The film’s opening is a prime example. In the dismal script, the action begins in Manhattan, no date given, green fog everywhere: it could be a million years in the future. I said, “You bought this book because, though it takes place twenty or thirty years in the future, it connects with today. People alive today will be alive when this film takes place. But the screenwriter has eliminated this. There is no connection with the present at all.”
“Harry, you son of a bitch,” Walter Seltzer said, “you’re costing us a lot of money.” It was money well spent—on Chuck Braverman. He’d previously done a short film, American Time Capsule: the history of America in two and a half minutes. For Soylent Green he did the opening credits as a montage of stills. Music over, no voices. They showed the settling of the Wild West, pioneers chopping down trees, railroads being built, going from wagon wheels to cars, slowly building to the opening scenes in the overpopulated and polluted New York City in the year 1999, very nicely done.
I rang up Walter Seltzer and said I’d like to come down and watch them shooting, and he said, in a moment of unusual largesse, “Any time you like, Harry.” Being on the set meant I could make suggestions that helped bring the film closer to my book.
I went down to MGM, driving majestically through the great front gate, taking copies of the original novel with me, propagandizing everyone in sight, from cameramen and technicians to actors. Chuck Connors was a big, solid guy—an ex-baseball player, built like a tank, six foot four or something. I stopped him on set and he said, “Yeah, what do you want?” And I choked out, “I’m the author of the book the film was adapted from, and I’d like to give you a copy of the book.” He looked at it and nodded. The director was setting up a scene and Chuck Connors yelled across to him.
“Hey, Dick, why aren’t you using this title instead of that crappy Soylent Green?” The answer, which Fleischer perhaps did not know, was the decision made in high places that my title might be associated with a long-dead Danny Thomas sitcom called Make Room for Daddy. I feel that the title Soylent Green is weak. They didn’t even know what Soylent was! In the book I mention Soylent burgers. I made up that word as a combination of soybeans and lentils. I’d always imagined they’d only have vegetarian food. In the film they call Soylent “the miracle plankton food,” made from microscopic plant life.…
On a movie set there is always a photographer wandering round with a big still camera. I was on the set with Joan and the kids, and I asked Chuck Connors if I could have a picture of him with my wife and kids. No problem, Harry, come on up here. He put his arms out, wide enough to get everybody in his arms. Joan and the children are smiling—it was nice to be hugged by Chuck Connors. And I’m on the far left, and he had his hand on my shoulder, and just as the photographer took the shot, Chuck squeezed, his fingers crushing bone—and the picture shows everyone smiling except me, who’s doing an agony take. He had a good grip, I’ll tell you.
I was shown the set for the “meatlegger” sequence. Meat is in very short supply in the future. The meatlegger is like a bootlegger selling meat of dubious origin; dog is hinted at. I was suitably impressed until I saw that they had plastic bags on the counter. “Where do you get these plastic bags from? They are made from petroleum, and all of the world’s petroleum had been used up by this time.”
“Then what do we do?” Wail of agony.
“What all the Europeans do—take a bag with you.”
The plastic bags were instantly whisked away.
The final sequence in Soylent Green was shot at the Hyperion sewage treatment plant, which was right by the sewage outlet. They built this new sewage plant and the state of California had some problem with it, so they just shut it off. The plant had been closed for a number of years. They were shooting all the outdoor scenes there. In addition they had an outdoor lunch set up on tables—it was really great food. The women disagreed. None of them would eat outdoors because of the dust blowing by—they were sure it was dried sewage. All the guys were eating outside. It wasn’t macho—they just couldn’t have cared less.
Real evidence of the dubiety of the screenplay was driven home to me when I overheard Edward G. Robinson say to the director, “Dick, I read the script and I don’t understand my role.” With good reason: there was nothing there to understand. Summoning up my courage, I introduced myself and offered to provide answers about his character. He ignored my rudeness, invited me to lunch with him, then listened closely while I explained the character he played as I had visualized him in the book: “You are the only person in this film who has lived in the world that we know now, who has seen a world of plenty. He can survive in this world of pollution, overpopulation, and chronic food shortages. That doesn’t mean he has to like it.” Robinson said: “That’s a very good idea. Why didn’t they tell me? It isn’t in the script.”
This conversation led, a few days later, to an act of cinematic creation that it was my privilege to witness. They were shooting on a closed set, which means no visitors allowed, just the technicians who were shooting the film plus the grips, carpenter, and electricians, who were standing by in case of any emergency. These guys, as usual, were bored to death. They were shooting a key scene that occurs about halfway through the film where they talk about how the world got that way. Sol (Robinson) and Thorn (Heston) are eating some pilfered black-market food. The scene runs for two or three minutes, shot as a unit, with intercuts done afterward. They had to memorize lines for this, which is hard for some actors. The script was devoid of directions or content, the dialogue banal. They did the scene and Robinson muffed a line—“I’m seventy-nine years old, I’m allowed to waste a bit of film.” They did it a second time. And then the third time. Then Robinson took this really dreary, badly written scene and before our eyes built a new scene that embodied the essence of the book and the film. Old wooden-faced Heston had to actually act a little bit—pantomiming simple pleasure at the loathsome artificial food—which is all he has ever known. Robinson virtually embodied repulsion and despair. And it’s not in the script. They’re not saying anything, really. Robinson is acting and inventing the role on camera. When Fleischer called out “Cut!” all of the bored professional audience, carpenters, grips and technicians—no visitors—burst into spontaneous applause. This was artistic appreciation at its very best. The impressive results grace the film.
I was impressed by two inescapable facts: the truly professional ability of everyone connected with the making of the film and the truly appalling quality of the script. That a successful film was made despite what might be considered a major obstacle can be credited to the art and set designers; the director, Richard Fleischer; and to the fine actors. As well as to, I submit with suitable humility, the strength of the novel.
The film has its strong visual content, the correct utilization of the large screen, the escape from television’s talking heads, and much credit is due to the art director, director, and cameraman. The green pall that hangs in the air makes the viewer aware at all times of this polluted and overcrowded world. It also adds emphasis to the beautiful Braverman graphics—with Beethoven’s Pastoral playing in the background—during the suicide parlor scene. A perfect example of visual strength overriding content. In the book, Sol is a loner, a survivor, and dies after taking a public stance for the very first time in his life. The one thing that he would never do would be to commit suicide. Completely ignoring this fact, the inept screenwriter brings in that old SF cliché, the suicide parlor. Something I would never do. Ironically, it worked, since it was new to cinema audiences. The scene, which includes images of the clean and beautiful world as it once had been, also adds to the film’s impact.
This continual visual onslaught conveys the message of the book—modified for the film. The idiotic cannibalism-crackers (not in the book) and the “big” revelation that they are made from corpses will have been twigged by the audience early on. This, and the cornball chase sequences, and the “furniture” girls (not in the book) are not what film is abo
ut and are completely irrelevant. The film, like the book, shows what the world will be like if we continue in our insane manner to pollute and overpopulate Spaceship Earth. This is the “message” of film and book. Both of them deliver this message in a manner unique to science fiction: the technique of background-as-foreground. This means simply that the story played out by the characters is not the major story. It is a means to capture the reader or viewer’s attention, to reveal a greater truth in the setting where the foreground takes place. The film is a visual success. The background of this terrible world is punched home like an inescapable drumbeat.
The aftershock is very strong. Almost every person that I have talked to had the same delayed reaction: a week or more after viewing the film, memory of the action had dimmed—but the feeling of horror of this world had grown and intensified. The background had become the foreground. This is what good science fiction can do. It has a residual shock content. The technique goes back to dear old Verne and Wells. It dramatizes the situation and explains the unexplainable.
MGM originally had the amusing idea of releasing the film on a Tuesday, because in the film “Tuesday is Soylent Green day.” They rescheduled at the last minute when some genius pointed out that the Tuesday they’d picked was Yom Kippur, the Jewish holy day when no one eats!
Soylent Green was released without much hype—they advertised it, but there was no Hollywood Boulevard, no arc lamps. It opened in forty thousand theaters at the same time. I was living in San Diego and went to see it with friends and family. It being California, they had the usual popcorn and Coke, and because it was a hot climate there they had cold slushy. They had orange slushy and lime slushy. But since they were showing Soylent Green the manager put up a sign saying SOYLENT GREEN SLUSHY. The audience had plenty of Soylent Green slushy on the way into the theater. And then hearing that “Soylent Green is people” they’re coming out barfing at the green machine.
Soylent Green was the only movie MGM made that year that made money. That was the year of a movie called The Great Waltz, which sank into oblivion and lost millions. Soylent Green was shown in the States and all over the world and enjoyed quite a success during its release, and it has since become a “cult classic” on TV and video. But somehow it was still in the red—according to the powers that be, it has never made any profit. Creative bookkeeping made certain none of the film’s profits reached the author. MGM loaned the money to the producers, and it takes its interest first every year. The returns come in and Charlton Heston draws on the gross. MGM take their interest off the net, which is very small at this point. I have points of the profit—and there’s no profit.
I should have made money on the rerelease of the novel. What you should do with a paperback as soon as they sign an option is say Soon to be a major film! And the week the film is released the book is there waiting with Now a major film! MGM worked with the publicity department of Berkley Books, they had a fine illustration, everything was worked out, and the book was finally reissued—six months after the opening of the film!
If I sound bitter, it is because I am bitter.
It was an exciting experience to see a major film produced by a major studio. Also fun and exciting for the kids and Joan, as they got to visit the set and watch filming. It was a humbling experience to meet Edward G. Robinson, a great actor and a great human being. He alone knew he had terminal cancer when he made the film. He must have chosen to make one more film rather than sit quietly at home and await death. He saw the dailies, which he enjoyed, but he didn’t live to see the finished film. It is a tribute to the hard-nosed film executives that they considered cutting out the suicide parlor scene before the film was released. But it is such an integral part of the film that it could not be done: his great performance remained untouched. Credit also goes to critics and filmgoers, none of whom complained about bad taste.
Ultimately Soylent Green works as a film. It moves, it keeps the interest, it is visually exciting. The message it delivers raises it above simple entertainment. There’s really only one thing wrong with it, and that’s the script. The screenwriter was a moron who had never even heard of science fiction. I only met him once. The film received the Nebula Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. There was a gorgeous event in Los Angeles—men wearing tuxedos and all of that.
An astronaut who had walked on the moon gave a talk, and I said, “I’ve got to shake your hand, you were on the moon!” That was a very happy moment in my life when I got to shake the hand of the man who held the flagpole on the moon.
Stanley Greenberg, who knew nothing about science fiction, got up to give his speech in front of the fans and pros in the audience, and said some inarticulate nonsense like, “It’s wonderful to be here … my pleasure to get this award … through art and emotion and sympathy we will conquer the universe.…”
I gave him a slow hand clap and said, “Thank you to my inadvertent collaborator, Mr. Greenberg. I just want to say that not one word he said was true. It won’t be emotion that will get us to the stars, it will be science, logic, and intelligence.” I saw Greenberg scurry out of the back door and I gave him the finger. Everyone else broke up and gave him the finger as well. I had a really nice time because I knew the audience; they were my audience. That was a wonderful bit of revenge! Stanley Greenberg invented the idea “Soylent Green is people”—one of the dumbest ideas in the world. Anyway, the Soylent Green chips are really made of green-painted plywood. I stole a handful of them when I was on the set and gave them to the kids.
Just one final observation. With my hand raised, I promise never to let anyone screw me, or one of my books, again.
ESPERANTO
It was a lovely summer’s day in Avoca, County Wicklow, Ireland. Wicklow is called “the garden of Ireland,” and with good reason. The rain is far less here than in the west of Ireland, but still more than enough falls to ensure that it is green and blossoming. Not that I saw many of the blossoms. As usual I was working my all-day every-day schedule that I stay with until the first draft of the current book is finished. My study here was at ground level, offering me a small view of the Vale of Avoca through the narrow windows—and even more view of the Volvo parked outside. The phone rang.
“Hello,” I muttered, mind still in the book.
“Bonan tagon. Ĉu vi estas sinjoro Harrison?” the voice said in fluent Esperanto.
“Jes, certe,” I answered, trying to switch mental gears out of English. The speaker went on to identify himself as the president of the Universal Esperanto Association, the overall organization that oversees all of the national societies. I made appropriate noises. The president went on to explain that he had a request for me and hoped that I would say yes. He asked me if I would like to become an honorary patron of Esperanto. I was taken aback, my mind still in English, still in the book. Dimly, I told him that this was surely a great honor, then asked him how I qualified.
“Patronoj devas paroli Esperanto kaj esti mondfama,” he said.
Which translates as, “Patrons must speak Esperanto and be world famous.”
“That’s me!” I remember thinking as I, not too reluctantly, agreed to accept this honorary position. I was in good company; other patrons included Ralph Harry, Australian ambassador to the United Nations, and Bakin Ba Jin, a member of the ruling committee of China. As well as the former prime minister of Sweden, along with others of this ilk who were “… linguists, scientists, and other eminent people who have made important contributions to the Esperanto movement, and who speak the international language.”
Well—that is a long way from starting on lesson one of Learn Esperanto in 17 Easy Lessons on a hot summer evening in 1944. What sort of Esperanto road had I traveled between these two events? It was certainly a long adventure—with some exciting moments along the way.
My attention was first drawn to Esperanto when I was in the army, during a long, hot summer in Texas, where I saw a notice on the bulletin board.
Hey guys! 8 PM in the post church.
Hear about the Simple Second
Language that
you can learn with ease—!
ESPERANTO!!
Join us and be wowed!!!
I was intrigued—and not only by the exclamation points. It was certainly better than another night in the steaming barracks. I went, and if not wowed, I certainly was intrigued. I paid six bits for a green-bound booklet titled Learn Esperanto in 17 Easy Lessons.
The book’s title was true, too. Unlike any of the so-called natural languages, Esperanto is accessible, simple—and fun, which cannot often be said about language studying. That’s the plug. If you are interested, enter “Esperanto” into Google and take it from there. Then read on to see what joys Esperanto might bring into your life.…
It helped me to survive the army. Learning to read and write Esperanto kept my mind turning over in the intellectual wasteland of military life. Since the war was still on I certainly couldn’t write to Europe; the places I could correspond with were limited to the Americas. There were plenty of deziras corespondi (wishes to correspond) notices in the Esperanto magazines. Very soon I had pen pals in Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and Cuba, but these were handwritten—few of my correspondents had typewriters. Since that one evening in Texas I had yet to hear a spoken word of Esperanto. After the war I returned to New York and, for almost the first time, heard the language spoken aloud. I took a conversational class and very soon was speaking as well as writing Esperanto. I was a great enthusiast, and in the right place at the right time. New York City was the home of the central office of EANA, the Esperanto Association of North America. With great pleasure, I threw myself into the movement, stamping envelopes, sending out mailings, the usual. Joan—to please me, or to please herself; it is hard to draw a line—attended conversation classes and learned to speak the language as well. Eventually I became national treasurer. We made good friends in the Esperanto community and had many fine times. This organizational activity ended when we moved to Mexico—but not my enthusiasm for la patro lingvo, the father language.
Harry Harrison! Harry Harrison! Page 27