It is true, and also difficult to believe, that eight classic science-fiction and fantasy films—including E.T., Blade Runner, The Thing, and The Road Warrior—were released over the course of eight weeks in the summer of 1982. In the context of today's shrinking, cautious, belligerently mid Hollywood, it's not just the quality but the quantity of these films that beggars belief. Not all of them were hits, but virtually all of them were risks taken by filmmakers who wanted to say something distinctive, and funded by studios that were desperate or brave enough to let them say it. Nothing in those movies seems quite as fanciful as the fact that this version of the film industry existed during my lifetime. But it is all true, and this week we had the former Entertainment Weekly writer Chris Nashawaty on to talk about The Future Was Now, his new book on those eight films and their journey to the screen.
And, to a degree that is notable given our general struggles to stay on topic, we mostly did talk about it. It's a topic that Drew and I both care a lot about, and one that he and I both experienced in similar ways; we were, for instance, both traumatized by the same gnarly scene in Star Trek 2: The Wrath Of Khan. It helped, too, that Chris was such a knowledgeable and game conversationalist—able to explain how and why so much good, weird, risky stuff snuck in around the edges of the industry in the 1970s and '80s, astute enough to connect it to the crisis in today's swaggerless and cynical industry, and willing to indulge us when we started talking about how monsters in today's films aren't sufficiently gelatinous-looking. We talked about how "the appeals court of VHS" made it easier for films to be discovered and rediscovered, where the next visionary directors will come from, and the importance of the horror genre as a developmental space.
And that was about it: we pretty much let ourselves talk about movie stuff this week, give or take the Funbag. Which, in a coincidence that is not quite as momentous as eight classic films coming out over the course of eight weeks, also leaned heavily in the direction of show business. Drew and I sat with the question of whether we are more famous than some of the notionally famous people that appeared at the Shreveport Fan Fest; in the course of defending the hulking character actor Kevin Durand I misstated the title of David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis, and regret the error. A question about which late performers we wished had longer careers veered, quite reasonably, into a Phil Hartman appreciation station. We'll get back to the sports stuff next week. Or maybe we'll just talk about Tobe Hooper again. Hard to say.
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