Chemistry in Showbiz
June 19th, 2007I recently came across this screenshot I took of an episode of Deep Space Nine (part of the Star Trek franchise):
That molecule is a key component of Ketracel-White, the sole source of nutrition for a species of warrior slaves. When the wormhole to their home-world was blocked by a minefield, the employers of the warriors needed to find a way to synthesize it.
Sadly, that’s where the chemistry ended. I think it’s the only time I saw a chemical structure in the whole series, which was otherwise littered with fantastic challenges in biology, physics, and engineering. Of course, it’s not just Star Trek that slights our field. Maybe it’s just that engineering problems are more entertaining. I saw Apollo 13 when flipping through channels Saturday night and couldn’t stop watching it. NASA is just full of these cool stories, including my favorite: the one about flight controller John “SCE-to-AUX” Aaron saving Apollo 12’s mission when the rocket was hit by lightning during launch. There’s audio here of the communication loops, where you can listen to how Aaron saved millions of dollars and enabled a cool science mission to proceed by knowing the vehicle’s instrumentation inside and out.
Anyway, in hopes that someone in Hollywood is reading this blog, here are my best ideas for how chemistry could be worked into a hit project:
1. Book, with possible movie deal (depending on sales): A postdoc in a total synthesis lab discovers a cure for cancer, but fearing that his advisor will take the credit, doesn’t tell anyone so he can publish it as an assistant professor. Unfortunately, he doesn’t manage to get a single job offer due to his poor record of publication. He eventually pursues a career in drug discovery and dies of melanoma at the age of 33.
2. Tweener Movie: A girl genius (played by Hilary Duff) extracts a natural product from a pretty flower and discovers that it cures AIDS. When the government forces her to marry the smartest man in the country (played by me), she steals the identity of a grad student and chooses a life of misery over a life of misery.
3. Action Movie: A nerdy agoraphobe (played by Ethan Hawke, or possibly, me) solves the world’s energy crisis by using his basement lab to synthesize a donor-acceptor dyad that undergoes photoinduced electron transfer when irradiated with sunlight. The petroleum industry puts a price on his head and chases him through the corridors of the US Patent and Trademark Office in an ultimately successful attempt to eliminate all knowledge of the molecule. The movie ends with the nerd’s lab notebook disappearing into a boiling vat of crude oil being stirred by the Secretary General of OPEC.
4. TV Sitcom: In every episode, a country bumpkin uses his barn-based laboratory to cook up a new way to get high. He often runs afoul of the law, but fortunately, the local sheriff is a bumbling idiot who doesn’t understand how to interpret a simple first-order NMR spectrum or solve the Schroedinger Equation.
5. Theater: A diabolical foreign dictator assembles a team of scientists to build a chemical weapon that recognizes DNA sequences only present in the ethnic race of their enemy. The weapon works, at first, before something goes horribly wrong: every living creature on Earth dies except for me and Hilary Duff.
Anyone wishing to produce any of these ideas should feel free to contact me for the associated scripts and musical scores.
Previous Comments
- Shrug Says:
June 19th, 2007 at 6:54 am The problem with chemical challenges on Star Trek is that they’ve already devised a way to immediately synthesize anything for which the chemical structure is known: the replicator, and a way to immediately get that chemical structure: the tricorder. I mean, once you’ve achieved immediate identification and molecular-scale assembly of, well, anything, doesn’t that take most of the chemistry out? - Paul Says:
June 19th, 2007 at 7:33 am Yeah, that is definitely a problem. For some reason, ketracel-white couldn’t be replicated. Maybe natural products isolation or mining operations would allow for some interesting chemistry? - Russ Says:
June 19th, 2007 at 7:42 am Fun post!
Has anyone seen “Medicine Man” – 1992 – Sean Connery? I saw it long ago, before I was a chemist, but thinking back on it, I’d like to watch it again and see how badly the real chemistry is portrayed. I recall the film revolved around a cancer-curing natural product in the rain forest, which Connery needed to isolate and characterize (somehow by GC?) and quickly because someone was in a big hurry to mow down said rain forest. - Matt J. Says:
June 19th, 2007 at 8:19 am I remember that movie, Russ. Wasn’t there another one in the same vein called “Mosquito Coast”? I might be thinking of something else here.Being a writer and being a chemist, I’ve tried to work some chemistry into my stories. Unfortunately, the style and type of stories forces me to stop at natural products, and even then I’m usually just using the plants that produce them. I do give myself credit for at least trying. - Captain Catalysis Says:
June 19th, 2007 at 8:26 am “The Rock” had Nicholas Cage as a biochemist fighting terrorists who had a huge stockpile of VX–but they never really mentioned chemistry beyond that.“Moonraker” had the Bond Villain trying to kill the entire human population from space with some deadly alkaloid from a rare orchid found only in the Amazon. At one point, they even show the structure of it.Idea 3 has been done already, with Keanu Reeves: http://imdb.com/title/tt0115857/It was pretty bad.Idea 4 might be a good excuse for you to get a ‘69 Dodge Charger with Confederate regalia. - Mitch Says:
June 19th, 2007 at 12:27 pm Star Trek has helped get more scientists into our field than it has ever “slighted” our field.Mitch - Albert Says:
June 19th, 2007 at 12:40 pm Adult Movie: hot, female, PhD students/PostDoc find a new way to get their findings accepted as trustworthy by their professors/supervisors: starting torrid affairs with them.Sezen/Sames anyone?You could be the tutor of your beloved Hilary Duff. - Hap Says:
June 19th, 2007 at 1:19 pm 1) Do you have a drawing of the structure – I can’t read it well enough off of the screen to figure out what it is. It looks like a peptide with some added chiral centers – perhaps it’s a peptidomimetic, or an anti-AIDS drug.2) Congratulations, you seem to have found a spammer of your very own (the last bunch of comments before the previous three). - Uncle Al Says:
June 19th, 2007 at 2:02 pm Anybody can be an engineering fool simply by slapping stuff together (or complexly so – Galloping Gertie or the Millennium Bridge). It takes little more than that to be a fool in physics (Road Runner cartoons). Being a fool in chemistry requires no small amount of education to be ignorant – as opposed to totally empty. Most folks are not up to the challenge.6) Green PhD organiker $60K in 21% APR debt doing fries at the local MacDonalds. He receives the annual C&ENemployment issue Officially stating 95% chemical employment. He puts down the fry basket and calls Dr. Schund,http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/fourbomb.htm
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/tsu.htm - aa Says:
June 19th, 2007 at 2:09 pm what about a hilarious episode of ST:TNG where Will Crusher, in a moment of teen rebellion and merry-making, replaces all the Carbon-12 in the replicator with C-13? The resulting metabolism slowdown ruins Picard’s normally strictly regimented BM schedule, leading to an embarrassing moment in front of the Klingon ambassador. The problem is discovered when Data notices that Picard’s cup of tea is heavier than normal; when Crusher admits his guilt, he is punished by being forced to drink gallons of tritiated Kool-Aid - Huge dork Says:
June 19th, 2007 at 2:57 pm Which episode of DS9 is that? Is that the one with Bashir/O’Brien on the planet with all of the Jem Hadar or is that the one where Odo raises the Jem Hadar kid? - ZAL Says:
June 19th, 2007 at 3:15 pm Since you invented the plot, you own the right to have Hilary Duff for you alone, but, if you don’t mind, I’d love to play the ferocious foreign dictator in nr.6. If someone in Hollywood contacts you, please remember this comment! (P.S.: my acting skills are AWESOME, as my labmates can’t help but notice when my supervisor comes in the lab and asks me if there are good news) - ZAL Says:
June 19th, 2007 at 3:16 pm sorry that would be nr.5! - Handles Says:
June 19th, 2007 at 5:05 pm Hahah I remember Medicine Man. Three funny things struck me at the time:1. Lorraine Bracco backpacking her GC into the rainforest, but neglecting to bring gas cylinders.2. I cant remember if the actual structure made sense, it was a huge molecule but the GC performed full structural characterisation in a matter of seconds.3. The other components identified by the GC included a bunch of inorganics like FeCl3.I agree, Russ, I need to watch this again to laugh at it properly. I cant remember if they claimed their drug was orally bioavailable, perhaps they injected. - Jose Says:
June 19th, 2007 at 6:07 pm Another Sean Connery epic *everyone* should see- “Zardoz.” Seriously, the most insane movie I’ve ever seen released by a real studio. - Milkshake Says:
June 19th, 2007 at 9:30 pm A “graphic novel” plot: A recluse genius is disfigured when his experiment goes awry. He loses his face and his love for humanity. He secretly drains the hydrogen tank on the shuttle and fills it with liquid chlorine. He proceeds to steal the shuttle, intending to crash it into headquarters of the United Nations. With the brave coastgueard choppers in a hot pursuit, he is forced to land the shuttle in Bahamas. When his nefarious plot is thwarted , he sets the chlorine on fire in a final act of defiance. The chlorine fire rages for three days and Bahamas are finished for good. One brave coastguardsman survives though and returns to his loving wife and a little kid. - Paul Says:
June 20th, 2007 at 2:03 am That’s good, but you need to find a way to work in a part for Hilary Duff.Also…Medicine Man is going on my Blockbuster list and I think that the structure from DS9 is nonsensical in terms of the elements we know. - Klug Says:
June 20th, 2007 at 2:04 am Don’t forget the nickname given to Aaron: a ’steely-eyed missile man’. - Dude Says:
June 20th, 2007 at 7:29 am Two other movies involving chemists as main characters that I can think of: 1) Jacob’s Ladder, where a chemist works for the Army to make a drug that turns soldiers into super-warriors 2) Formula 51 w/ Samuel L. Jackson as a “master chemist” making a drug that is “51 times more powerful than cocaine, etc.”
Jacob’s Ladder is OK – very little chemistry content. I can’t vouch for the chemistry content in Formula 51. - Matt J. Says:
June 20th, 2007 at 8:10 am If I remember right from the structure I saw on Formula 51, there was a nitrogen with five bonds to it. - Dude Says:
June 20th, 2007 at 9:16 am 21 Well then, that compound would eff you up for sure. - excimer Says:
June 20th, 2007 at 9:43 am My friends and I are making a pilot for a TV show called “grads.” It’ll be like scrubs, but in a chemistry grad program. I’m gonna be the snarky postdoc, Perry Cox-style. We’ll make trillions. - eugene Says:
June 20th, 2007 at 10:48 am Who the hell is Hillary Duff? Well, even if all those ideas were implemented, I still wouldn’t get a TV or go out to watch movies in theatres. I prefer living in my passive visual media free bubble. - Jalfrezi Says:
June 20th, 2007 at 10:53 am A couple more movies/tv where the scriptwiters really should have talked to a real scientist…Good Will Hunting has Minnie Driver refusing to go out on a date with Matt Damon as she has to stay in and interpret an NMR – which he obviously then solves in seconds.There’s an episode of the X-files with some nice chemistry in it. A guy from the future comes back to try and prevent the synthesis of a drug that allows time-travel. Mulder and Scully get hold of an NMR of this drug – it looks like maitotoxin’s complicated twin. They then take it to their local boffin, who recognises it immediately, despite ‘the technology to synthesise this molecule being twenty years away’. At the end of the show, there’s a 3D model of the structure rotating on a computer screen, and I’m not sure – but it looked like trifluoroethanol to me… - Paul Says:
June 20th, 2007 at 12:10 pm Eugene: That’s one “l” in “Hilary Duff”. How dare you. - Brian Says:
June 20th, 2007 at 7:33 pm Hollywood once casted Keanu Reeves as the scientist that discovered the secret to Nuclear Fusion.Right.I wouldn’t hold out anytime soon for Hollywood to start depicting science realistically.“Whoa…. like, fusion.” - MJ Says:
June 21st, 2007 at 12:41 am Action Movie: A biochemistry grad student (played, perhaps, by me) discovers a family of de novopeptides that can cure nearly any disease or disorder out there by modulating various aspects of the immune response. He is unfortunately forced to go on the run with his undergraduate assistant (played by Emmy Rossum) from pharma/biotech-hired hitmen (Angelina Jolie among others), covert agents from nearly every nation in the world, as well as his ex-girlfriend-turned-FBI-agent (Kristen Bell) assigned to bring him in.On a more serious note, I would imagine something along the lines of House but set in a research environment might work out quite well. If we could get Stephen Fry to play the PI, I’d watch it. Heh. - Brian Says:
June 21st, 2007 at 1:35 am Speaking of realistic depictions…It’s worth mentioning, a movie came out this year (on the independent film circuit, I believe) called “Dark Matter,” that tells the story of a graduate student that goes violent after his scientific career tanks due to academic politics (namely, an insensitive boss, I think).http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416675/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Matter_(film)It’s loosely based on the true story of Gang Lu, the physics grad student who killed five people at the University of Iowa.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_Lu - Matt J. Says:
June 21st, 2007 at 8:03 am House busts out the organic chemistry references from time to time. I remember a couple of seasons ago he drew urine out of a guy and added whatever reagent to it and shook it under light and asked if the interns had forgotten their organic chemistry and that light catalyzes organic reactions. It was almost close to real chemistry on tv. - Kyle Finchsigmate Says:
June 21st, 2007 at 9:35 am Matt, the line was “More light equals more oxidation” or something along those lines.No one even bothers to fact check chemistry. They’ll have droves of consultants for forensics, space physics and medicine, but NO ONE CARES about chemistry. And why hire a consultant when your audience won’t have a fuckin’ clue either? Save money AND look smart. - Huge dork Says:
June 21st, 2007 at 11:17 am I seem to recall that Flubber actually had a grad student for a chemistry adviser (the Robin Williams version.) - Darksyde Says:
June 21st, 2007 at 12:45 pm Zardoz zardoz zardoz zardozThe gun is good! The penis is evil!zardoz zardoz zardoz zardoZ - Jeremy Says:
June 21st, 2007 at 1:40 pm Well, I see this is off-topic for these comments, but nonetheless:I’ve been thinking about the under-representation of chemistry in public forums for a while now. Case in point: The NY Times website, which divides its Science section into Environment and Space/Cosmos. The headlines are all either biology or physics — never chemistry-related.For some reason, the media have the perception that the general public is interested in string theory and dark matter, but not drug design or OLEDs, for example. There must be SOME way to make chemistry sound interesting to a layperson, no? - Hap Says:
June 21st, 2007 at 6:24 pm Idea five is similar to a Stephen Cannell book – I think it’s called “The White Train” but I could be wrong. It ends differently though – I don’t think Hilary Duff was old enough to be thought of that way yet. - lab chemist Says:
June 22nd, 2007 at 7:34 pm I remember that episode that Jalfrezi mentioned. Because the 1H NMR spectrum came out on graph paper, it was probably taken on an old instrument, so at best 180 MHz. So further kudos to the local boffin for such wonderful structural elucidation. - Dude Says:
June 23rd, 2007 at 9:57 am 24 – yes, “the NMR of ibogamine”, as Minnie Driver says – and the next scene cuts to Matt Damon drawing out the structure of the alkaloid. - Anonymous Says:
June 23rd, 2007 at 11:58 pm Movie producers typically don’t care about accuracy when it comes to science. I have had this conversation a half dozen times with a major movie producer. Her rebuke, which was well thought out, was that there are only a handful of dorks (us) that notice the mistakes. Take for example, the name of the drug used in remake of Starsky and Hutch or the GC trace in Medicine Man.The point is, why hire a consultant to improve the accuracy when only 0.01% of the audience is going to notice.I had a three muskateers yesterday Paul. You are still wrong about candy bars. - Milkshake Says:
June 24th, 2007 at 6:11 am A: Maybe I am hopeless dork but I think a chem lab can be rented cheaply from some university chemistry research group, perhaps even more cheaply than setting studio’s own blue-solutions Mickey Mouse version of it. (I think the grad students would even do extras in their lab for free, for the “Look ma, it’s me in the movie” moment.) A real chem lab could be made interesting if studios employed film-makers that are not as arrogant dicks or shallow as mud. - Jose Says:
June 25th, 2007 at 1:44 pm The real problem is the tiny amount of science that John Q. Public *is* exposed to is hopelessly inaccurate, and thus the only real forum for changing the public mindset is squandered. I read somewhere recently that capital court cases are have huge problems because juries (after watching too much CSI) assume and *expect* lots of forensic evidence, which is rare. I think a similar trend might hold for us…. - matt Says:
June 28th, 2007 at 6:54 pm saw this and thought about this post:http://www.biocompare.com/video/thermo/smi/ - D Says:
July 1st, 2007 at 2:18 pm Lets see chem on tv,1.)Macguyver
2.)Formula 51(crazy double bonded hydrogen but the coolest briefcase/lab set ever)
3.)There’s A Pierce Brosnan movie with this liq if consumed catalyses a chemical rxn and maxes you explode.
5.)The Specialist(That rarely pops into anyone’s head but it’s controlled thermodynamics)
6.)Stargate(Any episode with Linea as the villain)
7.)Full Metal Alchemist(first law of Alchemy is the first law of thermo d)
8.)John Doe(Does Chem on the go in some episodes)
9.)Good eats(Food Chemistry)The ideal chem movie would have a macguyverish/john doe ish hero who uses the stuff around them and all forms of chem on the fly,who knows maybe scrape paint off the walls to get TiO2 to perform a rxn.Chem is the most interesting of the sciences the problem is that marketing people go to great lengths to hide the chemical basis of the things around us(yep branding’s a biyatch).
Yeah the show has to have someone who knows everyday chem,or at least has Sigma Aldrich and Fedex on speed dial.
Speaking of shows have any of you ever watched the Documentaries on crystal meth,as a professional chemist even I admire their improv skills,but they’re still a bunch of dumbasses for the most part.It’s like rough science on BBC,if you put a bunch of chem grad students on a deserted island,how many can cut it,and how any will tear leaves off trees to write theses on the Chemistry of being stuck on a deserted island?
Yeah we need Survivor:Chemistry or at the Very least Iron Chef Chemistry, Who will be the iron Chemist?A La Chemie - D Says:
July 1st, 2007 at 2:29 pm or you could make a movie bout a crazed chemist who threatens to deplete the ozone layer unless demands are met l.o.l.
We’re not that big a threat so chemists aren’t really the best villains.Say what?It’s a question of distribution,viruses etc affect far more people far more quickly.It’s honestly pretty hard to think of a global chemistry threat,cept for the Environmental impact of what we do.
So what r your views on pollution & chem?Personally we deal with some pretty messed up stuff,rxns can’t go without them and there are always left over reactants no matter how good your yield.I can’t wait till green chem is fully developed,greener & cheaper reactants - D Says:
July 1st, 2007 at 2:31 pm Dexter’s Lab - D Says:
July 1st, 2007 at 6:22 pm Darkman
Batman Begins(Natural Prod chem/the fear toxin) - Martin Walker Says:
July 3rd, 2007 at 12:38 pm Something very similar to your action movie has been done, namely The Man in the White Suit. Of course this came out in the days when chemists were seen as the good guys (wonder drugs, new cheap materials) rather than the bad guys (polluting the planet, gouging profits out of the sick, etc). Still a good movie, though! - kjk81 Says:
July 8th, 2007 at 11:36 pm I happened to catch “Medicine Man” on cable recently and managed to get a screen capture of the compound identifies by the magic GC. (I want one!)Apologies for the image quality. Does this seem familiar to anyone? The structure looks fine (except for a N that I think is missing). It seems to have a group that looks like a steroid. - kjk81 Says:
July 8th, 2007 at 11:38 pm The link didn’t post. I’ll try again.http://s63.photobucket.com/alb…..cap001.jpg - Paul Says:
July 8th, 2007 at 11:43 pm Ha…nice! - Klug Says:
July 9th, 2007 at 4:19 am Good night! What’s the logD on that sucker? - Matt J. Says:
July 9th, 2007 at 8:47 am I like the spiro ester in the upper right hand side of the molecule.As long as you’re listing chemists in popular culture, D, don’t forget Severus Snape from Harry Potter. Like my buddy Jim says, it’s always the chemistry professors who are the bad guys. - CET Says:
July 9th, 2007 at 12:27 pm re: #41It appears that the magic GC of +5 characterization doesn’t doesn’t reveal stereochemistry.Unless we are supposed to believe that the natural product is a mixture of all 2^7 isomers. - Dude Says:
July 9th, 2007 at 10:59 pm I like the vicinal Texas carbons. Awesome.
