Why This $1000 Student Film Changed Sci-Fi Forever | Dark Star (1974)

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[00:00:00]I think therefore I am.

[00:00:03]>> That's good. That's very good.

[00:00:04]>> I wish I had more time to discuss this matter.

[00:00:06]>> Why don't you have more time?

[00:00:08]>> Because I must detonate in 75 seconds.

[00:00:12]>> Welcome back to Golden Flicker. Today we are going to explore the turbulent production of Dark Star and we will uncover how John Carpenter and Dan Oannon turned a university project into a cinematic blueprint. why the film was distributed by a company with organized crime connections and the hidden profane message buried in the film's final cut.

[00:00:40]Do you remember when you first watched Dark Star or perhaps when you first noticed its subtle echoes in other science fiction classics?

[00:00:53]In the early 1970s, the University of Southern California's School of Cinema was a hub of creative ferment. This era was marked by political turbulence and a new generation of filmmakers eager to break established rules.

[00:01:10]>> Everybody was a hippie then, you know, it was big hippie era. So, everybody had lots of hair and was going crazy. So, it was wonderful, very creative time.

[00:01:18]>> Into this environment arrived two distinct personalities.

[00:01:23]Dan Oannon, an illustrator and editor from Missouri.

[00:01:27]>> He'd always loved movies, you know, horror movies, science fiction. He went to McMurray College and he talked them into getting a camera so he could uh start making his first film, which was The Attack of the 50oot Chicken.

[00:01:40]>> And John Carpenter, a stious filmmaker from Kentucky.

[00:01:44]>> John really introduced me to the creative world in a big way. I was a creative kid, too, but not like that. He was writing a novel. He was drawing a comic book.

[00:01:55]>> They were united by a shared appreciation for HP Lovecraft, Philip K.

[00:02:00]Dick, and the clinical precision of Stanley Kubri.

[00:02:05]They decided to collaborate on a concept that would serve as the deliberate opposite of the pristine heroic space exploration seen in science fiction at the time.

[00:02:18]Instead of stoic professionals, their astronauts would be bored, neurotic, and losing their grip on reality.

[00:02:25]>> Here was kind of waiting for GDAU in space. Uh, this was a movie about not all that much. The people in it looked like they just sort of hippies dragged off the street.

[00:02:38]>> Oannon referred to this aesthetic as the used future, a concept of a broken, uncared for universe. It was the anti-201, you know, which was also clean and also wonderful and also terrible.

[00:02:52]>> Funded by a single grant of $1,000 from the university, production began in 1970.

[00:02:59]The actual spaceship set had not yet been built, so the very first scene was filmed inside a student building closet.

[00:03:08]The crew crammed themselves into the confined space, struggling to record audio over a women's group meeting next door.

[00:03:16]This environment perfectly mirrored the themes of the story they were trying to tell.

[00:03:21]>> I can hear Dan's voice saying it. Space is not fun. Space is boring. Space is shy. It's a horrible job out here.

[00:03:31]>> Without funds for professional props, everyday objects were repurposed. The spaceship's control panel buttons were illuminated upside down ice cube trays.

[00:03:42]the uniforms that the equipment that these astronauts are wearing on their chest. Each one has a muffin tin right in the middle of it and they were held together with duct tape. I mean, the the actors were taped into the, you know, taped into the space suit.

[00:03:56]>> Do the spaceuit helmets look strange to you? That's because they were made for children.

[00:04:02]>> They put it together with a toy helmet and a fire jacket, gaffer tape to ski gloves under tremendous lights. And now I've actually got 2-in insulation under there. The exterior of the ship itself originated from a sketch by conceptual artist Ron Cobb drawn on a napkin at the International House of Pancakes.

[00:04:22]>> Superb illustrator, very strong science fiction illustrator is also a blistering political cartoonist.

[00:04:30]>> Oannon and model maker Greg Jin constructed the physical model from fiberglass.

[00:04:37]Decades later, that original model sold at auction for $40,000.

[00:04:44]To depict the ship jumping into hyperspace, Oannon devised an elegant technique of tracking the camera with the shutter left open to create streaks of light.

[00:04:54]>> Come out of hyperdrive. It just goes and just stops. If you know anything about physics, there'd be this ball of protoplasm that used to be four guys somewhere up in the nose, you know, this gelatinous um substance.

[00:05:07]>> The hyperdrive effect from Dark Star is virtually quoted in in in Star Wars.

[00:05:13]>> They completely predate the uh uh jump to light speed in uh uh Star Wars. I mean, to such a degree, it's obvious George Lucas saw this and used the idea for those uh for the light speeded travel. I mean, it's it's it it would be it's it's impossible that Lucas had not seen that. I We know he saw >> Oannon designed the computer monitors for Dark Star, drawing inspiration from George Lucas's earlier film THX 11138.

[00:05:43]>> Uh when I came to do when we came to do Dark Star, I'd been impressed by that.

[00:05:47]So, I said, "Let's us do some displays."

[00:05:49]We did them in a different manner using, you know, traditional animation table.

[00:05:54]Then Lucas sees that, hires me to do the computer screens on Star Wars. That was that little two-step.

[00:06:00]>> Filming was a fragmented process. What was intended to be a one-mon shoot stretched into four years. By 1973, when they secured additional funding to expand the project into a feature film, actors Cal Kunahome and Dre Pitch had cut their hair. To maintain continuity with footage shot two years prior, they had to wear fake hair. The disjointed schedule led to unusual production realities. When actor Brian Nurell, playing Lieutenant Doolittle, had quiet conversations with Sergeant Talby in the ship's observation dome, he was actually talking to a light on a stand.

[00:06:43]>> I never met Talby.

[00:06:45]>> Talby.

[00:06:47]I never met Dre Pitch and I never spoke to him. The wider shots are done with a body double cuz I wasn't around when they did that.

[00:06:56]>> During a scene where the crew relaxes, Kunahome improvised a game of stabbing a knife between his spread fingers.

[00:07:03]>> And he really stabbed himself and he didn't mean to. And he was such a stoic macho guy that he didn't break character. He didn't say anything. He didn't even flinch. But as soon as Carpenter yelled cut, then uh then some four-letter words came out. But as soon as it was over and he grabbed his hand, Carpenter said, "Okay, let's set up a low angle here, get a reaction, upshot, and everything." So, it was obvious right away, we're going to take advantage of this and put it in the movie.

[00:07:31]>> The genuine accident became a defining character trait for Boiler. Later, during the climactic spacew walk sequence, Nurell nearly suffocated. The helmet cut off air flow so severely that he could only deliver a single line of dialogue before removing it to catch his breath.

[00:07:51]By early 1972, Carpenter and Oannon had completed a first version of Dark Star, roughly 45 minutes long and shot on 16 mm. Realizing this was not a feature, they secured $10,000 from director Jonathan Kaplan and further support from a Canadian distributor, allowing them to shoot an additional 50 minutes of footage in 1973.

[00:08:19]To get this expanded film into cinemas, they secured distribution through veteran producer Jack H. Harris.

[00:08:28]However, >> it was a 90-minute experience. I saw it through and uh I would say a good 30 minutes was good enough for the trash can. Not good enough to be seen or shown or heard or anything.

[00:08:42]>> This included a 5-minut static opening shot of the crew sleeping.

[00:08:48]Harris insisted on cuts, re-shoots, and the blurring of posters to secure a G rating.

[00:08:57]Oannon didn't like the result, stating they went from having the world's most impressive student film to the world's least impressive professional film.

[00:09:08]Carpenters's response to Harris's mandated alterations was permanent.

[00:09:14]>> And couldn't stand him anymore. If you look at the movie Dark Star, if you ever get a chance, there's a there's a moment in the movie, you'll see in the screen, it's flashing by. You'll stop it. It says terroris.

[00:09:26]It was a band and couldn't take it.

[00:09:28]>> But the distribution drama did not end with hidden insults.

[00:09:33]Harris eventually sold the rights to Brianston Pictures, a company with documented ties to organized crime.

[00:09:42]Suddenly, a philosophical student project about bored astronauts was being handled by the exact same people distributing the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Deep Throat.

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[00:10:58]>> The additional footage shot in 1973 introduced a subplot that would quietly change the trajectory of science fiction.

[00:11:08]Needing to expand the runtime, they filmed sequences involving an alien mascot.

[00:11:14]>> One day we were shooting the surface of planets and we had a giant beach ball.

[00:11:20]What we would do with a beach ball is put plungers, bathroom plungers to hold it up and then photograph paint it and photograph the top of the surface.

[00:11:29]Somebody who's helping on the film was carrying this beach ball and it was it was kind of it was ridiculous looking.

[00:11:35]You know, Ben and I were sitting there looking at it said, "Look at that.

[00:11:37]That's absurd.

[00:11:39]What if the alien looked just like that?

[00:11:41]Like a beach ball with legs." It was puppeteered by fellow student Nick Castle, who would later play Michael Meyers in Halloween.

[00:11:53]Castle gave the absurd prop genuine personality, tapping its clawed feet and dodging through corridors.

[00:12:02]The sequence played as slapstick comedy with Pinback eventually shooting the creature, causing it to deflate and fly around the room like a popped balloon.

[00:12:14]However, Dan Oannon saw something else in the underlying concept.

[00:12:20]When audiences failed to laugh at the film, Oannon arrived at a careerdefining conclusion.

[00:12:28]If I can't make them laugh, then maybe I can make them scream.

[00:12:34]He took the premise of a creature stalking a spaceship crew through confined spaces and removed the comedy.

[00:12:42]He reworked it into a screenplay called Starbeast, which eventually became the terrifying cinema milestone Alien.

[00:12:53]We have reached the golden flicker moment. The partnership between John Carpenter and Dan Oannon frayed significantly during the extended production.

[00:13:05]The core of the dispute was creative recognition.

[00:13:10]Oannon had co-written the script, designed the sets, supervised the effects, edited the footage, and played the lead comedic role. He believed he had co-directed.

[00:13:25]Carpenter, who had originated the concept, produced, scored the film, and dubbed Voices, took sole directing credit.

[00:13:35]The poignant irony lies in the character Oannon chose to play.

[00:13:40]Sergeant Pinbach is resentful, ignored by his crew mates, and trapped in a role he did not ask for, having accidentally taken the place of the real Pinbach, who died before the mission.

[00:13:55]Observers from the production noted that the character of Pinbach was essentially Oannon playing himself.

[00:14:04]The film they constructed about a cramped, frustrated crew with one man seething over a lack of recognition served as a disguised documentary of their own fractured relationship.

[00:14:18]Do you agree that this is the golden flicker moment?

[00:14:23]When Dark Star was released commercially in 1975, it played to near silence in empty theaters. The Variety review dismissed it as a limp parody of 2001, A Space Odyssey.

[00:14:37]Oannon was so disturbed by the audience's incomprehension that he published an open letter asking them not to take the film too seriously.

[00:14:47]Yet, against all commercial logic, Darkstar refused to fade away. The midnight movie circuit kept it breathing, attracting audiences who appreciated its strange, altered wavelength.

[00:15:01]Then the VHS revolution arrived, and Dark Star became a late night staple.

[00:15:07]Its legacy rippled far beyond its creators. The beloved British science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf was directly inspired by Dark Star.

[00:15:18]Director Danny Bole named the villain in Sunshine Pinbacker after Sergeant Pinbach.

[00:15:26]Hideo Kojima, creator of the Metal Gear series, modeled the eye droid's voice on the film's computer.

[00:15:33]>> Support fire incoming. Signal recovered.

[00:15:37]>> Quentyn Tarantino even referred to it as a science fiction masterpiece.

[00:15:42]>> Darkstar. It's a science fiction masterpiece. It's a counterculture anti-establishment hippie filmmaking masterpiece. It's an early7s masterpiece.

[00:15:58]The film also borrowed its poetic ending from a short story by Ray Bradbury.

[00:16:04]Decades later, actor Brian Nurell happened to meet Bradbury. The author, angry about the uncredited use of his narrative, berated the actor on the spot, holding the performer responsible for a creative decision he had no part in making.

[00:16:23]Darkstar began as a cramped university project. It weathered copyright disputes, mob connected distributors, and fractured friendships to quietly plant the seeds of modern science fiction cinema.

[00:16:39]The people who made it shaped the future of the genre, proving that true cinematic influence can sometimes begin with $1,000 and a painted beach ball.

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