Silent Running is a 1972 environmentally-themed science fiction film, directed by Douglas Trumbull, who had previously worked as a special effects supervisor on such science fiction films as 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Andromeda Strain.
Silent Running depicts a future in which all plant life on Earth has been made extinct, except for a few specimens preserved in a fleet of space-borne freight ships converted to carry greenhouse domes. When orders come from Earth to jettison and destroy the domes, the botanist aboard the greenhouse-ship 'Valley Forge' (Bruce Dern) rebels, and eventually opts instead to send the last dome into deep space to save the remaining plants and animals.
In an interview with Starlog magazine in the late 1970s, Douglas Trumbull revealed that the plot of the movie in the original version of the script was quite a bit different from what was actually filmed. In the original version, the Space Freighters were on permanent duty, carrying biological domes. When they are finally told to blow the domes and return to earth, it is because the freighters are going to be scrapped.
The Freeman Lowell character in the original version was an older, more curmudgeonly man who simply did not want to return to earth and be forced into retirement, so he steals the Valley Forge, and heads off into deep space. As in the filmed version, he reprograms the robots for some companionship, and the subplot involving the plants dying due to a lack of light was involved, but his main interest in the plants was simply as a means of extending his limited food supplies. In the second half of the film, he receives a signal from an alien ship, and decides to approach it, making humanity's first contact with aliens. The last part of the movie was a race between Lowell, who was trying to contact the aliens, and the human boarding party trying to re-take the ship. Finally, in desperation, Lowell detaches one of the domes with one of the robots aboard seconds before he is killed by the boarding party. The dome drifts off into deep space, where it is found by the aliens.
Trumbull had been involved with creating effects for 2001: A Space Odyssey. Director Stanley Kubrick wanted the "Stargate" sequence of that film to be centered around Saturn, but there were technical difficulties in getting the special effects for this sequence finished in the limited time frame. The Saturn idea was scrapped, and Kubrick substituted Jupiter instead. Trumbull developed the sequence after production, and it was recreated for Saturn in Silent Running.
The interiors were filmed aboard the decommissioned WW2 aircraft carrier USS Valley Forge (CV-45), which was docked at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard in Long Beach, California. Shortly after filming was completed, the carrier was scrapped. The forest environments were originally intended to be filmed in the Mitchell Park Domes in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but the production budget forced the sequences to be shot in a newly-completed aircraft hangar in Van Nuys, California. Trumbull stated on the commentary accompanying the DVD release that the geodesic domes containing the last forests of Earth's future on the spaceship Valley Forge were based on the Missouri Botanical Garden Climatron dome.
There are three freighters seen in the film, the Valley Forge, the Berkshire and the Sequoia. Five other ships that carried domes are also named, but do not appear on screen — they are the Yellowstone, Acadia, Blue Ridge, Glacier and Mojave. Each ship features a designation on the hull, which notes the area from which some of the flora and fauna samples were taken. The Valley Forge is listed as "Bahia Honda Subtropical," indicating at least some specimens were taken from this area of the Florida Keys.
The model of the Valley Forge Space Freighter was 26 feet (8 m) long, and took six months to build from a combination of custom castings and the contents of approximately 800 prefabricated model aircraft or tank kits. After filming was completed, American Airlines expressed an interest in sending the model on the tour circuit, but this was not feasible due to the fragile nature of the model (in fact, during filming, pieces of the model kept falling away). The ship was subsequently disassembled after several years sitting in Douglas Trumbull's personal storage facility. Several pieces, including the domes, wound up in the hands of collectors. Several domes survive, including one that now rests in the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle, Washington, and another which was sold at auction in 2008.
The three "drones" were played by four double-amputees, an idea inspired by Johnny Eck, a sideshow performer of the early 20th century who had been born without lower limbs.[citation needed] The 20 pound (9 kg) "drone suits" were custom tailored for the different actors. The suits still exist, and are in Douglas Trumbull's personal collection.
The soundtrack was written by bassoonist and P.D.Q. Bach creator Peter Schickele. It contains two songs—"Silent Running" and "Rejoice in the Sun"—written by Schickele and Diane Lampert, which were performed by popular folk singer-songwriter Joan Baez. The two songs were issued as a single on Decca (32890). In addition, an LP record (LP-81072) was released on Decca DL7-9188, and was later reissued by Varese Sarabande on green vinyl. In 1998 a limited release on CD by the "Valley Forge Record Groupe" included an additional track with the spoken introduction "God Bless These Gardens"
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