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A day in the life of ... A Hollywood Science Advisor |
| Sunday, 17 April 2005 | |
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Nerissa Hannink talks to Wayne Grody about his work as a scientific advisor for film and television
What led you to become a technical advisor? I began my medical training and went on to do a PhD in molecular biology, but I’ve always loved film, so during graduate school I became a film critic for a leisure and topical magazine for physicians. Then I came to UCLA to do further medical training, partly so I could be closer to the movie studios. In the 10 years I worked for the magazine, I interviewed directors and actors and began to set up a network, so that when people had questions in my field they knew to call me. How would you describe your role as an advisor? To give advice on the storyline and special effects, so they are not too far from reality. I realise it’s not a scientific seminar, but I’d like to avoid something ridiculous where the audience comes away with a completely wrong view of science. I’m usually looking at the most egregious errors or assumptions and correcting those, but I’ll let some smaller details slip through. I write and change dialogue, but it’s very clearly spelled out that I am not a writer. And even if they use my lines I can’t share in the profits as writers do because I’m paid a flat rate. When do you find out if they have used your advice? It varies according to the personalities involved and how closely I work with the project. Sometimes I don’t know until I see the final production, and at other times I’m involved in every draft of the script. There was one TV movie called Condition Critical that involved research on prions (a type of protein believed to cause mad cow disease). There was a scene of a technician walking through the lab with a tray of coffee that wasn’t in the script. I protested but there was nothing they could do at that stage. What stage of production are you involved in? It depends who I am first contacted by; it may be the writer, producer or director. For The Nutty Professor I was approached by the art department because they wanted me to design the professor’s lab. That was fun because I went through the same catalogues I use to outfit my own lab and chose whatever I wanted because money was no object. Then they invited me to help dress the set, putting in post-it notes and details like that. Once I was onboard they gave me the scripts, so I also ended up critiquing dialogue. Do you show people how to use equipment, so it looks convincing? Yes, one of my jobs is to help actors with physical roles. You often have actors who are extras, just sitting there pipetting, but they don’t know how to do it. That part is fun too. Apart from the scientific accuracy, it seems advice isn’t taken about how long a scientific experiment would really take? No, I’ve given up even trying, especially in a comedy. They do experiments that would take years or decades in an hour, but they’ve got to keep the story moving along, it’s unfortunate. Do you think some of your work encourages people to go into research or forensics, say from your work on CSI? I don’t know if I can take credit for that because it’s the creators of the show who’ve done the framework. If I give them a story that intrigues people, maybe I’ve helped. But there’s no doubt that CSI has increased the number of people who want to be criminologists. With all of your jobs it sounds as if you don’t have a typical day but could you describe what happens during a day of consulting? A day of consulting may be as brief as a phone call to answer a question, which often happens with CSI, or it might be reading a script and marking it up. If it’s on set, it’s usually several hours to a whole day. Outside of medicine, they are the hardest working people I’ve ever seen. I liken the set to an operating room, with the director like the surgeon in charge. It’s fastpaced and there’s a lot of tension and unexpected events. It’s controlled chaos. But I love the excitement and professionalism. Don’t some scientists like consulting so much that they quit ‘day jobs’ to do it? Yes,
it happens, but I don’t think I would want to be a technical advisor
full-time. Aside from the good points there is a real sense of
insecurity in the movie industry: people are employed for one project
and, as soon as it wraps, they’re looking around for the next job and
that could take months. I’m always refreshed when I come back to the
medical centre and people are unpretentious. In academic medicine we
consider it to be one of our primary roles to train our replacements,
and teaching is a noble calling, whereas in Research from David Kirby at the University of I don’t deny that some of that happens. I think some of the funding for AIDS in this country, which was originally pretty meagre, may have been increased due to the various dramatisations on TV and in movies. What response have you got from other researchers about contributing to the perception of science? In general my own colleagues have found it exciting. I had some nice feedback for the movie on prions. Stanley Prusiner, who discovered prions, happened to catch it on TV and he contacted me to say it was a good portrayal. It was quite an honour. For more information on the work of science advisors and science in film, see David Kirby’s website www.davidakirby.com Nerissa Hannink is a postdoc in the Department of Plant Sciences |
Hollywood needs to
continually deliver interesting stories in order to attract moviegoers,
what better source of gripping plots than science? To add some realism,
movie-makers often employ scientists as advisors.The animators on
Finding Nemo had 20 lectures from marine biologists, and Nasa has its
own ‘Entertainment Industry Liaison’. Professor Wayne Grody is the
director of the Medical Molecular Pathology Laboratory at UCLA, and
also works part-time as a scientific technical advisor. He has
contributed to the Nutty Professor movies and TV’s CSI: Crime Scene
Investigation, for which he is currently devising his own storyline. News Archives
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