search articles:     from the issue of November 18, 2004           Chemistry at the cineplex Professor examines how chemistry has changed through movies  BY TOM HANCOCK, UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS When Mark Griep says a film has good chemistry, he's talking science, not art.     Mark Griep, assistant professor of chemistry, has studied the role chemistry has played in movies, from "It's a Wonderful Life" to more recent releases such as "Hollow Man." "You can follow chemical ideas through the history of film," he says. Griep, associate professor of chemistry at UNL, began compiling movies that contained chemistry references after seeing that the National Institutes of Health was showing films with medical references for employees. The agency would have an NIH researcher whose field was reflected in the movie talk about the biology in the film. "I said to one of my colleagues that we should examine films for the other sciences," Griep said. "Once that light bulb went off in my head, I was starting to notice chemistry references in many movies." Griep started collecting movie titles in 1997, using the extensive UNL film studies collection of reference books to identify films. He also uses the Internet Movie Database for research. As chemistry has evolved, the portrayal of chemistry in movies has changed, Griep said. Before 1941, a scientist (chemists were called "scientists" in most films) would develop a chemical formula with weapon potential, such as poison gas or a nerve gas, Griep said. It was then a question of who controlled the dangerous compound. Often a villain would steal the formula and much of the film would center on the good guys trying to stop him. As movies became more realistic, the chemistry became more specific as to what chemical it was and how it kills people. In contemporary films, the chemical's effect on people is shown explicitly on the screen. "There's an intersection of chemical history, film history and the public perception of science," Griep said, and the portrayal of chemistry has evolved along with the increasing sophistication of film-making. For example, it's now common to have a science adviser on a film, which in the early years wasn't the case. "These films do have a continuity to them," Griep said. "You can follow chemical ideas through the history of film." "Before the 1970s, chemistry provided the excitement," Griep said. "The chemist made a compound that was usually dangerous, but the chemist was an authority who knew what to do and no one got hurt. The tension in the plot occurred because a villain coveted that chemical invention but didn't know how to handle it. The most common result was that the villain either died from the chemical or was otherwise punished." One variation on this theme is "Monkey Business" from 1952 and directed by Howard Hawks. Chemist Barnaby Fulton (Cary Grant) develops an anti-arthritis compound called a youth formula. A research monkey in a cage in the lab watches Fulton mix the solutions. Later, the monkey gets out of its cage and mimics Fulton. After the monkey pours the solution into the water cooler, everyone starts acting younger. In the post-Watergate era of the 1970s, a large segment of the population lost faith in political leaders, and there was a lot of questioning of authorities. In this era of cynicism, even scientists couldn't be trusted to do the right thing, Griep said. One of many examples of this is "Scanners," a 1981 movie directed by David Cronenberg. During the movie, we learn that about 300 people in the world called scanners can read and control other people's thoughts. We also learn that all of their mothers had taken the drug ephemerol as part of a government experiment to create such people. Ephemerol sounds a lot like the real-world drug thalidomide, which was a "morning sickness" pill that caused birth defects. Griep became a chemist after getting bachelor's and doctoral degrees in biochemistry at the University of Minnesota, where he worked on the process of blood coagulation. He did post-doctoral research on DNA replication proteins for four years at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. He came to UNL in 1991. Griep has several criteria for deciding whether a film makes his list. These range from having a chemist as a character to citations from the periodic table of elements. Movies often confuse chemistry and biochemistry, and Griep keeps mentions of the latter on a separate list. "Since the 1980s, a film synopsis will call the compound in question a chemical warfare agent, but then when you watch the movie, you find that it's a biological agent, such as a virus," Griep said. Griep includes films with pharmacists, who were presented in the early days as working with bubbling apparatus, making chemicals for the customers. Pharmacists actually did create their own mixes, such as in the film "It's a Wonderful Life." Films show how this profession, like chemistry, has changed, Griep said. There are a few films that use chemistry as a major component of the film. One is "Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet" from 1940, which is the true story of the doctor who won the Nobel Prize for developing the immune concept and then went on to find a cure for syphilis. Ehrlich worked out the concept of differential toxicity, which is the idea that the same medicine that could harm a patient at one dose could benefit him or her at a different level. For example, arsenic compounds treat infection, but they also can harm the patient at a different dose. The last third of the film shows the development of differential toxicity, eventually leading to a treatment of syphilis. Griep recently published an article, "Based on a True Story: Using Movies as Source Material for General Chemistry Reports," for the Journal of Chemical Education. The article reflects his experience with his Chemistry 109 course, during which he has students write reports on two movies based on real chemists: "Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet" and "Me & Isaac Newton" in 1999, which tells the story of Gertrude Elion, who discovered a cure for childhood leukemia, gout and a treatment for AIDS. Griep so far has created four talks out of his film studies, which he presents to neighboring colleges and universities and at UNL on Chemistry Day, a recruiting event. Griep would like to get people to think about chemistry's portrayal in movies as a way to publicize what chemists do. He believes many people who are interested in either movies or science would enjoy learning that the chemical jargon used in a movie refers to some actual chemistry. "I'd like to use these movies to reach a wide audience to show them the deep but often unrecognized role that chemistry plays in our lives. To me, an explanation of a movie's chemical jargon represents an important forum to improve the popular understanding of chemistry," he said. Chemistry on film Here's a sampling of some of the most popular films with a chemistry influence. • "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb." In this film the fluoridation of drinking water is seen as a Communist plot. • "The Man in the White Suit." Chemist Sidney Stratton (Alec Guinness) develops a fabric that never gets dirty or wears out. The garment mill owners and workers unite to suppress his discovery. • "It's a Wonderful Life." A pharmacist gives the young George Bailey the wrong compound for a medicine. • "Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." The physician/chemist Dr. Jekyll creates a compound that turns him into the evil Mr. Hyde. This is the most-filmed horror story, with 90 renditions, Griep said. • "The Invisible Man." Dr. Frank Griffin, an assistant food preservation chemist, extracts "monocaine" from a rare Indian flower that draws color from everything it touches. This theme has been portrayed in many movies. The invisible man always gets killed at the end of the movie because he goes insane as a side effect of the chemical, Griep says. • "Formula 51." This 2000 film features a lot of discussion of chemistry and models of compounds. It stars Samuel L. Jackson as a man who decides to develop the ultimate mind-enhancing drug, which he calls formula 51 because it takes users to the "51st state" of consciousness. 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