Emotionally wrecked by the last episode, Sean and Cody seek solace in one of the ultimate comfort movies of the ‘80s and are joined by Maco, a true Scotsman who loves this 1983 comedy, as special guest. In Local Hero, boring oil industry executive wanna-be Mac (Peter Riegert) is dispatched by his sleepy, distracted and egocentric boss Mr. Happer (Burt Lancaster) to buy a small Scottish town and prepare it to be bulldozed into a new refinery. But once Mac gets to Scotland and experiences the charm of corporate chaperone Danny (Peter Capaldi), lawyer and bartender Gordon (Denis Lawson) and possible part-time mermaid Marina (Jenny Seagrove), he becomes much more attached to the town than he thought possible. Environmental issues discussed center around the petroleum industry in Scotland, the UK and 1980s Texas, development and climate change.

Are there real towns like this in Scotland? How has the oil industry affected Scotland’s past, present and future? What’s a selkie and how would you know if you had a crush on one? How did Margaret Thatcher, who started her career snatching milk bottles away from kids, get climate change right and almost everything else wrong? Why was getting an engineering degree in oil and gas in 1980s Texas a really bad career move? How is it possible that ordinary people walking down the street in Scotland find themselves chased by Vulcan bombers? Is it a coincidence that Local Hero is Al Gore’s all-time favorite movie? Who’s Fitzroy Maclean and what does he have to do with James Bond? How did a character in this movie get an asteroid named after him? Who owned C3P0 and R2D2 before Luke Skywalker did? All these questions and more come up from the ground like a bubblin’ crude in this extraordinarily Scottish episode of Green Screen.

Local Hero (1983) on IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085859/ Local Hero (1983) on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/local-hero/

Next Movie Up: The Mosquito Coast (1986)

Additional Materials About This Episode