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00:00Science fiction storytelling exists from the beginning of filmmaking and persists through
00:09two centuries. In the early 80s there was this wonderful explosion of highly imaginative,
00:15highly ambitious science fiction. Suddenly all sorts of stories that were prohibitive
00:20that because technologically they weren't possible, were suddenly possible now.
00:24When I think of science fiction I think of stories in any medium that tell us what we could be
00:33and warn us about where we're going. Escaping when you're a little kid or a teenager into the world
00:42of science fiction is a great way to start to come to terms with your own personality, who you are,
00:48where you fit in the world and they become really important benchmarks in how you remember your youth.
00:56For the next decade or so across the 80s that amalgamation of science fiction and fantasy
01:03seemed to be the driving force. Science fiction became direct, straightforward, provocative, clear.
01:11Any idea that anybody had, if you set it on another planet or set it in the future, set it in dystopia,
01:20you could get the money to do it. Art shows us what can be and what ought to be.
01:26That is what science fiction at its best is all about, is showing us the world of tomorrow
01:35and how human life can be better in the future than it is right now.
01:42That's the magic of sci-fi man.
01:57People were just channeling their beliefs, their fears or nightmare scenarios into these stories and now
02:02we're at an age where in the modern day it's all about lack of privacy and how the internet and
02:07the machines are going to take over and we're going to become dehumanized to the point where
02:10we're just slaves to the machines. It's an interesting cycle to have walked through.
02:15At some point all of this stuff is going to be implanted into our heads somewhere and we'll just
02:19think something and there it'll be in front of us. Why not? I would like to ask a question.
02:25Will I dream? Of course you will dream. Some of the things that have come to fruition are very scary.
02:32The thing about Blade Runner that is so powerful for me is just the visual storytelling.
02:48The production design, the cinematography, the choreography is so outstanding. It's so beautiful.
02:55It looks really cool but it is everything we have warned you against.
03:03A new life awaits you in the off-world colony.
03:07Ridley Scott's brother Frank had died and one of the reasons Ridley Scott made Blade Runner
03:13because he was trying to work his grief out the only way he knew which was making a film.
03:17So it was going to be imbued with that darkness.
03:21Replicants are like any other machine. They're either a benefit or a hazard.
03:26They're a benefit, it's not my problem.
03:28It's about our own lifespans.
03:30You were made as well as we could make you, but not to last.
03:35The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long.
03:38If we create a slave race, does that make us God? What is our moral duty to that?
03:44What makes us human? Is it memory? Incredibly detailed themes about existence.
03:51How can it not know what it is?
03:53Commerce is our goal here at Tyrell. More human than human is our motto.
03:58I love the replicants.
04:00I think, Sebastian, therefore I am.
04:04Because they're the most human characters in the film.
04:07They've got the most life to them and it's kind of an irony.
04:10My birthday is April 10, 2017. How long do I live?
04:12Four years.
04:14Something is very human about them. Self-preservation.
04:17Wanting to matter beyond the role as the slave or as a second-class citizen.
04:24I mean, this really is anecdotal.
04:28You think I'm a replicant, don't you?
04:31I felt that my character, Rachel, was the heart and soul of that picture.
04:35You play beautifully.
04:40Walking in to do Blade Runner, I thought I was going to meet Han Solo.
04:45Harrison could be funny on a dime if he wanted to be, but he doesn't take prisoners.
04:49He say you break right now.
04:52Tell him I'm eating.
04:56Rutger had a certain sort of dynamo personality and the character did as well.
05:01And one of my favorite lines is after he gets hit in the head, he goes, that's the spirit, you know.
05:06That's the spirit!
05:08And he made it very iconic.
05:10Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it?
05:13I said to Ridley, why the unicorn?
05:17And he says, well, I think I'm going to make another movie after this about unicorns.
05:20And I don't think this character is really human.
05:23I think he's not human.
05:25And I went, really?
05:27I don't think they ended up making that the case because I don't think the executives felt that you could have a leading man that wasn't human.
05:36I remember seeing Blade Runner in the theater, thinking to myself, my God, what is that narration?
05:42It's horrible.
05:43They don't advertise for killers in a newspaper.
05:47That was my profession, ex-cop.
05:50It looked like somebody had fooled around with it other than a director.
05:54Replicants weren't supposed to have feelings.
05:57Neither were Blade Runners.
05:59Ridley Scott shared with me the studio was so concerned that no one was going to know
06:05what kind of movie they were watching, that they insisted that he put the narration up at the beginning.
06:11This is what he said to me.
06:12He and Harrison conspired with each other to make it the worst piece of narration they could possibly record
06:19in order to get the studio to say, we can't even use this, it's just so awful.
06:23The report would be routine retirement of a replicant,
06:26which didn't make me feel any better about shooting a woman in the back.
06:31But they ended up using it.
06:32The precedent hadn't been set for a film like Blade Runner.
06:36I think that was probably ahead of its time.
06:39That's sort of the brilliant part about Ridley.
06:41He's constantly thinking and imagining and ripping things up in his mind,
06:46and that's what makes him the artist that he is.
06:48His brain went there.
06:50Like tears and rain.
06:56John Battam is among the last of the utilitarian directors.
07:04He could just direct anything.
07:06Action, comedy, light comedy, romance, you name it, John Battam could do it.
07:09Short Circuit proved this as much as anything else.
07:12Short Circuit.
07:14I am a lion.
07:16It's part ET, only instead of it being an alien, it's a robot.
07:19Welcome to my planet.
07:22And you got Steve Gutenberg and Ally Sheedy and the guy who was supposed to be Indian American,
07:28but is actually being played by Fisher Stevens.
07:31It's only being wires and several mechanisms and other such machine type apparatus for the Peter's sake.
07:36Today, I'm not sure you could get away with that.
07:39Where are you from anyway?
07:41Bakersfield originally.
07:43No, I mean your ancestors.
07:44Oh damn it.
07:45Pittsburgh.
07:46Ally Sheedy, as a young girl, I looked up to, I loved and adored.
07:51Malfunction.
07:53Oh, you can talk.
07:54Short Circuit is a caretaker friendship bond.
07:58This concept of this robot finding his humanity.
08:03I need information.
08:04I must learn everything.
08:05I am alive.
08:07Holy crap, you can read.
08:10And he has this quirky, outgoing, weird personality, much like me,
08:16that was based on all of the movies and pop culture that he had picked up.
08:20Disguise, camouflage, hi.
08:23Number five.
08:25There's a sense of joy to that movie and a sense of life and a sense of adventure.
08:30He's built as a military weapon of war that can destroy things with like a single laser bolt.
08:38Hello, bozos.
08:41But as a kid, you don't see that, you don't think about that.
08:43You're just like, he's alive.
08:45Johnny Five, it's just like, no, I'm gonna smell flowers and hang out and dance or make friends
08:55or whatever, which was really neat premise.
08:57One of my favorite moments in that movie is when he accidentally steps on the grasshopper.
09:01Look what you did!
09:02Error!
09:03And he has this moment where he realizes that he's mortal.
09:07Disassemble.
09:10Dead.
09:12Disassemble.
09:13Dead!
09:15Being aware of your own mortality is one of the deepest, most profoundly human things
09:19and that drives us and that makes us what we are.
09:22Of course I know it's wrong to kill, but who told you?
09:25I told me.
09:30What Shirt Circuit does really, really well, it makes you feel for this metal.
09:34It's got some, you know, wonky little eyebrows or whatever,
09:36and he's cute in his own sort of way, but he's metal, right?
09:40And yet by the end of that movie, you're like, no, Johnny Five is alive.
09:44You can't disassemble him.
09:45Don't shoot! Don't shoot! He's alive! He's alive!
09:50You feel for it.
09:51And it's hard to know sometimes whether that's just another part of the way that humans are
09:56hardwired to sort of anthropomorphize things, or whether that's a thing that we're going to
10:00have to really sort of worry about in the future.
10:03Maybe Johnny. Yeah! Johnny Five! That's cool!
10:17Tron.
10:17He's a programmer, but he gets sucked into this world and ends up taking the whole system down.
10:25Woohoo! Little guy.
10:27What a concept. What if we went down in there and there was actually a world?
10:36I auditioned for Star Wars. I didn't get that one. I looked at this and I said,
10:41well, it's kind of looks like space. Okay. I felt a part of a pioneering effort. And Steven
10:49Lisberger, the creator of this, I call him Yoda. Everything was hanging on this. That's a lot of
10:56responsibility. We could miserably fail. Or we could wildly succeed.
11:03If you look at the performances by Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, Cindy Morgan, who had to act in front of
11:15nothing. So what am I looking at? Okay, you're looking at the solar sailor. Here's a sketch.
11:21We wore hockey helmets and motocross shoulder pads. We were wearing what a male ballet dancer would wear.
11:33It was probably the early thong. A male thong?
11:37Tron was a warrior. He dominated the game grid. Who's that guy? That's Tron. He fights for the users.
11:49I would get my frisbee and we'd play with our discs, like just the battles and stuff,
11:55and pretend I had a light cycle.
12:00They love the light cycles. I never saw it. It was a stick in front of me with a crossbar.
12:07We were all standing there and they kind of went . We bent over and that was it.
12:12And I did the whole chase like that.
12:19Finish the game! No!
12:21David Warner, who played the villain Sark, who I had to have my final big battle with,
12:27was not a physical guy. So he had to be doubled through most of it.
12:37People were encouraged to put what they call Easter eggs. One of the compositors had put in Pac-Man.
12:47We loved it. The solar sailor going over the landscape and seeing the outline of Mickey Mouse.
12:54What a great idea! Alan, where did you hear that name?
13:01Well, that's your name, isn't it? The name of my user.
13:04When I saw the final product, I felt like a proud father. And it was basically an F.U. to the rest of Hollywood.
13:14You thought we couldn't do it? Yeah. Well, how do you like us now?
13:21For those kids and all those arcades throughout the country and the world, they got it. And I knew
13:27then that we had a revolutionary thing. It's not going to be appreciated now, but it will be.
13:33We are creating machines that mimic human behavior, the human body, human intelligence.
13:50In Saturn III, you see the biomimicry of Hector, the machine,
13:54taking on its human creator's ideas and psychopathy.
14:05Certainly, the way Saturn III was sold leaned heavily on alien, robots, science,
14:10all that kind of stuff. But it leaned even more heavily on Farrah Fawcett and that absolutely
14:14stunning smile of hers. And the fact that all of us were enamored of Farrah from Charlie's Angels.
14:20I had that poster. Everybody had that poster. And the idea that Farrah Fawcett might be
14:24wearing something sexy or nothing at all, definitely got my young self out to see
14:29Saturn III. The movie you got, however, was a completely different movie.
14:32You're quite an event in our lives.
14:34Well, I guess you don't get many drop-ins on Saturn III.
14:37Hardly ever, especially not from Earth.
14:39We are on a space station that's slick and designed and shiny and colorful,
14:44and all the edges are smoothed out. All the ideas that might have been initiated by Alien
14:49are gone by the time you get to the finished product of Saturn III.
14:53We get to see Kurt Douglas naked a lot.
14:56But not Farrah Fawcett.
14:59Oh, that's kind of forward-thinking.
15:02Doesn't it disgust you to be used by him, to be touched by an old man? Can't you feel the decay?
15:08The notion that he wanted to express his virility, that he's still a leading man,
15:12that he was still an action star.
15:15Kurt Douglas was very particular about that, about that in terms of the notion of men,
15:19of male movie stars and actors and the way that they should come off in film.
15:28Glad you didn't ask him to shake hands.
15:30It's a complicated film. You got Stanley Donan, the Singing in the Rain director,
15:34directing this sort of science fiction opera with this crazy over-sexed robot.
15:38He's probably not the right director for that. The production designer, John Barry,
15:47he was probably the correct person. The scenario was based on his stories. But
15:51Kurt didn't like John. And so got him fired and had Stanley Donan hired. So you have
15:56Kurt Douglas, who doesn't like John Barry. He gets rid of him. And then you have Stanley
16:00Donan, who doesn't like Harvey Keitel's voice. Now we have this weird sort of quasi-British voice
16:05coming out of Harvey Keitel's face. Why wouldn't you talk?
16:11Why not? What have I done wrong?
16:14All of these decisions just sort of led to something of a mess of a movie.
16:262010 is based on Arthur C. Clarke's novel, 2010 Odyssey 2, which is itself a sequel to the film
16:36version of 2001. It has the thankless task of being a sequel to the greatest science fiction
16:43film ever made. The last thing you want to do is make the sequel to 2001 and piss off Arthur C. Clarke
16:50or Stanley Kubrick. I would not do the film unless Kubrick said okay and Arthur C. Clarke said okay.
16:56And Stanley Kubrick to me is one of the great directors or the greatest director that's ever lived.
17:00I am not. The only way to do it was to make a film that honestly could not be compared to 2001.
17:10They're different in every possible way. Kubrick. And he said, just make sure it's yours.
17:17Just make sure you make your film. Roy Scheider plays Heywood Floyd, who was originally portrayed
17:23by William Sylvester in 2001. He has an opportunity to go out to Jupiter and determine what actually
17:31happened with the crew of the Discovery. Scheider, along with John Lithgow and Bob Balaban,
17:37hitch a ride aboard a Russian spacecraft captained by Helen Mirren. What has happened to American
17:42bravery? It's alive and well, thank you very much. What's happened to Russian common sense?
17:48This is the height of the Reagan era and here's a film about Russians and Americans doing a joint
17:54venture in space. In Arthur's book, everybody got along famously. I thought it would be interesting to
18:00have all hell break loose on earth and have it become serious. All American personnel are ordered to
18:07leave Soviet territory immediately or they will be placed under arrest. It plays with the Cold War
18:13thing, the early eighties paranoia that we had, but it also takes Hal, who is essentially the villain
18:19in 2001 and kind of reprograms him to be the hero. Do you want me to stay with you? No,
18:27it is better for the mission if you leave. Keir DeLay returns to reprise his role as Dave Bowman.
18:38And Douglas Rain returns to voice Hal, the computer. Dr. Floyd? Yes? Would you like to play a game of
18:45chess? I play very well. I'm sure you do. I had recorded Douglas first. So when Keir did his scenes,
18:53he did him with Hal. I'm afraid. Don't be. We'll be together. And he came to me afterwards in tears
19:01because when he did 2001, he did it with a Cockney's third assistant director. Opened the pod
19:07bay doors, Hal. Sorry, dive. Can't do that, dive. We used the docking ring in the Leonov to attach to
19:13the Discovery. Welcome. For a trip back home.
19:19Roy Scheider was a joy. What I equipped with Roy was he was always in the sun. He would be outside
19:26the studio with a reflector. The crew put a sign that said Scheider Beach outside the stage.
19:33In 2001, the monolith was a sentinel. It's an alarm that goes off that tells some other intelligence
19:41that somebody has stepped on the moon. I certainly think they left a lot to people's own interpretation.
19:49In 2010, the monolith is a basic life form building block. I think it's kind of futuristic DNA.
19:58I tried to make a science feasible film. I just wanted to make a film that was completely different
20:03so it could not rightfully be compared to 2001 because I can't be compared to Stanley Kubrick.
20:09It's as simple as that. What's going to happen? Something wonderful.
20:21What would you do if you had everything you wanted?
20:24Universal Pictures presents a John Hughes film, Weird Science.
20:28Weird Science really resonated with me because I have an awkward kid who loved technology and just to
20:36think of I could suddenly become cool. It was the teenage Frankenstein.
20:42So they created this beautiful woman.
20:56I think that was probably every geek's dream.
21:00What would you little maniacs like to do first?
21:02I think what he was best at, John Hughes, is teenage angst and being left out.
21:08His compassion for that, it really resonated, I think, to a lot of people.
21:16You! Check us out!
21:18Teenage life. Thank God I'm not there anymore. Oh, God.
21:23You made me. You control me. Kelly LeBrock, she had a sense of humor and a sexuality
21:33and a confidence and a personality. I can be a real serious bitch.
21:38It was elevated, her portrayal of the character, and it made everything come together the way it was
21:45supposed to. You guys had better loosen up.
21:53One of the themes is be careful what you wish for.
22:01Using all of our technology to do something wrong and then not being able to control it.
22:06Then having the consequences, which is me.
22:09Tossed off into any good books lately, have we?
22:13Warner Brothers were going to sue their ass off if I looked like Wes,
22:16and yet they got me to look as close like Wes as humanly possible.
22:23I walked around that set when I came onto it at Universal, like a two-story house that could
22:31be pulled into two halves to film in. A real two-story house. And when they needed to have a
22:37rocket to go through it, they actually had a rocket.
22:40This actual shell of a rocket was built under stage 26 at Universal to come up hydraulically and pierce the
22:53actual floor of the set of the house. And it was a one-time shot. A big deal, this scene.
23:01Right when John calls action, Anthony Michael Hall farts a silent but deadly.
23:07It had to be a several hundred thousand dollar moment that got ruined by a fart.
23:15That's not cool, man. If you watch the movie real closely, we did the scene again and they lowered
23:23the rocket and we had to do all of our action backwards. And then they ran it backwards for the final cut.
23:31It was massive anarchy at the end of that movie. That movie truly is almost like the cat in the hat.
23:45She is the cat in the hat.
23:52Oh my God, Weird Science Forever to me is now going to be Dr. Seuss.
23:55When are you going to learn people like you for what you are, not for what you can give them?
24:01The ultimate theme of Weird Science was be yourself and you'll still get the girl.
24:06I love you.
24:09It may not be that girl, but you'll still get the girl.
24:14Drop and give me 20.
24:24Introducing Dorothy R. Stratton, Playboy's Playmate of the Year as your favorite gal.
24:29Oh, yeah.
24:31Galaxina. I couldn't tell you the plot of that at all. It was Dorothy Stratton, right? I mean,
24:36that's all you need to know. She was delightful to watch.
24:41When I look at Galaxina, what I see is possibility, all kinds of possibilities.
24:47There's one relationship in that movie that works and rings as true and real,
24:52and it's the relationship between Galaxina and Steven Mock's character. He plays Thor.
24:56You're a machine and I'm a human being. Which is just another kind of machine, really.
25:03They fall in love, but they can't really be in love because she's an android.
25:07But she figures out how to correct something so that she can have human feelings.
25:11I love you, Sergeant Thor.
25:18Those moments between those two actors are the realest moments in that movie.
25:22In Galaxina, we see the first idea of Sexbot in artificial intelligent machines. How will they
25:30feel if they develop self-awareness?
25:33Where is the line? It really pulls at our psychology. I really think those provocative
25:38stories are important for us. What it all adds up to is something that's not quite as good as those
25:44individual pieces, but those individual pieces that are stuck in my head.
25:47The name's Mr. Spot.
25:49Star Trek. Star Wars. A little bit of Alien. And all the movies that were made before it,
25:54they were way, way better. At least two tropes exist in film of Galaxina.
25:58This sort of representation of the cantina from Star Wars, where all of these creatures from all
26:02over the universe are.
26:08And the image of that spacecraft coming across the screen and going on forever. All kinds of nutty
26:15things going on in that movie, I will probably remember forever. I will remember that alien
26:20coming out of Avery Shriver's mouth forever.
26:25At Galaxina, sadly, the thing that hangs over it more than anything is the murder of Dorothy Stratton.
26:30It's hard to think of the movie without remembering what happened to her.
26:34I really appreciate Galaxina, not just because of what happened to Dorothy,
26:41but because there was something suggested in that movie. There could have been more there,
26:46and there might have been more in the future for her.
26:57You know, when we talk about facial recognition, deep fake technologies, artificial intelligence that
27:02could potentially take over the planet. These are the kinds of things that were forecast
27:07in the 80s sci-fi films that are just now starting to break.
27:13Deep fakes. This is an existential issue, because we're going to come back to the idea of,
27:18do you trust your fellow man?
27:20Right.
27:24The running man.
27:25And it's not the deep fake that's going to make the difference. It's the guy behind the deep fake.
27:30Right now, you don't even have to do a deep fake. Just tell the same lie over and over and over again,
27:36and you're in. To me, that's the disturbing part. Not the ability to sing the siren's song.
27:43It's the people who are seduced by it. Running man definitely predicted deep fake technologies.
27:49They created this phony fight.
27:50Running man was more to show how sick, I think, we as society can actually stoop to. That entertainment
28:07knows no boundaries. We don't give a damn what it is as long as we get entertained by it in the end.
28:14A pretty sick thing to have sitting in our systems, isn't it?
28:19I'll be back only in a rerun.
28:22What running man did, it predated reality TV.
28:26The running man, America's favorite game show.
28:32Running man is kind of dead on to what happened to reality TV. Only in the case of the running man,
28:40the reality was termination, which we haven't fortunately got to, but I'll say, yet.
28:47It's time to start running!
28:51Richard Dawson was your perfect comedic bad guy. He was just playing the role he did on Family Feud.
28:58Come on, let's play the feud. Let's go.
29:01It made perfect sense to me.
29:03I'd like you to volunteer to appear on tomorrow's broadcast.
29:08Halfway through filming Predator, Arnold came up to me on the set and he said,
29:13my next film this fall is called The Running Man. There's a part in there you're perfect for.
29:18This is a sport of death and honor. Call to the gladiators!
29:22By the time my part got there, they were on their third director.
29:27Fortunately for me, that director was Paul Michael Glazer.
29:33David, here in the locker room, there's a lot of excitement here.
29:37Captain Freedom, my character in Running Man, he was the greatest stalker of all time.
29:43And he got old, and like all old stalkers, he ends up with a microphone.
29:48Are you ready for pain? Are you ready for suffering?
29:52Running Man was on the edge of technology predicted in the movie that has become reality today.
29:59Maria Conchita goes into her apartment and starts turning things on by voice.
30:04Well, that's a common practice now.
30:06Oh, God. Kitchen. Toast and coffee.
30:10ICS, channel one.
30:12We've already reached the Running Man stage of technology.
30:16Digital memory. Take it easy, game.
30:18There's a very crude 1980s style sort of digital frame to make you think that one person is there
30:25when in actuality it's someone else.
30:27You'll never know the difference.
30:29I ended up fighting Peter because Arnold wouldn't take a suplex.
30:34He made Peter do it instead of him.
30:38Let one out there, didn't I?
30:39I'll always cherish this. I get to go to my death as being one of only a handful of people
30:52who've ever killed Arnold Schwarzenegger on screen.
31:01Tom Selleck, Cynthia Rose, Gene Simmons, Runaway.
31:07Runaway. Runaway was directed by Michael Crichton.
31:11It's a futuristic cop movie about robots that are programmed to kill people.
31:24I played the bad guy. No, really? A guy named Luther.
31:29I said, drop your gun.
31:34I'm not kidding, asshole.
31:36The way I auditioned is he said, look into my eyes
31:39with intensity that you're going to kill me.
31:42So I just looked at his face.
31:43He says, okay, you got the job.
31:45I never read for the part.
31:48I just did a lot of brooding.
31:54Kiss meets the mantle of the park.
31:56Other than that, yeah, Runaway was Gene's first villain role for sure.
32:06I loved Magnum P.I. and I also loved Kiss growing up.
32:10Gene and his crazy tongue.
32:13I remember when I met him the first time, I was like,
32:15do you really have a goat's tongue sewed onto your own?
32:18And he's just like, no, it's just really long.
32:22The father-son scenes with Tom Selleck, they came out real.
32:34It wouldn't kill you to get married again, you know.
32:36I know I wouldn't kill you to go to sleep.
32:39The heart of the story and finding that underlying humanity
32:43and connection and relatability to the characters in these stories.
32:46One of the aspects of being a science fiction fan
32:50was a fascination with what science can bring us in the world of tomorrow.
32:57What might be, what could be.
33:00Hello, I'm Johnny Cash.
33:03It is a forecast into our future.
33:06A lot of science fiction writers are writing and developing technologies
33:11that end up becoming real in the future.
33:14Advanced technology.
33:16In the movie, with my gun, which I have in my collection,
33:19I have that original gun.
33:21You shoot the bullet and it goes around and finds you.
33:25Heat seeking.
33:28You think of all the things that were figments of someone's imagination.
33:34Motion trackers.
33:35Who would have thunk?
33:36And now we're almost reliant on GPS.
33:40What about tracking?
33:41We can check his exact location at all times with one of these.
33:44The phone, which is not a phone.
33:46It's a phone.
33:46It's a camera.
33:47It's your day runner.
33:48It has a tape measure.
33:50It's everything.
33:51It's your entire life.
33:52I never thought I'd be wearing a computer on my wrist.
33:56It's just laughable.
33:59Our computers and our iPhones are actually more powerful than the computer that
34:02was in the Apollo missions, right?
34:04It was just mind-boggling.
34:08In Runaway, there was that almost internet before its time.
34:12The drone technology.
34:18Police are preparing a floater camera which will enter the house in an attempt to locate
34:22the Runaway 912 and the infant.
34:23Little remote control cars.
34:25The spiders that shot acid.
34:38Those were remote control.
34:39Really neat.
34:40There was a couple different kinds.
34:42Some would jump.
34:43Some would scurry.
34:46I wanted a spider so bad.
34:48Dad, are you coming to get me?
34:51Kids in dangerous situations.
34:54Yeah, the 80s were a little more free with that.
34:57Let him go.
34:58Now!
35:01He's going to let them get killed by these crazy acid blowing up spiders.
35:06And it's pretty dark.
35:07The spiders will let you in, but they won't let you out.
35:11I can't have any witnesses.
35:12It's too messy.
35:13The spiders have been programmed to kill the first person that comes out of the elevator.
35:17He's just like, what?
35:19Bobby!
35:19Bobby!
35:22I thought it was good.
35:22I thought it came off well.
35:24Is the movie a triple-A movie?
35:26No.
35:26But my kids saw it and they gave me a thumbs up.
35:29That's good enough.
35:30Yay!
35:41From the producers of Jaws and the director of Splash.
35:45Cuccoon.
35:48One of the things I think was very evident in the 80s, we saw a lot of young heroes.
35:54We saw a lot of youth in this physical prowess.
35:58What Cuccoon did in a very interesting way, call into this social standard of what old means.
36:06A movie like Batteries Not Included really wouldn't exist without the proof of concept
36:13that Cuccoon was able to supply to the industry.
36:18Everything's happening so...
36:19I absolutely love Cuccoon, beautiful Ron Howard film.
36:23It's a science fiction film about aliens, but not really.
36:28Cuccoon is about aging.
36:30It's about life.
36:31Donna Meachie, Jessica Tandy, Hume Cronin were these aging actors.
36:35Will you still love me when I can't keep up with you?
36:38Of course.
36:39I love you now and you can't keep up with me.
36:41Wilford Brinley, who played one of the older gentlemen in the movie,
36:44was only 50 years old during the making of that film.
36:48Shoulders and get on down.
36:50They're in this old folks home and doing what they're doing.
36:53And every now and again they would be go over to the swimming pool and just fool around and have some fun.
36:59What they don't realize is that at the bottom of the pool are these cocoons.
37:03What are rocks doing in a pool?
37:06These older folks start to feel rejuvenated.
37:09They can do things they couldn't do before.
37:11Do you think there's cocaine in that pool?
37:13It might be.
37:15They would do their favorite things.
37:16They would go dancing.
37:18They would go try to fix the thing they regretted.
37:20Some enchanted evening.
37:23Brian Dennehy peels back his bodysuit and reveals these sort of really magical aliens.
37:30These sort of glowing beams that float through the sky.
37:32These older folks were offered the opportunity
37:39to leave Earth with these aliens and live forever.
37:42Forever?
37:44We don't know what forever means.
37:47The question in Cocoon becomes, is this cheating human mortality?
37:51Is our clock supposed to run out?
37:53It's a deeply, deeply moving film.
37:58Can you help me?
37:59I adored Cocoon.
38:01Ron Howard is able to get to the heart of the man's struggle or the woman's struggle.
38:08And be able to overcome it.
38:12One of the things I love about Ron Howard is that he's a true storyteller.
38:16If it's a comedy, or a drama, or it's in the future, or if it's in the past,
38:21or if it's right here in this very moment.
38:23The way nature's been treating us, I don't mind cheating her a little.
38:29I feel like Ron Howard cares about how the audience feels at the end of the movie.
38:38I feel like I'm not sure.
38:49In the 80s, there were several shrinking movies, which I guess somehow that became funny.
38:55Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, The Incredible Shrinking Woman, and Inner Space.
38:59And they were all good.
39:01Now, how about a big hand for the little lady?
39:06The Incredible Shrinking Woman.
39:09This is a take on the book Incredible Shrinking Man.
39:12The top news story of the day continues to be The Incredible Shrinking Woman.
39:16Honey, I'm sure there must be some logical explanation.
39:19The satire on advertising.
39:22Galaxy glue, galaxy glue.
39:26She's a tiny housewife.
39:27She has to deal with all these products coming at her.
39:29The glue, the solvent, your bubble bath, talcum powder, shampoo.
39:33He was making fun of these products that are fed to them like,
39:37this is going to make your life better.
39:39It's called Tres Naturale.
39:44And what had started to happen with the women's movement is they're going,
39:46I don't want to make my life at home better that much.
39:49I want to be out of here.
39:50Making dinner or doing the laundry is not all I want to do.
39:55Judith, I don't think this is such a good idea.
39:58Lily Tomlin, she's perfect because she's a comedian,
40:02and she can embody the craziness of that.
40:05She has this insane range.
40:07And you better lay off the buttons, Buster.
40:09I'm in it for like a very short amount of time.
40:11I'm advertising soap, but they cut it.
40:13When Lily hid in the Barbie dream house, it's so great because that's an iconic thing
40:20from a girl's childhood.
40:21To be the size of your doll, it's all about the insignificance.
40:26Off the furniture!
40:30And what are you grinning at, you big little creep?
40:32The dolls, if they were bigger than you, life-size, they would be terrifying.
40:38Mother!
40:39Lily gets smaller and smaller and then falls into the garbage disposal,
40:48which is, first of all, everyone's nightmare.
40:51Like when you drop something in the garbage disposal and you have to reach in and take it out.
40:54There's like a built-in terror.
40:58That's the big actual visual point that she's not a factor anymore.
41:03She's just doing her job and she's becoming smaller and smaller as a person.
41:08I'm going to lose my life!
41:09And it's the war that women then started to feel like,
41:12this isn't my life. I don't want this to be my life.
41:15I'm sick of products. I'm sick of advertising.
41:19You're talking about my work!
41:20See, I love things that have themes like that.
41:23Or champagne.
41:28Look what you did!
41:34Dennis Quaid, Martin Short.
41:36Give yourself a shot of adventure.
41:40Inner Space.
41:42Inner Space is about technology gone awry.
41:45The first person that can put someone inside someone's body and use them to kill them is the winner.
41:52When Inner Space came to me, it was a picture that Peter Goober and John Peters owned.
41:58And it was not a comedy. It was a straight spy movie with the plot of a guy who gets shrunk down
42:03and put inside another guy. I suggested diplomatically that people would laugh at this
42:08idea. Then they came back and they had hired Jeffrey Bohm, who was a very good writer.
42:13And he had come to it with a different idea, which was what would happen if Dean Martin was shrunk
42:19down and injected into Jerry Lewis. And that was something that, as a Martin and Lewis fan of my
42:25youth, I could certainly relate to. And I said, yes, now this works. Now it's funny. That's when
42:31Steven Spielberg became involved.
42:32When Fantastic Voyage was made, it used the best technology. Everything in it was cutting edge for
42:41the time. When we did Inner Space, of course, the technology has improved so much and we've gone
42:51so far ahead in leaps and bounds. I loved all the practical stuff in that movie.
42:59Just relax, Jack. I don't see what's going on in here.
43:03And how realistic they looked prior to the advent of any sort of computer graphics.
43:11Entering bloodstream.
43:16You know, things like him flowing through the bloodstream with the red blood cells,
43:20or seeing out of Martin Short's eyes.
43:24Viring optic sensor.
43:25And then you have the battle inside the car, where there's a very clever use of
43:33forced perspective.
43:34I'll kill you, buddy.
43:38Working with Marty Short, if you do 10 takes, take 10 is like from a different movie than take
43:42one. He likes to discover. He likes to try new things.
43:44Jack, you just digested the bad guy.
43:49And Dennis are never on screen together except at the very end. But yet it wasn't going to work to
43:55pre-record Dennis's dialogue or pre-record Marty's dialogue. So our sound guy, Ken King, came up with
44:00an idea that allowed them to talk to each other during takes. So whenever I did a scene with Marty,
44:05Dennis would still be there off screen and they could talk to each other and they could improvise.
44:09In here, inside you, inside your body. Somebody help me. I'm possessed.
44:17One of the reasons that their relationship in the movie works so well
44:20is because it's actually a real relationship that they were having at the moment.
44:24You are seeing parts of my body that I will never get to see.
44:31Yeah, believe me, you're not missing all that much.
44:33I love my character in the film. Just a malevolent presence. He didn't talk. He was just there.
44:43In my hand. I had a multitude of things, which was kind of fun.
44:49A gun, a flamethrower, an automatic submachine gun, which we don't see because that scene was taken
44:54out of the film. And the sex toy. Yeah, the sex toy. It's very quick, but you'll see it.
45:03They had this rig that they put me in. Then they lower it down into the floor,
45:09which is where I get shrunk down.
45:14I have a fear of claustrophobia. I was sweating bullets. I really hated it.
45:21It went very smoothly and everybody liked the movie when they saw it. And the only thing that happened
45:31was they had that terrible ad campaign and so it didn't make any money. But aside from that,
45:35it was a great experience. I think that for every new technology, for every sci-fi idea,
45:41you can find a movie that's hopeful about what that's going to do to transform the world. And a
45:46movie that's terrified about how this thing is going to destroy everything. There isn't a single
45:52sci-fi concept where you can't find both of those kinds of movies.
45:55I got a huge kick out of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. What an absolute silly idea that I thought was
46:10really well handled. You don't realize how terrifying all the little things around you
46:16can be until you're smaller than everything. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids is about a scientist
46:22played by Rick Moranis who accidentally shrinks his kids and they have to traverse this backyard
46:27in order to get back home and, you know, fight all sorts of dangers in this backyard now that they're
46:32this big. I shrunk the kids. What? And the Thompson kids too. They're about this big. They're in the
46:38backyard. What? Threw them out with the trash. It's a dead lift on the Richard Matheson story,
46:43The Incredible Shrinking Man, which was one of my favorite sci-fi movies when I was a kid.
46:48Matheson was very ahead of his time. There's allusions to that movie in it. There are sequences
46:53where they're fighting certain insects as an homage to those movies of the past.
47:00Before Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, the movie was called Teenie Weenies and gave me an opportunity to
47:05work with my buddy Joe Johnston on his first theatrical feature film. There was a big scorpion scene.
47:13What we essentially did was that, uh, fighting an ant and going after these children and the ant comes to the rescue.
47:23Stop motion creatures. We don't want camera moves to drive the performance. We want the
47:28performance to drive the camera. And then there was another unit down in Los Angeles with Dave Allen
47:35that was doing the other scenes with the ant. One of the things about making movies in the 80s that
47:42people today don't necessarily understand is how many different solutions to things you had to find.
47:47You couldn't just throw it into a computer and that's it. You had to use forced perspective,
47:51miniatures, bigatures, and sometimes in a single scene you might have a animatronic ant the kids are
47:57riding on and then a close-up that's just the head that's an entirely different prop.
48:01And you had to really sort of think about how you were going to do every single shot in a movie
48:06and come up with a different unique solution. Thanks for the lift, Andy.
48:11It has this aesthetic that is not quite realistic looking in a lot of places, but it 100% works for
48:17the movie and the tone of the movie that they're telling you. These giant blades of grass look exactly
48:22how they should look for that movie. The great thing about knowing the movie was done practically is
48:30that you know that at some point there was actually a kid swimming around in a giant bowl of milk using
48:34a giant cheerio as a life preserver. Don't eat me! Some of us feel like the world was getting a little
48:42too cynical for its own good, a little too self-aware for its own good. A movie like The
48:46I showed the kids just like look let's just go enjoy ourselves and enjoy the innocence and sweetness
48:50of the world. It's always got a place on my shelf for that reason. Nick, I've got six hours to get
48:57home, get big and get to the mall. There is more technological advance in the past 50 years than there
49:04is in all of recorded history up to 50 years ago and that will continue. Arthur C. Clarke's definition
49:11that any advanced technology will be indistinguishable from magic. What we think of today as impossible
49:18and magical in 15 or 20 or even a thousand years will be commonplace.
49:26We just don't know what's around the corner and it's bound to be something that will blow our minds,
49:32right? I would only hope that humankind would continue to be inspired by the possibilities of the future.
49:41We just don't know what to do with that. Oh our goal!
49:53Oh my gosh, we just don't know what to do!
49:58I'm done!
50:00Oh, I'm done!
50:00Oh my gosh, I'm done!
50:03Oh my gosh, I'm done!
50:05Oh!
50:05Oh my gosh, I'm done!
50:07Oh my gosh!
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