>Brian Siano wrote:
>
>
>>On the brighter side, I met Harry Harrison.)
>>
>>
>Hey cool. The author of the reproductive rights book of sorts (or at least
>a pro-contraception theme), "Make Room!
>Make Room!" that was later made into the movie "Soylent Green" with more
>"recycling" and government food regulation themes. Earth is overpopulated,
>divided into haves and have-nots, and horribly polluted with green house
>effects that have led to food shortages. The world of the haves consists of
>traditional food to eat and nice luxurious places to live where women are
>not only property/slaves but are referred to as "furniture." The have-nots,
>on the other hand, live on soylent - a new manufactured plankton biscuit or
>something. The top of the line of this soylent line of biscuits is "soylent
>green" which contains a special government endorsed "protein" ingredient
>that is manufactured in soylent factories that look like garrisons. Now
>with overpopulated masses and food shortages, it doesn't take too much
>imagination to guess what that special ingredient is exactly. Especially
>when you see dump trucks scooping up the unemployed masses -- presumbly as a
>crowd control method -- during the food shortage riots.
>
Just to make sure everyone knows... the surprise ending of _Soylent
Green_ didn't come from Harrison's book. I have an interview Harrison
gave John Brosnan, in his book _Future Tense_, where he discusses the
experience of the film. The novel _Make Room! Make Room!_ was carefully
extrapolated from what was expected at the time-- Harrison had a plot
involving a murder investigation, but his intention was that people
would eventually ignore the plot and notice how _bad_ everything was,
and start asking if such a future was avoidable.
He told (in the interview, not to me) some fun details about the making of the film. The production designers did use his book for a lot of details, so the film's background reflects a lot of Harrison's work. The climax of the film was shot in a sewage-treatment plant which had been built to recycle sewage into fertilizer... but politics intervened, and the plant wasn't used, and during the filming this pipe ran right past it to dump the sewage into the Pacific. And Harrison tells of a conversation with the late Edward G. Robinson, where he gave the actor a neat handle on his character. He also said, _at the time_, about twenty years ago, that the main reason that film got made was because Charlton Heston was very politically active in lots of areas-- "a little to right wing for me, but he _is_ involved", and wanted to do it.