Odum (President of Shell), and Jim Mulva (former CEO of ConocoPhillips) are all UT alumni.

So it seems the movies got this element correct!

Hook ‘em Horns.

GIANT
1956, Warner Bros. Pictures

One of the recurring stereotypes in energy movies is that of the Texas Oilman. There are far too many Texas Oilman characters in movies and TV to list, but here’s a start:

• - Cary Grant, Boomtown (1940)
• - James Dean, Giant (1956)
• - Rock Hudson, Written on the Wind (1956)
• - James Garner, The Wheeler Dealers (1963)
• - John Wayne, Hellfighters (1968)
• - Burt Lancaster, Local Hero (1983)
• - Chris Cooper, Syriana (2005)
• - Frances McDormand and Matt Damon, Promised Land (2012)

A few things jump out at me from this list. Early on, the list of Texas oilman characters (at least through the early 1960s) included the biggest and most dashing young stars of the day (Dean, Hudson, Grant, Garner). From the late 1960s through the 1980s, the Texas oilmen were still played by some of the most famous stars (Wayne, Lancaster), but they were no longer young and dashing. That shift represents the aging of the oil industry; the young wildcatters of the 1930s through 1950s had become aged executives in the 1970s and 1980s. More recently, the oilmen have been portrayed by character actors (Cooper), an indication that the oilman while still relevant is no longer center stage, or female actors (McDormand), an indication of how the industry has evolved with the times.

GATTACA
1997, Columbia Pictures

Gattaca (1997), starring Uma Thurman, Jude Law, and Ethan Hawke, is a futuristic film set in the ‘not so distant future’ where your genetic profile determines the opportunities available to you for the rest of your life.  Invalids (pronounced like an invalid username or password rather than the outmoded term for someone who is sickly), those with less than perfect genetic potential, are doomed to menial labor and a life without opportunities for advancement.  It’s a thought provoking film.

Energy comes into play in the form of rocket launches (the territory of the genetically superior), plug-in automobiles, and a large solar farm.  As the Energy at the Movies TV Special highlights, renewable energy, particularly solar, is often used by Hollywood as a time-stamping device to indicate the future.  A striking scene midway through the film shows Thurman and Hawke’s characters strolling among rows of solar troughs at sunrise. Interestingly enough, those solar troughs are real, but were built in the 1980s. Electric vehicles make a less pronounced, but interesting cameo in that the art director chose decidedly retro-style vehicles for the cars of the future.  I wonder what the underlying intention was behind this marriage of old and new.

Roger Ebert
Image Courtesy rogerebert.com

We wish to honor Roger Ebert, who died today after a recurrence of cancer, for his important impact on movies for the last 4+ decades. He was a movie fan, an important cultural critic who appreciated the societal value of the cinematic art form, and an intellectual.

We aspire to do as much for movies as he did, but recognize we are unlikely to get a fraction of the way there.  From the Energy at the Movies team, we offer our sincerest condolences to his family and loved ones.

Sadly,

Michael, Marianne, Griffin and Juan

LOUISIANA STORY
1948, Lopert Films

One more comment on Louisiana Story… as I’ve noted before, images of women either washing clothes by hand without piped water and/or carrying buckets of water appear to be the international symbols for poverty.

The movie Louisiana Story (1948), which captures some of the transition from poverty to wealth when oil production comes to the bayou, has some of these images.  In the 16^th minute there are two scenes of poor females washing clothes by hand. The foreshadowing is that such poverty would be changed forever after oil production begins.

THUNDER BAY
1953, Universal Pictures

Following up the last post, I think it’s interesting that Louisiana Story (1948) and Thunder Bay (1953) are both about shallow water oil production in 1946 Louisiana.   Louisiana Story was made in 1946 but released two years later, whereas Thunder Bay was made a half-decade or so later starring Jimmy Stewart.

Both have similar themes, such as a clash of cultures between oilmen and fisherman, both have a blowout, and both involve wildcatters.  They are an interesting side-by-side comparison, which reminds me of Giant (1956) and Written on the Wind (1956) (another pair of movies worth comparing). They are both about oil production in Texas and were both released in 1956 starring Rock Hudson.  We’ll post about all of these films in coming weeks.

LOUISIANA STORY
1948, Lopert Films

The Louisiana bayou setting in Beasts of the Southern Wild reminds me of a 1948 film, Louisiana Story.  This movie is fascinating for a few reasons.  And, despite its quirks, I really like it.

The black-and-white movie is almost entirely visual: there is remarkably little dialog and the images are poetic. Most of the film is comprised of a camera following around a Cajun boy in a “day-in-the-life” format, capturing his carefree and natural companionship with the local bayou.  It’s coupled with a really nice score in the background.  Virgil Thomson, the composer, won the Pulitzer Prize for the score in 1949 (performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra under acclaimed conductor Eugene Ormandy).

The story is simple: a boy’s simple bayou life is changed forever—good and bad—when his father signs a lease to Humble Oil to wildcat.

The movie has a pseudo-documentary feel to it for a few reasons.  First, the actors portraying the locals (the boy, his mother and his father) have Cajun names and convincing Cajun accents and speak in heavily accented, authentic-sounding Cajun French (with a guttural tone that reminds me of the Vaudois French I learned in Switzerland in the early 1980s).  Second, the film was made in cooperation with Humble Oil at an actual drilling site in a bayou (A reviewer at IMDB indicates that Standard Oil—which later consolidated with Humble Oil—commissioned the film).  So there were shots on the drilling platform that are almost educational about the drilling process.

Overall, the movie seemed pretty even-handed.  It captured some of the real negatives about oil production: the noise, the land disturbance, the water pollution (there are several shots of the water in the bayou littered once the drilling rig shows up), the speedboats whizzing by literally causing waves that rock the boats (canoes) of the locals.  It also captures some of the positives: the enchantment of progress, the high-tech gadgets, and money from oil production. In some ways it feels more even-handed, despite being commissioned by Standard Oil, than a documentary would.

If you want to get a feel for late 1940s oil production in shallow water, then I recommend you check it out.  I might blog a few more times about this movie, as there are a few elements worth pointing out.

The film Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) taps into some of these connections.  The film is many things, including a fantasy revolving around climate change, a fierce storm, and sea level rise.  The story shares the experience of one fictional community fighting to maintain their way of life in a floodplain.   In this fantasy world, which is reminiscent of modern-day coastal Louisiana, we see hardships and challenges through a small child’s eyes in the form of collapsing ice caps and stampedes of ice age beasts – her interpretation of an apocalyptic lesson of floods, melting ice caps and past extinctions from the local teacher/medicine woman.

A powerful and visually compelling film, this allegorical tale touches on many issues (climate, water and life, water and death, freedom, poverty, the wealth gap, the richness and fragility of nature, the sterility of modern life, love, loss, survival, parent-child relationships, …) in a quasi-fantasy, quasi-real way.  Articulating the whole film in succinct, coherent thoughts related to energy is difficult. Instead, I’ll just note that its integral treatment of climate change is compelling and potentially influential.

THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER
1990, Paramount Pictures

The James Bond tribute at the Oscars got me thinking again about the different ways energy has appeared in Bond films (see my earlier posts here, here, and here), and subsequently, the archetypal Bond Sean Connery. One non-Bond Sean Connery movie stood out: The Hunt for Red October (1990), which features a nuclear submarine.

As you may know, U.S. and Russian aircraft carriers and submarines are powered by nuclear energy. There are a few reasons for this fuel choice.

First, the energy density of nuclear power is remarkable, which means the subs and carriers require less space to carry their fuels.  The associated space savings provide a tactical advantage compared with diesel-powered systems.

Second, the on-board nuclear reactors provide electricity, which can be used for a whole variety of loads, including propulsion, climate control, weapons, etc.

The downside of nuclear energy is that mistakes can be costly.  SPOILER ALERT: Connery’s character plays into this fear during the movie by using the risk of a radiation leak to manipulate his men into abandoning their ship.  A clever energy twist that makes the plot complete…who knew that nuclear radiation could be so helpful?