The following is a human-made transcript of Episode 312 of the podcast Modern Technology Watches, the subject of which was the film WarGames. The discussion has been lightly edited for readability without substantially altering the content; if you need a verbatim quote for reference purposes, please confirm it from the original audio if possible.
This episode was released February 3rd, 2025.
GILA:
I can’t believe it, Jim. That girl’s standing over there listening, and you’re telling him about our backdoors.
ROB:
Mr. Potato Head, Mr. Potato Head, backdoors are not secrets!
GILA:
Yeah, but Jim, you’re giving away all our best tricks!
(Opening theme music)
ROB:
Hey Gila.
GILA:
Hey Rob.
ROB:
How are you?
GILA:
I am like a bucket of good things. How are you?
ROB:
(laughs) I am hanging in there like a thing that is hanging in there, and I’m in a good mood because, do you know why?
GILA:
Ah, why is that?
ROB:
This is episode 312 of Modern Technology Watches.
GILA:
312 of Modern Technology Watches, that podcast in which I, Gila Drazen,
ROB:
And I, Rob Vincent,
GILA:
A married couple of film geeks, show each other films from our shared collection that the other one may not have seen before.
ROB:
That is the very thing that we do here, and it is my turn.
GILA:
It is your turn!
ROB:
It’s been a while since we’ve done this. I’ve been wanting to do this one for a while.
GILA:
Okay,
ROB:
And I’m excited about it.
GILA:
I’m excited for whatever you’re going to be choosing.
ROB:
Excellent. That’s a good attitude to take. So while you stay here keeping your spirits up, I’m going to head over to our combined DVD collection.
GILA:
Alright, I’m gonna try to get out of your way.
ROB:
(sound of furniture) (singing) Office chair noise…
GILA:
And I’m also gonna go take the thing out of the oven that’s in the oven. (getting up) So that doesn’t burn.
ROB:
(returning to seat) She’s gonna go take the thing out of the oven that’s in the oven, which I think I can safely say to our dear listeners is a garlic bread which smells awesome. I’m sorry you can’t smell it. We don’t have that kind of podcast tech.
GILA:
(from off-mic) Not yet, anyway.
ROB:
How’s it looking?
GILA:
Good.
ROB:
Alright. Well, I think we’re going to have some garlic bread to enjoy while we check out…
GILA:
WarGames!
ROB:
I have just handed you the 4K Blu-ray of WarGames.
GILA:
You have. Now I’ve seen bits and pieces of this, but I’ve never, I don’t think, ever sat down and watched it all the way through. If I had, it was 35 years ago.
ROB:
Okay, so I think that’s legal for our purposes.
GILA:
I would agree. And, of course, I know how it ends.
ROB:
Spoilers.
GILA:
Whatever. You know how it ends.
ROB:
I do know how it ends.
GILA:
Would you like me to read the back?
ROB:
Yeah. What have we got there on this DVD case here?
GILA:
I think Ally Sheedy’s reflection looks creepy.
ROB:
Yep, that’s that’s a fair assessment.
GILA:
I mean, tell me it’s the ’80s without telling me it’s the ’80s.
ROB:
So, what have we got on the back cover, there?
GILA:
Al right. Well, I was confused when I looked at it initially because this movie came out in 1983. So the references they have here are just wrong. Matthew Broderick, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which came out in 1986, and Ally Sheedy of The Breakfast Club, which came out in 1985. Like, when this movie came out, no one was referencing The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off because they didn’t exist yet.
ROB:
(laughs) So you’re you’re taking issue with the timeline of the back cover to a video published this century.
GILA:
Yeah, I’m a little grumpy about it.
ROB:
Okay, well, I’m going to need you to power through the grump and tell me what it says on the back, there.
GILA:
“Matthew Broderick (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) and Ally Sheedy (The Breakfast Club) star in this compelling drama filled with action, suspense, and high-tech adventures, featuring superb performances by Dabney Coleman and Barry Corbin. WarGames is, quote, ‘brilliant, funny, and provocative.’ (New York Magazine.)”
That was very highly excerpted.
“‘A fast-paced cyber thriller.’ Computer hacker David Lightman (Broderick) can bypass the most advanced security systems, break the most intricate secret codes, and master even the most difficult computer games!”
ROB:
(laughs)
GILA:
“But when he unwittingly taps into the Defense Department’s war computer, he initiates a confrontation of global proportions: World War III!”
ROB:
(laughing)
GILA:
“Together with his girlfriend (Sheedy) and a wizardly computer genius (Tony Award winner John Wood,) David must race against time to outwit his opponent and prevent a nuclear armageddon.”
GILA:
So I have a couple of questions.
ROB:
Yes.
GILA:
What prompted you to watch this today? I mean, I know you’d wanted to do it for a while, but why today specifically, Rob?
ROB:
(laughs) Well, no reason today specifically. It’s just I’ve had this in mind as the one that I want to cap off my chunk of this season with,
GILA:
Mh-hmm?
ROB:
And also, we’ve done Sneakers.
GILA:
Yes.
ROB:
We’ve done Hackers.
GILA:
Yes.
ROB:
This sort of completes the trilogy of what’s generally considered the original ’80s, ’90s hacker films.
GILA:
Hm!
ROB:
Starting with this one.
GILA:
Yeah, this was nine years before Sneakers, 12 years before Hackers.
ROB:
Yes, I think before things like The Matrix came along, this was hacker cinema, more or less.
GILA:
Mm-hm, yeah. I mean, would we say The Matrix is hacker cinema?
ROB:
Yeah.
GILA:
Okay.
ROB:
Yeah, the main character was a hacker.
GILA:
True.
ROB:
And this is also, not to go too much into the story yet, but I think this may be the first time in a movie that the main character was the hacker.
GILA:
Hmm!
ROB:
I don’t even know if they use the word “hacker” in this movie. I don’t recall. I guess I’ll find out.
GILA:
(overlapping) I guess we’ll find out.
ROB:
But he was definitely, like, what people thought of in the early ’80s, mid ’80s as a “computer whiz.”
GILA:
Okay. Well, I think this will be fun.
ROB:
I hope so.
GILA:
I’m excited. So why don’t we have Torley play some music for the people,
ROB:
Mm-hm!
GILA:
And we’ll come back after we have finished 1983’s WarGames.
ROB:
WarGames!
GILA:
WarGames! CamelCase, WarGames.
ROB:
Ha, yes, it is CamelCase.
GILA:
Mm-hm!
(Interstitial music)
ROB:
Hey, Gila.
GILA:
Hey, Rob.
ROB:
How are you?
GILA:
I am so well. How are you?
ROB:
Oh, good. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?
GILA:
It has been a while, which was, in no small part, my fault. I got sick and I lost my voice.
ROB:
You did, and also, then we were running around and doing stuff for our birthdays and we, kind of, we started this at the beginning of November.
GILA:
We started this at the beginning of November, which I think will probably wind up coming around to again when we talk about the plot, which also may have contributed to the “not doing this yet” factor.
ROB:
You may be right because a whole bunch of November stuff happened, and now it’s December, and we’re doing the second segment. But we have watched 1983’s WarGames.
GILA:
1983’s WarGames, but since we’re talking about that we watched at the beginning of November. Yes. Do you want to talk about when specifically in the beginning of November we watched WarGames, Rob?
ROB:
(laughing) We watched this on Election Night.
GILA:
We watched this on Election Night. Now, listeners, you may remember, or not, which is fine,
ROB:
(laughing)
GILA:
But we did an episode on a movie called An Adventure in Space and Time.
ROB:
Yes.
GILA:
Which we recorded on Election Night in 2020, with the thought being that if we were recording a podcast, we wouldn’t focus on the election.
ROB:
Mm-hm.
GILA:
And it worked out well then.
ROB:
Yes.
GILA:
And you know what didn’t work this year?
ROB:
Do tell.
GILA:
That did not work.
ROB:
So watching a movie about the Cold War and, like, political panic, and the possibility of the end of everything, didn’t calm you down during Election Night.
GILA:
You know, it didn’t. And also, apparently, I was incubating some sort of upper respiratory something or another. So, yeah, the fact that I didn’t have a voice is only part of the reason that we wound up not recording the second half here. (laughing)
ROB:
No, I had had the idea that I wanted to start writing some comedy scripts again for the sketch show that we very sporadically do, and then Election Day happened, and nothing was funny for quite a while.
GILA:
Yeah.
ROB:
But I’ve only recently got back on that again, and we’re getting back on this.
GILA:
We are getting back on this.
ROB:
So.
GILA:
Yes.
ROB:
Given that this wasn’t the tonic I thought it might be and, see, I wasn’t even thinking about the content of the movie when I picked it. I was just like, okay, we’re gonna we’re gonna record a pod. It’s Election Day. We’re gonna record a pod, put our heads in the sand, and I had long had this in my head as the next one I wanted to show you.
GILA:
Mm-hm.
ROB:
Because – and I may have said this in the first segment, I don’t remember because it was about a hundred years ago now – I have shown you Hackers. I have shown you Sneakers. This is, kind of, the other hacker movie in the loose ’80s, ’90s hacker movie trilogy. They’re not actually related to each other in any direct way, but-
GILA:
Would we call it the hacker movie canon?
ROB:
Yeah, the hacker movie canon. That’s the word. The big three: there was WarGames, there was Sneakers, and there was Hackers.
GILA:
Right. You know what else there was?
ROB:
What else there was?
GILA:
In the greater universe?
ROB:
Mm-hm?
GILA:
A lot of good movies.
ROB:
(laughing)
GILA:
And please don’t get me wrong. I liked Sneakers.
ROB:
Mm-hm. And you’ve also seen Hackers.
GILA:
I’ve also seen Hackers, and you know what?
ROB:
Yes?
GILA:
I’ve also seen WarGames.
ROB:
Ha-ha!
GILA:
Now, this was not the only exposure I’ve had to WarGames…
ROB:
Okay…
GILA:
But… meh.
ROB:
Meh?
GILA:
Meh… meh.
ROB:
So you’re pretty “meh” about it.
GILA:
Meh.
ROB:
Okay.
GILA:
Now that I’ve insulted it, what do you think?
GILA and ROB:
(laughing)
ROB:
Well, I liked it.
GILA:
Well, I’m sure you did. I, you know, in this little experiment of ours, we do tend not to show each other movies we don’t like.
ROB:
Yes, but you know sometimes the movie doesn’t hold up and everything.
GILA:
Tao of Steve, what?
ROB:
(laughs) But I liked this movie back then. I was, I think, too young to actually see it in the movies, but it was on TV a lot. It was on cable a lot. I grew up watching this movie often. I had it on VHS. I had it on DVD, and now I have the 4K Blu-ray disc over here. And it’s always just been one of those comfy little movies. And it’s weird to think of like this “Cold War, a teenager is afraid he’s going to die and is the reason everything got killed in the world” movie is a comfort movie, but it kind of is, just, it evokes a lot for me, and maybe we’ll get into that.
GILA:
Okay, so yes, part of it was, I think, the particular moment and the fact that it’s not unreasonable to think we are down to the future of the world hinging on one person’s actions.
ROB:
Hmm. Yeah, the scenario was more interesting to think about back in those days. Some people cite this movie as a reason that there are so many more safeguards nowadays.
GILA:
With that said, there were definitely some parts of it that I thought were fun. Okay, first of all, part of the reason I have been exposed to WarGames before is…?
ROB:
…You’re pointing at me, and I don’t know why.
GILA:
Oh, I thought you might have a guess.
ROB:
I don’t know.
GILA:
Oh.
ROB:
Pass?
GILA:
Ally Sheedy.
ROB:
Oh!
GILA:
Because Ally Sheedy’s in St. Elmos Fire. so it was like, “Oh, you like movies with Ally Sheedy in them? Here, The Breakfast Club! Here, WarGames!
GILA and ROB:
(laughing)
ROB:
So, did you see this before, or…?
GILA:
Parts of it.
ROB:
Yeah, I think most people who grew up in our era probably saw parts of it, at least, on TV, and you knew, like, the memes from it.
GILA:
Yes, and I believe I did say the last line along with the movie. Don’t really know if it’s the last line… the computer’s last line.
ROB:
Yes. So!
GILA:
Yes.
ROB:
The cast section for this film on the Wikipedia article for WarGames – and in the Wikipedia article they use the CamelCase correctly, WarGames is one word, but with a capital W and a capital G – the cast section for this has, I think it’s safe to say, a bunch of people that we don’t really care about.
GILA:
Mm-hmm.
ROB:
So I think we can kind of pick and choose here.
GILA:
That’s very fair.
ROB:
Starting from the bad end.
GILA:
The problem with starting from the bad end is the first name I recognize, unfortunately, is Eddie Deezen.
ROB:
Yeah.
GILA:
(blows a raspberry)
ROB:
Yeah, Eddie Deezen…
GILA:
Sucks.
ROB:
Yeah. What year was Grease?
GILA:
’78.
ROB:
And after that, he was just basically playing that role forever.
GILA:
And I think he kind of leaned into it in life as well.
ROB:
Yeah, and it’s well known that he ended up being a real freaking creep, who..
GILA:
Didn’t they, like, he was supposed to go to court or something, and it turned out that he could not participate in his own defense?
ROB:
Yeah, I’ve clicked over to Eddie Deezen’s wiki article, and, uhh…
GILA:
There you go.
ROB:
Yeah, ruled unfit to stand trial as a result of his mental health struggles… blah blah blah, whatever. He’s gross.
GILA:
He’s gross.
ROB:
He’s gross, and it doesn’t bear going into on here. But yeah,
GILA:
Yes.
ROB:
So right above Eddie Deezen on this list-
GILA:
(overlapping) Right above Eddie Deezen on this list, we have Maury Chaykin, who died a lot younger than I had realized.
ROB:
Yeah.
GILA:
Wow… wow!
ROB:
That was a while ago. That’s longer ago than I thought. He died in 2010, age 61.
GILA:
Aw… Maury Chaykin.
ROB:
Maury Chaykin.
GILA:
Who I quite enjoy.
ROB:
Yeah, he’s a that guy, definitely.
GILA:
He’s a that guy, and there’s a movie that I may show you at some point called Mystery, Alaska in which he plays a lawyer, and I’m trying to think if there was ever any… oh, there’s one. Sorry, I was like, what movies was he in where he didn’t play a Jewish character?
ROB:
(mild chuckle)
GILA:
And then right there at the end, “Anthony ‘Big Tony’ Muscatiello.”
ROB:
(laughs heartily)
GILA:
I’m just guessing.
ROB:
He’s, like, a reassuring, cuddly presence in anything he pops up in, even when he’s playing, like, the vicious asshole.
GILA:
Absolutely, absolutely.
ROB:
(overlapping) Which he did his share of, he was a lot of heavies. So a couple of slots above him, we have James Tolkan as Mr. Wigan.
GILA:
Who’s James Tolkan?
ROB:
I’m going to pull up his article here, and you will know as soon as you see him.
GILA:
No… oh, that guy!
ROB:
(laughing)
GILA:
I was like, “that’s just the top of his head – oh, that guy!”
ROB:
Yes, it’s it’s kind of unfortunate. His wiki photo is, like, him looking away from the camera and signing a Back to the Future poster, but –
GILA:
Slacker.
ROB:
Yeah, exactly. Another one who played the same guy in everything.
GILA:
Yeah.
ROB:
Who else –
GILA:
(overlapping) Did we just skip over John Spencer?
ROB:
We haven’t skipped over him yet. Do you want to skip over John Spencer?
GILA:
No! I don’t want to skip over John Spencer. I like John Spencer!
ROB:
Talk about John Spencer.
GILA:
John Spencer, who when I saw him at the very beginning of this movie, I yelped, “ooh, it’s John Spencer!”
ROB:
(laughs)
GILA:
…True story. Tell it again, Gila! (laughs)
ROB:
In this movie, he was Captain Jerry Lawson.
GILA:
Right, he was one of the guys in the very, very beginning, and then we never saw him again. But always liked him a lot, he –
ROB:
I didn’t know he’d died.
GILA:
Yeah. Yeah, he died very suddenly in the middle of filming the last season of The West Wing.
ROB:
Oh.
GILA:
Which is problematic because he had a very pivotal role in that season of The West Wing.
ROB:
Ah-ha.
GILA:
It’s ’cause – have you ever watched that show?
ROB:
The West Wing?
GILA:
Yeah.
ROB:
Not really, no.
GILA:
Hm.
ROB:
I’ve only seen a couple of scenes from it
GILA:
Maybe we should do a watch-through of that.
ROB:
I’ve seen the scene that got posted around everywhere for a hot second. Martin Sheen taking down a fundamentalist by, like, quoting all the bananas stuff from the Bible that she should have also been following if she thought being gay was wrong.
GILA:
Right.
ROB:
You know, “you’re wearing clothes of two different fabrics, and…”
GILA:
Yeah.
ROB:
I got the sense, not having seen The West Wing, I got the sense that it was a lot of, sort of, wish fulfillment of, like, “oh, if only we could have somebody this together actually in the White House.”
GILA:
Oh, very much. I mean, the West Wing started in, like, 1999 when Clinton was on the way out, and then, yeah, during the George W. Bush presidency,
ROB:
Ah.
GILA:
Woo dogies. But John Spencer, I enjoy John Spencer, always have. Yeah, you’d know him from around.
ROB:
Mm-hm.
GILA:
Speaking of, “you’d know him from around,”
ROB:
Yeah, Michael Madsen also was with him in that bit, and he’s another, sort of squinty, that guy and everything.
GILA:
(laughs)
ROB:
What else, who else is in this?
GILA:
Dennis Lipscomb.
ROB:
Dennis Lipscomb as Lyle Watson.
GILA:
Yes.
ROB:
From whence do you know Dennis Lipscomb?
GILA:
Without Warning!
ROB:
Oh, of course!
GILA:
(intoning the Without Warning music) Da-da-da-da!
ROB:
(laughing) Yes, yes. When he popped up on the screen, you had mentioned this.
GILA:
Yeah, Dr. Robert Pearlman from the observatory in Kitt’s Peak… wherever.
ROB:
Yes.
GILA and ROB:
(laughing)
GILA:
Barry Corbin,
ROB:
Barry Corbin,
GILA:
who was in Northern Exposure,
ROB:
Who was General Beringer… oh, still with us! Yeah, he was – we can start talking about characters in the film because we know who they were now,
GILA:
(laughs)
ROB:
He was the military general who was, like, the no-nonsense dude, and dubious about the computer and everything, and ended up having to deal with it all when it went nuts.
GILA:
When it went doolally.
ROB:
Yeah, he was quite good in this.
GILA:
He was good in everything.
ROB:
Yeah.
GILA:
Did you ever watch Northern Exposure?
ROB:
No, never did.
GILA:
Are you familiar at all?
ROB:
Vaguely, very vaguely.
GILA:
Northern Exposure was about a Jewish doctor who wound up living in Alaska, and all of the strange and colorful people who populated Sicily, Alaska.
ROB:
Ah-ha.
GILA:
There was an episode where the doctor had to say kaddish, and he needed a minyan. Good stuff.
ROB:
Okay, right above Barry Corbin, Ally Sheedy as Jennifer Mack.
GILA:
So, as I may have mentioned previously, Ally Sheedy is in my favorite movie.
ROB:
Yes.
GILA:
So people were like, “Oh, you like Ally Sheedy?”
ROB:
(laughs)
GILA:
“You like movies with Ally Sheedy?” Someone bought me Ally Sheedy’s book!
ROB:
She has a book?
GILA:
…When I say Ally Sheedy has a book, I don’t mean like she published a memoir. Ally Sheedy had a book published when she was 12.
ROB:
Ah-ha.
GILA:
It was a children’s book.
ROB:
Hm.
GILA:
It was called She Was Nice to Mice.
ROB:
…Was this a good children’s book?
GILA:
…It was called She Was Nice to Mice.
ROB:
Some good children’s books have stupid titles.
GILA:
All that I remember about this book is it was called She Was Nice to Mice,
ROB:
(laughing)
GILA:
And someone got it for me, because Ally Sheedy.
ROB:
Well!. I always liked Ally Sheedy.
GILA:
Me too!
ROB:
She is one of the people printed on our shower curtain.
GILA:
Yes. Yes. I love our shower curtain, I don’t know if I’d mentioned that recently.
ROB:
Yes.
GILA:
Our shower curtain, which you very kindly ordered and surprised me with, is a custom shower curtain featuring a photo of the cast of St. Elmo’s Fire.
ROB:
(laughing)
GILA:
It’s the cast against a blue background.
ROB:
Yes, so there’s a very preppy-looking Ally Sheedy in our bathroom.
GILA:
Yes. Side note for those people who haven’t yet watched the movie Brat.
ROB:
Oh, yes!
GILA:
It’s fun.
ROB:
Yeah, the movie Andrew McCarthy made about getting them all back together to…
GILA:
Process.
ROB:
(laughing) “Process” is the word, yes. It wasn’t bad, and I say this as not a particular fan of the whole “Brat Pack” pack; it was not a bad picture. It was interesting. But Ally Sheedy, I don’t think I’ve seen her in anything that I really disliked her in. Even when she’s been in a crappy movie, she’s been, like, a decent part of it. So, we like Ally Sheedy. What did you think of baby Ally Sheedy in this movie?
GILA:
I thought that it would have been really nice if the character had had any sort of anything.
ROB:
Fair enough.
GILA:
(emphatically overenunciating the word) An-y-thin-g.
ROB:
(laughs) Yeah, she was very much there to be “the girlfriend,” and that’s it.
GILA:
(whispering dramatically as Sheedy) “David…”
ROB:
(laughs)
GILA:
Eh.
ROB:
Yeah. But, you know, when I was a kid watching this movie, I thought she was fully cute.
GILA:
She is fully cute. She’s also, like, smart and talented, which you would not know from this.
ROB:
(laughs) Yeah. Okay. How about John Wood as Dr. Stephen Falken and the voice of WOPR?
GILA:
He was there.
ROB:
He was.
GILA:
He was. I mean, you may have noticed my general reaction to this movie.
ROB:
Yeah, you – listener, you may know the smiley-face emojis, and there are also some sad-face emojis, and then there’s that completely neutral-face emoji where the mouth is just a horizontal line, and that is the face that our Gila is giving right now. (laughs)
GILA:
Well, with the understanding that, as we were about to learn, that I was in the middle of getting sick… I don’t remember staying entirely awake for the entire movie.
ROB:
Oh well, we can’t record this in that case, we gotta watch it again. I’ll just –
GILA:
(laughs)
ROB:
I’ll just put this in the machine, and, you know, ‘re ready.
GILA:
(overlapping peeved noises) …Tape my eyes open.
ROB:
I’ll get the Clockwork Orange gear.
GILA:
(laughs) So yes, given the Matthew Broderick and the Dabney Coleman and the Ally Sheedy of it all, I renew my previous “meh.”
ROB:
John Wood’s wiki photo is a screen grab of him from this movie.
GILA:
Of course it is.
ROB:
Which is unusual, but… Lasting association with Tom Stoppard.
GILA:
He won a Tony for Travesties. He was nominated for a Tony for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
ROB:
I could see him in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
GILA:
(overlapping) Got a CBE.
ROB:
(overlapping) Well, I haven’t seen him because –
GILA:
(gasps)
ROB:
Hm?
GILA:
Oh, I recognize why I recognized him.
ROB:
From where did you recognize him?
GILA:
Unless I’m mistaken, he played the dad in Sabrina.
ROB:
The Teenage Witch?
GILA:
Nooo.
ROB:
She didn’t have a dad. She had a couple of aunts.
GILA:
(exasperatedly) Not that Sabrina.
ROB:
She had a smart aunt and a cute aunt.
GILA:
(even more over-the-top exasperatedly) Not that Sabrina!
ROB:
(laughs)
GILA:
In the 19 – yes! Yes! Okay. In the 1995 remake of Sabrina, the Audrey Hepburn classic, which was remade with Julia Ormond, Harrison Ford, and Greg Kinnear.
ROB:
I vaguely remember it being a Harrison Ford thing, but I never saw it or took any interest.
GILA:
So he played the dad of Sabrina. Sabrina’s dad, if you will. Tom, the chauffeur.
ROB:
Ah-ha.
GILA:
Mm-hm. That’s why I recognized him.
ROB:
Well, okay.
GILA:
Oh, also he was in Chocolat.
ROB:
Oh, I forgot he was in Chocolat. I haven’t seen that one in a while. He was in Orlando.
GILA:
I’m sure he was in Orlando. Are you telling me that these people didn’t go to Disney World?
ROB:
(laughing) He was in the film Orlando, which was quite good.
GILA:
Alright, 1968… He played Guildenstern.
ROB:
Or Rosencrantz.
GILA and ROB:
(laughing)
GILA:
Nominated for a Tony. So, yes.
ROB:
So that’s our John Wood.
GILA:
That’s our John Wood.
ROB:
You mentioned Dabney Coleman, who is next up on our list.
GILA:
Mh-hm.
ROB:
(as Animal the Muppet) Bad man.
GILA:
(laughs)
ROB:
Bad man!! (laughing)
GILA:
Yes, Dabney Coleman, sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot.
ROB:
Yes.
GILA:
Alright. So Dabney Coleman,
ROB:
Bad Man in The Muppets Take Manhattan.
GILA:
Sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot in 9 to 5.
ROB:
Otis Drexell in Drexell’s Class.
GILA:
I was going to say, did he play anybody nice?
ROB:
He wasn’t a total asshole in this movie.
GILA:
Oh, and he was in You’ve Got Mail, where he was only moderately an asshole.
ROB:
(laughs) He was in a lot of things, and he elevated them.
GILA:
Yes.
ROB:
It was always, you were in a good place when you were watching any movie and there was a Dabney Coleman scene.
GILA:
He was fun!
ROB:
He he was a lot of fun.nd
GILA:
And he just died.
ROB:
Yeah, just recently, just this past May, in fact.
GILA:
Uh-huh.
ROB:
At age 92.
GILA:
Mm-hm.
ROB:
Foul play is suspected.
GILA:
He was in That Girl.
ROB:
(mock scandalized) Was he really?
GILA:
(laughs) He was in the film, That Girl.
ROB:
Hiyoo!
GILA:
Hiyoo! So I’m just gonna quote here, again: sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot. Coleman followed 9 to 5 with the role of the arrogant, sexist soap opera director in Tootsie.
GILA and ROB:
(laughing)
ROB:
Yes, he was great in Tootsie.
GILA:
We liked Dabney Coleman.
ROB:
Yeah. And in this movie, he could have played it a lot more asshole but, at the end of the day, his character just wanted to get the thing fixed and actually ended up softening on the kid.
GILA:
Mm-hm.
ROB:
It was fun. Our last cast member, Matthew Broderick, as David Lightman.
GILA:
Matthew Broderick as David Lightman. I think the ’83 to 87 time period was a time when it was really good to be Matthew Broderick. I’m not saying it’s not good to be Matthew Broderick now.
ROB:
(laughing) Yeah.
GILA:
But from, like, 1983 to 1986, Matthew Broderick was untouchable. He was awesome.
ROB:
Yeah.
GILA:
And then he made a turn into nebbish that he has never recovered from.
ROB:
From what he was playing in the ’80s, he was this kid. He was Ferris Bueller, and like Ferris Bueller itself as a movie, I don’t think that schtick would have aged well. If he kept trying to do that he’d just be, like, a jackass, not likable at all. And if he tried to do that as an adult character instead of a smart ass kid, it wouldn’t have worked. Like, you can only ride that train for so long.
GILA:
That’s fair, but I think there’s also something to be said for the characters he played in this time period as having confidence.
ROB:
Yeah.
GILA:
Confidence to spare. And then think about who he was after that, right? Simba, the teacher in Election,
ROB:
Yeah.
GILA:
Leo fucking Bloom.
ROB:
Yeah. I’m looking at his filmography here on his wiki, and you can kind of see the fallloff, like, okay, WarGames, 1918, Ladyhawke, Ferris Bueller, On Valentine’s Day, then Project X. This is where the turn started happening, because he was still a sort-of confident guy in Project X, but he didn’t quite know what was going on and didn’t know how to fix it. Then he was in Biloxi Blues, and after that Torch Song Trilogy, which was a huge deal in 1988 to play a queer character, especially if you were kind of a dreamboat teen-idol type star like he was.
GILA:
Mm-hm.
ROB:
Which was a huge deal in 1988 to play a queer character, especially if you were kind of a dreamboat teen-idol type star like he was.
GILA:
Mm-hm, right.
ROB:
The following year he did Glory, which, you know,
GILA:
I watched in eighth grade..?
ROB:
Yeah, I think I watched it in seventh grade or sixth, maybe. I think our entire generation got shown that on the VCR on wheels in social studies, global studies, history, whatever class.
GILA:
Yep.
ROB:
Whenever the Civil War was on the agenda.
GILA:
Right, and then it turns into The Freshman, The Road to Wellville, The Cable Guy,
ROB:
Yeah.
GILA:
Godzilla, for God’s sake.
ROB:
(laughs) ’98 Godzilla.
GILA:
Election, Inspector Gadget. Again, he took a turn into nebbish land.
ROB:
Yeah.
GILA:
And I would contend he’s still there.
ROB:
Seems to be making a good living at it.
GILA:
He absolutely is, and he’s still doing, you know, stage work and,
ROB:
Married to Sarah Jurassic Parker. Born in 1962 so, when this movie came out, he was 21, so maybe 20 when they were making it. Had a total baby face, so he looked like a much younger kid than he was –
GILA:
I have no idea what that’s like.
ROB:
(laughs) Yeah. They gave him the big tousley ’80s hair, dressed him in stripey ’80s kid shirts, and yeah, he totally pulled it off, and it was kind of iconic. For, it was a hacker who was the main character of a movie. The hacker wasn’t trying to damage things. The hacker wasn’t trying to steal things. The hacker just wanted to play games.
GILA:
Right, and that was something I found interesting. I was listening to part of our Hackers episode recently,
ROB:
Because you are one of the listeners to our podcast.
GILA:
I am indeed one of the listeners to our podcast but, more importantly, I just enjoy the conversation we have in the Hackers episode. Me being mean,
ROB:
(laughing)
GILA:
And Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy are much more believable as high school students than, say, anyone in the cast of Hackers, with the potential exception of Jesse Bradford, who was that age.
GILA and ROB:
(laughing)
ROB:
You’re probably right there, yeah.
GILA:
But also, everyone else in Hackers was aware that there was a context around what they were doing,
ROB:
Yeah.
GILA:
And when they yelled at Jesse Bradford, they’re like, “okay, that’s a cool accomplishment, but you fucking idiot! There’s so much infrastructure around what you’ve done, this is very dangerous.”
ROB:
Yeah.
GILA:
David Lightman did not have that coterie of hackers to be like, “you bozo.”
ROB:
Yeah, there is that short scene where he goes to his two professional computer-working friends, and goes over what he’s trying to do, and asks for help on it or whatever, and that is kind of a believable thing, where he would have two grown-up friends who are doing computers for real. Like, in Hackers in 1995, not every kid had their own computer.
GILA:
Right.
ROB:
In 1983, certainly not every kid had their own computer. Not every household had their own computer. David Lightman was a hugely privileged child.
GILA:
Hugely privileged child with his own computer, and by all appearances, his own phone line.
ROB:
Yeah, which was a huge, huge deal. We didn’t get a second phone line in the house I grew up in until I was, like, in my 20s.
GILA:
I was a teenager. I think we needed the fax/Internet line.
ROB:
Yeah. It was this whole thing where not everyone knew what computers were, and I think that’s a huge piece of context for this movie. You know, at least in 1995, 12 years later, in Hackers, these kids are off doing things with their computers that the adults are clueless about, but most people still knew basically what computers were and what the Internet might be, sort of, and it was becoming a mainstream thing. Whereas in the ’80s, you had to be a major geek to have a computer, to know how to use the computer, to know how to do tricks with the computer. So it was a very rare character to see, and I think seeing that in the form of Matthew Broderick, I think it really worked.
GILA:
See, I’d also contend that that’s part of the problem with seeing this now, 40 years later, because, like, I can also understand as being a kid and being like, “hey, this kid is awesome, right? It is that Ferris Bueller syndrome of like when you’re a young child, this is aspirational, but now it’s just, like, I want to smack this kid and be like, “look around you, you asshole!”
ROB:
“The plates in your skull aren’t finished fusing together yet, you little shit.”
GILA:
Yeah, like there’s nothing horribly aspirational about Matthew Broderick’s character in this movie. There’s nothing aspirational about any of these people except maybe Dabney Coleman, who just wants to get his job done and go home.
ROB:
Mm-hm. Although he was still a major working part of the military-industrial complex, so I didn’t want to be him.
GILA:
That’s true, but like, okay, Doctor Falken is sad. Sad and defeated and hermited,
ROB:
Hermited.
GILA:
Yeah, I just don’t…
ROB:
Yeah. I think the aspirational end, watching this as a kid, was, I want to have a computer like that. I want to do things like that, and…
GILA:
I want acomputer and a girlfriend.
ROB:
Yeah. (imitating Alice Cooper) “And a house, with cable.” (laughing)
GILA:
Sweetie?
ROB:
Yes?
GILA:
I don’t know if you know this.
ROB:
Mm-hm?
GILA:
You have a computer and a girlfriend.
ROB:
I do!
GILA:
And a house with cable.
ROB:
(laughing)
GILA:
You can’t change your own grades, but that’s just because you’re not in school.
ROB:
Yeah, I couldn’t tell you exactly what year it was that I got my first computer, TRS-80 Color Computer 2, but it was not 1983. It was at least a few years later. So! That’s the cast.
GILA:
That’s the cast.
ROB:
Shall we take a look at the plot?
GILA:
Let’s take a look at the plot.
ROB:
Plot section of the Wikipedia article for WarGames.
ROB:
“During a surprise nuclear attack drill, many United States Air Force strategic missile wing controllers prove unwilling to turn the keys required to launch a missile strike. Such refusals convinced John McKittrick and other North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) systems engineers that missile launch control centers must be automated without human intervention. Control is given to a NORAD supercomputer known as WOPR (War Operation Plan Response) pronounced ‘whopper,’ or Joshua, programmed to continuously run war simulations and learn over time.”
GILA:
So I think that was the other thing about seeing it now.
ROB:
Yes.
GILA:
Oh, my lord!
ROB:
(laughing)
GILA:
Why does everything need AI now?
ROB:
(sigh) Because it’s the hot, stupid thing for idiotic startups to put all their marbles into and pretend is the next thing that’s going to save humanity.
GILA:
But like beyond startups, just it’s getting baked into everything. And you know, Apple’s like, “oh, get the new iPhone because it’s working with AI!” Well, I don’t need it to work with AI.
ROB:
Yeah,
GILA:
I need the internet to work on it.
ROB:
Yeah, I would like to open a PDF on my work computer without a little sparkly thing popping up saying “Adobe AI can be your friend,” and, like, fuck you. (laughs)
GILA:
That’s why I use a different PDF reader, or PDF editor.
ROB:
Yeah.
GILA:
But also the whole idea that, like… I don’t know, man, Metropolis was 60 years before WarGames?
ROB:
Yeah.
GILA:
I knew!
ROB:
(laughs)
GILA:
I was two years old when this movie came out, based on when it was released to theaters.
ROB:
Sure.
GILA:
Two years old.
ROB:
Uh-huh.
GILA:
Not so much what you’d call sentient. I don’t think I was toilet trained.
ROB:
(laughing)
GILA:
Even at that time in my life, I knew that something that was fully automated and had no human failsafe was a bad idea.
ROB:
(laughing) Yeah.
GILA:
And again, Metropolis. It’s a bad idea.
ROB:
Yep. The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster.
GILA:
Mm-hm!
ROB:
Bad idea. And the scary part is, like, in retrospect, looking at this and knowing that, oh my god, they were totally thinking of this at the time. They’re still thinking of it now, you know, large language models and that sort of thing working as they do now, which is not very well at all.
GILA:
Mm-hm.
ROB:
Enough to seem like they’re working well while completely actually failing at everything.
GILA:
And the whole idea of machine models learning over time, which is only part of the reason I deleted my Twitter,
ROB:
(laughs) Yeah, congratulations, by the way.
GILA:
Thank you, thank you. But like, I don’t need AI training on my syntax.
ROB:
Mm. No, I like your syntax, warm and human as it is.
GILA:
Thank you, dear. I like your syntax as well.
ROB:
“David Lightman, a bright but unmotivated Seattle high school student and hacker, uses his IMSAI 8080 computer and modem to access the school district’s computer system and change the grades for himself and his friend and classmate Jennifer Mack.”
GILA:
As a precursor to Andrew McCarthy’s computer trick in Pretty in Pink.
ROB:
(laughing) Yes.
GILA:
Changing grades is kind of a fun way to impress your crush.
ROB:
Mm-hm.
GILA:
I like Andrew McCarthy’s thing better, but that also included Andrew McCarthy’s face.
ROB:
(laughing)
GILA:
And ’85, ’86 Andrew McCarthy was just so yummy.
ROB:
So, that hacking scene with Crash Overringwald and Acid Blaine…
GILA:
(singing as Evita) “You must love me…”
ROB:
“Later, while wardialing numbers in Sunnyvale, California, to find a computer game company,”
GILA:
Were there computer companies in Sunnyvale at the time?
ROB:
There may well have been. I mean, Silicon Valley was kind of congealing into place at this point.
GILA:
Because, like, Yahoo didn’t exist yet.
ROB:
Yahoo was just the guy who made Young Einstein in the ’80s.
GILA:
Okay.
ROB:
Ah.
GILA:
Oh!
ROB:
Well, okay. Why don’t you tell the listeners what you’ve just found?
GILA:
“As one of the major cities that make up California’s high-tech area, known as ‘Silicon Valley,’ Sunnyvale is the birthplace of the video game industry, former location of Atari headquarters.”
ROB:
(laughing)
GILA:
Well, alright. But yeah, it wasn’t…
ROB:
Yeah.
GILA:
Yahoo was in Sunnyvale,
ROB:
AMD as well.
GILA:
Yeah.
ROB:
Talking of Atari, I just finished listening to a really good limited podcast series called SwordQuest, which was about a weirdass chapter in Atari’s history and the legend around a certain game, and it’s all a true story. Worth checking out if you’re into video game history. The Legend of SwordQuest, narrated very well by Jamie Loftus.
But yeah, Lightman sees the ad for, you know, the hot new games from, I forget what the name of the company is, it’s a fictional company they made up for the film, and… yes.
“Later while wardialing numbers in Sunnyvale, California to find a computer game company, he connects with a system that does not identify itself.”
And I can only suspect that it’s called wardialing because it happened in the film WarGames. The idea that you would set your computer to automatically call every number in a certain block, whether that was a certain prefix or area code or what have you, and keep track of which ones answered with computer tones. That was a thing that people did.
GILA:
Right.
ROB:
hat was a thing that I did in my day. And –
GILA:
Do you think it’s called “wardialing” because of this?
ROB:
The wiki article for “wardialing” says, “the popular name for this technique originated in the 1983 film WarGames.”
GILA:
“Prior to the movie’s release, this technique was known as hammer dialing or demon dialing.”
ROB:
I’ve heard it called demon dialing as well.
GILA:
Who or what are the 414s?
“Of note, these 414s are not affiliated with the 414 biker gang, also based out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.”
ROB:
Yes, 414s were from Milwaukee.
GILA:
Well, of course.
ROB:
They were a group of hackers from Milwaukee. But, yes. And there is a little nod to phone phreaking in the film where his girlfriend asks him. She sees that his computer is calling every number in the area, and she’s like, “well, isn’t that expensive? Because of course, in the ’80s, phone calls were expensive, especially long distance ones, and he just goes “well, there are ways around that too,” with his big beaming Matthew Broderick smile. They don’t go into detail, but they insinuate that he’s phone phreaking.
GILA:
So, okay, backing up for a second. If you weren’t calling it “wardialing,” what would you call it?
ROB:
I’ve heard it called “demon dialing,” because a demon is the name for any sort of automated process that you would set a computer to do and let loose,
GILA:
Like mailer-daemon?
ROB:
Like mailer-daemon, yeah. And so, if you put together a demon to do your dialing for you, why not call it “demon dialing?”
GILA:
See, I just always assumed it was “wardialing” because of the way in my mind that, like, an army would advance in, and I’m thinking of, like, the Civil War, where they all just line up and walk together.
ROB:
(laughing) That’s interesting!
GILA:
You know? You’re doing this full-on press on a block of numbers. “Wardialing! Haa!” (grunts in a soldiery manner)
ROB:
It was one of the most fun uses for graph paper there was, besides TTRPGs,
GILA:
(laughs)
ROB:
Or really tiny tic-tac-toe games.
GILA:
Teeny tiny tic-tac-toe?
ROB:
Teeny tiny tic-tac-toe.
ROB:
“Asking for games, he finds a list including Chess, Checkers, Backgammon, and Poker, along with titles such as Theater-Wide Biotoxic and Chemical Warfare and Global Thermonuclear War, but cannot proceed further.”
GILA:
Right, so he’s like, “let’s play Global Thermonuclear War.”
Rob.
ROB:
Yes?
GILA:
How is it that there’s no safeguard on this particular machine?
ROB:
(laughing) It is a leap of fiction, I think, to say that there would have been, at the time, no security around this sort of thing, and it would just pick up for anyone. But you you go back to this era of a lot of people being completely naive to what computers were doing, and it was common for computers to just be sitting on a modem line waiting for somebody to ring because if you knew the number, obviously you were supposed to be calling it.
GILA:
Right, but I somehow refuse to believe that this particular… that, like, WOPR would just be sitting there.
ROB:
Yeah, they later say that, well, maybe it was a backdoor Falken left for himself, so he could still get into it. But, whatever, yeah.
ROB:
“Two hacker friends explain the concept of a backdoor password and suggest tracking down the Falken referenced in Falken’s Maze, the first game listed. David discovers that Stephen Falken was an early artificial intelligence researcher and guesses correctly that the name of Falken’s deceased son, Joshua, is the password.”
GILA:
Hm. A lot of OSINT work in there.
ROB:
Yeah, back before they called it that.
GILA:
OSINT, by the way, standing for “Open Source Intelligence.” I’m quite good at that sort of thing.
ROB:
You really are.
ROB:
“Unaware that the Sunnyvale phone number connects to WOPR at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, David initiates a game of Global Thermonuclear War, playing as the Soviet Union while targeting American cities.”
ROB:
And it’s kind of gleeful when the two kids are at the screen and he’s like, “let’s be the Russians!” Because, of course, if you were a kid in the ’80s, the Russians were very clearly painted as the bad guys.
GILA:
Mm-hm.
ROB:
Everything old is new again.
ROB:
“The computer starts a simulation that briefly convinces NORAD military personnel that actual Soviet nuclear missiles are inbound. While they defuse the situation, WOPR nonetheless continues the simulation to trigger the scenario and win the game, as it does not understand the difference between reality and simulation.”
GILA:
And I also understand that if, at this point, someone had said, “hey, we need to have some sort of human intervention on this computer because if it’s left alone to its own devices and gets to make all the decisions, we’re all gonna die,” but the movie also would have been 20 minutes long then.
ROB:
(laughing) Yeah, yeah, totally.
ROB:
“It continuously feeds false data such as Soviet bomber incursions and submarine deployments to NORAD, pushing them to increase the DEFCON level toward a retaliation that will start World War III.”
And they very helpfully explain what stuff like DEFCON means, and how it’s “Defense Condition” and higher numbers are better, and if it goes down to DEFCON 1, we’re at World War III. It’s Chekhov’s DEFCON because, of course, it comes into play later when everything goes to hell.
GILA:
Can I tell you something funny?
ROB:
Yes.
GILA:
When I was younger, and I’m not going to say how much younger, but at an earlier point in my life, yes, I used to get “DEFCON” confused with “Mach.”
ROB:
As in the speed of sound?
GILA:
I would use them interchangeably because I didn’t know any better.
ROB:
(laughing) That’s cute! It’s actually really cute. And that sequence is kind of funny when you see, like, the stuff on the kids’ computer screen with the nuclear war stuff, and then the same stuff is going on on the massive screen in the war room at NORAD with all the soldiers and people panicking and running around.
GILA:
Mm-hm. It’s sort of reminds me of the end of The Lego Movie.
ROB:
The end of The Lego Movie?
GILA:
Yeah.
ROB:
I haven’t seen The Lego Movie in a long time.
GILA:
I haven’t either, and I really only saw it once. But, like, think about, “spaceship!” Right? And then when you smash cut to the kid at the end,
ROB:
Ah-ha!
GILA:
Who is playing the Legos,
ROB:
Ah-ha!
GILA:
And then the world stuff. You know what I mean?
ROB:
Oh. Okay, yeah.
GILA:
Sorry, spoilers for the end of The Lego Movie.
ROB:
Yeah, no, now I see what you mean.
GILA:
Or!
ROB:
Or?
GILA:
Remember there was a thing in early Sesame Street where kids were playing with little diggers and shit in sand?
ROB:
Oh! Yes!
GILA:
And then they –
ROB:
(overlapping) And then you see the clips of the real trucks and stuff!
GILA:
Yeah!
ROB:
Yeah, yeah.
“David learns the true nature of his actions from a news broadcast, and FBI special agents arrest him and take him to NORAD.”
GILA:
Why!?
ROB:
(laughing)
GILA:
I’m sorry, I must have been asleep during this part. Why!?
ROB:
They figure he’s a spy, or working for the Russians in some way, to make all this stuff happen,
GILA:
Right! So if you’re causing a problem there, right? Like, if I think that someone is trying to steal whatever, I’m not going to take them to the place where whatever lives. I’m going to take them elsewhere!
ROB:
This is true. Yeah, it is kind of like the villains capturing Batman and Robin and taking them back to their hideout to hang in some death trap they’re going to escape from.
GILA:
Yeah. Like, I’m trying to rig the Powerball. They’re going to take me to Powerball headquarters so I can steal all the balls,
ROB:
(laughing)
GILA:
And choose the ones that are on my ticket, and win the Powerball! No, you don’t take me to Powerball headquarters. You take me away from Powerball headquarters!
ROB:
(laughing) Well, obviously, you’ve got a better strategic mind than the feds in this movie.
GILA:
I’m sorry, who wrote this, again?
ROB:
Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes.
GILA:
Did they write anything else?
ROB:
He wrote the story for Project X, and he wrote the movie Sneakers.
GILA:
Okay, okay. They were nominated for an Oscar?! An Oscar! For this!?
ROB:
Well!
GILA:
Oh my God! Do you recognize how bad the Cold War was that this shit got nominated for a Best Screenplay Academy Award?
ROB:
(laughing)
GILA:
Holy balls! What was it against?!
ROB:
That’s an excellent question. Wonder if that’s something we can see here.
GILA:
Alright, let’s go to Best Original Screenplay.
ROB:
All right, 1983. WarGames was up against Silkwood, Fanny and Alexander, The Big Chill, and the winner Tender Mercies.
GILA:
Were there no other movies that year?
ROB:
(laughing)
GILA:
Like honestly, were there no other movies that year? The plot holes in this movie. I could wear this movie as, like, a pleasant shawl, on a warm evening,
ROB:
(laughing, ending in a sigh)
GILA:
Loosely knitted. (laughing) Alright, what else did he write?
ROB:
And Walter F. Parkes, who co-wrote this, this and Sneakers were his only screenwriting credits.
GILA:
But… but okay, there were like 10 years between. He must have learned a thing or two in those 10 years, because jeezy creezy.
ROB:
In the MAD Magazine spoof of WarGames which was called “Warped Games,” I remember this one gag in it that I think my friend Arbie, who wrote the Phone Losers of America zine, also thought was especially fun, where the feds were wearing jackets that said on the back, “I’ve got my F.B.I. on you.”
GILA:
Did you ever see the movie Feds?
ROB:
I did not see the movie Feds.
GILA:
Are you familiar with the movie Feds?
ROB:
I am not familiar with the movie Feds.
GILA:
Alright, the movie Feds is about two young women who decide they want to be FBI agents and who go to FBI agent training camp, training school
ROB:
(overlapping) When did this come out?
GILA:
’87, ’88 maybe.
ROB:
Okay, so I’m sure this went completely well and was a balanced look at the scenario.
GILA:
Yeah, so, two significant things about Feds.
ROB:
Alright.
GILA:
Number one, well, the FBI cadets in question, the girls,
ROB:
Yes?
GILA:
Were played by Rebecca De Mornay,
ROB:
Okay,
GILA:
And Mary Gross.
ROB:
Huh!
GILA:
The bumbling boy cadet they make friends with, Larry Cedar,
ROB:
Ha! Okay.
GILA:
And part of the interiors were filmed on location at my university, so the cafeteria at the FBI Academy had a meat microwave and a dairy microwave.
ROB:
(laughs) Well, that’s just them being accommodating,
GILA:
And the feds in Feds are less bumbling than the ones in WarGames, and Feds is a comedy.
ROB:
Yeah, well, you know, if the Breakfast Club kids had a capable principal…
GILA:
“We don’t want a capable principal. We want Mr. Clark.”
ROB:
(laughs) That’s a whole other movie principal.
GILA:
Did you know, by the way, in the whole wilding section of Lean on Me, and then the teacher who tries to break up the fight, and then the kids all turn on him,
ROB:
Yeah,
GILA:
Beat him up, bang his head into the floor. It’s the director.
ROB:
(laughs) I suppose that’s not a bit part you can just give to somebody else, and have them go in and do.
GILA:
No.
ROB:
So the FBI special agents arrest him and take him to NORAD.
ROB:
“He realizes that WOPR is behind the NORAD alerts, but he fails to convince McKittrick, who believes David is working for the Soviets and is charged with espionage.”
ROB:
And again, he’s in this military complex at NORAD, under the watchful eye of the military and everyone, and he just slips out of there by using scissors and some shit to connect a little microcassette recorder to an electronic keypad on a door. Which, you can see why these guys later wrote the scene in Sneakers where Martin Bishop asks his pals, “anyone know how to defeat an electronic keypad?” And he gets a long list of instructions over his earpiece, and he’s, “uh-huh, uh-huh, yeah, okay, I’ll try it,” and then he just kicks the damn door in.
GILA:
Mm-hm. Yeah. Yeah.
ROB:
(laughing)
GILA:
Like I said, these fellas learned a thing or two between WarGames and Sneakers, which did not get nominated for a Best Screenplay.
ROB:
Somehow.
GILA:
How…? Apart from the last line of WOPRs, what are we quoting from this movie? And why is it that duder… did you see this in his wiki?
ROB:
In whose wiki?
GILA:
Lawrence Lasker… Read that.
ROB:
“In 2023, Lasker won the Future of Life Award for reducing the risk of nuclear war through the power of storytelling.”
GILA:
If we blew any more smoke up this movie’s ass,
ROB:
(laughing)
GILA:
We could walk it down Broadway on Thanksgiving. I’m on fire tonight!
ROB:
(laughing) You are.
GILA:
(laughing)
ROB:
The shade rattles.
GILA:
Oh yeah, (emulating the RuPaul shade rattle sound effect) tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.
ROB:
(laughing) So.
GILA:
Alright, so, 16 years old, charged with espionage. Carry on.
ROB:
“David escapes NORAD by joining a tourist group.”
GILA:
Sure,
ROB:
(laughing)
GILA:
Like you do.
ROB:
It’s a funny scene. A soldier stops him on the way out and goes, “hey! You’re not supposed to be here, you’re supposed to be over there with the group.” Yeah.
ROB:
“David escapes NORAD by joining a tourist group, and with Jennifer’s help, travels to the Oregon island where Falken lives under the alias Robert Hume. David and Jennifer find that Falken has become despondent, believing that nuclear war is inevitable and as futile as a game of tic-tac-toe between two experienced players. The teenagers convince Falken that he should return to NORAD to stop WOPR.”
GILA:
I don’t like tic-tac-toe. I find it frustrating.
ROB:
What’s frustrating about it?
GILA:
Everything. I don’t like having to… like, if I’m playing against somebody else, I don’t like losing, but I don’t like defeating somebody else in that kind of a thing. Like if it’s a trivia contest, I will kick anybody’s ass, I do not care.
ROB:
She will, too.
GILA:
If it’s about skill or knowledge, super. Tic-tac-toe, which is, you can say it’s about skill, to a certain extent. Also, it’s just kind of boring.
ROB:
Yeah, well, that kind of plays into what Falken is saying in this movie. It’s, like, once you know the game, you know how to, if not win, then not lose, and it’s just kind of pointless to play.
GILA:
I did see something fun though recently: a video of two gymnasts playing a game called stick-tac-toe.
ROB:
Stick-tac-toe.
GILA:
Stick-tac-toe, and they had a little springboard, and they’re busy doing flips off the springboard, but they had to stick the landing in a square to count it for their tic-tac-toe.
ROB:
(laughs) I see.
GILA:
Super fun.
ROB:
I’d rather just take Shadoe Stevens to block.
GILA:
“You fool!”
GILA and ROB:
(laughing)
ROB:
“WOPR stages a massive Soviet first strike with hundreds of missiles, submarines, and bombers. Believing the attack to be genuine, NORAD prepares to retaliate. Falken, David, and Jennifer convince military officials to delay the second strike and ride out the supposed attack until actual weapons impacts are confirmed. When the targeted American bases (Elmendorf Air Force Base, Grand Forks Air Force Base, and Loring Air Force Base) report back unharmed, NORAD prepares to cancel the retaliatory second strike. WOPR tries to launch the missiles on its own using a brute-force attack to obtain the launch codes. Without humans in the control centers as a safeguard using the two-man rule, the computer will trigger a mass launch. All attempts to log in and order WOPR to cancel the countdown fail. Disconnecting the computer is discussed and dismissed as a fail-deadly mechanism will launch all weapons if the computer is disabled.”
GILA:
Is that actually a term?
ROB:
It is wikilinked in this article. Fail-deadly. Pulling up that article… Yep. Fail-deadly is a concept in nuclear military strategy that encourages deterrence by guaranteeing an immediate, automatic, and overwhelming response to an attack, even if there is no one to trigger such retaliation. The term “fail-deadly” was coined as a contrast to fail safe.
GILA:
Okay. I mean, why not fail-dangerous?
ROB:
(laughs)
ROB:
Falken and David direct the computer to play tic-tac-toe against itself. This results in a long string of draws, forcing the computer to learn the concept of futility and no-win scenarios. WOPR obtains the launch codes, but before launching, it cycles through all the nuclear war scenarios it has devised, finding that they all result in draws as well. Having discovered the concept of mutual assured destruction, (“WINNER: NONE”), the computer tells Falken it has concluded that nuclear war is “a strange game” in which “the only winning move is not to play.” WOPR relinquishes control of NORAD and the missiles and offers to play (imitating WOPR’s robotic voice) “a nice game of chess.”
GILA:
Okay, again nominated for an Oscar…
ROB:
(laughing)
GILA:
This guy got a lifetime achievement award for avoiding, for… helping… what’s the word I’m looking for?
ROB:
(laughs)
GILA:
Helping… deter nuclear war? Reducing the risk of nuclear war by basically saying, “just say no.”
ROB:
The Future of Life Award is a thing, apparently.
GILA:
Given to two movies.
ROB:
Given to two movies by the Future of Life Institute, which seems to be some sort of think tank.
“Steering transformative technology toward benefiting life and away from extreme large-scale risks.”
Okay, good for them. So they have given this award since 2017, it looks like.
GILA:
Go back, go back, go back. 2018.
ROB:
Here, have the mouse.
GILA:
Alright.
“The 2018 Future of Life Award celebrates a relatively-unknown individual whose courageous judgment may have prevented a nuclear strike during the Cold War that could easily have escalated into a full-scale nuclear conflict.”
Real guy.
ROB:
Yes, Stanislav Petrov, who you may know if you know your military nuclear Cold War history. In the beginning of this movie, he was the equivalent of the guy who saw the order to launch the missiles and refused.
GILA:
Right. So we see the guy who kept nuclear war from happening during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the guy who kept nuclear war from happening during the Cold War, contributing to the eradication of smallpox, protecting the ozone layer… these guys wrote a fucking movie.
ROB:
Not just any fucking movie, it’s this fucking movie.
GILA:
So it was the – oh my God, it was this and The Day After.
ROB:
Ha!
GILA:
1983, the year of shit.
ROB:
They have a YouTube video embedded in this page here on FutureOfLife.org about how two films saved the world from nuclear war.
GILA:
The Day After was a TV movie!
ROB:
Yeah, and WarGames was a movie movie.
GILA:
Oh, for fuck’s sake. I am sorry. Did you see The Day After?
ROB:
I watched it on VHS. Half-paid attention to it.
GILA:
I watched it on YouTube. The only thing that really lingers with me is the bald cap they put on, I think it was Steve Guttenberg?
ROB:
(laughs)
GILA:
After the radiation made all his hair fall out. Big forehead.
ROB:
Yeah. I think we had a scratchy VHS, which might not have even been something that made that all that visible.
ROB:
“Released in the tension-filled year of 1983, these films not only reflected the era’s nuclear anxieties but also played a direct role in shaping policy. (speaking increasingly over-the-top dramatically) They went beyond mere entertainment, acting as significant catalysts for dialog!”
Oh, the gesture you’re making right now.
GILA:
(laughing)
ROB:
So, you don’t agree with this particular award, is what you’re saying.
GILA:
I’m saying that if this movie prevented nuclear war.
ROB:
(laughs)
GILA:
Again, if this movie prevented nuclear war… I’m trying to think of a parallel.
ROB:
(laughs) Well, I mean, here we are, years later, and we haven’t had a nuclear war, at least not yet. Though you know, by the time I get this edited and posted, who knows what’s going to happen?
GILA:
Right, but are we saying that it wasn’t diplomacy, and it wasn’t scientific advancement, and it wasn’t any number of other, it wasn’t anything financial, it wasn’t political, it wasn’t… the reason we haven’t had a nuclear war is because of this. Fucking Movie.
ROB:
(laughing)
GILA:
“113 minutes that saved the world.”
Have they made a documentary called that?
ROB:
(laughing) I don’t know. We’ll have to look at the special features on this.
GILA:
Like I said, if we blew more smoke up this movie’s ass, we could walk it in the Macy’s parade.
ROB:
Well, that’s the thing too, is like this movie… Okay, you’ve got the hacker kid, and he’s doing hacker tricks and stuff, and that’s that’s novel. But at the core of it, you see, I think in the scenes where the kids are on the island with Falken, and he’s trying to tell them, “oh, it’s all futile anyway, and why even try?” And just, “we’re all gonna die anyway,” and being very nihilistic about the whole thing. And then Lightman’s just like, “I’m just a kid. I wanted to learn how to swim,” and all this stuff, and, you know, “I never saw Paris, I never played the violin!” I think the very sweet core of this movie is in that scene where he’s scared, because, I remember being that kid in the ’80s. You know, the Cold War was in full force, and we were told that the Russians were the bad guys with nukes, but it’s okay because we were good guys with nukes. And we were given air-raid drills in school where we would go out into the hall and just crouch against the wall in the hallways with our heads down and our hands over our necks because that was supposed to somehow protect us if our school was bombed.
GILA:
You know why you’re supposed to protect your neck, by the way?
ROB:
Yes.
GILA:
Because your thyroid. That’s why you have to wear that extra shield at the dentist office.
ROB:
Yes.
GILA:
I don’t have to do that.
ROB:
But I have very strong memories of being this kid, and you know, with my fellow kids in those days, and we were taught all this stuff, and we were taught this fear. And the adults who were supposed to know what was what and everything, they didn’t, and sometimes the mask slipped, and that became apparent. And I was a kid, and I had nightmares about the Bomb dropping, and I’m not the only one. Something like this, I think an aspirational bit of this, completely outside of the whole hacker thing, was that a scared kid could be what shakes the soldiers who are just concerned with soldiering to get some sense knocked into them and go, oh, well, maybe we have to err on the side of not killing fucking everybody.
GILA:
I get that. And, you know, I think that whole idea of kids being scared, right? And there was there’s a line in St. Elmo’s Fire. It’s an Andrew McCarthy line. Jules says to Kevin, “don’t you enjoy anything anymore, like girls? And Kevin says, “I enjoy being afraid of Russia…” I don’t remember the first half but he says, “Russia gets an inflated sense of national worth for more paranoia.” And it’s one of the things I memorized as a kid and had no idea what anybody was saying,
ROB:
Yeah.
GILA:
And the thing is… in Omaha, right, you remember the part in Without Warning, where the missiles are being launched from Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska?
ROB:
Yeah.
GILA:
That was real. We were right there, and somehow I feel like this is less about avoiding nuclear war qua nuclear war, than it is about losing the human element in any major decision-making process. It just happens to be that nuclear war in 1983 was the easiest way to make that point.
ROB:
Yeah.
GILA:
And how you can bumble into anything and create a mess.
ROB:
This is true.
GILA:
It just needed to be on a global scale because otherwise, the movie would have been boring.
ROB:
(laughs) It’s interesting to think about all this.
GILA:
The only winning move is not to play.
ROB:
Yeah. So that’s WarGames.
GILA:
WarGames.
ROB:
So, having now seen WarGames, and vocalized your general meh-ness about it,
GILA:
Mm-hm.
ROB:
What do you feel like, where’s your firefly?
GILA:
My firefly hitched a ride with the tour group and just peaced.
ROB:
(laughing) Fair enough.
GILA and ROB:
(laughing)
ROB:
I will say mine is still up. There is the Cold War context, and there is the hacker context, and all of it and this still has its total spot in my personal cinematic canon and the hacker movie canon. So, you’ve now, I think, completed the standard-issue handful of hacker films of the era. So you know, welcome to that club.
GILA:
Thank you, thank you. It only took me 42 years.
ROB:
Yeah. Speaking of things that take a couple of years, I wanted to very excitedly give a shout out to the podcast A Match Made in Space, which is a podcast that pretty much inspired this one, and it is by a married couple called Ali Goodman and John Wolter, and they show each other movies from their childhoods, I think they’re strictly ’80s movies, and after a hiatus of a couple of years, they’re doing episodes again, so you could find A Match Made in Space, go to MatchMadeInSpace.com, or just search for “A Match Made in Space” on your podcatcher of choice, and tell them we sent you because they are they are a delight to listen to. Check them out, A Match Made in Space. They’re good people.
And exciting news, if you’d like to keep in touch with us, there’s a fun new way to do it. You may have heard that Twitter is collapsed in upon itself, and we are no longer there. We have deleted our Twitter. Gila deleted her Twitter. I deleted my Twitter. Modern.technology has deleted its Twitter. But to replace that, what that was doing for us, we’re running a little experiment. We’re starting an email newsletter, in the old sort of spirit, where, give us your email address and we will mail you things. We are not aiming to be spammy. We’re not aiming to be exploitative, we’re not sharing our mailing list, we’re not taking money from anyone to put ads into our mailing list, we’re just writing what we want to write. And so, if you’d like to keep updated with things we release, things we’re working on, just what we’re thinking randomly about things, you can check out our Modern Technology newsletter. Go to modern.technology on the web, where you will see the link to subscribe to the newsletter.
GILA:
Alright. So if you would like to get in touch with us, though, because the newsletter is going to be a thing where we send emails to you, but if you’d like to send an email to us, you could always contact us at watches at modern dot technology. As a friendly reminder, technology is in fact our top-level domain. So send us a note at watches at modern dot technology, or, if you’ve got something to say, you can give us a call! United States telephone number 1-929-399-8414, which is a voicemail-only box. You can chat at us to your heart’s content. We do reserve the right to play that message on a future episode of this here, podcast, here,
ROB:
Yes, indeed. We have had this for a long time. No one’s taken us up on it yet.
GILA:
We’ve gotten a lot of phone calls about our car’s extended warranty.
ROB:
Yes,
GILA:
We’ve gotten a lot of voicemails that we do not understand, in Chinese.
ROB:
We neither have a car nor speak Chinese, so none of that was working.
GILA:
None of that was working.
ROB:
You could be the first.
GILA:
Could be the first.
ROB:
You could break the seal on this thing.
GILA:
Ooh!
ROB:
And if you would like, you can just go on the web to modern.technology/contact, where you could fill in your email in a little ready-made box on a web page, or click a link to dial that phone number of ours.
GILA:
I like that we get to do this.
ROB:
Me too. I appreciate doing this with you so much.
GILA:
Absolutely.
ROB:
So, for Modern Technology Watches, this has been Rob Vincent,
GILA:
and Gila Drazen,
ROB:
And we will catch you on the flip side.
GILA:
We will see you at the movies.
(Ending theme music fades in)
GILA:
You’ve been listening to episode 312 of Modern Technology Watches with Gila Drazen and Rob Vincent. Go to Modern.Technology on the web for more info on this show, our other work, and our social media failsafe. Our music is The Promise by Torley Wong, released Creative Commons-Attribution-Sharealike 3.0. Find more from Torley at torley.com. Thank you, Torley! Content from wikipedia.org is used under Creative Commons-Attribution-Sharealike 3.0. This podcast is released under Creative Commons-Attribution-Sharealike 4.0 and is a production of Joyful Firefly, LLC. Email us at watches at modern dot technology, and, if you like us, tell a friend or two.
(Ending theme music concludes)
ROB:
“During a sup – during a surprise nuclear attack drill, may-me-ma-mo-ma…” (devolving into stuttery blooper noises as Rob trips misspeakingly over his own words.)