How a Micro-Budget Student Film Changed Sci-Fi Forever (bbc.com) 44
An anonymous reader writes: In the early 70s, young filmmakers John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon created a spaceship tale for a graduation project -- little knowing it would influence Alien and many other works. Made for $60,000 by film school students, horror maestro John Carpenter's directorial debut Dark Star is now regarded as a sci-fi cult classic. Having just turned 50 years old, it's a world away from much of the sci-fi that came before it and would come after, neither space odyssey nor space opera, rather a bleak, downbeat and often absurd portrait of a group of people cooped together in a malfunctioning interstellar tin can. Arguably its most famous scene consists of an existential debate between an astronaut and a sentient bomb. Dark Star was a collaboration between Carpenter, who directed and scored the film, and Dan O'Bannon, who in addition to co-writing the script, acted as editor, production designer, and visual effects supervisor, as well as playing the volatile, paranoid Sergeant Pinback. They met as budding filmmakers at the University of Southern California. "While [Carpenter and O'Bannon] couldn't be more dissimilar in personality, they were both very energetic and focused," says Daniel Griffiths, director of Let There Be Light: The Odyssey of Dark Star (2010), the definitive documentary about the making of the film.
The sci-fi films of this period tended to be bleak and dystopian, explains John Kenneth Muir, author of The Films of John Carpenter -- films like Silent Running (1972), in which all plant life on Earth is extinct, or George Lucas's 1971 debut THX-1138, in which human emotion is suppressed. "Dark Star arrived in this world of dark, hopeless imaginings, but took the darkness one step further into absurd nihilism." Carpenter and O'Bannon set out to make the "ultimate riff on Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey," says Griffiths. While Kubrick's 1968 film, explains Muir, was one "in which viewers sought meaning in the stars about the nature of humanity, there is no meaning to life in Dark Star". Rather, says Muir, it parodies 2001 "with its own sense of man's irrelevance in the scheme of things". Where Kubrick scored his film with classical music, Dark Star opens with a country song, Benson, Arizona. (A road in the real-life Benson is named in honor of the film). The film was even released with the tagline "the spaced-out odyssey." Dark Star captured the mood of the time in which it was made, says Muir, the atmosphere of Nixon's America. "The 1960s was all about utopian dreaming and bringing change to America in the counterculture. The 1970s represent what writer Johnny Byrne called 'The wake-up from the hippie dream', a reckoning with the fact that the more things change, the more they stay the same." [...]
When Dark Star premiered at the FILMEX expo in 1974, the audience response was largely positive. "They recognized the film's absurdist humor and celebrated its student film roots," says Griffiths. It had a limited theatrical release in 1975, but it was not a commercial success. "The film met with negative reviews from critics, and general disinterest from audiences," says Muir. "Both Carpenter and O'Bannon realized that all the struggles they endured to make the film did not matter to audiences, they only cared about the finished product. I think they were discouraged," says Griffiths. The growth of the VHS market, however, helped it find its audience and propelled it towards cult status. Its influence can still be felt, perhaps most directly in Ridley Scott's Alien, for which O'Bannon, who died in 2009, wrote the screenplay. The two films share DNA. Alien is also set on a grotty working vessel with a bickering crew, only this time the alien wasn't played for laughs.
The sci-fi films of this period tended to be bleak and dystopian, explains John Kenneth Muir, author of The Films of John Carpenter -- films like Silent Running (1972), in which all plant life on Earth is extinct, or George Lucas's 1971 debut THX-1138, in which human emotion is suppressed. "Dark Star arrived in this world of dark, hopeless imaginings, but took the darkness one step further into absurd nihilism." Carpenter and O'Bannon set out to make the "ultimate riff on Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey," says Griffiths. While Kubrick's 1968 film, explains Muir, was one "in which viewers sought meaning in the stars about the nature of humanity, there is no meaning to life in Dark Star". Rather, says Muir, it parodies 2001 "with its own sense of man's irrelevance in the scheme of things". Where Kubrick scored his film with classical music, Dark Star opens with a country song, Benson, Arizona. (A road in the real-life Benson is named in honor of the film). The film was even released with the tagline "the spaced-out odyssey." Dark Star captured the mood of the time in which it was made, says Muir, the atmosphere of Nixon's America. "The 1960s was all about utopian dreaming and bringing change to America in the counterculture. The 1970s represent what writer Johnny Byrne called 'The wake-up from the hippie dream', a reckoning with the fact that the more things change, the more they stay the same." [...]
When Dark Star premiered at the FILMEX expo in 1974, the audience response was largely positive. "They recognized the film's absurdist humor and celebrated its student film roots," says Griffiths. It had a limited theatrical release in 1975, but it was not a commercial success. "The film met with negative reviews from critics, and general disinterest from audiences," says Muir. "Both Carpenter and O'Bannon realized that all the struggles they endured to make the film did not matter to audiences, they only cared about the finished product. I think they were discouraged," says Griffiths. The growth of the VHS market, however, helped it find its audience and propelled it towards cult status. Its influence can still be felt, perhaps most directly in Ridley Scott's Alien, for which O'Bannon, who died in 2009, wrote the screenplay. The two films share DNA. Alien is also set on a grotty working vessel with a bickering crew, only this time the alien wasn't played for laughs.
_So_ good. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you haven't seen it, it's a must.
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Don't give me any of that intelligent life stuff, just give me something I can blow up
(Which actually makes sense in the context of the movie)
The "Cleaning the elevator" scene.
Recommended!
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Omg, yes, I haven't seen it in years. Must re-watch again immediately.
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Just make sure you watch the German version, which is much funnier. It kinda loses something in the original.
"Bombe, mach dich Scharf! / Bin Scharf!".
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The most unintentionally funny part was the long elevator scene, when you realize that it is a large box in a hallway being rolled up and down the hall on a skateboard or dolly
Beyond that, the frantic "button pushing" and calling out steps was intentionally funny, with the high point of the bomb working through an existential crisis and reciting Genesis before exploding
cannabis, as with most 70's comedy, is key to enjoying it
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It needs to be in context too. The time it came out is very different from todays over-saturation of sci-fi. It wasn't "great" in a traditional sense, but it was the opposite of 2001: A Space Odyssey. 2001 was slow and boring, but looked great. Dark Star has a lot of slow and boring parts. But 2001 took itself too seriously, Dark Star doesn't. 2001 posits a wonderful future of space travel but Dark Star says space travel is meh. 2001 was big budget, Dark Star was painfully lacking in budget. Dark Star
Hello bomb, are you with me? (Score:3)
Topicality (Score:2)
I guess it's the film's anniversary or something because I've been seeing Dark Star mentioned in the popular press (multiple days and sources in my Google News feed) for the last couple of weeks.
I can't help but wonder if it is coincidental with the AI phenomenon, and I think about the misapplication of generative AI to critical decision making areas such as military targeting. Of course, GPT isn't going to debate with itself over the existential questions. It's just going to blather misinformation about wh
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I get it that people don't RTFA since I am not new here. But the 50 anniversary is literally mentioned in the summary. I guess nowadays people just read the headline.
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I get it that people don't RTFA since I am not new here. But the 50 anniversary is literally mentioned in the summary. I guess nowadays people just read the headline.
This is what happens whe people spend their time glued to anti-social media. Their attention span and ability to comprehend plummets.
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Me: ChatGPT, please summarize the Slashdot summary for me.
ChatGPT: Movie on a budget has anniversary, nerds are happy. Brawndo, it's what Taylor Swift craves!
Me: Too long, too long, please summarize your summary.
ChatGPT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Me: tk
ChatGPT: yw
Budget (Score:5, Informative)
The "micro-budget" was $6k, not $60k.
$60k would have been quite a bit of money for student film!
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A quick search of background stuff on IMDB reveals they got $1000 for 45 mins initially, then got updated to $6000 to extend the project, then got $60,000 to make it a full feature-length movie.
Re:Budget (Score:4, Informative)
This is from Wikipedia:
which references 2 books.
I think it's just poorly worded in the article. They "created a spaceship tale for a graduation project", and it was "[m]ade for $60,000 by film school students", but these are not the same film. The student film cost $6k, the publicly released one was $60k.
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$60k would have been quite a bit of money for student film!
Are you talking about past tense? Because it happens $6000 in 1970 is equivalent to $50k today.
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I was curious about that price tag too. I have very fuzzy memories of watching a commentary track, probably from the DVD, and probably from ~20 years ago. If I'm remembering it right, the version we know today was expanded from a short student film, which could explain why it cost more than a student film normally would have cost. Now that I'm thinking about it more, I seem to remember that when watching it, it is fairly obvious which parts were added later. I need to re-watch it to be sure.
Also, the ve
And inspired a band! (Score:2)
The film also inspired the fantastic alt rock band Pinback. Check them out if you haven't, one of my favourites.
Wow that brings me back (Score:5, Interesting)
I saw this movie in Berkeley back in the day with friends. I always remembered it but never saw it again until I found a DVD in some store and bought it.
Astoundingly, that DVD copy did have the noted metaphysical discussion between the Lieutenant and The Bomb, but for some reason the earlier scene of a discussion between the ship computer and The Bomb was taken out. ("you are out of your bay again")
Now I have to wonder what else was edited out. Also if there is other media out there with the whole thing. Anyone here know?
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"Careful Dave, I have an explosive temper" (Score:2)
> an existential debate between an astronaut and a sentient bomb
The ultimate IOT gone wrong.
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Sorry, but I must take a contrarian view (Score:2)
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I wondered why they bothered with the beach ball, but they were students, so who knows. If you've ever seen the "The Prisoner" series from 1967, a partly inflated latex weather balloon was used surprisingly well as a plot device to explain why escape from the island is impossible.
Re: Sorry, but I must take a contrarian view (Score:2)
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The idea behind the beach ball is that in any horror movie, it does not really matter what the monster is, because when you finally see it (largely before CGI) it is never as scary as intended
imo, it is a movie industry in-joke that has not aged well
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The beach ball was added later, because the first film was considered too short for cinematic release and it needed padding. These parts were also where Carpenter and O'Bannon disagreed the most. This is in the story.
I saw it when it came out (Score:2)
Red Dwarf exists because of Dark Star (Score:2)
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Wiow, really? I never would have expected anything even halfway serious to have influenced Red Dwarf.
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Holly: They're all dead. Everybody's Dead, Dave.
Dave: Peterson isn't, is he?
Holly: Everybody's dead, Dave.
Dave: Not Chen?
Holly: Yes, Chen. Everyone. Everybody's dead, Dave!
Dave: Rimmer?
Holly: He's dead, Dave. Everybody is dead. Everybody is dead, Dave.
Dave: Wait. Are you trying to tell me everybody's dead?
Late night TV (Score:2)
Dark Star was aired on late night TV several times in my teens. We're talking late, late night--after SNL crazy late. Something about being a teenager that makes you want to be up at that hour. I probably never saw the whole thing in one sitting, but I know I got to the end once. I admired the gritty, dirty look of it all vs. the unrealistic cleanliness of 2001 or Star Trek. When the Soviet space station Mir began to age and grow mold I was immediately reminded of it. A space station that was behaving
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The science fiction club at the university was called Dark Star. And they'd have showings of it periodically, which was the first I heard of it. Probably this was peak cult and midnight movie era.
Lost me at country music (Score:2)
2001 is my favorite movie of all time. The classical music is an important part of why.
A must watch (Score:2)
Doolittle:
Hello, Bomb? Are you with me?
Bomb #20:
Of course.
Doolittle:
Are you willing to entertain a few concepts?
Bomb #20:
I am always receptive to suggestions.
Doolittle:
Fine. Think about this then. How do you know you exist?
Bomb #20:
Well, of course I exist.
Doolittle:
But how do you know you exist?
Bomb #20:
It is intuitively obvious.
Doolittle:
Intuition is no proof. What concrete evidence do you have that you exist?
Bomb #20:
Hmmmm... well... I think, therefore I am.
Doolittle:
That's good. That's very good. But how
there is a whole genre (Score:1)
Teach the slashdot commentariat (Score:2)
phenomenology.
Saw it in theater (Score:2)
Very happy to say that I saw Dark Star in theater, almost by accident. At a time of dystopian scifi (finally put to rest by Star Wars, released two months later) Dark Star was a welcome parody of the downer that was most scifi at the time. With props from a toy store and very early space effects, the film still stands up today.
A friend had it on tape and we'd periodically have "Dark Star" parties, especially if someone in our group was a "Dark Star virgin".
I have the novel (which adds depth to the charact
funny (Score:2)
Dark Star is incredibly funny. If you haven't seen it, try to.
Required viewing in the 90s (Score:3)