nuclear-news

Matthew Modine on His Role in ‘Oppenheimer’ and Producing Nuclear Testing Doc ‘Downwind’: ‘This Insanity Hasn’t Stopped’

By Addie Morfoot, Variety, 15 Dec 23

In “Downwind,” a documentary executive produced by Matthew Modine, directors Mark Shapiro and Douglas Brian Miller chronicle the lethal effects that nuclear testing on American soil has had on U.S. citizens.

The Oscar hopeful reveals that from 1951 to 1992, Mercury, Nevada, was the site for the testing of 928 large scale nuclear weapons. Wind dispersed radioactive fallout from those atmospheric blasts (mushroom clouds) and underground testing (venting) in a seemingly unpredictable manner to people living “downwind.” The United States Department of Justice defines “downwinders,” also known as lab rats, as human beings who live in counties located downwind from Nevada Test Site in the states of Utah, Nevada and Arizona.

The film explains that the radiation led to various diseases, mainly cancer. Shapiro and Miller also highlight how Hollywood star John Wayne and numerous members of the cast and crew of the 1956 movie “The Conqueror” died, arguably, of cancer due to filming in Nevada close to the atomic testing sites.

Martin Sheen narrates “Downwind,” which features several interviews with various talking heads including Michael Douglas, who starred in the 1979 nuclear-meltdown movie “The China Syndrome, comedian Lewis Black, John Wayne’s son Patrick as well members from the Shoshone Nation who were severely impacted by the nuclear radiation that spread to their land.

For Modine, who played American electrical engineer and administrator Vannevar Bush in Christopher Nolan’s movie about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the creation of the atomic bomb, the issue hit close to home………………………………………………………………………………………

What was it like to tell the story of how the insanity started in Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer”?

I think that the most frightening scene in the entire movie is when you have a group of men sitting in a room and the Secretary of Defense says, ‘I’ve made this, list of 15 cities where we are going to drop the bomb.’ Then Matt Damon’s character (General Groves) says, “Bombs.” Now my character has just said that hundreds of thousands of people are going to die immediately from the fallout of the radiation and he says, “Bombs. We are going to drop one to demonstrate that it works, and a second to demonstrate that we can replicate it,” without a breath. It’s like, ‘What’s for dinner? Cornbread and peas.” On the day we were shooting that scene, I told Nolan, “You know what takes this into the realm of absurdity and Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove”? He said, “What?” And I said, “birthday cake.” You don’t have to change anything. Just put some balloons in the room and have us eating birthday cake because that’s how insane it was.  https://variety.com/2023/film/news/matthew-modine-oppenheimer-nuclear-testing-documentary-downwind-1235834894/

December 17, 2023 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized