Scientists Turn To Acting In New Movie

TORREON, MEXICO— On a dusty movie set in the Mexican desert, J. Robert Oppenheimer—or, more correctly, actor Dwight Schultz is writing equations on a blackboard. The setting is Los Alamos in 1944, and the actor is portraying the famous physicist as he excitedly describes a key step in the process of constructing the first atomic bomb to the general—played by Paul Newman—in charge of the new wartime laboratory. In minutes the camera stops rolling, and one of the actors strolls up to Schultz and points out that his chalk etiquette was incorrect. Real scientists, he explains, share their chalk, passing it back and forth like taking turns in a conversation. And they stand off to one side of the blackboard, not directly in front of it. How would he know, you wonder? He knows because he's not an actor, he's a real scientist-psycho-physicist Brian Wandell of Stanford University. So are half of the folks portraying Oppenheimer's colleagues. Actor Schultz, it seems, is surrounded by scientists. They help him play his part better, he insists, and help the movie portray scientists more accurately than Hollywood has done in the past. Traditionally, Hollywood has chalked up a pretty poor record in its portrayal of scientists. During the 1950s, the silver screen brought us humorless, white-coated geniuses who saved the world from menaces like radioactive ants, space invaders, and polio. Even now, movies are populated with bizarre eccentrics like time-traveling Emmett Brown in "Back to the Future," or the malevolent eugenicists in "The Boys From Brazil." "I think Hollywood has fallen into the myth of the scientist as the meddler, the mad scientist," admits Roland Joffe, who is directing the action on the Mexican movie set. If these myths were confined to the screen, maybe researchers wouldn't care. But some scientists worry that Tinsel Town's images are affecting the public's perception of science—and have a chilling effect on the recruitment of smart kids. After all, if you had to pick between emulating Tom Cruise in "Top Gun," or Jeff Goldblum in "The Fly," which would you choose? That is why Joffe's film—which takes its name from those of the two bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Fat Man and LittleBoy- is being eagerly, if somewhat warily, anticipated by those scientists who know about it. The expectations aren't high just because some half-dozen scientists, like Wandell, appear in the film, and about five others are acting as advisers. The real reason is that Joffe is trying to show scientists as charismatic, sexy, ambitious, and flawed—in short, like real people. "One of the things that's very important to me is that the movie humanizes scientists in the public's mind," the director explains. His idea is to mix fact and fiction in chronicling the last 19 months of the Manhattan Project, an effort that to Joffe seems filled with human drama. "Atomic physics is a frontier that requires great courage," explains Joffe, and he wanted to bring that courage to life on the screen. For the major roles, Joffe went strictly Hollywood. Paul Newman is Major General Leslie Groves, who ran the Manhattan Project with an iron fist and lanky Dwight Schultz was cast as J. Robert Oppenheimer. But what Joffe and his team quickly realized is that no one—neither the actors nor the film crew—knew how to portray scientists accurately or with the intensity Joffe wanted. Scientists As Themselves So Joffe decided to cast a few actual scientists to appear in secondary roles; they wouldn't have to act, really, just be themselves. He also sought out a dozen or so scientists and technical experts to guide the production staff and help make sure that every little detail, from the design of the bomb to the mannerisms of the actors, was accurate. "The idea is to always have some experts around, and preferably, to have them in the movie. It keeps the actors honest, and it keeps the filmmakers on the ball," Joffe explains. So casting director Nancy Foy began combing the California campuses seeking physicists and other scientists to be in the movie. She and her staff contacted friends and old professors, who in turn spread the word and recommended possible candidates. One was Caltech physicist David Politzer, who was skeptical at first. "I thought that it was the most absurd notion I had ever heard of," he recalls. "I wasn't sure what the point would be." After reading the script, however, he became convinced that the project could be a valuable one. "I found the idea of trying to make such a movie-arid [Joffe himself]—to be quite electrifying says Politzer. In addition to networking through her academic friends, casting director Foy posted notices on bulletin boards in physics departments on California campuses. "Want to be in the movies?" the signs read. And her efforts paid off. More than 150 scientists and students responded. "I'm like many other Americans," admits Stanford psychophysicist Brian Wandell, who responded to the ads along with two of his graduate students. "When they said Paul Newman was going to star in it, I said, 'Fine, I'll try it. Why not?' " Of course, the prospect of a $1,500-a-month paycheck for haying an adventure didn't hurt either. Six scientists and students of science—including Wandell—passed the casting interviews and were parceled out roles. Politzer, Caltech professor of theoretical physics, plays the part of Robert Serber, a young protégé of Oppenheimer Marek Alboszta, 23, and Thomas J. McFarlane, 24, two physics undergraduates who took a term off from Stanford because they couldn't resist the adventure, portray young physicists caught up in the excitement of the project, as do Brian H. Brainard, 28, and Allen Poisson, 28, Wandell's graduate students. Even a New York Times science writer, Walter Sullivan, and Robert Gale, UCLA cancer specialist noted for his work with victims of the Chemobyl nuclear power plant disaster, were called on for cameo appearances. Gale also lectured to the film staff about the full effects of radiation and helped the special effects artists recreate the stages of fatal radiation exposure. In the movie, Wandell and his students Brainard and Poisson collaborate on experiments, just as they do in their laboratory at Stanford. "We're mostly involved with manipulating laboratory equipment, doing things that we're comfortable with," says Wandell. They weren't even told to act, just to play themselves and to fill the set's blackboards with suitable equations and keep the script technically accurate. At the same time, they kept a keen eye on, the real actors, making sure that not too many scientific liberties were taken. Don't drop the second "per second," Politzer warned an actor one day. The added words aren't there for emphasis, he explained but because that's—how acceleration is expressed." on an other occasion, Joffe fetched McEarlane from the cafeteria—to help improvise a conversation between actors playing scientists. "I felt like at that moment I had contributed to making the film more accurate," says McFarlane. Explaining The Principles Out of these, interactions came respect for, but not awe of scientists. "What I learned from then was correct terminology," admits actor John Cusack, who plays a physicist killed by radiation. "Give them some concepts, wiring, and paper, and they go nuts. But would they be able to do a big scene? Probably not." Adds Schultz, "Talking 24 hours a day about science and politics certainly rubbed off on me. "There's a certain way in which you phrase a question, the calmness with which you approach a problem, the tenacity with which you stick with a problem." Take the case of the imploded beer cans, which demonstrate how scientists made this movie set just a bit different from most. Charged with the task of explaining the principles of atom bombs to the actors and production staff, the scientists decided that showing was better than telling. The fact that they had no actual bomb mechanisms handy was only a minor problem. They scavenged wood, nails, and a car battery from the set and built a remarkably sophisticated device for crushing beer cans. The device demonstrated implosion, the crucial concept of drying radioactive material together so a critical mass for fission could be achieved. "I felt like a little boy," says Schultz. "They explain the world, and I suddenly understand things I never understood before." Or take the case of the "tickle the tail of the dragon" experiment, in which a small piece of uranium briefly goes critical but not before exposing one character to lethal doses of radioactivity. "It's done in a weird Hollywood way," complains Wandell. For this scene, he and the other real scientists are fiddling in the background on equipment that doesn't work. Frustrated, and with a lot of time on their hands while the details of the scene were being worked through, their tinkering scientific nature came through again. Much to the surprise of the film crew, they found a small-battery-and wire, and hooked up the meters so that they all peak at the same time. The result: In addition to helping the actors and film crew understand the ideas that they were, trying to capture on screen, these projects helped demystify science. "They got used to the idea that you've just got to get in there and get your hands dirty," says Poisson. Responds Cusack, "I definitely learned 'a lot about science. It's a different form of creativity. It isn't just a sitting at a desk, calculating dry reality." The actors came to respect the scientists, and vice versa. "I was really impressed with the actors," says Brainard. Many involved in the movie had read as much as they could about the project and the people they played. Then the actors would round out that knowledge through interaction and observations of the scientists on the set. "They would talk to us, think a little bit, and then they were actually able to take on different personalities." But none of the scientists found the movie business more glamorous and enticing then their own labs. They found the set's strict hierarchical nature foreign and the long waits between scenes boring and tedious. "I realized that I really do like being in the lab," concludes Brainard. So, will "The Fat Man and Little Boy" be the movie that turns the United States on to science? Possibly, says Cusack. "They [the physicists involved] had a lot of spirit, a lot of guts. I don't think people know what kind of brave, adventuresome, courageous lot those people were to be doing what they were doing." Adds Barry Yourgrau, the actor who plays Edward Teller, "They are not just twerps with ink stains on their shirts." Some Dramatic Liberties But since scientists are generally seekers of truth, many of those who worked on the film worry a bit about some dramatic liberties that Joffe is taking. Some events are out of sequence-fictional characters mingle with real people, and romance blossoms in unlikely places. After all, this is Hollywood. "It's a rewriting of history," complains Poisson. "The audience trusts you because you have gotten so many things right. People will think, 'oh, it's definitely fact.' It just seems wrong somehow." For his part, director Joffe says he made the changes because of his sense of what the moviegoing public would watch and understand. He wanted audiences to feel that they understood the kinds of problems the scientists faced without having to wade through facts and figures. Mixing fact with fiction, he says, is necessary in order to convey the essence of the dawning of the atomic age. He wants the audience to leave knowing that the mushroom cloud was the work of science and that science is the work of mankind. "It will seem like most human endeavors," says Joffe. "It will have patches of extreme insight, patches of terrifically hard work, and sterile patches. In the end, I hope the audience will see science as a human activity like any other." And that may be the best scientists can hope for.

Scientists Turn To Acting In New Movie

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