Translating a nonfiction book into a movie is a considerable ask. Disjointed is a polite word to describe What to Expect When You’re Expecting, a 2012 American romantic comedy based on the bestselling pregnancy manual by Shauna Cross and Heather Hach.
Even the great Richard Linklater — aided by a cast featuring Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke, Paul Dano, and Bruce Willis — couldn’t transform Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation into a pleasing narrative feature.
In this spirit, How to Blow Up a Pipeline represents all kinds of improbable achievements. The new nail-biting environmentalist thriller — as directed by Daniel Goldhaber, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ariela Barer and Jordan Sjol — is far closer to Reservoir Dogs or Rififi than anyone might have expected from a film inspired by a Swedish academic’s thoughts on civil disobedience.
As many critics (and the film-makers) have noted, it is the “eco-Ocean’s Eleven”.
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“I think it was — for all of us — an act of extraordinary, manic faith,” says director, Daniel Goldhaber. “We made the movie within 18 months of reading the book. We put the movie together ourselves. And we were in significant credit card debt until the first cheque cleared from the financiers. It could have not only gone wrong creatively; it also could have ruined us. But that was never something that we thought about. Narrative film-making is knowing what you want to say and figuring out how to say it as clearly and entertainingly as possible. That was our focus.”
“In terms of how we framed it, nothing could go wrong,” adds co-writer and star Ariela Barer. “Our only blueprint was the ideas in the book and how readers would interpret and discuss those ideas. There was no right and wrong way to do that. But we did want to honour the communities that are represented in the film and their fight.”
Published in 2021, How to Blow Up a Pipeline by Swedish climate scientist Andreas Malm draws on an extensive history of civil disobedience — including women’s suffrage and instances of sabotage in apartheid South Africa — to argue that the climate movement must escalate its tactics to combat ecological catastrophe.
“The first part of the book is an academic analysis of social justice movements throughout history and about their use of sabotage and disruption tactics,” explains Goldhaber. ”These tactics were successful and they are not particularly new. There is a tremendous historical precedent. Andreas then links that historical basis to the fight against climate change. In the second part of the book, he argues there’s no one government or corporation or individual or system that you can attack justifiably because we all participate in the system. So what is a justifiable target? He says it’s the infrastructure. It’s the machines that are killing us. So our movie shows characters out to sabotage a piece of infrastructure that from their point of view has no justification, morally, to exist.”
Kirsten Hugo is a great friend writer-actor, who gave so much of her personal story and experience to the movie
— Co-writer and star Ariela Barer
In legal terms, Goldhaber’s film frames radical activism as a legitimate form of self-defence. As the heroine notes: “We have a right to defend ourselves. We could set a new legal precedent, and if we get off, more people follow, more bombs happen, fossil fuel gets priced out of the market.”
The film adaptation of How to Blow up a Pipeline arrives at a moment when climate activists are contending with overwhelmingly negative coverage. Three months after the publication of Malm’s book, an open letter representing 400 leading experts — including 14 authors from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — flagged the increasing criminalisation and demonisation of non-violent civil disobedience from school strikers and Extinction Rebellion.
“There are vested interests and structural reasons why these actions get negative coverage,” notes How to Blow Up a Pipeline’s editor, Daniel Garber. “You can immediately predict the dismissive, kneejerk responses those actions will provoke.”
“It was important for us to look at the response to climate change, and to everything that’s happening in the world, climatically politically, and to turn that into an accessible story,” adds Goldhaber. “It was important to put a story out there that is a counterpoint to what corporate media and their narrative. That idea was really clarified for us in the process of meeting with activists and talking with Andreas.”
The team spent months interviewing environmental and political radicals, climate journalists, pipeline experts, bombmakers, and cultural consultants.
“The activists who were the most helpful cannot be named”, says Ariela Barer. “Kirsten Hugo is a great friend writer-actor, who gave so much of her personal story and experience to the movie. Olive Jane Lorraine, who is actually in the movie playing Katie, gave so much useful information, just about Texas and their upbringing in Texas in a refinery town. To personally connect with all these people who have these stories to tell and who are so much more common than you would think. We just got to dive in, to each other’s lives, in a beautiful way writing this movie.”
“That was the most notable experience for me,” adds Goldhaber. “Looking for young people who have experiences that were specific to the script, you find way more than you bargained for. People living with cancer in refinery towns; people who had experiences with indigenous activist movements; people who had very different experiences with different parts of the planet movement in the US. The most important part of the development process was figuring out where our story was living in the world.”
How to Blow Up a Pipeline follows a group of climate activists who come together to take immediate action against the oil industry infrastructure. Xochitl (Barer), the recruiter and team leader, sets her sights on a stretch of pipeline in west Texas. Each of the activists has their own, urgent reasons to destroy a pipeline. Xochitl is grieving for her mother who died in a heat wave and her friend, Theo (Sasha Lane), is dying from a rare cancer caused by pollution.
Dwayne (Jake Weary) is a Texas smallholder who has lost his land and who couldn’t be less like his left-leaning cadres. Theo’s girlfriend Alisha (Jayme Lawson) is conscientious and questioning. Rowan (Kristine Froseth) and Logan (Lukas Gage) are a stoner couple with experience in environmental activism. Shawn (Marcus Scribner) is a jaded film student who wants to do something more than doom-scrolling. Michael (Forrest Goodluck) is a Native American and an amateur bomb tinkerer.
There is no one thing that we want anybody to leave with, which is how we made the film
— Director Daniel Goldhaber
The characters, plot and structure were originated by screenwriters Goldhaber, Barer and Sjol, a fascinating collective in their own right. Goldhaber, the son of climate scientists, is best known from Cam, the clever porn industry horror that was scooped up by Netflix in 2018. Barer, a former child actor, has worked on TV since she was nine. As an adult, she’s the star of Marvel’s Runaways, Atypical and Saved By the Bell.
“It started with Jordan, Daniel and I together in a room brainstorming,” recalls Barer. “At the time Daniel and I were living in California and Jordan was living in North Carolina. So we went home, whoever had time got to work on a portion of the script. And then we’d discuss and edit. Everyone was involved every step of the way.”
Goldhaber jokingly suggests that the title was the most important aspect he wanted to preserve from the source novel. (Famously, Malm’s book does not provide a blueprint for blowing up a pipeline.) A central anxiety for the film is: how will we be measured in the future? Malm’s book cites Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth and concludes that: “There has been a time for a Gandhian climate movement; perhaps there might come a time for a Fanonian one. The breaking of fences may one day be seen as a very minor misdemeanour indeed.”
Goldhaber’s propulsive film is similarly provocative.
“There is no one thing that we want anybody to leave with, which is how we made the film,” says the director. “The idea is that it doesn’t matter what part of the political spectrum you’re on, you’re going to come out of the movie feeling challenged. The political views that end up on broadcast news are so polarised and extreme. But in fact, most people believe that climate change is a real thing. Our film is asking you about the existential threat of climate change. What kind of tactics are justified, to bite it and stop ecological collapse? We hope that the audience leaves the theatre and then considers that question and how that question, impacts their lives, their communities, and their politics. What are we going to do?”
- How to Blow up a Pipeline opens on April 21st
