Starman (film)
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| John Carpenter's Starman |
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|---|---|
 Starman theatrical poster |
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| Directed by | John Carpenter |
| Produced by | Larry J. Franco Michael Douglas |
| Written by | Bruce A. Evans Raynold Gideon Dean Riesner (Uncredited) |
| Starring | Jeff Bridges Karen Allen |
| Music by | Jack Nitzche |
| Cinematography | Donald M. Morgan |
| Editing by | Marion Rothman |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
| Release date(s) | December 14, 1984 |
| Running time | 115 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $24 million USD |
| IMDb profile | |
John Carpenter's Starman is a 1984 science fiction film directed by John Carpenter which tells the story of an alien from another planet (Jeff Bridges) who has come to earth in response to the invitation found on the gold phonograph record in the Voyager space probes.
The movie was written by Bruce A. Evans, Raynold Gideon and Dean Riesner (uncredited). Bridges was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. The film inspired a short-lived, 1986 television series of the same name which starred Robert Hays and Christopher Daniel Barnes.
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[edit] Plot
Upon arriving in earth's atmosphere, the Starman's ship is attacked by military aircraft, forcing it to crash-land. The Starman, requiring a human form in order to get assistance, searches the local countryside and finds the cabin of a young woman named Jenny Hayden (Karen Allen). After reminiscing about her dead husband by watching old movies and looking through photo albums, Hayden has fallen asleep from drinking too much in an attempt to drown her sorrows. The visitor finds a lock of her husband's hair in a photo album and samples the DNA from the hair, replicating it to a fully adult, cloned body within minutes in which he takes residence. The Starman then convinces Hayden to drive him from Wisconsin to Meteor Crater in Arizona, where his mother ship will be picking him up. Hayden is both terrified and enthralled by this seeming return of her dead husband, and so she agrees to help the Starman get to Arizona, although at first the fear seems to outweigh the interest.
Along the way, the couple is pursued by the Army, who detected the crash. The Army contingent is led by gung-ho NSA Chief Fox (Richard Jaeckel), who is reluctantly assisted by a less military-oriented scientist named Shermin (Charles Martin Smith).
Over the course of the journey, the Starman learns about humanity (and being human) through direct experience and from some explanations by Hayden, who in turn learns more about him when his communication skills improve, finding that he is a tender, sincere, loving being. By the end of the journey, when the Starman is retrieved by his fellow extraterrestrials, he has saved Hayden's life, they have fallen in love, and she has become pregnant by him.
[edit] Cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Jeff Bridges | Starman |
| Karen Allen | Jenny Hayden |
| Charles Martin Smith | Mark Shermin |
| Richard Jaeckel | George Fox |
| Robert Phalen | Major Bell |
| Tony Edwards | Sergeant Lemon |
| John Walter Davis | Brad Heinmuller |
[edit] Trivia
- Producer Michael Douglas considered several directors, including Mark Rydell, Adrian Lyne, John Badham, and Tony Scott, before settling on John Carpenter.
- The role of Starman originally went to Kevin Bacon.
- Bridges' character (Starman) walks in and buys a Cadillac with cash. In the 1974 film Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, Bridges' character (Lightfoot) exclaims that one day he would like to walk up and buy a Cadillac with cash. Just buy it!
- When Jeff Bridges walks outside the house naked and uses a 'marble' his hair seems to stand on end. This effect was actually created by shooting Bridges hanging upside-down and then matting the shot onto the background the right way up to give him a surreal look.
- This script was being developed at Columbia at the same time as another script about an alien visitation. The studio did not want to make both, so the head of the studio had to choose which film to make; he decided to make this one and let the other script go to a rival studio. The other script was for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, a box-office smash in 1982.
- The only John Carpenter film to have an Academy Award nomination (Jeff Bridges for Best Actor).
- The jet fighters sent to intercept the UFO in the opening of the movie are F-102 Delta Daggers, aircraft which had been taken out of service in 1976, eight years before the film was released.
[edit] External links
- Starman at the Internet Movie Database
- Starman at theofficialjohncarpenter.com
- Karen Allen: An ACME Page - includes a Starman page
| The Films of John Carpenter |
|---|
| Feature films |
| Dark Star | Assault on Precinct 13 | Halloween | The Fog | Escape from New York | The Thing | Christine | Starman | Big Trouble in Little China | Prince of Darkness | They Live | Memoirs of an Invisible Man | In the Mouth of Madness | Village of the Damned | Escape from L.A. | Vampires | Ghosts of Mars | Psychopath |
| Made for television |
| Someone's Watching Me | Elvis | Body Bags | John Carpenter's Cigarette Burns | John Carpenter's Pro-Life |
