The Last Starfighter (1984)

Nick Castle (0:09)

Hello, this is Nick Castle speaking. I'm the director of The Last Starfighter that you're viewing here, and I'd like to introduce my partner in crime, the production designer Ron Cobb.

Ron Cobb (0:20)

Thank you very much. I'm here too. We're both watching for a while.

My God, there's Rilos.

Nick Castle (0:30)

This first shot, actually, I had assumed could be the Universal logo, but with Rilos instead of the Universal world. But Universal at that point didn't want to give us a break.

So we just went with this.

Ron Cobb (0:48)

Ah, yes, the time dilation tunnel here, which we'll see more of later.

Nick Castle (0:57)

This is basically going backwards from the trip that our lead character, Alex Rogan, takes to get to Rilos. As if we're in the ship going down to meet him on Earth.

Ron Cobb (1:08)

A cosmic backward zoom.

Nick Castle (1:14)

This is the first time we've seen this thing in the right format in about 15 years, so it's kind of exciting.

This was a project that was brought to Lorimar. It was written by Jonathan Betwell. It was purchased by Gary Adelson at Lorimar, who is the producer on the movie. And he brought me in early on the project to develop the screenplay with Jonathan and himself. What we had to begin with was a very, I think, interesting idea, a very clever notion. The video game craze, or the second generation of video game craze, was happening in the early 80s and was really taking off. And Jonathan came up with this idea that The Last Starfighter was actually a simulation game for recruitment to the Star League, a real place in outer space. And a clever idea to take a regular teenage boy and put him in a heroic situation in a space opera.

Ron Cobb (2:23)

What was wonderful about this, too, is that it's beautifully written for anyone, any young person to identify with. It's like this could happen to me. And that's the best of these kinds of films, I think.

Nick Castle (2:36)

Originally, the script started in the suburbs, very much in a Steven Spielbergian suburb, which is one of the reasons we want. When I came on, I thought, let's find something a little bit more original, since he did that so well and was identified with it.

And we wanted to get something more isolated, so we were looking for what we found here, which was a trailer park.

Ron Cobb (3:00)

Jim Bistel and I found this place high in the hills somewhere. I don't even know where it is now. I think it's a lost trailer park.

But it was absolutely perfect for our hero's kind of isolated home.

Nick Castle (3:22)

Well, I actually never thought of myself doing anything even near, um, a special effects movie. I came out of film school thinking I was going to be the Vincent Minnelli of the 80s and 90s. And I think you can see a little bit of the broadness and the theatricality of the characters almost like a musical without the music. Catherine Mary Stewart was cast as your archetypal girl next door. Fresh, real pretty, simple.

Well, the idea of the trailer park was also to give a little extended family to Alex Rogan, to give this homespun quality, a small extended family that we could identify with and root for, with all the different kinds of folks. Otis is the wise surrogate uncle, and Granny is the wise surrogate granny, I guess.

SPEAKER_3 (4:43)

I'll tell her, James.

Nick Castle (4:49)

The location was great because you had these levels made for nice spring walls.

The lead of the piece, Alex Rogan, is played by Lance Guest. He was chosen for his All-American Boy qualities, and a kind of teenage Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda, the really great kid that's always there for his mother and for all the folks at the trailer park. And someone you can really root for.

Ron Cobb (5:22)

Well, you've seen the first bit of the fantasy here, the game itself, which is sort of thematic of the whole world that we're all about to enter in. It was a very interesting thing to try to design because games at the time were relatively limited, and I was very, very intrigued by the fact that we could go a lot further in implying a very, very complex sort of flight simulator. We wanted to look higher tech than the games that you would normally expect to see, including the cabinet and everything, to give it a believable look. Everything was designed from the ground up. The logo is kind of a variant on the strategic air command.