Starman (1984)

Director: John Carpenter

Cast: Jeff Bridges, Karen Allen, Charles Martin Smith, Richard Jaeckel

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: First of all, I’m just going to say this part simply and quickly. Any movie where the antagonist has a complete change of heart and helps the heroes escape after getting a dressing down from his superiors for being “a GS-11.” I like that a lot. I had forgotten about it. Even if this hadn’t been one of Carpenter’s films, I would have on the whole liked it quite a bit.

That being said, it’s weird to see Carpenter—and he really didn’t try it again, until Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992) maybe—make a film that doesn’t have a pitch black heart.

It’s even weirder that Carpenter made this film shortly after—Christine (1983) only remains in the gap—he made the bleakest tale of alien visitation, The Thing (1982).

But, at his best, that’s what John Carpenter does: surprise.

It surprises not only in Carpenter’s choice of genre—alien invasion as hybrid of mediation on grief, romantic comedy, and road picture—but also in terms of casting. Carpenter would have been forgiven for using the Robert De Niro to his Scorsese and putting Kurt Russell in the role of Starman. That would have been a mistake, though. Whether Carpenter had the presence of mind to go another way, or he had the idea thrust upon him by the studio, but there’s an inquisitive, guileless innocence to Bridges that Russell didn’t even have when he was outwitting Cesar Romero.

It almost, just almost, makes one want to ignore that Carpenter isn’t using Dean Cundey as cinematographer. It might be a bit too much to allow for Carpenter to not writing the score. Unless you’ve managed to get Ennio Morricone, there’s really no excuse for that kind of mis-fire.

American Graffiti (1973)

Director: George Lucas

Cast: Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Paul Le Mat, Charles Martin Smith

Have I Seen it Before: Yeah, a couple of times.

Did I Like It: It’s another odd duck from Lucas before he reached his true destiny. With THX 1138 (1971), he embraced every nihilistic impulse he must have had as a film student, and here he takes a completely left turn and manages to sing-handedly create the teen comedy genre that John Hughes would continue to perfect in the following decade.

He’s still trying to create interesting soundscapes in his films. THX is a cacophony of an evil future, and this a similarly overwhelming wave of adolescent noise. That instinct started to disappear with Star Wars – Episode IV: A New Hope (1977) and was all but gone by the time Star Wars – Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (1983) rolled around, that had disappeared.

Is it possible between the dourness of THX and the crowd-pleasing qualities of Star Wars, this is the kind of film we could have expected from Lucas when he was happy? I suppose not, as he also later made More American Graffiti (1979). It was not a success and continued to haunt him almost twenty years later when he made an off-hand comment about it during the making-of documentary of Star Wars – Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999). 

Lucas so thoroughly nails this movie that even though I was a teenager forty years after these Modesto teens moved on to their adult lives, I am filled with nostalgia for my own days. Why doesn’t someone make the film about a bunch of kids running around trying to make a film themselves without any actual resources to back them up.

Guess I should probably make something like that myself.

God, this filmmaker has an ability to make me want to do things outside of my comfort zone. Usually it’s trying to find a heated-plasma sword and hoard religious artifacts. Is there any higher sign of a great filmmaker? Good on ya, Lucas.