Tonight the Aero hosted a 25th anniversary screening of one of the films that pretty much shaped my childhood: The Last Starfighter. Seriously, I can't tell you how many times I saw this back in the eighties. I saw it once or twice in the theater with Mom....and then one or two billion times on HBO. Indeed, there was a time when I could've recited the script by memory. Backward. In my sleep. In Ancient Greek. Mom, meanwhile, put up with it 'cause it has Robert Preston as Centauri. At the time it came out, of course, I didn't have a clue who Robert Preston was. What do you expect? I was eight. But I loved his character. And since then I've seen him in older stuff (e.g. How the West Was Won) and appreciate his talent much more.
Before tonight, I hadn't seen this pup since the late eighties I'm sure, so it was like rediscovering the magic all over again. And talk about gravy, they had seven--count 'em, seven!--guests from the movie partake in a Q&A afterward. Only one person from the cast made it, that gal who played Maggie, Catherine Mary Stewart. She turns fifty next month and looks--what's the best word?--hot! The other six were behind-the-scenes folks: Director Nick Castle, producer Gary Adelson, composer Craig Safan, special effects supervisor Kevin Pike, visual effects coordinator Jeffrey Okun and, most distinguished of all, Gary Demos. The movie credits list him as simply "technical executive from Digital Productions," but that doesn't do justice at all to the impact this guy had, on both The Last Starfighter and, by extension, motion picture photography using computer-generated images.
Indeed, like Robert Preston, the way they made this movie is another thing I didn't appreciate when I was a youngster. Even more than Tron, The Last Starfighter was a watersh
ed in how special effects were done. This film helped usher in the era of creating entire worlds on computer, something we take for granted today, right? So in case you're wondering why three of the seven guests tonight included effects geeks, that's why. To have Gary Demos in person was an especially huge deal. It'd be like having Thomas Edison in person for a Q&A about the light bulb or something. Gary didn't go it alone, though. His partner in crime at Digital Productions was this guy named John Whitney Jr. He was in the audience tonight. Gary and John, by the way, were also the brains behind Tron, as well as Looker the year before that, and Futureworld back in '76. So it's thanks to them, more than anyone else, that CGI exists at all. And while they'd used it a bit before, The Last Starfighter is where they finally honed it down, although it still wasn't easy, as I'll get to below.
ed in how special effects were done. This film helped usher in the era of creating entire worlds on computer, something we take for granted today, right? So in case you're wondering why three of the seven guests tonight included effects geeks, that's why. To have Gary Demos in person was an especially huge deal. It'd be like having Thomas Edison in person for a Q&A about the light bulb or something. Gary didn't go it alone, though. His partner in crime at Digital Productions was this guy named John Whitney Jr. He was in the audience tonight. Gary and John, by the way, were also the brains behind Tron, as well as Looker the year before that, and Futureworld back in '76. So it's thanks to them, more than anyone else, that CGI exists at all. And while they'd used it a bit before, The Last Starfighter is where they finally honed it down, although it still wasn't easy, as I'll get to below.Speaking of the audience, John Whitney wasn't the only one from the film who showed up just to watch. At one point the moderator asked anyone in the audience who was involved in Starfighter's special effects to raise their hand. I kid you not, I'd say a good two dozen or so peeps raised their hands. And when I looked around at them, I couldn't help but notice that a lot of them didn't seem that old. Forties maybe? Early fifties? They must've been right out of college at the time.
In case you're wondering why Lance Guest (Alex Rogan) wasn't there, Catherine Mary Stewart explained to us during the Q&A that he's in the middle of a play in Chicago that he is not only starring in but also wrote. Getting out of it even for one night just wasn't possible. Catherine and Lance have remained pals over the years. She couldn't say enough about how bummed out Lance was that he couldn't make it tonight. That made two of us. The one cool thing, though, was that his wife and baby boy were in the audience tonight.
So what's The Last Starfighter about? Although I'm not sure how it's possible, I know there are some of you out there who've managed to avoid it all this time. I won't give the whole story away, but here's the setup.
Lance Guest, right? He plays this college-aged kid named Alex Rogan. He lives with his mom and kid brother Lewis in this California trailer park called Star Lite, Star Brite. He's of college age, but he's not in college, and therein lies the root of his frustration. Mom's the landlady of this park, and Alex is sort of her do-it-all handyman. Not only has this prevented him from getting an education, it keeps him from hanging out at Silverlake with his buddies and his love interest, Maggie (Catherine Mary Stewart, looking adorable in that eighties 'do).
Whenever Alex finds a free moment, he goes up to the diner at the park entrance to play this arcade game called Starfighter. This game is pretty much his only hobby. Soon into the film, Maggie gets home late after hangin' out at Silverlake just in time to watch Alex beat the record score. Pretty much all the tenants in the trailer park gather around to see Alex defeat the evil Xur and the Kodan armada.
His high doesn't last long, though. As soon as he gets back home, he finds his mom holding a rejection letter from a bank, refusing to lend Alex the money for college. It's when he runs back outside to ball up the letter and hurl it away in frustration that he meets the inimitable Robert Preston.
He shows up in this awesome little car (I think it was a Dilorean) and introduces himself as an alien named Centauri. He's the one who invented the Starfighter game. He made a bunch of them and distributed them all over the place to see who was best at it. Whoever actually beat it would be offered the chance to go back to Centauri's home planet, Rylos, to be a starfighter for real and fight against the real Xur and the real Kodan armada. Did I mention the Dilorean can fly through space at warp speed? Oh yeah.
I won't go into too much detail from there except to say the only way Alex has a fighting chance of taking on the armada by himself is thanks to this alien navigator named Grig. Besides Centauri, Grig is my other favorite character from the film. He cracked me up as a kid, and he cracked me up tonight. The guy who played Grig, by the way, is the late great Dan O'Herlihy. Like Robert Preston, he was in his sixties when he did this, but because he's covered in makeup, it's hard to tell. Indeed, I was shocked when I saw how old he was when he appeared sans makeup in Robocop. He played the head of OCP, the corporation that owned the cops. The credits list his character simply as....the Old Man.
Okay now to the Q&A. With so many guests, where the heck do I start? How about with Catherine Mary Stewart? She wasn't a complete novice at the time. In her mid twenties, she'd already scored a smattering of supporting roles in Canadian movies (she's from Edmonton) as well as American TV, such as Knight Rider (all right!) and Days of Our Lives. 
She doesn't remember the first round of Starfighter auditions because so many people were there and she was a big ball of nerves. She definitely remembers the callbacks, though, 'cause that's when she got to meet Lance. Those who made it to the callbacks were paired with a member of the opposite sex, and Catherine was assigned to Lance just by sheer happenstance. He was the same age with a modest resume of his own, including a small role in Halloween II. I'll explain why that's significant in a sec. They hit it off right away. With Lance she felt immediately and completely at ease, she said. Which obviously worked to her advantage considering they made the final cut. She said she still gets people today who recognize her from the film and thank her for playing a strong woman at a time when that was relatively uncommon.
She doesn't remember the first round of Starfighter auditions because so many people were there and she was a big ball of nerves. She definitely remembers the callbacks, though, 'cause that's when she got to meet Lance. Those who made it to the callbacks were paired with a member of the opposite sex, and Catherine was assigned to Lance just by sheer happenstance. He was the same age with a modest resume of his own, including a small role in Halloween II. I'll explain why that's significant in a sec. They hit it off right away. With Lance she felt immediately and completely at ease, she said. Which obviously worked to her advantage considering they made the final cut. She said she still gets people today who recognize her from the film and thank her for playing a strong woman at a time when that was relatively uncommon.The reason I say Lance's gig in Halloween II was significant is because it may very well have helped him land The Last Starfighter. In the end he had to audition like everyone else, but he may have been referred to the audition. The original Halloween was the brainchild of the great John Carpenter. While he wrote and directed the first one, his only involvement with part deux was co-writing the script. But guess who played the killer, Michael Myers, in the first one? Some dude named Nick Castle, a friend of John Carpenter's who was doing him a favor by walking around with that albino William Shatner mask (yes, the mask was really modeled after William Shatner's face) and the large knife. Does the name Nick Castle ring a bell? I mentioned him up top. He's the dude who directed...The Last Starfighter! Isn't it funny how things are all tied together?
Speaking of Nick Castle, he almost didn't do Starfighter. When the moderator asked him how he landed the gig, he said his agent was approached by producer Gary Adelson, who was sitting right next to Nick tonight. The last thing Nick ever thought he'd direct was a sci-fi film. His instinct was to say no. At the time, he'd directed all of one film, this action pic from
two years earlier called Tag: The Assassination Game. And he'd written or co-written some features too, like Skatetown, USA, as well as the awesome Escape from New York. He'd also done theater, but only musical theater. Escape is kind of sci-fi-ish, but still, with a resume like his, Nick wasn't the obvious choice for a picture like The Last Starfighter. When he finally caved in to his agent's pleading, he said they'd have to let him revise the script. It was an original screenplay by this guy named Jonathan Betuel. Nick said the script was very broad and needed a lot of work. It originally took place in some generic suburbia a la E.T. The main idea behind the revisions, Nick said, was "not to run into Lucas and Spielberg on every page." Speaking of page, he said the revision was literally a page by page rewrite, and he was thrilled Gary Adelson was so accommodating. Nick concedes the final draft still wasn't optimal and some of the acting suffered for it. Still, with the resources they had, I think they did just fine. Look Nick up on IMDb when you get a chance. Dude's directed all kinds of stuff: This, Tap, Major Payne. Between that, the John Carpenter connection, the musical theater... He's not the most prolific director, but you can still say he's done it all.
two years earlier called Tag: The Assassination Game. And he'd written or co-written some features too, like Skatetown, USA, as well as the awesome Escape from New York. He'd also done theater, but only musical theater. Escape is kind of sci-fi-ish, but still, with a resume like his, Nick wasn't the obvious choice for a picture like The Last Starfighter. When he finally caved in to his agent's pleading, he said they'd have to let him revise the script. It was an original screenplay by this guy named Jonathan Betuel. Nick said the script was very broad and needed a lot of work. It originally took place in some generic suburbia a la E.T. The main idea behind the revisions, Nick said, was "not to run into Lucas and Spielberg on every page." Speaking of page, he said the revision was literally a page by page rewrite, and he was thrilled Gary Adelson was so accommodating. Nick concedes the final draft still wasn't optimal and some of the acting suffered for it. Still, with the resources they had, I think they did just fine. Look Nick up on IMDb when you get a chance. Dude's directed all kinds of stuff: This, Tap, Major Payne. Between that, the John Carpenter connection, the musical theater... He's not the most prolific director, but you can still say he's done it all.As for Jonathan, this was his first writing credit. It doesn't seem there were any hard feelings about the rewrites. In fact, Nick said they kept Jonathan very involved, even during production, which is a rare treat for a screenwriter. Usually once the script has been sold, the writer is shut out of the process. But no, however the screenplay was rewritten, it wasn't Nick who did the rewriting, it was Jonathan, using Nick's notes. Jonathan retained sole writing credit, which is awesome.
It was Jonathan's idea to get Robert Preston for Centauri. That's who he wrote the role for. Jonathan pitched it as Obi-Wan Kenobi meets The Music Man. They never in a million years thought he'd say yes, but you never know if you don't try, right? If you know anything about Robert Preston's oeuvre, it is kind of amazing that he signed up for Starfighter. Like Lance, Jonathan was also supposed to be at the Q&A, but he's in New York for his mom's eightieth birthday. Oh all right, I reckon that's more important.
Producer Gary Adelson, as buff and bald as Nick Castle is gray and hairy, said that he didn't know Jonathan Betuel or anything. This script was one of a ton that landed on his slush pile. He picked it up, read it, and fell in love with it. As someone who's currently toughing out the slush pile phase with my own writing, I can't tell you how inspiring that is. But again, like Nick, he said it needed a lot of work. As for why he wanted Nick to direct, he said they figured they could get him on the cheap precisely because his sci-fi experience was minimal. Gary said the budget for Starfighter was about twelve mil, which even back then was below average, so they had to pinch pennies. They didn't pinch enough, though, going over by a good mil.
As a side note about Gary, he's the son of a certain producer named Merv Adelson. In the sixties Merv was one of three producers who founded a production company called Lorimar. Look them up on Wikipedia. By the time they went belly up in the nineties, they'd done a ton of TV shows and films you'll recognize. One of those films, of course, was Starfighter.
When the moderator asked F/X coordinator Jeffrey Okun about his memories, he said he didn't come in until the movie was halfway finished. Gary told him what they wanted to accomplish, and Jeff told him they'd never be able to do it. Since Gary had Gary Demos and John Whitney from Digital Productions at his disposal, he figured he'd go for it anyway. Plus, Jeff admitted he was practically a kid back then, as were a lot of the other F/X folks. He didn't know anything, like how you're not supposed to go into the producer's office and tell them they can't do it. Gary said remembered Jeff as being very quiet, and that he was doing more talking tonight than during the production.
F/X supervisor Kevin Pike talked about how he sort of fell into this film. At the time, he was an out-of-work architect. It was thanks to the recession of '83 that he and a lot his fellow unemployed architect friends were available to work on Starfighter. Kevin talked a little about how painstaking the computer modeling was. For the vertices, the right cursor was x and y, the left, z. The poor souls had to plot each and every one. Kevin said it was a healthy combo of tedium and Zen. He was especially proud of the logo on Alex and Grig's gunship, which he said was constructed with several layers.
Gary Demos said they had two processors sharing sixteen megs of RAM. In '83 that was unheard of, and I can testify to that personally. I remember when I got a PC in '93 with all of four megs of RAM, and that was a big deal. Seriously, I remember being ecstatic about that. And they had quadruple that a decade earlier. Awesome. Demos also talked about their 10MB hard drive, this huge unwieldy box that cost upwards of ten grand. You believe that shit? But again, as with the RAM, I remember my PC with a 4MB hard drive back in the late eighties. And yes, it was this big ugly box taking up too much space on my desk.
Demos also mentioned that John Whitney, who never said a thing tonight from his seat in the audience, used to talk about how, by the mid nineties, we wouldn't need actors anymore. Even they could be computer generated. Demos said John started talking about that around 1980. But even Demos, not to speak of the other guests, admitted that it's hard to imagine not having flesh-and-blood talent. That's when everyone started clapping, egged on to do so by Catherine.
One thing all the F/X guys agreed on was that production designer Ron Cobb is the Man. He wasn't here tonight, but obviously he should've been. They called him the unsung hero of Starfighter. The film couldn't have been done without all of his conceptual designs, those painstaking sketches and so forth. He's got quite the resume as a production designer or conceptual artist: The Abyss, Leviathan, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Alien, Aliens, Total Recall. Originally from L.A., Ron's now in his seventies and semi-retired in Australia. He still dabbles now and again, having worked on the criminally short-lived Firefly and, most recently, Southland Tales, Richard Kelly's follow-up to Donnie Darko.
Craig Safan's main challenge in composing the score for Starfighter was that he had to do it without seeing the film, not even a rough cut. All he had to go on were animated pencil lines that represented the spaceships. Weird, huh? And dude had a hundred-plus-piece orchestra to manage. In order to give them anything to play, he had to go on faith that the eventual images 
would jive with the grand orchestrations he wanted to come up with. His strategy was to compose four main orchestrations. Craig labeled them the big theme song, the heart song, the Centauri song, and one more I can't remember. Maybe the action song, but I'm not sure. And then he'd play it on the piano for Gary Adelson to get his feedback. He's amazed he was able to pull it off, what with how it's done today, all on computer and with each major character having their own theme song. Craig also reminisced about his college days in the sixties when he first got into electronic music.
would jive with the grand orchestrations he wanted to come up with. His strategy was to compose four main orchestrations. Craig labeled them the big theme song, the heart song, the Centauri song, and one more I can't remember. Maybe the action song, but I'm not sure. And then he'd play it on the piano for Gary Adelson to get his feedback. He's amazed he was able to pull it off, what with how it's done today, all on computer and with each major character having their own theme song. Craig also reminisced about his college days in the sixties when he first got into electronic music.Craig, along with Nick and Gary Adelson, talked about the fifteenth anniversary DVD party they had for Starfighter back in the spring of '99. The party was at Nick's house. Craig apparently brought the house down when he belted out the film's score on Nick's piano.
Not as many soundtracks these days are done with full orchestras, and Craig sort of lamented that, as you'd expect him to. He said something's missing when a feature film's soundtrack is composed entirely on a laptop. Of course he's right, but it's tough to beat the cost-effectiveness of that. Someone in the audience told Craig that the Starfighter soundtrack was the only soundtrack he could listen to from start to finish.
Okay. Now. The sequel. According to IMDb, next year will see the release of a film called Starfighter, with Nick Castle directing, Jonathan Betuel writing, with a story set twenty-five years after The Last Starfighter. Sure enough, Nick wouldn't give up too much about it other than to say that Jonathan has finished the final draft. He wouldn't even tell Catherine if her character's going to be in it, which is kind of weird if the script is done. She clearly wants to be in it, judging by how eager she looked when Nick chose to be demure.
One of the last audience questions was from this guy complaining about the quality of tonight's film print as well as the DVD's picture quality. I thought tonight's print was fine, but that's just me. This guy wondered if there'd be a restoration. Nick had never thought about a restoration before, but now that this guy mentioned it, it was starting to bother him. "It's now in the front of my mind," he said.
