Why I love "Silent Running" (and you should too)

There are movies you want to forget, movies that entertain purely in the moment and wash from your consciousness five minutes after you leave the theater, and then there are movies that keep creeping back into your consciousness years or decades later, demanding to be watched again to see if they've stood up to the sands of time.

For me, "Silent Running" is one of the latter category of films. I've watched it many times over the years, though not recently, but several months ago it came up in an on-line discussion, and I was compelled to rent the DVD from Netflix and watch it again.

Now, this is always a task approached with trepidation, because some films simply don't hold up, even films you've watched repeatedly and enjoyed. Eventually you, or the world you live in, simply passes them by. At best they become watchable as a relic of their time or an object of nostalgia. On surface, Silent Running seems particularly vulnerable to this, with its Joan Baez songs, cult actor Bruce Dern as star, and its vaguely counter-culture themes.

But I was pleased to find that not only did the film hold up, it's actually aging well. Yes, the once-thrilling special effects have gone from spectacular to merely serviceable for the most part, but there's never a point where they become embarrassing. The spaceship interior sets still look great, and for the most part would look right at home in any modern science fiction film or TV show. And the drones, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, are still among the best cinematic robots (and most endearing non-human characters) of all time.

The enjoyable soundtrack (by Peter Scheckele, better known as his alter-ego P.D.Q. Bach) gives the sometimes claustrophobic film grandeur and scope, and the songs, which at the time seemed to me a bit intrusive, now seem organic and essential to the film.

Moreover, the writing, direction, and performances (much of the movie is essentially a one-man-show, with Bruce Dern ably carrying the movie with only the drones and his artificial environment to play against).

But not only did the movie hold up, as I watched it, I became increasingly convinced that it was not merely a good movie, it was an important movie, a cinematic milestone that almost single handedly created the modern space science fiction film.

Without Silent Running there is no Star Wars, no Close Encounters of the Third Kind, no Star Trek films (or follow-on TV series), no Babylon 5 or Farscape or reimagined Galactica. In so many areas, from the most technical to the most artistic, Silent Running either radically changed or reinvented the genre in dozens of important ways.

Silent Running should be recognized as one of the ground-breaking sf films of all time, on a list with Forbidden Planet, The Day the Earth Stood Still, 2001, Alien, Bladerunner, and a handful of other better-known films. But for the most part, it seems to languish in obscurity, existing in the shadow of Star Wars, a film that in many ways is made in its image, and in at least a few ways is probably inferior.

Why? Well, Silent Running wasn't a huge commercial success a the time. It was produced as part of an experimental program by Universal to produce five films on a budget of a million dollars (which sounds absurdly low-budget now, and was still pretty low even then) each (ironically, one of these five was George Lucas' break-out hit, American Graffiti). But also as part of the experiment, it was shoved into theaters with no real publicity campaign. Like many people, I think I first became aware of the film not from its initial release, but from seeing the soundtrack album (with its spectacular art from the poster seen above) in a record store. Likely, I first saw the movie on TV, though I later saw it in art-house and college film-class screenings.

People who have seen Silent Running usually remember it, but frankly, not that many people have seen it. The current DVD release lists for about $15, is packed with extras (several documentaries including a 45-minute "making of," and a commentary track by director Doug Trumbull and Bruce Dern) and is well worth seeking out.

So enough about it being good. Here are some of the reasons I think it's important...

1.The entire "Star Wars" era of special effects begins here.

Now, admittedly, Doug Trumbull cut his teeth on the ground-breaking effects of 2001, a Space Odyssey, but in many ways, that film would have a dead end without this film. Director Stanley Kubrick was notoriously secretive about some aspects of the effects, to the extent of destroying the models and most records of their creation after the film was finished. This may have had more to do with preventing a sequel than any real attempt to hide his methods, but while many "big iron" effects for the film (like the rotating Discovery centrifuge set) were well publicized and documented, the model work was relatively undocumented.

In addition, 2001 did little but verify the conventional wisdom of Hollywood: that good special effects could only be done in a huge-budget studio blockbuster. The idea that first rate effects could be done cheaply, and might even make the movie cheaper, that just was unimaginable.

So along comes Silent Running, done on a modest budget, which still managed to incorporate some of the most spectacular models and effects seen on screen until that time. It established the hyper-detailed "kitbashing" (using plastic model parts and other shapes to provide surface texture on spaceships) look that would soon be followed by Star Wars and countless other movies and TV series.


One of the people working under Trumbull on the effects was John Dykstra, who managed most of the model photography for the movie. Dykstra was the wizard who developed the computerized motion-control camera system that made possible the elaborate space-battles of the pre-CGI Star Wars movies (and pretty much every other effects film to follow). Though there is no motion-control on Silent Running, the long-exposure photography methods used on the models were similar, and there were then state-of-the-art robots on set. It isn't difficult to imagine Dykstra already putting the pieces together in his mind.

2. Silent Running brought industrial thinking into film-making

Prior to Silent Running, not only special effects, but many aspects of movie production, had long been static. Sets, props, and models were "old school," done with wood, plaster, fabric and more rarely, metal. Most physical aspects of the film, lights, photography, construction, used long-established methods, many of them rooted in the theater.

Silent Running seemed to take a fresh-look at almost everything. Trumbull came from an engineering background, and he brought new technologies, materials, and production methods into the film. Sets and props were produced using modern plastic molding techniques. Rather than simply using wooden props, many items on the Silent Running set were in some way functional: the small ATV vehicles driven around the ship, robotic arms, video monitors, electronic instrumentation, it didn't just sort of look right, it worked. It contributed to a feeling a realism and believability that holds up pretty well even today.

More importantly, though Star Wars had a larger budget, it simply couldn't have been done without the methods established by Silent Running. You see this all through the film in thousands of places, but it's most obvious in the stormtrooper armor. In old-school Hollywood, it would have required more than film's entire budget to individually produce each suit by hand. The use of plastics allowed them to be mass-produced affordably. The same goes for many of the droids, vehicles, and even Darth Vader himself.

3. Silent Running established the "grunge" look for science fiction films

Before Silent Running, the look for most science fiction spacecraft was clean, mechanical, and sterile. The Valley Forge was one-part well-used industrial and one part lived in. The floors were dirty. People decorated their living spaces, they played pool and poker to kill the boredom. Things showed wear-and-tear. People personalized their uniforms. The Valley Forge was a place where people lived and worked, and it showed it.

Star Wars took it a step farther, by creating even more grungy places (trash-masher, anyone?) and showing us whole, living, cities and worlds, but it starts with Silent Running, and you can trace the line on to the Alien movies and even Bladerunner.

4. Silent Running brought fully-realized characters into science fiction film

Before Silent Running, most future science fiction charters fell into the categories of a handful of stereotypes. There was the square-jawed hero/military man. There was the idealistic and detached (possibly even mad) scientist. There was the cold-blooded human robot. There was the lovely but helpless heroine. There was the slightly dim comic relief. The godly and arrogant (possibly with justification, probably not) alien. A few others.

Even superior films like 2001 and Forbidden Planet usually drew their characters from that pool (and to a lesser extent, so did the Star Wars films that followed).

But the hero of Silent Running wasn't all good, and it's villains weren't really bad. All of them had reasons for acting as they did, flaws, and a whole range of human quirks. Bruce Dern clearly gets a great deal of credit for bringing his character to life, and for picking a number of his Actor's Studio pals to fill out the rest of the Valley Forge crew. These characters wouldn't have been out of place on a contemporary commercial fishing boat, or an oil-platform, or a coal mine, and that was exactly the point. Silent Running brought to cinema the idea that while technology and circumstances may move on, people will remain very much the same. It suggested that science fiction could tell human, character-driven stories, and not just intellectual treatments of ideas, or scary tails of monsters, or square-jawed adventures.

The crew of the Valley Forge is the clear model for the crew of Alien's Nostromo, or the space marines that followed them in Aliens, or the space-cowboys of Serenity.

5. Its environmental themes are more timely than ever

Unfortunately, the idea that ecosystems might collapse, that forests would all be destroyed, and especially that most people would just sit around and let it happen, that all seems way more credible to me now than it did in 1972. Yes, from a strictly science-fictional standpoint, this works best taken as an eco-fable. (What do the people on this plant-deprived Earth eat, or even breath for that matter?) But it's way less over-the-top that I originally thought. (Actually, a whole range of 70s cautionary sf films, Soylent Green, the Omega Man, even Planet of the Apes, seems less fantastic than they once did, which is a pretty sad commentary on the state of modern life, actually.)

6. Best robots ever!

Okay, this is a stretch, especially as fond as I am of Robby the Robot, but Huey, Dewey and Louie broke all manner of ground for cinematic robots. With the exception of Robby, most movie robots to this point had been soulless monsters, just waiting (and often not very long) to run amok. Even Robby, as benign as he is, remains a frightening and potent symbol of technology beyond our understanding.

The drones were believably tools, simply serving as they were programmed to serve. Yet as sophisticated as they obviously are, they also have developed human-like quirks and surprising behaviors. It's hard not to think of them as innocent children caught in some tragedy beyond their understanding. Perhaps this is actually their nature, or perhaps it is merely something we as humans, trying to understand them, project on their boldly un-anthropomorphic shapes and methods of moving and communicating. Either way, it says as much as us as it does about them.

Many scenes with the drones remain the most moving and memorable in the movie. Trumbull's genius was in making them both the least anthropomorphic of film robots, and the most human. The drones were played by human actors, double-amputees, walking on their hands, and hidden inside clever, light-weight, plastic suits, allowing them to deliver a convincing performance without needing to resort to mechanical contrivances to hide their humanity. And of course, Bruce Dern's performance in playing to them also deserves some credit for the power their scenes carry.

And while some aspects of the on-screen methods used to program the drones haven't held up well (keying card-game rules by hand into a terminal or resoldering circuits under a microscope, all guided by a mimeographed service manual), overall their appearance and behaviors have only become more realistic as robots have advanced. I suspect that it's only a matter of time before some robotic scientist, influenced by the film at an early age, builds a functional drone modeled on the early version.

Even if George Lucas hadn't admitted the influence, it should be obvious that without the drones, there is no R2D2 as we know him. And while R2D2 is a pretty cool film robot, in most every measure besides public recognition, the drones just have him beat.


There are other points to be made, but I think the defense can rest here. Without Silent Running, it's doubtful that any of the modern classics of science fiction film and television would exist, or at least, if they'd exist in anything like the form we know them today. It's a landmark, ground-breaking film which had untold influence on the industry.

It's interesting to note too that all the film's influence can't be credited entirely to the film itself. While much of the production of 2001 went unseen, every aspect of Silent Running was unusually well documented. Not only was it the subject of a detailed 45 minute "making of" documentary (yes, the one on the DVD), but it was covered extensively in the industry press, most notably a massive series of articles in American Cinematographer magazine.

Thanks to this, Silent Running provided both inspiration for a whole generation of film makers hoping to make low-budget science fiction films, and a "how-to" guide to dozens of useful and innovative techniques that could be applied to make them.

It's a shame that Doug Trumbull was as interested in innovating the technology used to produce and display films as he was in the films themselves. As a result, he made only one other major theatrical feature, 1983's Brainstorm, a film better known for the death during production of star Natalie Wood than any virtue of the film itself.

Instead of making films, Trumbull became obsessed with a series of largely dead-end large-format projection systems that he hoped would bring greater realism and audience involvement to the masses. Some of these later did find some application in motion-ride systems, and Trumbull did direct several programs for these attractions.

But while this new technology could have revolutionized cinema, for various reasons it didn't, and now the digital world has largely passed it by. I'd trade it all for even one more film like Silent Running.

I Hate Destiny

There's a great scene in Mel Brook's classic parody film "Young Frankenstein." The young Doctor Frankenstein, as played by Gene Wilder, has traveled to his grandfather's castle in Transylvania and is gradually uncovering the secrets of his ancestor's experiments in reanimating the dead. Though he has tried to distance himself from his family history, he is strangely, almost mystically, drawn to it. He lays in his bead, and his slumber is interrupted by a fitful dream. "Destiny," he mumbles in his sleep. Then again. "Destiny!" Then he begin to rock from side to side, falling into to cadence of a cheerleader, "no escaping, that's for me! Destiny! Destiny! No escaping, that's for me!"

Even in 1974, Brooks (and Wilder, who wrote the screenplay as well as starred) knew that destiny was tired and cliched concept worthy primarily of parody. Yet it is the cockroach of story tropes. Not only has it refused to die, it seeming has grown in popularity of use, as I was reminded by episodes this week of two popular TV shows I generally like very much, Heroes and Battlestar Galactica. (Spoilers for recent episodes of both shows follow, so if you haven't caught up your TiVo or live outside the U.S. where episodes are delayed, proceed with caution.)

In fiction, the concept of destiny (and the often closely related, often overlapping, trope of prophecy) takes on many forms, but the most common goes something like this. Our protagonist either learns of or comes to believe in some special destiny ahead of them. Often there are cryptic prophecies here (as I said, overlapping), or visions, or dreams, or perhaps an inscription on some ancient tablet or temple wall to point the way. Perhaps the destiny of the coming hero/leader is already known to our protagonist or others around him/her, and they only later beginning to suspect that he/she is The One.

At that point, our hero will either seek their destiny, or fight hopelessly against, it, but either way, they're headed there on rails. There will be much hand-wringing over what they cryptic-to-the-point-of-uselessness prophecy/inscription means, and the mysteries will be dragged out, often to tiresome lengths. Maybe the villain knows about the prophecy too, and tries to put the whack on our protagonist, but that trick never works. Sacrifices may be made along the way, there may be some twists and turns, a surprise or two, and it may not come out exactly the way you imagined, but destiny will be fulfilled because -- hey -- it's destiny!

And really, it's this most basic use of destiny that bugs me. It's certainly possible to write good stories using the concept, and to apply it in different ways, but there's a recursive, meta-element to the story use of destiny. Once a writer starts to apply it to the story, all too often it lazily falls into the above pattern.

I'm not sure where the concept of destiny first crept into literature, but it is certain that it is very, very old. It's used in the Bible, for instance (look at Moses) and it's the basis of Arthurian legend. Perhaps it's as old as literature itself, and quite possibly older.

My suspicion is that it is closely related to the concept of the divine right of kings, the idea that the had of God (or some similar supernatural force) reaches down on high and delivers greatness onto some individual. By this rule, great heroes and leaders aren't made, or even necessarily born. They are created, by powers beyond humanity.

It comes down, I suppose, to the fundamental question of free will. Free will, may be an illusion, but by golly it's a good illusion, and I like it. I like the idea that I have free will, and I like the idea that my heroes (and villains, for that matter) have it as well. I like them to make choices, and then see the consequences of those choices honestly played out in drama.

Destiny cheats all that. Ultimately it doesn't matter what choices the hero make. Ultimately destiny is going to use its big, intrusive hand to shove him back onto his preordained course. In fact, a convention of these stories is often that fighting destiny is bad. Destiny is a bitch, and it will often smite your girfriend, or your dad, or your favorite dog Carl if you don't immediately let her have her way.

Now that I think of it, there's another ancient story convention closely related to destiny, one that that has more completely condemned to the dust-bin of literary history: deus ex machina, "God out of the machine." It originates in the ancient Greek and Roman theater, where an actor playing a God would be lowered out of the rafters on a lift to extricate the hapless human characters from their hopeless situation.

In modern terms, it's any story where the characters are rescued from their situation by any intrusively external and unexpected device rather than by their own actions. It's seen as a cheat, and most writers are taught early on to avoid its use. But thinking about it, how is the typical destiny story anything by deus ex machina writ large? In a destiny story, the Gods don't even wait till the end of the play to hit the down button on their cosmic elevator. In a destiny story, they've the first ones on stage, yanking and shoving the other players around through the whole show.

Let's get back to those TV shows I was talking about. First, and to me most annoyingly, Battlestar Galactica. Okay, I really like this show, and I have to let a certain amount of destiny and prophecy slip by. It's really fundamental to the series itself, which is built on mythic and religious elements (as was, somewhat more ham-handedly, the original series).

So when a Galactica character says something like, "this has all happened before, and it will all happen again," I'm okay with that. It's all part of a larger mythic structure that, usually, isn't the story itself. It's simply a framework within which more human stories are told.

Sure, there are the ancient clues to Earth, and how we find them. But that isn't destiny, that's just the McGuffin of the week. And certain characters have had prophecies applied to them before, especially President Laura Roslin. But it's only really become intrusive in a plot line involving Kara "Starbuck" Thrace which (seemingly) reached its climax last week the the death of the character.

In this case, both prophecy (as delivered by "oracles") and visions (in the form of a pacticular "eye of God" design that Kara has felt compelled to paint and draw since childhood) come into play. We are told again and again, from by several widely dispersed characters, that Kara has a "great destiny." I'll even allow for some of this. Kara made a great flawed and reluctant hero, fighting destiny every step of the way. For a while, I thought she might even escape it. But no...

If this episode is to be taken at face value, her "great destiny" was to die a stupid, pointless, and self-inflicted death. It's been suggested by the show's creator, Ron Moore (who I greatly respect as a writer, even if I don't always agree with his decisions) that her death will ultimately have some greater meaning for the future of the colonists (and perhaps the Cylons as well, since they were even more interested in her "destiny" than the humans were). A suspicious mind might even suspect that while she may have "crossed over," perhaps she isn't as dead as she appears.

But ignoring all this, it was just an annoying story to watch. The prophecy elements had become intrusive and heavy-handed to the point of giving the character no real purpose other than self-destruction, and the resolution required a character defined by her willfulness and Independence, to blissfully surrender to her stupid end.

Hopefully it will all get better, and in the later context of the show, this will seem like no more than a speed-bump. Hopefully.

A much different (and in fact, more diverse) approach to destiny can be found in Heroes, where the concept takes on many form. First and most literally, there is Hiro's conviction that his has a "destiny" to use his powers over time and space to become a hero. Okay, he calls it destiny, but I call it conviction. I call it character. Hiro is trying to become a hero because he has chosen to do so. The powers don't make him a hero. Others on the show have powers, and have much different paths. Hiro has made a choice to follow his current path (wherever it leads him, and I hope it is to success). Free will applies. This is destiny in name only.

But the show also has several forms of prophecy, more or less supernatural. Artist Isaac Mendez has been shown to be able to paint the future (an ability also used on occasion by human-duplicator Peter Petrelli). A more science-fictional version of prophecy derives from Hiro's time-travel abilities. Twice (most recently in this week's episode) he's traveled forward to see the destruction of New York City by some kind of explosion. A future version of Hiro also returned to present day and delivered the cryptic message, "save the cheerleader, save the world."

From a story standpoint, not much of this bothers me. Why? Well, while both the paintings and the time travel episodes forecast the future, it is yet to be determined that they absolutely define it. In fact, it seems likely that they do not, since we can presume (if not with absolute certainty) that the destruction of New York will somehow be averted. I can also allow for the typically cryptic "prophecy" of "save the cheerleader, save the world," as Hiro explains he is trying not to cause a rift in time. Perhaps saying or doing anything too direct would cause a paradox. But it suggests also that, within limitations, Hiro knows that time can be changed.

Again, while the rules of the Heroes universe have yet to be completely defined, there's no suggestion that free will is violated. The characters have some clues as to what will, or could, happen in the future, but they apparently can change that future. Their action, and their choices, have consequences.

So, lets try to boil this down to a set of rules or guidelines for effective use of destiny/prophecy in fiction.

1. Free will must be preserved. Characters must have choices, and those choices must have honest results and consequences within the context of the story.

2. Prophecy should forecast, not predict. This is an important distinction, as one leaves your characters room to shape the future, and the other does not.

Of course, there is an entire category of story based on the idea of changing the future while maintaining the prophecy, "cheating destiny" so to speak. Perhaps our heroine sees a vision of her lover stabbed to death, but changes events so that it is actually the villain disguised as her lover who is killed. Its a small (but important) part of the movie "Back to the Future," where when Doc Brown learns that he will be shot in the future, wears a bullet-proof-vest to the meeting and thus survives without changing the events as witnessed.

These "cheating destiny" stories aren't inherently bad, but if that's all the story is about, then its just a puzzle or a trick. Entertaining, perhaps (except that you've seen it a hundred times before), but not good storytelling.

I also remind you that a lesser used but interesting device is the prophecy that is patently wrong or false. In particular, I love the tragic villain who, having latched onto such a false prophecy, follows it straight to their own ruin and destruction.

3. A character with a destiny is always less interesting than a hero with choices. Heroes (and villains) aren't born that way. They may have certain gifts and abilities, sure, but they must be able to choose how to use them (or have their choices taken from them by believable circumstances, not simply the blundering hand a fate). There is no greater villain than one who contains the seeds of his own corruption. There is no mightier hero than one forged by his own hand, guided by his own heart, and for whom a lesser (or darker) path is always an option.

4. Destiny is not required. Remember, even in fantasy, there's no law that says you need destiny or prophecy. In fact, I'd venture there are far more stories to tell without them than with them. In an (as yet unpublished) young adult fantasy novel I wrote, I had a kind-of-fortune-teller say to a young character when she asks if she's locked into the role of world-saver, "There is no destiny. There are only -- possibilities." Really, those are my words to live by.

Finally, I am reminded of my old friend, Conan. He lives in a world of magic, gods and seers. Yet he ultimately becomes a king not by divine right, but by his own hand, by living his life as he must and as he will. His god, Crom, almost never interferes or intervenes in the affairs of his followers. His only gift to them is the strength they are born with. The rest is up to them.

That Crom, he would have made a good writer.