Green Screen

The environmental movie podcast! We watch and discuss movies about the environment, movies that have environmental themes or in which nature plays a significant role. Hosted by Sean Munger (an environmental historian) and Cody Climer (a movie buff).

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert 06/09/2022

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert After last episode’s icy prison break, Sean and Cody go down under for Pride Month as they load up the bus for a queer road trip into the outback. In The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Australian drag queen Tick (Hugo Weaving) gets a gig to do a show in the remote outback down of Alice Springs, so he teams up with the flamboyant Felicia (Guy Pearce) and transgender widow Bernadette (Terence Stamp) to get a bus to transport them, their costumes and a giant high-heeled shoe halfway across the continent. But there’s more on the road than dust and kangaroos, as the trio encounter homophobia, unexpected allies, and various bonding experiences in the places they stop along the way. Environmental issues discussed include resource extraction in Australia, boom towns such as Broken Hill and Coober Pedy, aborigines and their sense of their land and history, and lots of queer history. How did resource extraction, especially gold and other precious metals, shape the history and environment of modern Australia? How did queer history unfold in Australia and how was it different from the course of queer history in the U.S.? Which tiny Australian town produces 70% of the world’s opal? What was the only battle of World War I fought on Australian soil, and how did it come to involve an ice cream salesman? Which environmental hero’s name was claimed by 111 women arrested for an anti-nuclear protest near a site shown in the film? Was Australia slower to warm to LGBT equality than other countries, and if so, why? How did they get the iconic shot in this film? Who is lip-syncing to Vanessa Williams in the end credits? As progressive as this film was for its time, how is it still incredibly cringe-inducing today? All these questions are ready to do drag in the desert in this, the penultimate regular episode of Green Screen. Where you can find The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) on IMDB: The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) on Letterboxd: Next Movie Up: Dances With Wolves (1990) /episode/index/show/greenscreen/id/23372441

Runaway Train (with guest Dan Delgado) 04/28/2022

Runaway Train (with guest Dan Delgado) Sean and Cody, back from an unplanned hiatus, are joined by The Industry podcast host Dan Delgado for a look at the rarest of birds: an actually good film from schlocky 1980s grindhouse studio Cannon Films! In Runaway Train, prison lifer Manny (Jon Voight) is joined by a whiny shoeless sidekick Buck (Eric Roberts) for a poop-scented breakout from Alaska’s most notorious hoosegow. But their brilliant escape goes terribly wrong when the engineer of the freight train they stow away on croaks from a heart attack, and no one in the entire Alaska Railroad system seems to know how to slow down the train. Environmental issues discussed include the impact of the railroad, a harebrained early 1900s scheme to turn Alaska into Scandinavia, and how perennial Green Screen podcast villain Tricky Nick Nixon swindled Native Americans out of their land for, you guessed it, oil. How, when, and why were railroads built across Alaska, and how was that process different from how train infrastructure developed in the rest of America? What was “recapitulation,” whose idiotic idea was it, and how did it manage to be both environmentally disastrous and crudely racist? What did President Warren G. Harding really die of? Why did so many of the Cannon films star Chuck Norris and Charles Bronson? How did famed Japanese auteur Akira Kurosawa get involved in this movie? Why is “600” the magic number for Eric Roberts’s career? Should Golan and Globus have just shelved the idea for this film and concentrated by putting more money into Superman IV: The Quest For Peace? How did Danny Trejo parlay a life of crime into a successful film, philanthropy and restaurant career? All these questions and more are waiting to jump the track in this, the third-to-last regular episode of Green Screen. Big thanks to Dan Delgado of for joining us on the show. Where you can find Runaway Train: Runaway Train (1985) on IMDB: Runaway Train (1985) on Letterboxd: Next Movie Up: The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) /episode/index/show/greenscreen/id/22936364

Bonus: A Statement About The Show 04/25/2022

Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World 03/18/2022

Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World Though still weary from that long train trip to the Urals last episode, Sean and Cody board a British Navy sailing ship headed around Cape Horn as they delve into this swashbuckling 2003 adventure/war film, directed by Peter Weir. In Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World, indefatigable Captain Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe) can’t think about anything except the French man-o’-war he’s chasing all over the oceans. But his best friend Maturin (Paul Bettany) is so keen on collecting bugs in the Galapagos Islands that he can barely keep his mind on his job of sawing limbs off teenage crew members injured in battle. A whole lot of cannons go boom when the HMS Surprise finally meets her enemy on, well, the far side of the world. Environmental issues discussed include the effect of the Napoleonic Wars on forests in Europe and Asia, the weird beasts of the Galapagos Islands and how they got that way, “naturalists” in the early 19th century, and more dope on Darwin’s famous voyage. How did British short-sightedness in managing their forests come back to bite them during the Napoleonic Wars? How far did they have to go to get timber for their ships? Are Americans still mad at the British for burning down their capital in 1814? What’s the history of the Galapagos Islands? Which previous episode was it where we revealed the strange fate of the Beagle, the ship that took Darwin there? Do all historians read Patrick O’Brian novels? How do you pronounce “Maturin”? Who was Alexander von Humboldt and why is there an ocean current named after him? What member of Darwin’s 1835 expedition to the Galapagos was still alive at the time this film was made, and how is that even possible? Which actor in this film’s cast did one of the podcast hosts have a Twitter exchange with? All these questions and more are lying in wait disguised as a whaler in this adventurous episode of Green Screen. Where You Can Find Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World: Next Movie Up: Runaway Train (1985) /episode/index/show/greenscreen/id/22496291

Doctor Zhivago 03/03/2022

Doctor Zhivago Finally having returned from a double-header on Mars, Sean and Cody find themselves on the snowy steppes of Russia in the tumultuous era of the Bolshevik Revolution as they sink into this 1965 epic classic, one of the biggest blockbuster films of all time. In Doctor Zhivago, wistful sawbones and sometime poet Yuri (Omar Sharif) is living his best life with happy wifey (Geraldine Chaplin) and baby, until he suddenly gets the hots for the alluring Lara (Julie Christie) who’s married to someone else. But when the Revolution comes they’re all forced to put on red stars and salute Lenin, or at least the terrifying Comrade Strelnikov (Tom Courtenay), who, by the way, is Lara’s husband. If it sounds complicated, it is! Environmental issues discussed include the internal colonization of Russia into Siberia and across the Urals, how the tsars and the Soviet commissars used and exploited this area, the true nature of “pastoral” Russia as depicted in this film, and what Russia must have been like in the transition between capitalist monarchy and Soviet Communism. How, environmentally and historically, was Russia’s colonization of Siberia like American colonization of the Western frontier? What did the Soviets plan to do with the vast lands across the Urals, and did they succeed? What happened to all those beautiful country estates, like the one seen in the film that Zhivago and Lara use as their love nest? What are the subtle environmental clues that this film was not made in Russia, but much farther south? What was the special purpose that the dreaded “House of Special Purpose” was used for? What’s the story behind the iconic theme song for this film, and why is it repeated over and over again? Why is the book on which this film is based virtually unreadable? Have you ever heard of a 1981 film called Comin’ At Ya, and why is it famous in film history? What is the John Huston Corollary to the Michael Gough Rule which governs the Five Crowns Award? All these questions are ready to charge the monarchists’ machine guns in this very revolutionary episode of Green Screen. Where you can find Doctor Zhivago: Doctor Zhivago (1965) on IMDB: Doctor Zhivago (1965) on Letterboxd: Next Movie Up: Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003) /episode/index/show/greenscreen/id/22319060

The Martian 02/17/2022

Robinson Crusoe on Mars 02/03/2022

Robinson Crusoe on Mars After turning themselves into cartoons last episode, Sean and Cody make a side trip to a mostly fictional version of the red planet on their way back to the real world. In the 1964 space adventure Robinson Crusoe on Mars, white bread astronaut Kit Draper (Paul Mantee) and the monkey he loves crash-land on the titular planet to find the basic tourist amenities such as oxygen, water and food haven’t been restocked in several million years. With only a mid-60s tape deck, an Air Force surplus flight suit and a couple of tubes of turkey paste, can Draper find a way to survive long enough for Lyndon Johnson’s NASA to come rescue him? The environmental issues covered in this episode center around humans’ changing conceptions of conditions on Mars, with surprise cameos by our old friends settler colonialism and the white savior, who we can’t seem to get rid of even 200 million miles from Earth. What did scientists know or think they knew about what Mars was really like at the time they made this film? Can liquid water exist there or can’t it? What are Mars’s polar ice caps made of? Why did some astronomers, including especially Percival Lowell, believe that the “canals” of Mars were works of engineering created by an alien species? How was the mission of the Mariner space probe in 1965 a huge bummer for filmmakers and conceptual artists who got paid for producing “Mars porn” for science magazines? What poor sap in the costume department on this film had to sew a fur loincloth for a monkey? Is Adam West the only true Batman? Who was that mid-1950s Disney narrator who sounded suspiciously like Orson Welles? Is there no escape from racist stereotyping anywhere in the universe? All these questions are sucking air out of the rocks in this, the first part of a double header on Green Screen centered around Mars, together with the next episode on The Martian. Where you can find Robinson Crusoe on Mars: Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) on IMDB: Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) on Letterboxd: Next Movie Up: The Martian (2015) /episode/index/show/greenscreen/id/22005911

The Congress 01/20/2022

The Congress Sean and Cody exchange the gross creatures of the last episode for the dubious charms of an animated, drug-induced alternate universe as they dive into this visionary 2013 dystopian science fiction drama. In The Congress, aging Hollywood star Robin Wright, playing herself, lets a movie studio zap her into a digital clone that they can use to put her into any film for the next 20 years. When her contract is up and it’s time to renegotiate, though, she finds herself hyped on hallucinogenic drugs to join the raddest party in town, which is a freaky alternate reality that turns everyone into cartoon characters and makes them forget the real world and its problems. Environmental issues discussed include Facebook and the “metaverse,” plans by Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to either leave Earth behind or make it even worse for its inhabitants, and the ethics of abandoning the real world and allowing environmental problems, like climate change, to go unchecked because reality is just too much of a bummer to deal with. What is Zuckerberg’s “Metaverse” and why, among its many terrifying implications, is it a total disaster for the environment? Did Zucky announce the whole “Meta” thing to divert attention away from Facebook scandals? What does the “Metaverse” have in common with the environmental history of Las Vegas? Do amoral libertarian billionaires really plan to evacuate Earth and just leave us stuck with all the problems? How did said billionaires totally misread the science fiction novels they obviously grew up on? How are cryptocurrencies, blockchain, NFTs and related scams making climate change worse in a big hurry? Can you really “scan” an actor and put them in any movie you want, as depicted in this film? Remember when they actually tried to do that and put Cary Grant in a Diet Coke commercial? Which movie was it where they turned Paul Giamatti blue? All these questions are assuming new cartoon avatars and heading for the party in this positively hallucinogenic episode of Green Screen. Where you can find The Congress: The Congress (2013) on IMDB: The Congress (2013) on Letterboxd: Next Movie Up: Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) /episode/index/show/greenscreen/id/21832445