Running Silent

Swiss scientists are thinking about launching some "janitor" satellites to help clean up the growing amount of junk orbiting our planet.  Which makes me think back to a great movie from 1972 called Silent Running.  The movie was about the Earth's plants being put on spaceships to preserve them for the future because the Earth could no longer support them.  It starred Bruce Dern, a long time runner who once ran for the University of Pennsylvania in the 1950's.

 I went to the University of Pennsylvania, which was probably a big mistake. But my coach was an excellent decathlete Olympian and the guy who was really an influence of me was ... He was terrific. In those days freshmen could not compete in varsity meets. I did well in track my freshman year, although I didn't run any faster as a freshman in college than I did as a senior in high school. This bothered me. And I trained hard. I did everything right. Interval training, I ran tremendous interval workouts that were extraordinary things: 10 quarters in 62 seconds with just a quarter-mile jog. People said, "My god, he was the miler." I was in love with the half-mile. It was a metaphor of life for me: everyone stays together for the first half and then you make your mark and go away.

... Those indoor relay meets, like the Boston Games, the Philadelphia Inquirer Games, the Washington Post Games, you know you go and run in these relay meets, put on by newspapers, we had a good two-mile relay team. And I ran in them. And in both meets, the people were chanting at me, "Go Elvis go." And I held my own. Then, after holding my own, the Monday after the second meet, Ken Daugherty, the coach, comes up to me and he says to me, "I want you to go home, and when you come to practice tomorrow, I want you to cut the sideburns off because you're not going to run for this college lookin' like that. We're a team here and you're trying to be some kind of an individual." And I said, "You're kidding me." He said, "No." And he said, "I have the school's backing on this." And I said, "I'm outta here." And I never saw him again. I left college that day.

In Silent Running, when the decision is made to destroy the spaceships and all the plants to save money, Bruce steals his ship and goes rogue.  I think he even has a scene in the film where he goes for a run amongst the plants.  His only companions on the ship are three robots Huey, Dewey and Louie (soon only two) who are the janitors programmed to run the ship and clean up the messes.  Funny how real life is finally catching up to 1972!

Here's another movie with Bruce Dern about the Dipsea Race.