Word: lemmon
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...bird's eye perspective of the visitor's gallery, the shit indeed hits the fan. The building shakes, buzzers blast, and control panel lights flash like a Christmas tree gone beserk. Douglas surreptitiously films the panic unfolding below him, focusing on the contorted face of supervisor Jack Godell (Jack Lemmon '47). By adroitly juggling water valves and pressure relief systems, he prevents the plant from destroying itself. But Godell's expressions of horror, prayer, and finally relief convince Adams and Wells that they have a real story...
...China Syndrome is not a disaster film in the style of The Towering Inferno nor Earthquake--it doesn't even rely on ritual seduction scenes to cement the plot. Lemmon and Fonda portray characters who are average people, holding perhaps better-than-average jobs, who act heroically when the circumstances demand it. Fonda is very believable as a success-oriented member of the "Me Generation," at first frustrated far more by her boss's fluffy conception of her than by his cover-up of her nuclear accident story. "I've got a pretty good job, and I fully intend...
Fonda applauded Lemmon's speech, but then Douglas quickly cut in, bringing the discussion back to drama: "We almost did our job too well as a thriller. If what's bothering you is the sense of reality, that you're delving into these two particular industries or areas, more so than if we did it on television--where it was a little schlockier, a little more open, here you could say this is just a film, I don't have to worry about it--what's happened that we have taken it one step further...
...Lemmon acknowledged the film may have a serious impact. Nobody has used a nuclear reactor as background before. And it is, far more than we ever realized, a hot issue. And hot is a mild word. Everybody jumps at that. And it takes a little while to get beyond that to understand why the real crux of the film...is the power behind the power--whether it's nuclear or anti-nuclear. It's the suppression of the story getting out. Was the public interest ever really at heart? Or was it just a corporate decision where money became more...
...Lemmon also notes that while he is "Diametrically opposed" in philosophy to the character he plays (a man who, until the end, believes that the system will work and that nuclear power is completely safe) he likes the character and admires him because of his heroic act that ends the film. Both Fonda and Lemmon say that the point of the film is that ordinary people, who fear for their jobs, who normally don't give much thought to politics, are capable of extraordinary action when they see something terribly wrong. As Lemmon said of his character, "No Caesar...