October 8, 2023
by Ed Rampell
In the ensuing interview Jim Heddle references a “nuclear revival,” a phenomenon which has also recently been occurring in different mediums. Christopher Nolan’s all-star epic Oppenheimer dramatizes the creation of the atomic bomb and the fallout from it. Steve James’ A Compassionate Spy chronicles espionage conducted by the Manhattan Project’s youngest physicist at Los Alamos. Oliver Stone’s documentary Nuclear Now argues in favor of nuclear energy as a supposed solution to the climate emergency. Janice Haaken’s new film Atomic Bamboozle: The False Promise of a Nuclear Renaissance looks at the downside of this supposed nuclear energy revival. Irene Lusztig’s doc Richland, like Joshua Frank’s book Atomic Days, The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America, both chronicle the U.S.’s largest plutonium production site, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state.
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Ed Rampell was named after legendary CBS broadcaster Edward R. Murrow because of his TV exposes of Senator Joe McCarthy. Rampell majored in Cinema at Manhattan’s Hunter College and is an L.A.-based film historian/critic who co-organized the 2017 70th anniversary Blacklist remembrance at the Writers Guild theater in Beverly Hills and was a moderator at 2019’s “Blacklist Exiles in Mexico” filmfest and conference at the San Francisco Art Institute. Rampell co-presented “The Hollywood Ten at 75” film series at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures and is the author of Progressive Hollywood, A People’s Film History of the United States and co-author of The Hawaii Movie and Television Book.
