How we would all laugh at that now, but back in the seventies the press really did do things like call corporations and the establishment to account. Of course the authorities are no use (mainly because they’re in on it), so it’s down to Elliot Gould’s insubordinate investigative journalist to get to the truth.
The insidious paranoia which drove films like Alan J Pakula‘s Parallax View or Sidney Pollack‘s Three Days of the Condor is mostly missing from Capricorn One, replaced by a story about cost-cutting at NASA in which the dearth of giveaway commemorative binoculars at the official launch party is only the beginning. This is America licking its wounds, one year on from a bicentenary celebration which had been marked by division and the Son of Sam killings in New York. Just what a maverick genius like Robert Altman might have made of Capricorn One’s central premise – live television broadcasts coming from a manned space mission to Mars are in fact fake, filmed in a studio out in the desert – is anyone’s guess.Īltman regulars Gould and Karen Black (criminally underused here as a television reporter with an inexplicably high tolerance level for Gould’s smart-alec shtick) lend the film a certain hipster gravitas, but with a journeyman like Peter Hyams in the director’s chair Capricorn One was never going to be M*A*S*H in Space. Yes, the apartment where a whistle-blower lives is mysteriously redecorated and new tenants ushered in overnight to make it look as if said whistle-blower never existed, but so far, so Rockford Files. Yes somebody fixes the brakes in Elliot Gould’s car in an attempt to silence him. What has any of this to do with Capricorn One, showing at Bradford Picturehouse as part of a season of films celebrating the 50 th anniversary of the first moon landing? Released a mere week before Star Wars, the film has much in common with Lucas’s space opera despite having its roots in one of the most persistent conspiracy theories of the 20 th century.Ĭapricorn One eschews the cynical ennui of Hollywood movies made in the eye of Vietnam and Watergate, preferring old-fashioned cornball instead. Meanwhile Lucas gambled and won on making more money from canny merchandising than from actual takings at the box office, which comes as less of a surprise than the discovery that he turned down Apocalypse Now to make Star Wars? (Ewoks don’t surf!) Who is to blame for the parlous multiplex guff that is cinema today? Easy Riders and Raging Bulls, critic Peter Biskind’s thoroughly entertaining account of how sixties countercultural freaks saved then ruined Hollywood, points the finger at Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.īack in the seventies, Spielberg was a jobbing Hitchcock copyist filling his days directing episodes of Columbo and trying to kill McCloud with a truck, when Jaws unexpectedly birthed the summer blockbuster and Spielberg got to make movies which spoke to the child within us all. Amongst the selection on offer is Capricorn One, Peter Hyams’ thriller about a fake mission to Mars.
#Cast capricorn one series
(March 18 at 3:15 PM).BRADFORD PICTUREHOUSE is screening a series of films to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing this weekend.
#Cast capricorn one movie
, and the series Hotel, The West Wing, the TV movie The Reagans, and the current series Life in Pieces.
Leonard Maltin praised the film: “Lots of great chases punctuated by Hyams’ witty dialogue.” This screening will be followed by a Q & A with Hyams, the director of other sci-fi movies Outland, 2010, and Timecop, Elliott Gould, the Oscar-nominated star of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, MASH, and The Long Goodbye, and James Brolin, whose storied career includes roles in films such as Westworld, Gas Food Lodging, Traffic, Catch Me If You Can and Emmy-winning turns in his breakthrough series, Marcus Welby M.D.
In addition to Gould, the cast includes James Brolin, Sam Waterston, Karen Black, Telly Savalas, and Brenda Vaccaro, with Hal Holbrook as the conniving villain. But then an intrepid journalist (Elliott Gould) begins to investigate, and he and the three hapless astronauts find themselves in jeopardy as government bigwigs try to prevent them from exposing the truth. This ingenious sci-fi thriller written and directed by Peter Hyams plays with that premise, imagining a journey to Mars that is fabricated for the TV cameras in order to stir up patriotic fervor. ANNIVERSARY CLASSICS SCI-FI WEEKEND PRESENTS CAPRICORN ONE (1978) 40th Anniversary Sunday, March 18th at Ahrya Fine Arts at 3:15 PM In the paranoia-soaked atmosphere of the 1970s, more than a few cynics wondered if the celebrated moon landing of 1969 could have been faked.
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