Word: silkwood
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Jackson? If so, it can be no less punishing or rewarding, because Lange -- any actress, really, in today's Streepstakes -- must find the core of feminism, of flinty self-fulfillment, in a modern movie role. No wimpering-wife parts, thank you. Just Joan of Arc in Levi's, with Silkwood strength and Flo-Jo flash...
...such stellar company, Co-Stars Joe Mantegna, a 1984 Tony Award winner for Glengarry, and Ron Silver, a movie and TV veteran (Silkwood, NBC's Billionaire Boys Club), might almost be an afterthought. In fact, the interaction between Mantegna as the mogul and Silver as a shameless huckster is the core of Mamet's pell-mell 88-minute play. Of all American playwrights, Mamet, 40, remains the shrewdest observer of the evil that men do unto each other in the name of buddyhood. Obsessed with the need for ethical debate, he nonetheless brings as much delight as despair...
These scenes carry hints that Redford wants to update some classic movie parables. Milagro could be Chinatown, with its diverted water supply and political-industrial intrigue. Or Silkwood, with a heroic loner fatally bucking the system. Or The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, with the greedy Anglos outsmarted by wily Hispanic outlaws who snort, "We don't need no stinkin' condos...
...including a 1986 leak that killed one worker and released toxic uranium hexafluoride gas into the environment. Moreover, it is owned by Kerr-McGee, the Oklahoma City-based company implicated in the radioactive contamination of 73 workers at another facility -- the case uncovered in 1974 by the late Karen Silkwood...
...Kerr-McGee hoped its $1.38 million settlement with Silkwood's heirs had lifted the cloud of controversy from its operations, the furor that erupted last week dashed that hope. A spate of news reports revealed that Sequoyah has for more than a decade, with Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approval, been converting radioactive wastewater, called raffinate, into fertilizer and spraying it over company-owned fields. Hay grown on the fields has then been sold as feed to farmers and ranchers. Nearby residents charge that the fertilizer may be contaminating the Arkansas River and the water table near the Oklahoma-Arkansas border...