REEL REALITY: Science Consultants in Hollywood

Carl Sagan would have been proud of the film’s scientific accuracy if he had lived to see the film through to its conclusion... (Dennis Schwartz writing on Contact in Ozus’ World Movie Reviews). Find me a scientist! A geologist! Someone who can tell me what the hell is going on! [Mike Roark (Tommy Lee Jones) in Volcano]. Surprisingly enough, when Tommy Lee Jones shouts out this line during the eruption of Mt. Wilshire in Volcano, he actually echoes the cries of some of the most powerful people in Hollywood. Twenty per cent of the top grossing films of all time have had scientific or technical consultants,1 as did the 2000 and 2001 Best Picture Oscar winners (Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind), several of the top-rated television shows of recent years (C.S.I.: Crime Scene Investigation and The X-Files among them), and a prodigious number of other entertainment industry products. This is a paper about the experience of science consultants in Hollywood. It examines the process through which their input is secured and incorporated by filmmakers, and how that knowledge is part of a process of commodification of scientific knowledge through which those filmmakers play with the concept of reality as part of the industry and craft of the dream factory. It interrogates the idea of reality as viewed through native eyes: as social scientists, when the producer of the movie Spider-Man says during an interview that his movie is very accurate scientifically, our duty is not to stare back at him in disbelief, but to take that sentiment and try to understand the cultural framework that enables him not just to say this with a straight face, but to mean it.