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Dark Star at 50: How a micro-budget student film changed sci-fi forever
- fermigier 3y agoMy first reasonably useful Linux computer was called "darkstar" because it was the default on Slackware.
- noisy_boy 3y agoI have taken to giving that name to my main computer.
- contingencies 3y agoCame to post the same. Slackware 3, Kernel 2.x IIRC. Installation from floppies so slow you could read the package descriptions during unarchiving. Always laughed reading "bison - a parser generator in the style of yacc". Awesome.
- shoo 3y ago> Scenes had to be added to pad out the runtime to the requisite length. These additional scenes include a lengthy sequence in which Pinback does battle with an alien in the form of a beach ball with clawed feet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vywgEsuyGEY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vywgEsuyGEY I have a hazy memory of a scene where the beach ball alien is punctured and is propelled about the room like a deflating balloon. > its most famous scene consists of an existential debate between an astronaut and a sentient bomb https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h73PsFKtIck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h73PsFKtIck (if you are concerned about spoiling the ending of the movie, you may prefer to watch the entire film from the start rather than clicking the above link)
- cess11 3y ago"Let there be light" is such a good joke.
- senkora 3y agoIt's very well-telegraphed as well. The bomb paraphrases the first few verses of the Book of Genesis beforehand: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/k/kjv/kjv-idx?type=DIV1&byte=1477 https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/k/kjv/kjv-idx?type=DIV1&byte=...
- noisy_boy 3y agoOne of my favourite phrases in sci-fi is "talk to the bomb"
- matja 3y ago<ext4> I have no proof it was false data <zfs> YOU HAVE NO PROOF IT WAS CORRECT DATA!
- mihaic 3y agoAs in any article that overlooks the great Ron Cobb, I just wanted to point out that his designs were influential into shifting the direction of how sci-fi should look. It always takes more than the people who's names are mentioned to build anything.
- JKCalhoun 3y agoHe and Syd Mead were a pair. I think Ron Cobb's work was more "grounded" though.
- defrost 3y agoI've got his cartoon books and Colorvision art book, his website is still up: Disney cel art: (1956-) Concept Art for Film (1974 - 2015): https://roncobb.net/film.html https://roncobb.net/film.html Initial Dark Star napkin sketch: https://roncobb.net/img/filmography/02-Dark_Star/441-on-Ship-ds.jpg https://roncobb.net/img/filmography/02-Dark_Star/441-on-Ship... Dark Star Gallery: https://roncobb.net/02-Dark_Star.html https://roncobb.net/02-Dark_Star.html
- rado 3y agoOne of the best debuts of all time
- KingOfCoders 3y agoI love it, my wife hates it. It has been a running joke between us for the last twenty years.
- noisy_boy 3y agoIt is an love-it-or-hate it type of movie. I didn't like it at all when I first saw it many years ago; now I appreciate it much more.
- anonzzzies 3y agohttps://archive.org/details/dark-star-movie-1974-from-john-carpenter https://archive.org/details/dark-star-movie-1974-from-john-c...
- varelse 3y agoIt was only last year that I realized the country music opening theme "Benson, Arizona" was about relativistic travel through space, shortly after playing it because I had just driven through Benson, Arizona.
- omnibrain 3y agoLyrics, MP3 and background information here: https://www.benzedrine.ch/darkstar.html https://www.benzedrine.ch/darkstar.html It's interesting, that it predates '39 by Queen by a year: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E2%80%9939 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E2%80%9939
- pulvinar 3y agoThere's now a Dark Star Road in Benson. Someone's a fan.
- rootbear 3y agoThe group Clam Chowder, who played at conventions in the Washington, DC area and beyond, did a cover of Benson Arizona that was extremely popular at their concerts.
- throw0101c 3y agoWhen I saw "Dark Star" was fifty years old, I was confused as Mos Def and Talib Kweli have not been around for that long: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Star_(rap_duo) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Star_(rap_duo) * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mos_Def_%26_Talib_Kweli_Are_Black_Star https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mos_Def_%26_Talib_Kweli_Are_Bl... Their song "RE:DEFinition": * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JQpnilvvk4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JQpnilvvk4 Also Mos Def's "Mathematics": * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5vw4ajnWGA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5vw4ajnWGA
- JKCalhoun 3y agoDan O'Bannon, RIP.
- JKCalhoun 3y agoMake it a double-feature with "A Boy and His Dog" and you have the quintessential sci-fi indie scene from the 70's that we lost after "Star Wars". (Ha ha, should I add "THX 1138" and make it a triple feature? Thanks, George!)
- TheOtherHobbes 3y agoI have a theory that between them Star Wars and Blade Runner killed, or at least seriously damaged, SF. Instead of forward-looking weirdness (like 2001) a lot of SF - especially written SF - turned into reruns of WW II in space and 30s detective noir decorated with some stick-on SF greeblies. There are obvious exceptions. But a lot of SF became less interesting, with endless reassuringly predictable variations on battleships in space, and gumshoes/mercenaries with laser blasters.
- PeterHolzwarth 3y agoI understand what you mean, and there very definitely was a change, but I've always felt it was the shift away from late sixties / early seventies high-concept, almost-fantasy, semi-hallucinogenic wonderful weirdness. Just as culture pretty quickly went post-hippie (as it were), so too did science fiction. I feel as tho, somewhat tongue-in-cheek here, we collectively went "well that was a little embarrassing" after the sixties and reverted a bit to form culturally - not just in popular fiction, I mean, but more generally.
- mistrial9 3y agothats entertaining but no.. disagree.. the "hippy visionary" gestalt got lots of airplay for certain.. but there was always a straight-line science crowd that went deep-dive into elaborate scenarios.. with Science.. not the easily-identifiable fuzzy-glowey you allude to.. heck, give credit where credit is due, and point to more interesting book covers, background settings and other ephemera to the artsy people.. and also see the heirarchy, hard logic, high-tech machines and serious life and death events that drove a lot of stories and their production..
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- wslh 3y agoAm I missing something? Because Solyaris [1] predates Dark Star. Not mention though. [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069293/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069293/
- flohofwoe 3y agoWas Solaris even released to US cinemas in 1972? I can only find information that it was shown at the Cannes Film Festival in the year of its release. And even if Carpenter and O'Brannon knew about the movie it might very well be that they didn't see it as influental as it is seen today in the western world. Apparently Lem didn't like the movie either, so it might very well have been overlooked at the time because it didn't fit the "Zeitgeist".
- denton-scratch 3y agoIt was very slow-moving. First time I saw it, I fell asleep. The 2002 remake is more pacy, but I'm afraid I can't take Clooney seriously as an actor. I think it was 20 years before I watched the original again, and enjoyed it.
- HideousKojima 3y agoThere's that whole 7 straight minutes of a self-driving car with no dialogue scene to filter out casual audiences before you even get into space, too.
- empath-nirvana 3y agoInfluence is not a straight line and more than one movie can "change sci-fi forever".
- sfn42 3y ago$60,000 1970s dollars is a "micro-budget"? Who paid for it?
- tgv 3y agoNot really micro. In 1970, the US dollar was about €1.8. Inflation since then has been 560% (here), so that would make for €600k.
- rovolo 3y agoEuros were introduced in 1999, and the preceding "European Currency Unit" (just for accounting) was introduced in 1979.
- VikingCoder 3y agoEl Mariachi has entered the chat. $7000 budget in 1992 that made director Robert Rodriguez famous, and happens to be a good movie.
- telesilla 3y agoPrimer, one of the great time travel movies, also had a $7000 budget. Both Primer and El Mariachi are excellent, excellent examples of how to make a quality movie on a tight budget.
- BLKNSLVR 3y agoPrimer is an absolute mind funk. I've got to watch it again, twice in a row.
- plastic3169 3y agoLike these films, but hate this indie budget math. The way to get to low number is to barter as much as possible and steal the rest. People still put the hours in, but nobody gets paid. Handful of key people get the ip and something for their reel. The rest get taken advance of. It’s like doing an open source project except end result is commercial product licensed to a company. By all means do films for cheap but at least pay people salary or give a piece of the ip.
- matja 3y agoThis movie blew my mind as a kid and a serves warning of things to come with AI that kinda became a movie trope, but had some memorable scenes in Dark Star: <Commander Powell> Talk to the bomb. <Doolittle> But I have been talking to it, sir. And Pinback's talking to it right now. <Commander Powell> No, no, Doolittle. You talk to it. <Commander Powell> Teach it phenomenology
- throw0101b 3y ago> <Commander Powell> Teach it phenomenology Oy vey: > Phenomenology is the philosophical study of objectivity and reality (more generally) as subjectively lived and experienced. It seeks to investigate the universal features of consciousness while avoiding assumptions about the external world, aiming to describe phenomena as they appear to the subject, and to explore the meaning and significance of the lived experiences.[1] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology_(philosophy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology_(philosophy)
- mcguire 3y agoMy assumption is that it's an attempt to cause the bomb to be suicidal.
- james-skemp 3y ago> phenomenology Where I got my BA in philosophy the department head was all about Husserl. Another philosophy professor from a neighboring college told a number of us about Dark Star. In hindsight I do wonder if it was because of the phenomenology reference, or because they were philosophers who took in 60s/70s/... scifi/speculative fiction.
- saltcured 3y agoI keep Dark Star in a nostalgic mental cabinet alongside Dr Strangelove and The Prisoner. But somehow that last Cmdr Powell line, with italics, immediately makes me think of Schizopolis. "Nomenclature"...
- prepend 3y agoQuentin Tarantino and Roger Avery review Dark Star on their first podcast episode. [0] It’s worth listening to even if you don’t really follow their work. It’s what finally motivated me to watch this movie after seeing it in the video store my whole childhood and then forgetting about it for decades. [0] https://videoarchivespodcast.com/episodes/dark-star-cocaine-cowboys https://videoarchivespodcast.com/episodes/dark-star-cocaine-...
- e40 3y agoLove QT's work. I listened to this pod and watched the movie because of it. Honestly, I absolutely hated the movie, and I'm a huge Sci Fi fan. I just do not get why people like this movie.
- jhbadger 3y agoI like how the article brings up Alien, which Dan O'Bannon later wrote the screenplay for. They have a lot of similarities -- both presenting space travel not as glamorous but as something the future equivalent of truckers do, and also about the problems of picking up alien life without a quarantine, although it is played for laughs in Dark Star and deadly seriously in Alien.
- ne8il 3y agoIt's worth watching "Jodorowsky's Dune" if you haven't to see the direct-line connection - Jodorowsky happened to see "Dark Star" playing at a film festival while out in California and wanted whoever did the special effects to come work on his doomed "Dune" adaptation. He hired O'Bannon, who came out and met future Alien collaborators HR Giger and Moebius. It's fair to say Alien would not have happened, (or would not be the Alien we know now), if not for Dark Star.
- usrusr 3y agoI think I remember reading in an interview with O'Bannon, likely linked from hn when he died, that he came up with the idea for Alien after experiencing a cinema audience in terrified silence through the elevator scene, instead of the intended laughs. Something along the lines of "if I can't make them laugh but make them fear without even trying, what if I do try?" If there's and truth to this story, Alien is quite literally a remake of a Dark Star side story, just pivoted a bit. Never heard about that Jodorowsky angle before, thanks. Must be the most influencial movie that never happened.
- vieinfernale 3y agoYou need to watch both of them: Jodorowsky's Dune and H.R Giger's documentary "Dark Star: HR Gigers Welt". Giger was a true artist to the bones, his house was like a macabre gothic castle from dracula, full of statues, books and art. Jodorowsky hired Dan O'Bannon, HR Giger, Jean Giraud Moebius, Salvador Dali, Mick Jagger, Pink Floyd... not to mention his own son. He and Moebius created L'Incal and Metabarons, one of the wildest rides in the realm of european comics. Moebius was one of the most talented artists in the history of the Franco Belgian comics scene of France. Surreal that Jodorowsky's Dune never materialized. I think it would have been truly amazing and far better than Lynch's Dune. I won't even mention the modern adaptation. How can the guy who made Blade Runner 2049 fails to deliver something so important for Science Fiction? Villeneuve was saved by legitimate actors on blade runner.
- howerj 3y agoI found out about Dark Star from the album "Trevor Something Does Not Exist" (https://youtu.be/LYOtZvwNCsc?feature=shared&t=2942 https://youtu.be/LYOtZvwNCsc?feature=shared&t=2942), it uses the conversation with the bomb as part of music, which contains spoilers!
- _-I80I08I-_ 3y agoThe band Pinback, named after Sergeant Pinback, also samples the film in a bunch of songs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDxylYWcHuA&list=OLAK5uy_kmJoNVasF223_aUcocbBbdX01xOlQVeww&index=1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDxylYWcHuA&list=OLAK5uy_kmJ...). There's also the beloved (unrelated to the movie) Grateful Dead song Dark Star.
- denton-scratch 3y agoMost famous scene: I remember the argument with the bomb. But for me, the most memorable scene is the final one, when the surfer astronaut surfs away through outer space. That scene, combined with the argumentative bomb, are reminiscent of the final scene of Dr. Strangelove, with Slim Pickens in his cowboy hat stradling the bomb, yee-ha-ing, and riding it to armageddon. I saw this in a cinema when it came out, and loved it. It's astonishing that it cost only $60,000 to make. I mean sure, it wasn't exactly a cast of thousands; and the beach-ball alien was obviously cheap as chips ("It's your turn to feed the alien!"), but I had no trouble suspending belief. Maybe it was the drugs; I have no idea what I was taking back then.
- croes 3y agoFor me it's the alien attack in the elevator. At that moment I couldn't determine if the ridiculous looking alien is tickling or eating him. And of course the end of the elevator scene.
- anonymousiam 3y agoAnd the Rossini (Barber of Seville) score is just perfection.
- tambourine_man 3y ago*suspending disbelief
- denton-scratch 3y agoThanks! Yes, that's what I meant!
- rhgraysonii 3y agoUnrelated, but I would implore everyone who enjoys anything relating to the words "dark star" to listen to this compilation of the jams of every Dark Star the Grateful Dead played in 1972. It has so much continuity, and is a great bit to have playing while working. https://archive.org/details/DarkStar_1972 https://archive.org/details/DarkStar_1972
- volleygman180 3y agoThe only thing that'd make this even better is if after hearing 11.5 hours of Dark Star, it gracefully transitioned into El Paso!
- semolino 3y agoRelevant to your comment (and not the film) is John Oswald's super-collage of many, many live recordings of Dark Star: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grayfolded https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grayfolded
- nonrandomstring 3y agoI run a quote/clip from this movie in my cybersecurity classes "Doolittle I do have a malfunction on this readout, but I can't pinpoint it exactly. Don't worry about it. We'll find out what it is when it goes bad." Basically the entire history of software engineering in a nutshell in a 1974 movie.
- wolverine876 3y agoIt's a great way to make an important point. How do you teach them to solve that problem? They can't dig into every problem in a real job - resources are always constrained.
- nonrandomstring 3y agoYeah good question, that's the trick isn't it! I often use that one in the context of talking about signals (events)... about aircraft flight deck signal hierarchies and types... like alert, caution, warning, critical, emergency.... Some signals are proportional and escalating, so if you miss them first time don't worry as they will sound again and again until you attend. Other signals will (can) only appear once and the next time (if there is one) is catastrophic. Also it fits into the topic of information overload and mental capacity for tracking things (Miller's 7 +/- 2). Lots of bad things happen because alerts are too aggressive and people turn them off! :)
- m463 3y agoWhat I remember is basically the same subject... The guys sitting in front of their fake movie prop consoles and wildly mashing keys.
- nntwozz 3y agoDisrupt has a nice track with samples from Dark Star called Bomb 20. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fP2r59XMMvM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fP2r59XMMvM The whole album Foundation Bit is full of samples from movies like Blade Runner, Tron, THX 1138 (George Lucas) etc. A real gem if you like electronic/reggae.
- pgreenwood 3y agoThe Forger (Meat Beat Manifesto) also samples Dark Star at the start and end of The Good The Bad And The Forger. Lots of other video samples in the track https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kZQfM2z9mk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kZQfM2z9mk
- miesman 3y ago“It’s time to feed the alien”
- UncleSlacky 3y agoThe video game that shares its name (if not its plot) isn't bad either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Star_(1984_video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Star_(1984_video_game) https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/0001263 https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/0001263
- harimau777 3y agoQuestion from someone who knows nothing about making film: How do two film students get $60K? I get that's a small budget for a movie, but it's a huge amount for a pair of individuals.
- Funes- 3y ago>How do two film students get $60K? I want to know this, as well, especially if you consider that $60K in 1972 was equivalent to today's $445K [1]. 1: https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1972?amount=60000 https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1972?amount=60000
- theyinwhy 3y agoA friend of mine sold the house he inherited for making a movie.
- slg 3y agoThey didn't get $60k for a student film as that is the final budget on the movie. They got a tiny fraction of that to make a short student film. It ended up being so good that they were able to use it as a proof of concept to secure most of that $60k budget to expand it into a feature-length movie. Basically they made an MVP on the cheap and used that to secure additional funding to turn the MVP into an actual product.
- anigbrowl 3y agoRich parents/social circle or maxing out credit cards, typically. It's kinda misleading to call this a 'micro budget film', in 1973 this was a serious chunk of money, equivalent to $2-300,000 today.
- nineteen999 3y agoRobert Rodriguez wrote a fun book about the making of his first feature film (El Mariachi) and how he saved up the money to finance it. On the strength of that he got a contract with Columbia Pictures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebel_Without_a_Crew https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebel_Without_a_Crew
- wolverine876 3y ago> 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". It's said that 'every generation thinks they discovered sex', as if prior generations wouldn't imagine the things the new generation does in the bedroom. Every generation also thinks they discovered existential despair, and seem to have to same attitude about that: What a cool, knowing take-down of those old people and their simple-minded optimism. I see people doing the same these days (though right now existential despair is really having a moment).
- VelesDude 3y agoThat is a very fair take, but I do like the variations that folks put on this ideas even if they arent new. I mean these were probably the first guys to be reasoning with an AI powered bomb about the meaning of life and empiricism. A fresh take on an old idea.
- pcblues 3y agoIt looked better when Bruce Willis was doing it (reasoning) with Milla Jovovich.
- kyleleelarson 3y agoMy immediate (incorrect) association upon seeing the words "Dark Star" on HN was with the Grateful Dead song, which is about 56 years old. The Live/Dead version was a true epiphany for me, now 18 years ago. After really only liking the late 60s Dead for about a decade I have apparently aged into liking their later stuff. There is a nice live video of Dark Star from 1974 on YouTube: search "Grateful Dead - Dark Star (Winterland 10/18/74)".
- mcguire 3y agoI hadn't realized the link between Dark Star and Red Dwarf! In retrospect, it's kind of obvious.