While Fox News has made very clear over the years where its messaging stands when it comes to the urgency of climate change, anchors on “The Big Saturday Show” felt they were given all-new reason to sound their alarm with the release of Neon’s “How to Blow Up a Pipeline.”
Featuring a story inspired by Andreas Malm’s 2021 nonfiction release of the same name, the indie feature comes from director Daniel Goldhaber, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ariela Barer and Jordan Sjol. Admitting that he hadn’t seen the film himself — “I went through and watched the trailer, watched parts of it” — Fox News co-host David Webb torched the project as “leftist Hollywood propaganda” on Saturday, while other panelists raised questions about the existence of climate change at all.
“Climate craziness reaching a new level — a new film is out called ‘How to Blow Up a Pipeline,’ and you guessed it: It pushes climate activists to sabotage a Texas oil pipeline to stop that evil fossil fuels’ production,” Webb said.
Malm’s book argues that property destruction is a valid form of activism in the fight for climate change reform. Goldhaber’s narrative adaptation takes those arguments and depicts a group of young activists fighting against the climate crisis by planning to blow up an oil pipeline in West Texas. Neon acquired distribution rights for the feature out of the Toronto Film Festival in September.
Coming out of its first weekend in limited release, the indie holds 95% positive critical consensus on Rotten Tomatoes, and TheWrap’s chief film critic Tomris Laffly called it a “Soderbergh-ian” film that “ignites an urgent sense of activism through a stellar ensemble cast and sophisticated direction.”
Still, Webb and fellow Fox News contributor Joey Jones aren’t supporting its release.
“What Hollywood’s doing overtly now is what they’ve done subtly for a really long time,” Jones, himself a former Marine Corps bomb technician, said.
He added, “Hollywood’s trying to bankrupt itself, I guess. I’m not sure. They’ve become so righteous in their cause they don’t understand the business that they’re in. And that’s fine. Make movies about blowing up pipelines. Nobody’s going to watch it.”
Fox Business anchor Cheryl Casone, also sitting on Saturday’s panel, cut down a positive review from Rolling Stone, saying that the publication is “actually pushing, saying violence is the way to deal with the climate problem — if you believe that there is one.”
“If you really wanna do something about climate change, then I guess… go to Washington,” she said. “But blowing up things and ending up in jail? Sorry, not the plan.”
Fox News contributor Lisa Boothe then expressed that even though “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” is fiction, she worries that younger generations may begin taking cues from its plot line.
“What worries me about this is, I mean, first of all, are we sure this is a fictional tale? And secondly, Gen Z is the TikTok generation where they go watch a video and then that is where they get their beliefs and thoughts from. They’re not a critically thinking generation,” Boothe said. “So it does worry me for them to be spoon-fed this sort of propaganda.”
Barer stars in “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” with a young Hollywood ensemble that includes Kristine Froseth, Lukas Gage, Forrest Goodluck, Sasha Lane, Jayme Lawson, Marcus Scribner, Jake Weary, Irene Bedard and Olive Jane Lorraine.
Isa Mazzei, Goldhaber, Barer, David Grove Churchill Viste and Adam Wyatt Tate, with production company Chrono, produced the feature with Alex Black and Alex Hughes also serving as producers and Danielle Mandel as co-producer. Executive producing the project were Jon Rosenberg, Riccardo Maddalosso, Lane, Goodluck, Sjol, Natalie Sellers and Eugene Kotlyarenko.
Watch the “Big Saturday Show” segment from Fox News in the video above.
“How to Blow Up a Pipeline” is now playing on select screens.
