Newsradio Concordance

Soylent Green – This 1973 dystopian science-fiction film shows a bleak future where overpopulation and climate change cause society for look to alternative food sources. When police detective Robert Thorn (Charlton Heston) investigates the murder of a man with close ties to company that makes Soylent Green (a plankton based wafer), he makes the grim discovery that the product is made from human remains, and this revelation remains on the most memorable conclusions in all of filmdom. Unfortunately, since many people know the film’s conclusion without the benefit of watching it, the story’s other merits are often overlooked.

The ending of the Soylent Green has been parodied and mimicked so many times that the movie’s plot-twist may be the most spoiled one in film history. Phil Hartman, who often impersonated Heston on Saturday Night Live, helped to make the film’s last line “Soylent Green is people” a familiar phrase to those who have never seen the original film.

Phil Hartman’s character, Bill McNeill makes two references to Soylent Green on Newsradio, but without assuming Heston’s voice. ["Look Who’s Talking", "Space"]