Taking License With the Lava

Universal Pictures claimed scientific validity for its volcano movie, “Dante’s Peak,” opening itself to endless expert criticism. Twentieth Century Fox is not quite making the same mistake with its “Volcano,” opening Friday.

“The Coast Is Toast” is the movie’s motto, and its story of a volcanic eruption in the La Brea tar pits and lava coursing along Wilshire Boulevard and through Metro Rail tunnels is part thrilling and part grisly.

But, basically, as the president of the Fox division that made the movie acknowledged in an interview, the likelihood of it actually happening is extremely remote.

“I do think this movie is for fun and entertainment, and certainly not something we think will happen tomorrow,” said Laura Ziskin of Fox 2000 Pictures. “We are not claiming this is scientific fact. It is as likely as the dinosaurs being brought back to life.”

But she could not resist adding, “I am a native Angeleno. . . . This is a town that continues to surprise.”

“Volcano’s” science advisor, Rick Hazlett, professor of geology at Pomona College, was more categorical.

“It is by all geological reason impossible for us to expect an eruption in the Los Angeles area any time in the near geological future, which is to say a few million years,” he said.

Such details as the lava occasionally having to flow uphill if it were actually following the streets mentioned in the movie, “at first really, really bothered me,” Hazlett said. “But I bit my lip and said, ‘Hey, this is entertainment.’

“And I remembered that one of the things that inspired me to become a volcanologist was seeing the movie ‘Fantasia’ when I was a little kid. By no stretch of the imagination is the lava depicted in that film realistic, but by golly that film got me interested and led me to my career.”

An impromptu poll outside a Westwood screening of the new movie found about half those interviewed saying they thought something like the film’s eruption could happen in L.A., and the younger they were the more they seemed to think so.

There is a temptation to examine what happens in “Volcano” against scientific fact. But is that fair?

Caltech seismologist Egill Hauksson thinks not.

“Why are we trying to employ a method of scientific analysis to this garbage?” he asked. “After reading the script, it’s totally fictional, totally unrealistic. This is entertainment. I would like to leave it at that and let Hollywood have its entertainment.”

Nonetheless, Hauksson advised Caltech to have its lawyer write a letter to Fox demanding that Caltech’s name not be used in the film.

It isn’t. The movie instead has its beautiful female geologist come from the California Institute of Geological Studies.

Just for the record, volcanologist Stan Williams of Arizona State University made these main scientific points:

* The methane and other gases visibly boiling up in the La Brea tar pits and routinely seen every day by Angelenos and visitors alike are the result not of volcanic processes but of the subterranean decay of organic material.

* There have been countless episodes of volcanic activity near Mammoth Lakes in the Eastern Sierra over hundreds of thousands of years, and there are volcanic cones within the city limits of Portland, Ore. But Los Angeles is not a locale of any such activity.

* The movie displays “a complete absence of scale.” The firetrucks and freeway barriers shown stopping the lava in its tracks would be completely unable to do so, assuming a volcanic eruption continued.

Some scientists point out that on occasion lava has been diverted, but only with much more powerful weapons and the expenditure of millions of dollars.

In 1973, for example, a volcano in Heimaey, Iceland, sent lava toward the town. It halted after large ships equipped with powerful pumps sprayed millions of gallons of seawater over it. But some analysts believe this was successful only because the volcanic eruption was tailing off.

As with the recent ABC television movie “Volcano: Fire on the Mountain,” parties depicted negatively on the screen in “Volcano” have wanted to have their say.

With “Fire on the Mountain,” it was Mammoth Lakes people defending their mayor against suggestions he would be insensitive to visitor safety, even though Mammoth Lakes’ name had been changed in the movie to Angel Lakes.

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With “Volcano,” it is Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials deploring scenes in the new movie that show Metro Rail officials reluctant to shut down subway service even though disaster authorities suggest it may be dangerous.

Gary Wosk, an MTA spokesman, said: “If there is the slightest threat to any of our passengers, it does not require anything more dramatic to shut down the system. . . . We’re not going to play with anybody’s lives. Those are our passengers. They come first.”

Another comment on factual issues came from Bob Canfield, emergency preparedness coordinator for the city of Los Angeles. The role of the protagonist in the movie, a disaster coordinator played by Tommy Lee Jones, is modeled to some extent on Canfield. But Canfield pointed out that in an actual Los Angeles disaster, authority is vested in the mayor, not him.

One thing Canfield did agree with, however, is the reality of the movie depicting the disaster coordinator as operating from the field, right next to the eruption, rather than from downtown headquarters.

Canfield recalled that in the 1994 Northridge earthquake, he was at first unable to leave his home, which had suffered $400,000 damage, and, like the character in the movie, he kept an open line with the emergency operations center for an hour and a half, going so far as to dictate the language of an emergency proclamation from his home.