This is Later with Lee Matthews The Lee Matthews Podcast More of what you hear
weekday afternoons on the Drive. Mark Altman is a television and motion picture writer
producer who is the showrunner and executive producer of the sci fi series Pandora,
also the executive producer of The Librarians Castle Necessary Roughness. But he's got a
new four part book outs called The Greatest Geek Year in Films Ever, which
features stars, directors, writers, producers, and pop culture historians sharing their
insights about the greatest geek year ever. Hello, Mark, what was the
greatest Geek Year ever? Well, Lee, I think I think we subbed
it up to the title of TV series it is nineteen eighty two is the
greatest geek year ever. And you know, to pay homage to this incredible
year of movies in this four part series on the CW. It was extraordinary
because if you just go down the list of movies, it's incredible. Every
week there was something else remarkable. I mean, just look at the summer
of nineteen eighty two. You'd started two and Poltergeist opening June fourth, a
week later ETV Extraterrestrial the week after that, John corperent is the thing at
Blade Runner opens the same day along with a little movie called Mega Force,
and it's just incredible. I mean, look at the year at Sly had
that year. Rocky three comes out in April, First Blood comes out in
the fall. It's just you can't, you know, throughout dart at the
calendar and not come up with a remarkable movie we still talked about forty one
years later that opened that year. I remember being in the business early in
my career, and this was back when giving away movie passes was a big
deal, especially for the small town I grew up in, and I remember
it seems every week we had passes to give away for what was going to
be the next blockbuster. Yeah, and it's incredible because these are these films
were still talking about all these years later, and some of them were huge
hits, like obviously like Et, but then you have something like Blade Runner,
which just died at the box office, which is arguably now considered one
of the great films of all time. But it isn't every genre. I
mean, a fantasy had Conan in the Dark, Crystal, and you know
horror, Poltergeist and creep Show and Paul Schrader doing cat People and comedies.
Of course TUTSI in forty eight hours at Nightshift, which for me was part
of the best part of doing the show because we sat down with Ron Howard
and Henry Winkler, who could not be more excited to talk about Nightshift,
their first movie together, you know, coming off a happy days, and
Henry Winkler gives us his home movies from the set. He hadn't even developed
them. He says, well, I'll give me see show on the air
as long as you can go and get them developed and give me a copy
when you're done, which was wonderful. And so we have always never before
seen footage from behind the scenes of Night Shift, and it's just incredible.
I mean, it was so eye opening for me. And you know,
it wasn't just these incredible movies, but if you look at music, I
mean, it was Duran, Duran's Rio premiered Prince's nineteen ninety nine thriller I
Love Rock and Roll from Joan Jet, and then on TV it's everything from
Night Writer to t J. Hooker to Family Ties to Saint Elsewhere, all
premiered that year. Cheers premiered that year. I mean it was just an
exhortinary year, and I think Leonard Malton says it destined the documentary. He
says, we didn't know how good we had it. Well, there was
another thing coming along, and I don't know if you touch on it.
Robert Altman's with us, and I'm sorry, Mark Altman is with us.
And the greatest geek year ever in nineteen eighty two. There was another aspect
here. This is about the year when everybody was getting a VCR. I'm
so glad to hear you say that, because that's such an important part of
why this year I think resonates. This was the first year that home video
went from being rental only to where they were trying to sell the consumer directly,
and Paramount pioneered it. At the end of the year they released an
Officer Gentleman and started to the Wrath of con for thirty nine ninety five.
And that may sound really expensive, but at the time that was amazing because
the only way you could get videos were rent them at a video store,
and the video stores were paying over one hundred dollars each and this is nineteen
eighty two, so now all of a sudden you could buy them and build
a home video library. It was the beginning of home theater. And then
you also had the emergence of HBO, and that's how so many of these
films that even people did see affat became popular, like The Beast Master today
is a classic, and at the time people used to joke that HBO stood
for Hey Beast Masters on because it was on constantly because they always played the
PG movies during the day and the R rated movies at night, so a
lot of these PG movies would play over and over and over again, and
that's when people would start to memorize dialogue and stuff. But the emergence of
home video is so important, and of course the year before MTV premiered,
so you also see the power of music and a music video to open a
movie, whether it be Austin or Gentleman with that, Joe Cocker, Jennifer
will Op, will we Belong? Rocky three, who didn't hear Eye of
the Tiger in every incestantly everywhere you went all summer long, Survivor's Eye of
the Tiger and that helped open Rocky three. Mark Altman, the CW event,
the greatest Shiki year ever, nineteen eighty two. It's a four part
series, and I remember seeing the previews for Blade Runner that summer and thinking,
Wow, that looks visually stunning. I can't wait to see it.
It never came to my hometown. I don't know if it ever made it
that far, but you believe you me, that was one of the very
first things I saw when I got a VCR. That was where I first
exposed to it. And I think that's what made it such a cult classic.
People weren't seeing it in the theater. They saw it on video,
absolutely did. That movie was a notorious failure at the box office, but
people started to discover it on HBO, they discovered on home video and phs
and Betamax, and that's where it started to develop its mythic stature. And
you know, the second episode, which airs this Saturday and is also going
to be available on the c W app, is the science fiction episode,
So we do everything from Star Trek two to Blade Runner to Airplane two and
of course Megaforce. So it's a really great episode, and diving into Blade
Runner was really one of the joys we had shown young and so many people
that were involved in the making. John of Cassidy who were involved in making
that movie, and such a fascinating story how that movie came together, how
it almost didn't happen, and how it went from being a complete failure to
you know, considered a movie classic. Mark Altman, the c W event,
the Greatest Geek Year Ever, nineteen eighty two. See it on the
CW in four parts. This also was a time where our lives revolved around
the movie theater, and we don't that that doesn't happen anymore now, that's
true because movies now you are called content, right and back then they were
movies. They aren't. They were something special. There were something that you
counted the days, and going to the theater was you know that that was
something special. You know, now everything just shows up on a streaming platform
and it's all the same and it's just a little picture and you click on
it and you consume it and they call it content. But back then movies
were really something special. You could line up. You didn't have a reserve
seat, You couldn't buy tickets, you know, on your phone or on
the internet because those didn't exist, the cell phones in the internet. But
what you could do is you'd line up and sometimes you'd be lining up for
hours to see a movie that you really wanted to see. And when you
were doing that, it wasn't like online. You were in line and you
could talk to everyone online who was as excited as you were to see these
movies. And it was a really special experience. Going to the movies was
something very special and and we've lost that, and I think that's something we
really tried to recapture in the document Menery, and we talk a lot about
that in the premiere episode, which is repeated tonight at eight o'clock. And
it's just such a remarkable It was a remarkable time to be a fan of
movies and of popular culture, and I think it's sad that we've lost a
lot of that now that everything is so ubiquitous. It takes away the uniqueness
of the experience. Mark Altman, the producer and writer of the CW event
Greatest Geek Year Ever nineteen eighty two. If you're a nineteen eighty two geek
like me, you'll love the Greatest Geek Year Ever. And Mark, thank
you for joining us. Thank you so much, Lee, I appreciate you
having me. Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews, The Lee Matthews
Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five to
seven and I Heearts Media Presentation