Speaker 1: Hey, Snaffoo listeners, this is your host ed helms. I'm
Speaker 1: back in your feed for a bonus episode of snaffoo.
Speaker 1: Able Archer. At the very heart of it is a
Speaker 1: story about the nuclear conundrum, how the arms race left
Speaker 1: us with no winning options and an unacceptable margin for error,
Speaker 1: and no one summed this up better than the movie Wargames.
Speaker 1: You may recall back in previous episodes, we had great
Speaker 1: conversations with the movie star and National treasure Matthew Broderick,
Speaker 1: as well as its director John Badam. Those interviews were
Speaker 1: so fun and cool, but we just couldn't include all
Speaker 1: of it in those earlier episodes. So as a little treat,
Speaker 1: here's a bonus episode where we dive a little deeper
Speaker 1: into all things wargames. What was what was just like
Speaker 1: a normal day in the life of Matthew Broderick around
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two eighty three.
Speaker 2: Well, let's see, eighty two. I would be graduating high school,
Speaker 2: which was in New York City, Yes, and I was
Speaker 2: very happy to be done with that, and I didn't
Speaker 2: want to go right to college. I remember going to
Speaker 2: a college counsel a counselor at school who was supposed
Speaker 2: to tell you what schools you should apply to, you know,
Speaker 2: when you're a junior or whatever. And I remember she
Speaker 2: kept mentioning colleges that I had never heard of, so
Speaker 2: that that was a bad sign.
Speaker 1: Your guidance counselor didn't believe in you as well.
Speaker 2: Say no, I left the meeting less than I was not.
Speaker 2: I thought to myself, I'm going to have to find
Speaker 2: something else because nothing that she mentioned not only were
Speaker 2: they at schools that I had heard of, but none
Speaker 2: of them specialized in anything that I was at all
Speaker 2: good at. So I was taking a year to kind
Speaker 2: of see if I could, you know, get a job
Speaker 2: or something acting. And that's why I knew that's what
Speaker 2: I wanted to do, but I had no idea if
Speaker 2: I would, you know, be somebody who could do that.
Speaker 2: But so my memory of that time is is trying
Speaker 2: to basically become an actor.
Speaker 1: What was the lead up to the sort of war
Speaker 1: games opportunity.
Speaker 2: Well, I started in high school doing a bunch of
Speaker 2: plays and I felt I was good at it. Now
Speaker 2: why I felt that, I don't know, but I mean
Speaker 2: I was better at that than at many of my
Speaker 2: other endeavors in high school I'll put it that way,
Speaker 2: so same here. Yeah, I get it. It wasn't that
Speaker 2: I was good at it. It was that I wasn't
Speaker 2: as bad at that as I was at Algebra two.
Speaker 1: There was nothing else to go after, really, that's the truth.
Speaker 2: And I went to HB Studio, which was in the
Speaker 2: village it still is, I think, and I took classes, sure,
Speaker 2: and then my first girlfriend, and so I had a
Speaker 2: kind of a great summer. As I remember, I auditioned
Speaker 2: for everything. And you know, there was this movie called
Speaker 2: The Genius that I auditioned for that I wouldn't let
Speaker 2: me read the script, but it was a you know,
Speaker 2: a boy in a computer. And then I somehow got
Speaker 2: a callback and another callback, and then I read for
Speaker 2: the new casting director and then maybe even a third
Speaker 2: casting director. The Genius became more games, by the way,
Speaker 2: this was its original title. Oh okay, yeah. And then
Speaker 2: somehow I got a play in New York, which was right,
Speaker 2: you know, very successful play, and suddenly that everything changed.
Speaker 2: Then it was like, oh, he's the guy from that play,
Speaker 2: you know everybody, and I got a Neil Simon movie
Speaker 2: out of that.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: So while I was shooting the Neil Simon movie. They
Speaker 2: wanted me to read again for War Games, and I
Speaker 2: had now read for it, I don't know a million times.
Speaker 1: And had you already read for the for the director
Speaker 1: at the time was Martin Bress. Martin Brest, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you'd already read for him.
Speaker 2: I had. So my dad, who was an actress, said
Speaker 2: ask the director, Herbert Ross, of the of the Neil
Speaker 2: Simon movie, ask if they can see some dailies. So
Speaker 2: I somehow had the nerve to ask my agent, and
Speaker 2: Herbert Ross, who was directing the Neil Simon movie, was like, sure, absolutely,
Speaker 2: and he ran. He picked out some nice scenes of
Speaker 2: mine and showed it to Marty Breast. You know, they
Speaker 2: screened it in those days. It wasn't like, you know,
Speaker 2: click on it. It was they came and watched it
Speaker 2: at you know, the studio.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's really cool. He really believed in.
Speaker 2: You and made the effort, you know, and so you
Speaker 2: need all that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's really cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so so finally you get the part. Had you
Speaker 1: read the full script at this point or were you
Speaker 1: just reading sides or did you know a lot about
Speaker 1: what the movie was.
Speaker 2: Around that time? I think I finally was allowed to
Speaker 2: read the whole thing. It was really a very fun read.
Speaker 2: You know, it was a you just really wanted to
Speaker 2: know how it was going to end up. You know.
Speaker 2: It wasn't the most like intense acting part or something,
Speaker 2: but I just thought, this is a thriller, you know.
Speaker 2: I loved the story. The only you know, my father
Speaker 2: was dying and actually died during it.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I don't think of that movie without that.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 2: To tell you the truth, it's a little almost like
Speaker 2: a surreal memory to me because I was, on the
Speaker 2: one hand, so pleased with myself and you know, excited
Speaker 2: about what had happened to me, and also at the
Speaker 2: same time the absolute opposite. And you guys were close,
Speaker 2: very close, and you know, he'd been sick for I
Speaker 2: knew that it was coming. It wasn't like that, but
Speaker 2: you know, there's no way to not. You know, he
Speaker 2: died during it, and I was shooting one or two
Speaker 2: days later, I think, wow, you know, I didn't really
Speaker 2: want anybody to say how are you or anything, and
Speaker 2: they and they didn't, you know, and we went on
Speaker 2: with I'm very glad I had it. It probably saved
Speaker 2: my life.
Speaker 1: It's so fascinating. I was in I was shooting the
Speaker 1: office when my dad passed. Oh really and went back
Speaker 1: and it was the same thing. I was so grateful
Speaker 1: to have.
Speaker 2: That something to put your mind on for a while, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so all the excitement of this first experience.
Speaker 1: He must have been so proud that you got this opportunity.
Speaker 2: He was definitely so.
Speaker 1: Then even the release of the movie is so bittersweet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: is not being there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, you know, but I like to think he
Speaker 2: was glad to see that he had that he left
Speaker 2: while I had some hope of a career sure, or
Speaker 2: you know, make a living. And truthfully, it was such
Speaker 2: a break from that that I didn't feel it at work,
Speaker 2: you know. I just felt the movie. So I you know,
Speaker 2: I threw myself into it, and I love the story, you.
Speaker 1: Know, Yeah, it really is. It's like kind of a
Speaker 1: perfect screenplay as a thriller with comedic elements, and there's
Speaker 1: never a wasted scene or a dull moment. Did it
Speaker 1: change a lot from those early drafts to what it
Speaker 1: eventually was?
Speaker 4: It?
Speaker 2: Did? I mean, are you talking to John Badam too?
Speaker 5: In the summer of nineteen eighty two, I get a
Speaker 5: call from my agent at the time Lee Rosenberg, who said,
Speaker 5: there's this project over at United Artists that they're in
Speaker 5: trouble with the director, and they wonder if you would
Speaker 5: take a look at it. And I'm recommending that you
Speaker 5: don't take a look at it, because if they're in
Speaker 5: trouble with the director, that means the whole project is troubled.
Speaker 5: So you better stay away from it. But I have
Speaker 5: to make the call and tell you about it. And
Speaker 5: I replied to him, I said, but Lee, what if
Speaker 5: the script is any good? So we read it and
Speaker 5: I'm going, oh my god, I am so lucky to
Speaker 5: be reading this script. This script is wonderful. I told
Speaker 5: that to Leonard and I said, let me think about
Speaker 5: it and I'll get back to you. He said, well,
Speaker 5: we're shooting every day, so you better be fast about this.
Speaker 5: So I started driving home and I got about three
Speaker 5: blocks from MGM and I stomped on the brakes. Now
Speaker 5: this is before cell phones, and I had to find
Speaker 5: a phone booth. And I said, Leonard, I know what
Speaker 5: it is. These actors, these characters aren't having any fun.
Speaker 5: The scene that you showed me was Matthew Broderick showing
Speaker 5: Ali Sheety how he could change her grades at school
Speaker 5: on the school computer. These actors are playing it like
Speaker 5: they're going to blow up the White House, and instead,
Speaker 5: if I could change your girl's grades in my high school,
Speaker 5: I would be peeing in my pants with excitement. This
Speaker 5: would be the most fun thing. I would be so
Speaker 5: thrilled and scared and excited about it. I said, I
Speaker 5: think that's where the director has gone off track. I mean,
Speaker 5: he was on schedule and from what I could what
Speaker 5: I could understand, everything had been beautifully prepared. But suddenly
Speaker 5: they were getting a very dark film. So I said, well,
Speaker 5: if I come on, that's that's what I would do.
Speaker 5: I would make make those alterations, make it, make it funny.
Speaker 5: So they said, well, when can you start.
Speaker 2: I couldn't believe I'd gotten the job. And then the
Speaker 2: director got fired. It was pretty sure I was out too, by.
Speaker 1: The way, right, sure, there's no way that There's no
Speaker 1: way a director gets fired and the lead actor isn't
Speaker 1: like I probably wasn't doing the right thing either.
Speaker 2: So wait a minute, they're throwing out two weeks of
Speaker 2: work I just did. That's interesting. And and you know,
Speaker 2: John Badam came and basically fired absolutely everybody but kept
Speaker 2: to me and Ali Cheety and one or two others.
Speaker 2: But he was our first meeting with John Badam. He
Speaker 2: was like, I'm going to keep both of you.
Speaker 5: Well, that was a good choice, but I also wanted
Speaker 5: the ability to replace anybody that I thought maybe was
Speaker 5: not cast as best they could be, So we made
Speaker 5: a couple of changes in the secondary cast our general
Speaker 5: of Norad. We recast him and one or two other characters.
Speaker 5: But Ali Sheety and Matthew Broderick were wonderful. I mean
Speaker 5: they were terrific. For example, the scene that where Matthew
Speaker 5: takes her into his bedroom and shows her how it
Speaker 5: can change the grade. We decided that we needed to
Speaker 5: reshoot that because, as we said earlier, they were not
Speaker 5: having any fun, and I knew that the scene needed
Speaker 5: to be much much better than what had been originally shot,
Speaker 5: not just a little bit better. And so we did
Speaker 5: a few takes and they were stiff as boards. These
Speaker 5: two poor actors were so scared that they too were
Speaker 5: going to be acted out of the movie and get fired.
Speaker 5: We're stiff as they could be, and so I'm starting
Speaker 5: to try to loosen them up to entertain them. I'm
Speaker 5: running in. I'm making bad dad jokes, which is the
Speaker 5: only kind of oaks I know how to make, and
Speaker 5: being silly. And after about nine or ten takes, I
Speaker 5: called a halt to everything, and I said, okay, all right,
Speaker 5: we're going to take a little bit of a break
Speaker 5: here for a minute, and Matthew and Ally you come
Speaker 5: with me. And I took them outside the stage at MGM,
Speaker 5: which is a wonderful big old movie lot, and I said,
Speaker 5: what we're going to do here is we're going to
Speaker 5: run around, have a race around the soundstage the outside,
Speaker 5: and the last person back has to sing a song
Speaker 5: in front of the crew. And they went what I said, Yeah,
Speaker 5: here we go. Okay, let's go, and we ran and
Speaker 5: ran and ran and ran, and of course I was
Speaker 5: the last person back. I was a good twenty years
Speaker 5: older than them, and so now I had to sing
Speaker 5: a song in front of the crew, which was the
Speaker 5: dumbest song I could think of, which was something called
Speaker 5: The Happy Wanderer about a guy who's wandering through the
Speaker 5: Alps and going.
Speaker 6: Hold it, hold it rop. Okay, Okay, we got through that. Okay,
Speaker 6: let's go for a take.
Speaker 2: Those your grades stuff.
Speaker 1: I don't think that I deserved it.
Speaker 4: Do you.
Speaker 3: You can't do that already done?
Speaker 5: That was the one that we printed.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 5: Just you know, you do what you can to loosen
Speaker 5: people up and get them, get them there, and to
Speaker 5: let them know that it's okay to have fun. Uh.
Speaker 5: And and this is we're not curing cancer here, We're
Speaker 5: just making a movie.
Speaker 2: The first day, first cup of date shooting with John Badam,
Speaker 2: I was like, he's so different than Martin Breast too.
Speaker 4: Uh huh.
Speaker 2: Martin Bess was very methody and actory, you know, and
Speaker 2: you should feel a certain way and get into it.
Speaker 2: And so now I'm doing a scene and I finished
Speaker 2: the scene, you know, doing something on the computer, and
Speaker 2: I hear a voice from from behind the camera. John
Speaker 2: Badam says, and smile, smile. Will you smile? Like he
Speaker 2: was telling me what face to me?
Speaker 1: And you're like, that's not acting. Smile.
Speaker 2: Martin Best never did that. But yeah, but sure enough
Speaker 2: I smiled. You know, I did everything, and thank god
Speaker 2: he kept me, he kept me around.
Speaker 1: That's so funny. Do you That's that actually raises an
Speaker 1: interesting question separate from all this. Yeah, do you do
Speaker 1: you like a director who is very literal, like that,
Speaker 1: or do you prefer someone who's a little more kind
Speaker 1: of like in the emotion of it and in the
Speaker 1: sort of like, yeah, do you have a strong.
Speaker 2: Preference, Well, you know, my preference is somebody who's like
Speaker 2: I can understand and who I think is good. I
Speaker 2: don't know how to but like, I don't mind people
Speaker 2: who I know you're not supposed to say smile, but
Speaker 2: if it's if it's somebody good and as John Batham
Speaker 2: is and and in a way that's they might as
Speaker 2: well just say it. Because I see directors sometimes bend over.
Speaker 2: I'm sure you feel this way too. Of course, you
Speaker 2: know you can see their brain trying to say. I know,
Speaker 2: I'm not supposed to tell them to be angry or.
Speaker 1: Happy or give them a line reading or exactly.
Speaker 2: How many words can I use to make a line reading?
Speaker 2: Like just tell me the line ate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. I'm just saying I'm very practical that way.
Speaker 1: And I tell directors sometimes like I can feel you
Speaker 1: dancing around, that's just tell me what you want, like, definitely,
Speaker 1: I love I love a mechanical direction like me too,
Speaker 1: like hold your arm higher, okay, sure, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well then I can I can understand what they mean,
Speaker 2: and then I can I can turn it into actory
Speaker 2: terms if I want or not. Yeah, and see I
Speaker 2: even sometimes and this doesn't come up so well. But
Speaker 2: I'll sometimes tell a director who's really hemming and allying,
Speaker 2: why don't you show me which I like to make
Speaker 2: them feel horrible and uncomfortable and act this out for me.
Speaker 2: You play me, Yeah, I'll read the other part. You
Speaker 2: show me what you want. If they're being really irritating,
Speaker 2: I'll do that.
Speaker 1: That's great.
Speaker 2: At least I know exactly what they want, all right.
Speaker 1: So the so the movie production is starting. Now it's
Speaker 1: you and Ali Sheety and this incredible cast Barry Corbin
Speaker 1: Dabney Coleman, who I love.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Ben Barry Corbman.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And they're both just it's like the cowboy and the nerd,
Speaker 1: and they're just they're such a perfect conflict.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't trust this overgrown pile of microchips and if
Speaker 2: further like to throw it.
Speaker 4: And I don't know if you want to trust the
Speaker 4: safety of our country to some silicombe dial In general,
Speaker 4: nobody is talking about and trusting the safety of the
Speaker 4: nation to a machine.
Speaker 1: For God's sake, And what's compelling about those two characters
Speaker 1: that they is that they really represent two kind of
Speaker 1: competing points of view very literally in the story, but
Speaker 1: I think also kind of culturally, which is, do we
Speaker 1: trust technology or do we trust gut r and Dabney's
Speaker 1: Dabney Coleman is saying, let's trust Whopper the computer to
Speaker 1: to to launch missiles. And Barry Corbin is you know,
Speaker 1: chewing his redman chewing tobacco and saying, uh, no way, man,
Speaker 1: guy can't take the human out of it. You gotta
Speaker 1: trust humans.
Speaker 2: But they mess up at the beginning, right, that's in
Speaker 2: the missile silo.
Speaker 1: Right, the humans mess up in the in the opening, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is a wild entry to the film, and it
Speaker 1: sets the stage for like mistrusting humans.
Speaker 5: Put your hand on the key, serve launch.
Speaker 1: Sure, we are at locks.
Speaker 3: Turn your keys. Sorry, We're so sorry. Turn your key, sir.
Speaker 5: We've had men in these silos since before any of
Speaker 5: you were watching Howdy Doty.
Speaker 3: For myself, I sleep pretty well at night.
Speaker 5: No one knows boys are down there.
Speaker 4: General, we all know they're fine, man, But in a
Speaker 4: nuclear war, we can't afford to have our missiles lying dormant.
Speaker 4: In those silos because those men refuse to turn the
Speaker 4: keys when the computers tell them to.
Speaker 2: Turn your key.
Speaker 1: Yeah, turn your key, that whole thing. I was watching
Speaker 1: the movie with my wife a couple of nights ago.
Speaker 1: She just goes, man, there were a lot of buttons
Speaker 1: in the eighties. It's true, walls buttons and like everything.
Speaker 1: It's like, okay, ignite or you know, uh, switch operation too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like thirty.
Speaker 1: Buttons to do one thing. Yeah, there's some part of
Speaker 1: our inner child that just wants to click all those
Speaker 1: yeah buttons.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now it's just these damn touch screens.
Speaker 1: I have one quibble with the movie that I just
Speaker 1: have to I have to mention, which is that you're
Speaker 1: very disappointingly bad at Galaga.
Speaker 2: Now, I mean, you're okay, but you know, I understand.
Speaker 4: I do.
Speaker 2: I must in my defense tell you. You know, they edit
Speaker 2: it so like in yeah, pressure whatever, there wasn't enough
Speaker 2: film in the camera if I had played at my best, because.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess so, okay, I'll take your work for it,
Speaker 1: but I will say, like to be able to work
Speaker 1: on a movie where the whole thing is like you're
Speaker 1: gonna get to play Galaga for free, for as long
Speaker 1: as we're shooting this scene.
Speaker 2: They gave me a Gallica machine. I'm not kidding. Oh,
Speaker 2: Marty Brest was like, you should get good at Gallagha,
Speaker 2: we'll send one over. Oh wow, So my little apart
Speaker 2: men in Santa Monica had a Galaga in it.
Speaker 1: Oh that's amazing, which I could.
Speaker 2: I was so excited by that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's huge.
Speaker 1: So what are some of your memories about culture at
Speaker 1: that time, you know, in particular some of the political
Speaker 1: landscape afoot Reagan as president. How were you feeling any of.
Speaker 3: The Cold War?
Speaker 2: Well? I think everybody felt it a little when I remember,
Speaker 2: you know, Reagan saying he's going to put weapons in
Speaker 2: space and people saying that was going to get everybody killed, and.
Speaker 1: That really pissed off the Russians.
Speaker 2: Yes, so it was scary to read about all these
Speaker 2: you know, every time we would add a missile system,
Speaker 2: they would add one or and vice versa. And it
Speaker 2: was you could read articles that would say, there's absolutely
Speaker 2: no way this can end except for everybody being blown
Speaker 2: up pretty soon.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Mutual destruction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, mad right. I had a book with pictures that
Speaker 2: it called mad I think mutual assured destruction. And that
Speaker 2: book proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that we
Speaker 2: had about five years as a planet.
Speaker 5: Ever since the nineteen sixties, I would say, even maybe
Speaker 5: the late nineteen fifties, we were seeing this constant build
Speaker 5: up of nuclear facilities and nuclear warheads. I remember I
Speaker 5: was in grammar school after World War Two, and we had,
Speaker 5: you know, constant drills for what would happen with nuclear explosions.
Speaker 5: You know, I'm sure you've heard the phrase duck and cover.
Speaker 5: You know, we're going to duck under our little third
Speaker 5: grader desks, and that was going to save us from
Speaker 5: the nuclear bomb. And you knew that it was going
Speaker 5: to fly off the handle in some crazy way, but
Speaker 5: nobody was doing anything about it. And of course this
Speaker 5: is before Gorbachev took down the wall and so on. Basically,
Speaker 5: it was a scary kind of world where often your
Speaker 5: reaction was to, like the Ostrich, bury your head in
Speaker 5: the sand and just hope to hell it went away
Speaker 5: without blowing up the planet. The military has thought up
Speaker 5: hundreds of different scenarios of possible ways that things could
Speaker 5: happen as they're trying to get around this problem of
Speaker 5: how do you make the right decision. It's just way
Speaker 5: too complicated a problem for us to be cleanly and
Speaker 5: easily dealing with.
Speaker 2: Originally it had an ending where the bomb went off,
Speaker 2: I believe. Oh wow, Like I remember, there's some scene
Speaker 2: where I'm looking in a mirror. At the very end,
Speaker 2: I wake up. I'm home. It's all over, you know,
Speaker 2: And I get up and brushing my teeth or something,
Speaker 2: and there's a flash of light and all the skin
Speaker 2: burns off of my face or something. What yep, And
Speaker 2: then I wake up.
Speaker 3: Oh okay.
Speaker 2: So it's just a little nightmare that David Lightman had
Speaker 2: after going through this whole thing, right, which you know,
Speaker 2: wisely they when they edited, they were like, no, it's
Speaker 2: over in that war room.
Speaker 4: Yeah, greetings, Professor Falcon, Hello, Joshua James.
Speaker 1: Game.
Speaker 5: The only winning mood is not today. It was the
Speaker 5: closest thing to an anti war message that we had
Speaker 5: because we didn't want to make it a big preachy movie.
Speaker 5: It was meant to be something that was very entertaining,
Speaker 5: but that could at the very end zing you with
Speaker 5: something that you go, oh, yes, yes, we.
Speaker 2: Did want it to be a warning to some degree. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, everybody there was, like everybody else scared of
Speaker 2: nuclear war.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's such a backdrop for the whole thing.
Speaker 1: The air you're breathing was fear, yes, fear of technology,
Speaker 1: fear of nuclear annihilation, and this movie kind of like
Speaker 1: really hits both the technology and the weapons.
Speaker 2: Definitely, And now that I think of it, some people
Speaker 2: were into disarmament and some were not, so we were.
Speaker 2: Everybody who made that movie, I think was very on
Speaker 2: the side of disarmament. You know, they wanted they wanted
Speaker 2: Reagan and GARBAGEV to make a deal. So if it
Speaker 2: has a political point of view, I'm sure it's that
Speaker 2: they everybody there wanted it to make deals with Russia
Speaker 2: and not just keep building weapons.
Speaker 1: A great magic trick that way, because it's it's unbelievably
Speaker 1: entertaining and fun to watch, but it also, you know,
Speaker 1: from a sort of like commentary standpoint, allows you to
Speaker 1: play out the fantasy of nuclear annihilation and hopefully scare
Speaker 1: you a little bit or scare the political establishment a
Speaker 1: little bit into doing something.
Speaker 5: When the film actually came out, it definitely had an influence,
Speaker 5: and thank goodness, it was a It was a big
Speaker 5: success at the box office. So we knew that our
Speaker 5: film was being seen by many, many people, and especially
Speaker 5: by an audience of young people who could identify with
Speaker 5: Matthew and ally remember the time that we're in nobody
Speaker 5: understood computers very much. Certainly adults did not. The kids
Speaker 5: were understanding it and we're getting it right away, and
Speaker 5: the adults were thinking, well, that's stupid. No little kid
Speaker 5: could do this. There were many articles in different newspapers
Speaker 5: that said, this is complete, blowney, none of this could
Speaker 5: possibly happen, this is all ridiculous. That was part of
Speaker 5: the part of the drama and the humor of it.
Speaker 5: That it was not some evil Russian or evil Germanic force.
Speaker 5: God knows what it could be, but it was just
Speaker 5: just a little kid being playful and playing without motive equipment. Well,
Speaker 5: the wonderful thing about movies is you can often look
Speaker 5: beyond what's possible, and sometimes sometimes you can be spot
Speaker 5: on with it and in seeing things that could happen
Speaker 5: in the future. Well, it wasn't more than a couple
Speaker 5: of weeks after the movie that was released. Uh, Suddenly,
Speaker 5: from I believe Minnesota, three guys broke into Norad or
Speaker 5: they they broke into the Defense Department's computer. Our whole
Speaker 5: defense system was much more fragile and much more vulnerable
Speaker 5: than anybody wanted to announce. And here are young kids,
Speaker 5: maybe inspired by our movie or just maybe because they
Speaker 5: were out there all along, that they were actually, you know,
Speaker 5: breaking breaking into places. When Reagan came into office, we
Speaker 5: had we had made the film. And one of the
Speaker 5: first things that he happened to do when he was
Speaker 5: in office was to run more games for He and
Speaker 5: Nancy at the at the White House one night, and
Speaker 5: and he started talking about how we how we could
Speaker 5: fight these nuclear problems with our Star Wars defense and
Speaker 5: he started talking about that, and they said, well, this
Speaker 5: is ridiculous. We don't have technology that would be anything
Speaker 5: like that. He said, yes, we do. Nancy and I
Speaker 5: saw this film the other night, war Games, and they
Speaker 5: have that kind of technology. Well, Mommy and I were
Speaker 5: watching this movie, War Games, and we were thinking that
Speaker 5: we could do the same thing. Mommy was very happy
Speaker 5: about seeing it.
Speaker 1: Are you aware that Ronald Reagan screened the movie right
Speaker 1: after it came out. No, this is an amazing story.
Speaker 1: The New York Times did a piece on this bunch
Speaker 1: of years ago. Ronald Reagan watched it just you know,
Speaker 1: kicking back with Nancy at Camp David, just watching a
Speaker 1: pop culture movie. It rattled him so badly that he called,
Speaker 1: in his defense establishment, all the you know, the big
Speaker 1: wigs into the White House, and he said, is this possible?
Speaker 1: Is it possible that some rogue kid could or worse,
Speaker 1: like a Russian actor penetrate our computer systems and our
Speaker 1: missile systems and so forth. And the takeaway was, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a little more possible than any of us would
Speaker 1: like to admit. And so that precipitated some of the
Speaker 1: very first cybersecurity policy, you know, from a national defense standpoint.
Speaker 2: Well, that's very Yeah, you're welcome, everybody.
Speaker 1: Right, Thank you, Thank you, Matthew. Special thanks to Matthew
Speaker 1: Broderick and John Batham for joining us to talk all
Speaker 1: things war games. Next week we have another bonus episode
Speaker 1: where I interview a Cold War cage be agent, So
Speaker 1: check back for that. You're not gonna want to miss it.
Speaker 1: Snap Who is a production of iHeartRadio, Film, Nation Entertainment,
Speaker 1: and Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio.
Speaker 1: It's executive produced by me Ed Helms, Milan Papelka, Mike Falbo,
Speaker 1: Andy Chuck, and Whitney Donaldson. Our lead producers are Sarah
Speaker 1: Joyner and Alyssa Martino. Our producer is Carl Nellis. Associate
Speaker 1: producer Tory Smith. This bonus episode was edited by Carl
Speaker 1: Nellis and Dustin Brown. Our senior editor is Jeffrey Lewis.
Speaker 1: Olivia Canny is our production assistant. Our creative executive is
Speaker 1: Brett Harris. Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Alison Cohen and Matt Aisenstadt.