Can't we, insert name?
November 1, 1984
I’m in the kitchen. A man is on fire near me.
I can’t move, I’m frozen, I can only watch him. Instead of writhing and burning, he crouches to the ground. There is no sound, no screams. His skin begins to slough off. The flames engulf him and for a moment I see nothing but fire. He’s gone.
But wait. Suddenly his head emerges. It’s not fleshy or organic, it’s metallic. His eyes become luminous red lights. His skin is vaporized. He is a metal skeleton. He is creeping along the ground, holding a kitchen knife in his metal hand, stabbing it into the floor repeatedly to pull himself forward. Only the top half of his body remains. He is coming straight at me, his shiny metallic skull reflecting the flames’ glow.
I’m describing an alleged dream from 1981. It wasn’t my dream. IRL the dreamer was in Rome, shooting a cheap horror movie about carnivorous fish. He was new to film. The fish movie was his directorial debut.
The movie was a flop but the kitchen dream stuck with the guy. He sketched a drawing of it. He wrote a story outline describing the burning man as a malevolent robot in disguise, sent from the future with a murderous mission. His direct influence was sci-fi time-travel stories on Outer Limits, crossed with classic ‘80s slashers like Halloween and Friday the 13th.
He shopped his movie around, reportedly spending some time living in his car.
The idea was eventually made into a major motion picture that was released the week of this Family Ties episode in October 1984. It took a lot of networking, a lot of pitching, and a LOT of luck.
Did the dream sound familiar?
The dreamer was James Cameron. The movie was released as The Terminator.
1984 was a year of change. Stealthy change. New developments transformed how we used technology in our homes and how we expected to be entertained. VCRs, CDs, cable TV, and PCs were all emerging from the birth canal simultaneously. Boomers were turning 40 and they had money to spend. Kids were at the arcade. We were creating new diversions. It was peak pre-Internet.
The Terminator was a sign.
It’s a mini-miracle that it happened. Even more of a shock that it was so successful and seminal. First, studios didn’t want it. James Cameron couldn’t sell it because, bluntly, he was a NOBODY. The NYT review of the movie says the movie was:
…directed by James Cameron (Piranha II)…
Piranha II! He’s Mr. Avatar, Mr. Titanic, and his peak career reference then was “Piranha II: The Spawning”?
Fortunately there was a member of producer Roger Corman’s staff that liked the story idea. Cameron sold her the rights to it. For ONE DOLLAR. The catch was that if it ever got made, Cameron would be the director. She had a friend at Orion Pictures, and they took the bait.
This was never considered a “big movie.” Orion had just released Amadeus the previous month, which garnered Serious Movie respect and was on the way to eight Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. We are serious now. This monster-robot movie is NOT serious.
The budget for The Terminator? Six million dollars. That’s it! Much of it was filmed rogue (Corman style) and permit-free on the streets of L.A. at night. Filmed in only 6 weeks. Guess what Arnold was paid for this movie. Just guess…
He was paid $75,000! In the movie world, he was a “nobody,” too. None of the actors were excited. Arnold was shooting the sequel Conan The Destroyer when he signed. He told a reporter that The Terminator was “a shit movie” that he had to do. Linda Hamilton had just graduated from Strasberg’s prestigious acting academy. She was Shakespeare-ready. And now she was going to star with some bodybuilder guy?
The head of Orion, Mike Medavoy, didn’t want Arnold to be the killer robot. He wanted Arnold to play Kyle Reese, the good-guy character who follows the T-800 from the future and hooks up with Sarah Conner (Hamilton).
Guess who Medavoy wanted cast as The Terminator instead. O.J. Simpson! Can you imagine? Football hero O.J. Simpson, murderously chasing a blonde through Los Angeles??
Neither could Cameron at the time. He had indeed written the Terminator character to be a “plant,” to blend in with the crowd as a normal-looking stealthy villain. Arnold does not blend, of course. But Cameron loved him when he met him, and thought the Austrian accent would pass as some kind of SkyNet glitch. So fine, let’s make the T-800 robot a genetically conspicuous freak! Great call.
By the way, in the movie, SkyNet sent Arnold back from a robot-ruled dystopia in the year 2029. That means OpenAI has 5 years left to fulfill the prophecy. Crazy! I mean, you think it will really take that long?
Janet Maslin wrote the NYT review in ‘84. In retrospect it seems to describe the whole point of the movie. Arnold smashing things. She called it “Monster Mash.”
Much of it, as directed by James Cameron (''Piranha II''), has suspense and personality, and only the obligatory mayhem becomes dull. There is far too much of the latter, in the form of car chases, messy shootouts and Mr. Schwarzenegger's slamming brutally into anything that gets in his way — NYT 10/26/84
“Mr. Schwarzenegger,” eh? The Terminator made $78M at the box office. It also made James Cameron, and it made Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The sequel was seven years later (1991). T2’s budget wasn’t six million, it was $100 million, allegedly the most expensive movie ever made to that point. Fifteen million of that was Arnold’s paycheck! Arnold is fine now. Different story.
James Cameron is fine as well. The staffer who bought his movie for $1? That was Gale Ann Hurd. Later she produced The Walking Dead. So she’s probably fine, too.
Interesting family note about Cameron. He married Hurd after they partnered on The Terminator! They made it three years.
In 1991 he convinced Linda Hamilton to star in T2. Then he married Hamilton.
In 1997 he made Titanic, which included Suzy Amis in the role of old lady-Rose’s granddaughter in the submersible scenes. And, yep, he married Amis. They’re still married. They have three kids together.
My message about The Terminator: you never know. Gigantic cultural milestones can have dubious origins. Our collective unconscious was ready for a SkyNet story, but we didn’t know that until we saw it. The Terminator also needed to be Arnold, right? And Arnold needed to be the Terminator.
We had done dystopia in movies before, but never quite so…clearly believable.
Speaking of accents, it was only six years before The Terminator that we had the first digitally synthesized human voices in our homes. Wanna know what the first completely synthesized voice machine in our homes looked like? It looked like this:
Not kidding! The Speak & Spell was built around the Texas Instruments TMC0281 chip, the first ever mass produced voice synthesizer chip, designed for this toy. The first computer to talk to us. It made human-ish voices out of fragments - buzzes, pops, and clicks. I’ll be back, it should have said.
Family Ties S3E7: Hotline Fever
Humanities?!
We are reminded that ALEX is a full time college student. In the kitchen with JENNIFER, he frets about the requirement that freshmen must complete a humanities class.
ALEX: (holding course guide) I mean, listen to this one - ‘Humanities 1: Man, Society, Civilization, The Universe.’ How am I supposed to relate to this stuff?
JENNIFER: Just don’t talk in class, they’ll think you’re one of them.
DAD sits with Alex, looks through the options with him. There’s a loophole. He can fulfill the requirement by signing up for The Hotline, taking two shifts a week on a phone bank, helping students with personal problems.
Alex says it’s perfect because he can bring along his books and “catch up with my REAL courses, stuff that has nothing to do with people.”
Signing up
ALEX goes to the hotline office to sign up. He runs into classmate JAMES, a long-time academic rival. They compare the scholarships they’ve won. James razzes Alex about beating him in a 3rd grade spelling bee. They compare smartness.
It’s worth noting, given my recent writing about Black actors on ‘80s mainstream TV, that James is a Black man, which the show takes in stride without reference.
The ADMINISTRATOR assigns them to each other as training partners! They grimace.
Training session gets real
ALEX and JAMES show up for training. The ADMINISTRATOR says their trainer is on the way, and leaves them alone. Alex pulls out his backpack to do some homework. James goes to fetch a snack.
The hotline phone rings. It’s the trainer. He can’t make it. No training today. Alex celebrates and packs up.
He’s one foot out the door, and the phone rings again. Alex answers. It’s a real hotline call. His name is BILL.
Alex says “What’s your problem?” He gestures impatiently for the caller to get on with it, mouths “c’mon, c’mon, c’mon”
“I think I’m going to kill myself,” Bill says. Alex freezes. So does the studio audience.
James returns to the room. Alex explains. “OK. What did you tell him?” asks James. “I put him on hold!” says Alex.
The two of them botch it. A black humor bit. Bill asks for a reason to live and they flail. They fight over the phone and accidentally hang up on him.
One more chance
Bill calls back. James suggests that Alex “use the manual,” and Alex pages furiously to look for the right thing to say. He reads:
ALEX: Let’s reflect for a moment on all the positive aspects in one’s life. We can do that, can’t we, insert name?
Whoops!
They keep Bill on the line, they bore him with their own life stories, they give him their real names. They build a rapport.
Bill says he is scared. Alex says he gets scared, too. “Oh yeah? When?” asks Bill. We get serious. Alex cracks and gets self-conscious. No more breathless McFly, he speaks softly.
Alex says he’s scared about his future. James looks on.
BILL (on the phone): Why should that scare you? You told me you’ve always succeeded at everything
ALEX: I have. And that’s why I get scared. Because I’m afraid I might fail. And, uh…if I fail, I don’t know how I’d handle it. So I can’t let myself fail, I keep pushing myself to do better, and better, I keep trying harder and harder. And I’m afraid that if I stop…if I slow down and I stop being the best…and the brightest…and the wittiest, that uh…I’ll be nothing
Bill identifies. He feels better. He’s gonna hang up and get some sleep. He thanks them for their help, gets a laugh line when he says their goofy incompetence made him feel “superior.”
They are relieved. James offers his hand, but Alex goes for a man-hug. Everything is OK.