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When I worked for my college newspaper back in the 1970s, writers and editors were frequently shuffled between departments in order to give us, the greenest journalists, broader experience. My favorite job was writing movie reviews. It hardly seemed like real work—getting to see movies for free, then filing a story filled with soaring praise or scathing, witty put-downs. Unfortunately, as I learned pretty fast, the senior editors always snapped up the best assignments, the Oscar nominees and star-studded action films. Fledglings like me were given the poor orphans and rotten eggs of the movie world. Some were good, but most were sad, putrid little things.
Have you ever seen The Evil Children, where a nuclear accident causes all the town’s youth to grow black fingernails and turn into rampaging zombies? No? (Check the credits: If all the extras in a film have the same last name, that’s a bad sign.)
The newest bad guys. That last bit of cinematic refuse illustrates a fact of movies in the 1970s—the go-to villain of the day was nuclear power. In a recent Hollywood offering, Promised Land, starring Matt Damon, the default villain is Big Oil, or in this case, Big Natural Gas. I suspect they greenlighted this one back when natural gas was more expensive, and companies were scurrying about, leasing the Marcellus and Haynesville areas, tossing around bonus money like confetti.
Matt Damon plays Steve Butler, a former small-town everyman who now works for the ominously named Global, and has been sent to a small community to convince the residents to let the company lease their shale gas. Butler is both affable and vaguely threatening. He tells one reluctant landowner that, if he doesn’t sign, “We will walk away. We always do. Then we come back and buy this place for nothing.” He alternates these grim possibilities with tantalizing visions of future riches.
The Steve character does raise the very important point that in the middle of the declining heartland, sometimes making these kinds of devil deals with corporations is the only way to bring money and life back to the community. “I’m not selling them natural gas,” he says, “I’m selling them the only way they have to get back.”
As Steve and his partner, Sue, run around the county signing up landowners, they hit a roadblock when a local high school teacher stands up at a town meeting and speaks out against the lease sales. “Fracing!,” he shouts. “Google that word and see what you find.” The old man goes on a crank diatribe. “There are people all over the country whose water is being contaminated! Global is being SUED. Isn’t that true?” He then insists that the town schedule a vote to decide the fate of gas drilling in the county.
This is a rather ridiculous premise. Where in the country can a small town hold a vote to tell private landowners what they can or cannot do with their mineral rights? Certainly not in Pennsylvania, where Promised Land was filmed. (Though the Colorado Oil & Gas Conservation Commission has sued the town of Longmont for this very thing.)
It could have been a good movie. The concerns that people have over environmental damage need to be taken seriously and addressed. This film does not do it. Instead, the writers relied on the old “everybody knows” strategy. Everybody knows that fracing kills cows. Everybody knows that if you light a match, your sink will explode. As Steve says when his soul-searching leads him to doubt his mission: “All we had to do was be willing to scorch the earth beneath our feet.” Everybody knows fracing scorches the earth.
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| Angry townspeople: “Fracing, Google that!” Photo courtesy of Focus Features. |
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There is a schizophrenic side to the debate. The opponents of increased use of natural gas, and the techniques that make it abundant, find themselves opposing the emission of less CO2, less sulfur, fewer nitrogen oxides. For the earth-friendly, it’s not a comfortable position to be in. There has been sharp debate in the various environmental movements over just this issue, and it shows in this movie. The story feels like something written by a contentious committee rather than an inspired screenwriter. The financial and environmental advantages brought by a transition to natural gas are acknowledged, but reluctantly.
Spoiler alert, and all that. The story spirals downhill when a supposed environmentalist comes to town and tries to whip the locals into an anti-fracing frenzy. This brings about the silliest exchange in the film:
Steve: “I think there’s an environmental presence!”
Sue: “Don’t panic!”
The activist plants signs, hands out leaflets, and gives ludicrous demonstrations of the dangers of fracing, such as throwing chemicals around and setting fire to a tiny model farm.
There is no way to discuss this without giving away the “big plot twist,” so if you want to be surprised, stop reading. Still with me? The “environmentalist,” unbeknownst to Steve, is a shill sent by Global to portray an environmentalist, in order to discredit the movement. When Steve finds out, the company man warns him: “You’re going to want to stop asking questions now, Steve. You’re at the big kids’ table.”
I suspect this revelation will make everyone from the Club for Growth to Greenpeace roll their eyes in unison, and let out a collective “Oh, come ON.” In that sense, maybe this film will bring us all together, at the big kids’ table. 
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