China Syndrome author dies

[patric]

Mike Gray, an author, activist and documentarian who co-wrote the Oscar-nominated screenplay for "The China Syndrome," the provocative 1979 film about a cover-up at a nuclear power plant, died April 30 at his Hollywood Hills, Calif., home. He was 77.

Gray developed the "China Syndrome" story after reading books and interviewing scientists about the dangers of nuclear power. No one knew how timely the subject would prove. A nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania went into partial meltdown barely three weeks after the opening of the movie, which starred Jack Lemmon, Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas and became a box-office and critical success.

A Newsweek reviewer called the film "a rare phenomenon - a piece of popular entertainment that immediately foreshadows a major news event and then helps explain it."

"I meant 'China Syndrome' to educate people about what I'd found - that our heavy reliance on nuclear plants hadn't been clearly thought through," Gray, who co-wrote the script with T.S. Cook and James Bridges, told the Chicago Tribune in 1998.

Gray was a native of Darlington, Ind., who received an engineering degree from Purdue University before moving to Chicago in the early 1960s. He was making TV commercials when the Democratic National Convention came to Chicago in 1968. When police began beating protesters in the streets outside the convention hall, Gray took a film crew to record the events.

[heironymouspasparagus]

Mike Gray, an author, activist and documentarian who co-wrote the Oscar-nominated screenplay for "The China Syndrome," the provocative 1979 film about a cover-up at a nuclear power plant, died April 30 at his Hollywood Hills, Calif., home. He was 77.

Gray developed the "China Syndrome" story after reading books and interviewing scientists about the dangers of nuclear power. No one knew how timely the subject would prove. A nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania went into partial meltdown barely three weeks after the opening of the movie, which starred Jack Lemmon, Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas and became a box-office and critical success.

A Newsweek reviewer called the film "a rare phenomenon - a piece of popular entertainment that immediately foreshadows a major news event and then helps explain it."

"I meant 'China Syndrome' to educate people about what I'd found - that our heavy reliance on nuclear plants hadn't been clearly thought through," Gray, who co-wrote the script with T.S. Cook and James Bridges, told the Chicago Tribune in 1998.

Gray was a native of Darlington, Ind., who received an engineering degree from Purdue University before moving to Chicago in the early 1960s. He was making TV commercials when the Democratic National Convention came to Chicago in 1968. When police began beating protesters in the streets outside the convention hall, Gray took a film crew to record the events.

Good riddance...one less obstacle to start building nukes EVERYWHERE!!!!  (Channeling my inner Republicontin....)