Welcome to the Decipher podcast. We are doing a Hacker movie
podcast about war games. We have the original band back
together, Zoe Lindsay and Pete Baker here with me along with
Lindsay O'Donnell Welch, who I think this is your first Hacker
Movie podcast with us, Linds. Which is crazy.
I'm honored to be here. Thanks for coming on our
podcast. I love that we're doing it again
so we can do like Taylor's version of this this time.
Yes, perfect. Not released from the shackles
of the corporate overlords. Yes, I, yeah, we did do this
probably in 2019 is my guess. Somewhere in that early 2019
time frame. Yes, somewhere around there.
Closer to when the movie came out than now.
Right, Yes, yeah. When you we're still building a
tree house for your kids that are now in high school, Pete,
something like that. We're off to a good start.
So this is a a favorite movie, I think of all of ours.
We have a a very large age range here, Pete and I on the the
higher end of the scale, Zoe and Lindsay down on the on the lower
end of the scale. So I think when we did this the
first time, we probably talked about our first, like when we
became aware of this movie, for me, it was going to a movie
theater and seeing it in 1983, somewhere around my 11th
birthday, I would guess. Pete, I don't know.
Did you you might, you're a couple years younger than I am.
Would you? Yeah, I didn't get in the
theaters. They may have like re released
it, but it was definitely one of like the early VHS tapes I
rented. Oh yeah, at like 7 or 8 years
old. Yeah, and I don't even have to
ask you, Zoe or Lindsey, but we would like love to hear.
I know you, Linds, were not not able to see this in the theater
'cause you were -10 years old or something like that.
Yeah, I was. I would say I was probably in
the womb or before so it. Came out in 1983.
You were not even close. Yes, but yeah, no, I, I probably
have, you know, I think probably, you know, a decade
ago, it was when I first saw it, but, and it wasn't even because
it was, you know, within the field that I'm doing, I just
really enjoy 80s movies and you know, that that entire kind of
range of actors and actresses I I really like.
So I, I saw it because of that. And then, you know, as I got
into cybersecurity, I was like, huh, this is really cool and saw
it again and then. Yeah.
So I've only seen it like maybe three times, whereas I'm sure
all of you guys have seen it like at least a dozen at this
point, if not double that. So a.
Dozen is generous too. I spend my time.
I've seen it three times this weekend, but to be honest.
It's on in the background right now.
Perfect. Yeah, what about you, Zoe?
I was thinking, I remember the like living room frame around
the TV that I saw it on. So I saw it at my friend's
house, which means it was either on HBO or taped off of HBO
because they had HBO and so they had the robust movie collection.
Yeah, that's that sounds about right.
It was one of those HBO movies that was just on in the 80s from
like, you know, however long it took to get to HBO back then,
like 8586, whatever it was, it was just on forever.
And it was one of those movies. I just remember, you know, a lot
like sneakers, which, you know, we all love too, where you just
kind of committed at a point you're like, oh, awesome.
You know, they're they're getting to the island with
Falcon's house and he's going to do weird dinosaur shit with
them. And you're a little worried
about like his like him having teenagers on his island.
I'm going to sit down and watch this or like, you know, the
Nora, that tour is coming and there's going to be that
happening. Or, you know, like, you know,
Matthew Broderick, dopey parents are going to eat raw corn at the
dinner table and you're going to get grossed out and, just, like,
laugh. It very much seemed on this
rewatch, it very much seemed like Matthew Broderick's parents
were like the parody of parents that you would see in a kids
cartoon. Like, like they are such like
archetype cutouts that it's just like they they seemed like
animated characters in a live action movie almost.
Yeah, straight out of central casting for.
Yeah, truly. Inept.
You know, technocratic genius spawning parents.
And also just like completely ignoring their kid, which was
like a seventies 80s parent thing.
Like the, you know, my parents had no idea where the hell that
was 90% of the time, right? And they clearly have no idea
what the hell David is doing. You know, he's wandering around,
he's got his own computer setup up there.
They they don't ever even walk up the stairs like they spend
all of their time in that living room or the kitchen or whatever.
They never go to his bedroom. They're, you know, they have
they're. Just glad he he he brought a
girl home. His little friend.
You're the friend, yeah. Not failing on his report card,
yeah. Yeah, exactly.
No double checking that one like a OK.
I always forget that he's like a terrible student in this movie,
which they emphasize like right away, you know, like failed his
what? Chemistry or biology or whatever
it was exam him analogy. Biology one, Yeah, which maybe
has one of the better like lines of of all in it.
When the teachers asked him about asexual reproduction, he's
like, why don't you tell me who who came up with the idea of
reproduction without sex? He's like, you're a wife.
He's like, yeah, that's like a Rodney Dangerfield.
Literally or like a henny young man like one liner just like.
Weird. What is happening here?
What the the HBO mentioned, though, I realize, I think I
realized how how the vast majority of the time I've seen
this movie has been that kind of situation where you kind of jump
in a few minutes into it or halfway through it or something.
It had been so long since I saw the entirety of the opening
scene in the, you know, the first NORAD bunker kind of
thing. Where there, you know, the two
man rule doesn't happen and that's why they're, you know,
going through all this stuff. Them getting into that and going
down the elevator. I'd had it totally mixed up in
my head with the spy, not spy versus spy.
What's spies like us? Spies like us, the the same
opening scene when they're like out in New Mexico or something
and they go and they have to get a Pepsi from the fountains
loaded to unlock the elevator to go down.
I thought that was working. It's kind of the.
Same. It's the same thing.
They go into some weird abandoned house, but yeah.
But it's also like. I'm glad it wasn't the Pepsi
unlock thing. That was a little little heavy
product placement there. It's not far off though, because
like the, the goofiness of it, they go through this whole drawn
out thing where the 2 replacement guys come to the
bunker. They go through this whole
security procedure, you know, the ID cards, the whole, you
know, PIN pad verification, all that kind of stuff.
And then they get in there it, I mean, this is like 5 or 7
minutes of the movie that just really is just like a prologue
to set up this test essentially that these two guys failed.
You know, Michael Madsen and who I always forget.
I told you, Pete, every time I see this movie, I forget that
Michael Madsen is in that first scene.
And I'm always so excited with Leo McGarry from Oregon.
Yes, it always like kind of shocks me.
Holy shit, that guy's in this movie.
I completely forgot he just died like what, 8 months ago or
something but. And he was like, he looked 18 in
it, too. Yeah.
No doubt. Which is crazy because Michael
Madison just looks 70 all the time, or at least like 50 all
the time. So seeing him look young at all
was very often, Yeah. It is.
It's one of those movies where it's like right out the gate
there's like a Leo moment of oh, I know, I know him.
And that happens through the whole thing.
I think that isn't one of the generals.
Also the guy that was the principal and Back to the
Future. Yes.
He's not a general. He's like one of the civilian
consultants that's in the Yeah. He's a student.
Yep, the Principal and Back to the Future and the Admiral and
Top Gun. Yeah.
James Toback, I think, is his name.
I should have done some research.
I've only seen this 400 times. But yes, I always forget that
he's in this too. And there's just so much of
that. But there's the whole before we
ever get to any of like, the Hacker movie stuff that we all
love about this, it's just like kind of a goofy 80s movie with,
you know, David and Ally Sheedy's character, Jennifer,
you know, who are apparently, like, lovable kind of goofball,
like, not great students, like, you know, failing biology exams.
I take it they're seniors. I don't really know.
Well, maybe not. She's riding a moped.
Might be junior. Dirt dirt bike.
It's a dirt, dirt. Bike.
OK, yeah, way, way cooler. Either way, they don't have
cars. They're just kind of like
cruising around Seattle, like not going to class, not doing
any homework. Ally Sheedy's doing like
aerobics commercials or something.
We find out towards the end of the movie, which I forgot about
too. Yeah, they're remarkably
unbothered by like having to be in school or anything like that,
or have parents or obligations. Yes, yeah.
Is that what your high school experience was like?
Lindsay? I know you're you're a you're a
good student. So it's probably I feel.
Like I would have made they made questionable decisions that I
would have probably made differently.
Yeah. It is interesting that like,
especially at this point in 80s movies, it felt like if if you
had high school characters, they were getting slotted into like
an archetype. Like you were, you were going to
be a jock, you were going to be a nerd, Like you were going to
be like the Alex P Keaton, like young capitalist, you know,
business person. And it was neat that this was, I
mean, they were they were just kids.
Like, you know, they're kind of kind of goofy goofing off in
class, but also really smart. Like they didn't have, they
didn't have that central casting kind of character outline.
Lightman kind of fit an archetype, but Ally Sheedy is
like a total outlier for me. Like like you're saying like a
high school girl in the 80s riding a dirt bike and like
wearing sweater vests. Like, I don't know where to put
her in my brain as far as like, you know, references anywhere
else in the stuff. She seems smart.
She's at least personable, but we don't really get any other
than she's not good at testing or doesn't try.
Like we don't really get much fleshing out of her other than
like a couple interesting elements.
Like we never see her parents. We they never seem to care that
she's like off on this adventure just.
Hanging out in Lightman's room like she's.
Very preppy for a kid with a dirt bike like.
This was the era of commercials reminding you to check if you
had your children at home, like 11.
So. Yeah, Captain Lou Albana
reminding you to. It's 10:00.
That's right. The street lights are on.
Do you know where your children are?
Like, this is. I forgot all about that, Zoe.
That was like, my entire childhood is literally.
Yeah. Yeah.
So it's so true. But the first indication we get
of like, kind of the mischief is on that dirt bike, dirt bike
ride home from school after they both failed their tests, where
Ali Sheedy's like, oh, so I guess you have to go to summer
school, too. And he's like, Nope, I don't
think so. And she's like, what do you mean
you got to pass biology to graduate?
He's like, yeah, I'm going to take care of that.
Come on up to my room. And she's like, oh, OK.
But she's not so mischievous that she want that.
She goes right along with it. She sees him do it and then
she's like, I'm not comfortable with this.
And put it, put it back to an F, yeah.
And then leaves, which is not typical dirt bike owner
attitude. So again, she's just did a
little more. Rebellion from young men for
Matt. Yeah.
Yeah, I know. Lindsay, what was your what's
your reaction when you see, like, the computer in David's
room? Like, does that look like an E
Rex skeleton to you? Yeah, it.
Does I mean, we had a computer in my house in the 90s.
So like, you know, it obviously I'm I'm aware kind of of that
generate, you know, that decade, I guess, although that was, you
know, a decade later, but it's still like really funny to
watch, especially with laptops that we have today with
smartphones, all that. And even just like, you know,
the like calling on on the landline phone, those types of
things like I love, you know, movies like this where it's just
like way before any of that stuff.
So it's I think that so I have young kids and I'm definitely
going to make them watch this because I feel like, you know,
people, they need to know like how how it used to be before
kind of the times of the. Quick smartphones and.
We were all jealous as hell of that setup.
Even that like, you know, it was fairly, it was like the, I
forgive what his computer was, but it was like a clone of, you
know, it's the kind of hobbyist 1.
So it wasn't like crazy expensive, but having the the
modem in 83 was like, I mean, that's game changer for anyone
with a computer and a voice. Encoder and a printer.
I had a. Commodore 64, like a couple
years later and I never had, I didn't have a modem for that.
There was no connection for that thing that that I had at least
because I think the modem was like 1800.
Dollars or something. Modems are so expensive.
Crazy expensive and to have it as anachronistic just like the
hand, the handset just sitting on there and that's how they,
you know, disconnected in speaker, in sneakers too and
they just knocked the handset off and it's like disconnect.
Love that. It's yeah, it's so funny.
I think you mentioned Zoe in your in your notes that you had
an acoustic coupler modem. We definitely did too.
We found it, my best friend and I, we would go garbage picking
for people's old computer equipment on our bikes, haul it
all back to his house and we found 1.
And I also had a Commodore 64, but we found the one that we did
in like 91, I think 92. So we didn't have a system that
could use it. But I was so excited when we
found it because of sneakers of war games.
Like, you know, we, I don't know if we had a dial up modem at
home then, but I thought the acoustic coupler was so much
cooler. Also, watching this movie again
makes me want large toggle switches on anything that I do
right now. I'm going to like 3D prints and
switches to put on my MacBook just to.
Yeah, the hell with touch screens.
Give me physical switches that like actually do a thing.
Like if you have a modern car that's just a computer on wheels
and something breaks, you're so screwed.
Like you can't fit. Like even people that know how
to you, you can't do it. So like, yeah, I'm with you,
Pete. Like give me like a button that
I push and I know that a mechanical thing is happening.
You know I want a physical disconnection between the
diodes. Also.
I didn't realize until watching this one again, he wasn't even
using the five and a half inch floppies.
He was, you know, big. Like 7/7 and 1/2 or 8?
They might as well have been laser discs or like.
Enormous. They are like dinner plates.
Like, how do you even get that in the slot when you have to
feed it in manually and it's that like flimsy crazy?
Yeah. So that that whole technical
like the setup that he has in his room.
So this came out in 83 this, you know, say it's shot in 82 or
whatever. That would have been like
extremely rare. I would say like, you know, my,
I've talked about this before. My dad was an engineer at IBM
and like we had computers in our home from the time I, I could
remember, like we had an Apple 2E and then we had IBM PCs once
those came out. But in 1982, like to have all
that shit in your room. I mean, I don't know, we could
probably look it up, but that is many thousands of dollars worth
of computer equipment. And like his mom I guess is a
real estate agent. I don't know that Lightman's dad
has a job. He just sits around doing
crossword puzzles and like being absent minded about like the
trash or whatever. Like they have a nice house
obviously in Seattle. Like that's probably like
$7,000,000 house right now. But now, yeah.
Knowing somebody that had that kind of set up, like would have
been like everyone in town would have been like, holy shit, have
you seen David's computer? Like, you know, it would have
been like him having a Ferrari in his.
And if you look around on the rest of the shelves, like he's
got some pretty sick stereo equipment too.
And like a Selectrics typewriter like this guy is like kitted
out. Was he?
You think he was a ride? He needs a ride home from LE
Sheedy. Yeah, yeah, Something, something
done that up. Here, yeah, how is he making his
money that I've got some questions about Davidde
background here was he like. It might be someone bootleg
video games from the company is. Breaking into.
Someone wears. Yeah.
I I think the setup was why we had started going down the
rabbit hole of the Ferris Bueller extended universe last
time was because like. There's no.
Reason for a high school student to have all of this stuff.
Yes, true. This is.
I don't Lindsay. I don't know if you've heard
this, Zoe. Yes.
I have. That's a very valid theory in my
opinion. It all just clicks immediately
when you hear that right? It does, yeah.
Because it's only like, what, 2 years later or three years
later? So David's obviously not a good
student. Doesn't, you know, doesn't make
it in the Seattle high school. They transfer him to to Chicago,
right? Yes, to your neck of the woods
and give him another shot. And yeah, you know, brings his
skills. And Jennifer Gray gets mad.
I mean, he's got the charisma. He's he's on the edge of the
Ferris Bueller charisma in war games.
Not not quite, you know, but it comes from like being able to
make money off your computer. I guess this this really was
like the initial drop out computer, you know, success kind
of guy that that knows such a cliche.
And did go ahead, sorry. Did we talk about the universal
6 character passwords? Because I know that I, I don't
know if I remembered that he sent, got sent to the
principal's office so he could check out what the new one was.
But I think I noticed a little bit later on when he's trying to
figure out what the back door password is to get access to
Whopper, that like I'm pretty sure that every password that
gets used in the movie is 6 characters because all the ones
that are scratched out on the on the writing slate are also 6
characters. And then so is Joshua.
Yeah. And the the guns they give the
NORAD guys to ensure that they both turn the key are 6 shooters
so. Look at this.
Look at you, Pete. Maybe there's a whole thing.
There yeah, I know the the principal's office thing I
always forget about that too. Zoe like, Oh yeah, how does he
get into the whopper again? Like how does this whole thing
start? And then it's literally just hit
like him getting sent to the office, sitting down and pulling
out the like writing desk thing. And it's like, Oh yeah, today is
his pencil or this week or. The password for Whopper
Falcon's son Joshua 6 letters. Like there really was something
to that. Do you remember?
So the first thing first idea I think I ever told John and Doug
a duo about when we were like talking about doing weirder
stuff than normal like security marketing was I want to re edit
war games for if there was 2 factor authentication at the
time and the movie lasted about 35 seconds.
It was, you know, he found he found the password pencil.
He puts it in. They're like, hey, there's
somebody trying to get in. They're like, well, just hit the
red button and then it gets denied.
The duo logo shows up on the screen and they're like, how
rude? Like, what do you want to do
now? And it cuts straight to them
like walking down the dirt Rd. on the island.
Credits roll like. So good.
Yeah. Do you have that somewhere?
I'm sure you do. Yeah, yeah, of.
Course, of course you do. Why?
Would I ask, That was one of my favorites to play at events
because you didn't need any audio like you could just people
could watch it and get a kick out of it.
But if you did have the audio, you would hear me speaking over
Michael Madsen to to give the voice.
Over. Oh shit, yeah.
Same thing, same same energy. Yeah, psychopath.
The thing that always strikes me on rewatch is, yeah, there's the
technical stuff, you know, the whopper stuff and all this sort
of technocrat stuff once we get to NORAD and all that.
But it's like Lindsay, it's the same like social engineering and
like basic stuff that we still write about like literally 42
years later. That's the real extended
cinematic hacking universe. It's just social engineering all
the way down. It's so true.
Yeah. Even the password thing we were
just talking about, I was like, I think like, there's so many
people that, you know, will have their password as pencil or
effort or double or whatever. The other passwords were just
like keep it on a scratchpad like.
In their. In their office or wherever.
And you know, this is like what? Like decades later so. 40 years.
Yes, like the social engineering aspect of it too is like also
very much still relevant and applicable and even like, yeah,
using Joshua as your as your password, like being able to
connect the dots and like, you know, like, you know, from a
social engineering perspective, like you know, how to how to do
certain things. Like, I thought that was really
interesting. And the the ocean of like
researching who made the thing and then finding out that his
son passed away. And maybe that's.
And then just like they spend as much time like reading about
stuff as they do trying to actually hack the stuff in order
to have enough awareness of the people behind it that they can
emulate them, emulate their thinking.
I mean, David goes to an actual library and like does whether
it's like microfiche or I was. Just going to say, does he get
microfiche because that I. Think or I can't remember, but
he's looking up old news articles.
I think it's actually on the computer, old news articles
about Falcon to do research, you know, to figure out what this
guy was all about, which is exactly, exactly the stuff that,
you know, pen testers and social engineers and attackers of all
kinds do when they're looking at a target, you know, they're
trying to find out as much as they can about who they're
going. It was microfiche.
I just OK. There we go, microfiche.
I remember in my notes I wrote down like that whole little
montage. Can't have an 80s movie without
a good montage. I mean, they they showed
reconnaissance, they showed him doing scanning, they showed him
doing exploitation in the sense of figuring out what the
password was like. Don't remember him doing a whole
lot of exfiltration of information.
And he certainly didn't do a great job of covering his
tracks. But like there's there's a
decent chunk of the attack chain there, like.
Yeah, I love. I love how like plausible every
all the consultants they had on it were like, you know,
luminaries, right? Cabin crunch was like part, but
they're all and even after the non consultants were like this
is all all these techniques are totally legitimate.
This is one of the better portrayals of hacking in in in
movies. But the the most farcical part
about it was when people that were familiar with NORAD saw the
the war room. They're like, we didn't have
anything that cool. Yeah.
We didn't have sweet screens that big up on the wall, it's
just terminals and shit. One of my favorite bits of
trivia is that NORAD upgraded these screens to color because
after this movie came out they did have tours, and the tours
were asking where the modern the modern control room was.
It's kind of demoralizing that that's what our our nuclear
systems are run off of after you see what it could have.
Been Well, yeah. I mean, so this this movie
caused that. And also eventually the computer
fraud and abuse act stemmed from this movie.
There was an interim wall between there, but yeah.
I didn't realize how close in time and coincidental, this
movie and the Soviet, the guy Petrov that actually did what
they did in the opening scene where he didn't, he didn't turn
the key, he didn't make the attack happen.
That was just like a month or two later after this movie came
out. Yeah, the same year.
And we didn't hear about it obviously, for a long time.
But that was 1983, too. So this is like eerily plausible
on so many levels. Oh yeah, yeah.
It's crazy. I wanted to.
So this came out in 1983, as I mentioned, just to get, I want
to give you a little bit of context of like the movies that
were coming out in 1983. So this is the top 10 box office
like US domestic box office movies from 1983.
Top five Return of the Jedi. Oh, you're saying?
Tootsie Flashdance. Trading Places.
War Games at #5 Respectable. Octopussy.
Staying Alive. Risky Business.
Mr. Mom. National Lampoon's Vacation
Staying. Alive was #3 the.
Sequel no Staying alive was number 70.
OK #3 was Flashdance. Flashdance a movie that has no
actual does not exist at this point.
You cannot. OK, so for context, 2023, forty
years later. This is so depressing.
Stop me when I get to a non IP movie here.
Barbie, the Super Mario Brothers Movie Spider Spiderman, Across
the Spider verse, Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 Oppenheimer.
There we go. There we.
Go The Little Mermaid, Avatar, The Way of Water, Ant Man and
the Wasp, Quantum Mania, John Wick Chapter 4, and Sound of
Freedom, a movie I've never heard of.
Is that the drummer 1? It's not it's something about
like human trafficking. I looked it up sounds I don't
know how it's in the top ten domestic that never heard of it,
but like 9 IP movies in that top ten and you know, and obviously
we weren't making quite as many sequels in 1983, but like those
are almost all classics in that top 10 from 1983, right?
Like I don't know about original original classics.
Yes, aside from Return of the Jedi.
Yeah, it's crazy. But it's it's also crazy to me
that a movie like this, which has like a kind of a depressing
plot, you know, like we almost blew up the world because a kid
hacked into a computer was the number five movie in the
country, you know, had such a wide audience.
Obviously it's like fun, but you know it.
I mean, it had a wide enough audience that Ronald Reagan this
here's another, here's another parallel to modern it.
Our president watched a movie and changed policy over it.
Reagan got to watch it at Camp David that year and then went
straight to the Joint Chiefs. And he was like, is this for
real? And they're like, well, kinda.
And so they changed all kinds of stuff.
Another to to that this is kind of a depressing story.
I always forget that when they get to see Falcon that he's
like, no, no, no, no, it's OK, I've got a plan.
We're only three miles away from a primary target, so we'll just
be vaporized. Like I always forget that.
Like, not only is he resigned to this vape, but he's like no, no,
no, I just, I want to be gone when it all kicks off.
Yeah, which was that was pretty heavy at 8 years old, but also
kind of, you know, was just the right amount of nihilism to be
had. Like then you'd be like, well,
if you're going to go go quick because the only, the only thing
worse than nuclear war is surviving it, so.
He's not wrong about that, honestly.
Like his little speech there where he's like, no, trust me,
I'm saving us from wandering around with the blind in the
post apocalyptic wasteland. And they're like what?
And why do you have so many dinosaurs in your house?
What are you doing out here? Dude, I have the high score at
Gallagher right now. I'm not ready to go.
Yeah, I feel like it's such like a family fun tone of movie that
like when you get hit with those like super dark scenes, you're
like, oh, that's actually really messed up.
Like, that's why they delivered it in such a gentlemanly English
accents. If that was like Dabney Coleman
doing that, it would have been really hard to take.
For Barry Corbin, Yeah, Cowboy Barry Corbin.
I think we, I'm sure we would have talked about this on the
first podcast, but knowing that, I don't know if you know this,
Lindsay, that role of Falcon was written for John Lennon.
I read that. Yeah, that's wild.
Which is like bananas. I don't he would have it.
My brain doesn't even I can't like wrap my head around that at
all. I don't I truly don't know if he
was ever in a movie like a in an acting role, like a non Beatles
type movie. I have no idea.
I can only imagine they would have tried to work him into way
more of the movie if they had land in him and that would have
made it pretty weird. Yes.
Was he going to play it like I know he like died before, right?
Like was that the background there or was it for him?
I don't know that it ever got that far.
I think the two screenwriters who also wrote sneakers, we
should talk about that. But they wrote the part with him
in mind. I don't know that it ever got to
the the point of him seeing the script or anything like that.
Because he would have, really. Early in the pre production of
this movie I would guess. It was originally written to be
more about Falcon, like it was called the Genius and then it
turned, you know, in writing revisions and stuff.
They realized it was just, it was a lot cooler to make it
about the, the teenage, you know, brat versus the depressed
genius. So maybe, maybe that's when it
kind of switched. It's like, well, it's not going
to center John Lennon anymore. He's he's busy like doing
nothing. He's.
He's not doing it for a bit part.
Come on. No.
I do want to talk about the cast a little bit though, because we
mentioned Matthew Broderick, obviously Ferris Bueller.
I, I think this is really like his first real big role.
I think he'd been in a couple little things before this and I
think he'd done some theatre work maybe.
But he became such like an 80s icon with this and Ferris
Bueller and a few other movies. And so did Ali Sheedy.
They just like knocked it out of the park with those two leads.
You know, she was in like Saint almost fire and Breakfast Club
and Short circuit, another great, great movie, which makes
sense now, but I don't know how well this works if they don't
nail those two parts. You know, you have like
Broderick's like goofy boyish charm and she's like this kind
of naive sidekick. But you know, not an idiot If
you know if it's if it's two other people, I'd have a hard
time. Like, who would we even like if
we were casting this now? Who?
Like, are there any modern actors that you could see Zoe?
I don't know. I didn't get to.
I was, I did have the thought several times of how things
would be different now, mainly that Whopper would have been
sponsored by Amazon and Burger King, but no.
And it's I was thinking that both of them, their careers were
made by these iconic high school characters that they played like
when they were like they were in their early 20s.
But in this movie, both of them look look like the high school
students that they're supposed to play.
It'd probably be like Timothy Chalamet or something now.
Yeah, You know, fortunately I think you're right.
To like, to Pete's point, though, I feel like there wasn't
like an archetype that they were put into, and because they were
relatively unknown at the time, that probably helped a little
bit. So, like, I feel like you
couldn't do it with any sort of existing actor today, you know?
Yeah, that's a good point. And I think I didn't really look
at this, but the movie was probably not sold on either one
of them. You know, it was sold on, like,
nuclear paranoia. Everything could go wrong and we
could all die tomorrow. Like, here's a funny movie about
that. Like, there's big.
Like, Dabney Coleman was probably the biggest star at the
time this movie was made. I would guess.
Yeah, I don't. I mean Barry Corbin has been in
5000 movies but I don't know if he was like a well known guy
back then. This was like Broderick's first
movie, wasn't it? I think so, yeah.
So he would have been totally unknown, but it was like it was
right in that. What was the other movie that
was much more dramatic about the protests against nuclear war and
all the sports players is right around the same time all the
sports players got behind the kid that was he refused to play
baseball and he was a really good pitcher or something,
refused to play. Oh, I don't remember this.
But it was right around the same time, and it was the more like,
you know, dramatic take on it all.
It's like they're all recognizing that, you know, the
existential threat of nuclear war.
And this one kid inspires a whole movement.
All these sports, these, you know, professional players stop
playing and they join him in his protest.
And so. Oh my God this sounds like an
after school special. I don't know, sappy as hell
sappy. We can watch this, yeah.
I don't remember that at all, but.
It did have to be bold to be like, yeah, we're going to make
a little summer blockbuster about, you know, mutually
assured destruction. Like at the peak of Cold Wear
Cold War paranoia is just I, I guess there's maybe a pressure
release or like a escape fantasy out of well, but it's not
actually real. It's just, it's just a
simulation that got out of hand, but still it is, it is a bold
choice to like have that story and do it then.
Amazing Grace and. Chuck Oh, no, I do remember
that. Yeah, Jamie Lee Curtis is in it.
And Gregory Peck. Oh my God, the 80s man.
Yeah. The league player named Chuck
refuses to ever pitch again until nuclear weapons are
disarmed. How'd that work out for Chuck?
Don't wait. How we doing?
Yeah, Still wait. Still wait.
Did we fix it? Well, that's the thing, like I
growing, I grew up right outside DC in the 80s and I just
remember like always, like the real threat of like nuclear war
was something that like you thought about like all the time.
It was like, well, it kind of like in the Falcon like fatalist
way. You were like, well, I mean, if
it does happen, we're definitely like the first ones who were
going to die like we will. Be.
Oh yeah. Roadkill within 4 minutes of
this happening, we're not going to have to worry about anything
at all. But like that whole sequence
with him and the two kids where he's telling them, like, you
know, maybe we'll push it off for a few years for you long
enough for you to have a son, but eventually we're all going
to kill each other. And, you know, Matthew Project's
like, well, I, I wanted to learn how to swim.
Like, there's just goofy little things like the kids are the
ones, of course, because they're still kids.
Like, well, no, it doesn't have to be this way.
You know you can come help us fix this problem that you sort
of created and I made worse. Yeah, I mean, Chernobyl was only
a couple years after this, too. There is so much.
I mean, nuclear fear was such a thing in the early 80s.
We weren't doing the, you know, get under the desks anymore,
like our parents, because they were like, well, that's not
going to do shit. So we know enough about this
now. Don't bother.
Yeah, everything's going to be paved over.
The desks aren't going to help you that.
Was interesting to watch like, you know, me, like I'm in a from
a different generation or whatever, but like, you know, we
we don't really have that same level of fear.
I mean, we have like school shootings and things like that.
That's much more prevalent. But like, I thought that was a
really interesting part of the movie for sure.
Yeah. I mean it was everywhere.
It was like an an all consuming sort of like everyday thing of
like, you know, the thing that you mentioned Pete, the Soviet
who like declined flip the switch or whatever, Like we
never knew about that. But that was the kind of thing
that you were always sort of scared about.
You know, it was really weird. And then when you see it in this
movie, we need to talk about like that whole norad crew and
like the control room and everything, just like the
bumbling dopes. It's, I love the, you know, like
the thought that, OK, there's these 100 people or whatever
that are in this mountain in Wyoming that essentially control
the fate of the world. And what the people running this
are a cowboy general who's literally like putting chewing
tobacco in his mouth throughout the movie.
You know, the computer operator with a cardigan who's just like,
I don't know what's going on, you know, like waving his hands
around like a Muppet and then a bunch of goofy like computer
operator drones that kind of just do what they're told.
It's unreal. It's a it's a great movie sort
of set up because you have the authority and you have like some
anti authority and you have some bumbling fools.
But the fact that they just bring Lightman there, like they
kidnap him in Seattle and drive him to where this is supposed to
be, I think I. AM or something?
Yeah. Like 1200 miles.
I've looked it up for no reason. His parents don't know where he
is. He just gets in a van and gets,
you know, like renditioned to Wyoming.
And then they're like, here, go play in the computer room while
we talk about what to do with you, like.
That was NORAD overall just seemed like an HR nightmare.
Like there's there's like 5 different, yeah, there's like 5
different references to drug use, including PCP, like the on
base clinic, the doctor's notes are like possible PCP.
And then yeah, there's the there's literally like the HR
video training happening of harassment of the the airmen
outside with the secretary. It's just.
But that's but that's what all, you know, nuclear nihilism
create. Well, why not smoke them if you
got them, you know. Yeah.
They just like locked Matthew Broderick's character into the
in the room. Just like I'm sorry if you're
suspected of espionage with Russia like that's, you know,
it's not what they're. Going to do.
Yeah, someone keep eyes on them. The Infirmary is the only locked
room that they have I guess. Military base the only place to
put someone. And it takes 2 minutes to find
like a pair of forceps and a pocket tape recorder and rewire
the keypad so that he can record the the key sequence from the
outside, which is another thing that I always kind of forget,
but is a very clever, you know, detail that I think mostly would
work, you know. Yeah, the way they did it was
the way they showed it was that he was like playing back the
audio, like it was a touch tone kind of thing.
But really what it would have been is like the different tones
just gave you the button indicators or something.
Because I don't think it was like an audio signal sort of
thing, but he recorded the audio signal from it.
And it was basically like a red box attack, just slightly,
slightly different. And I also marked down another
one that I always forget, shorting out the payphone to
make a call, which at the time was on its way out, but in a lot
of cases would still work. They had started making changes
to allow some calls to connect to to initiate the like charge
to make the handset live like if you dialed 911 but.
Yeah, I I just love that Whopper allowed brute forcing password
it sounds. Yeah, no big deal.
You know, keep trying, keep trying.
It's fine. Yes, I.
Predicted my own. I predicted my own future
because I had my notes from when we did this before and I had the
note down like, you know, it would have been great if they
had like a SIM because they had about a million login attempts.
Yeah, well, and, and they created, you know, the archetype
for what everyone thinks is him looks like, or a sock looks
like, you know, Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
This is something we definitely talked about on the first
podcast, Pete. But I was reminded when I looked
at the the trivia for this about how they they rendered the video
on the NORAD screens where they did it ahead of time.
Like they recorded it frame by frame by frame.
And then can you kind of explain like what that whole situation
would have been? Which ones?
The the the maps themselves, Yeah, those are all like
projection mapped off the back of the screens off some other
computers and they had to do single cell animation to do it.
So none of that could have been in real time.
And it was far, apparently far ahead of what even NORAD could
do in there. It's great.
Which is awesome. And the other.
Good, good. I was just going to mention that
I don't know if you saw this, Lindsay that there was inside of
Whopper. There was like a dude sitting
there typing commands into an apple two to make the light.
Sitting inside, he's controlling the light sequence because he
couldn't sequence that easily and the words coming out on the.
You can see that like, yeah. That's just how they did the
practical effects was a guy had an Apple 2, which was probably
more powerful. Even the the NORAD stuff at the
time. Yeah, yeah, I was just sitting.
Inside that plywood box, that was Whopper just like, yeah,
just like. Yeah, making, making, making.
Quickly on a typewriter. Go Yeah, it the movie was as
nominated for an Oscar for sound.
Yeah. So I guess that that was that
was enough. That.
Whoever was in that whopper did a good job on that part.
Well, the there's I'm one of these weird people, like the
score of a movie very rarely like registers in my brain for
some reason. Like I just don't hear like the
underlying like all hear needle drops and things like that and
remember those. But like the score very rarely
registers with me for some reason.
But this one for whatever reason, did like the plinky
piano and like the synthy stuff is this is all like right in the
middle of like new wave. Everything's got to be
synthesizer type stuff. I wanted to get your take on the
on the score. Zoe, how did you feel about
this? Like it's pretty.
It's not terrible like I kind of did.
And I think because I saw I saw the question, so I was listening
with an eye to that ear to that as I was watching this time.
And I do think that like they leaned heavier into the synth
whenever Matthew Broderick or somebody is like interacting
with the computer, like especially as it gets later on
and a little bit more action movie, like the helicopter
showing up and they're all getting rushed into NORAD and
stuff like it's more orchestral in those parts.
But like when he's doing the research and he's trying out the
different passwords, like all of that is very modular, synthy.
Yeah, it is. It's it's one of the things
that, like, marks it as an early 80s movie too.
Like aside from the actual technology in the movie and
like, you know, the dirt bike or whatever.
Like, yeah, this is this is 1983.
Like the music looked like it was made by the computers in the
movie, right? I found the the notes on that,
the the big screen stuff, they were all, it was all rendered in
advance on an HP computer, just straight BASIC.
And then that computer at the time it was a was H HP9845-C.
It was $90,000 and it weighed 100 a 100 lbs.
And it was the H PS like flagship desktop computer.
That's a tiny computer for that time.
Yeah, but they had to render one frame at a time.
They, they, they filmed it from the display, like on the
computer display, one frame at a time, one color at a time.
And then they, they just used filters.
It was still monochromatic. They used lens filters to give
the different parts of the the map different colors.
So the missile coming over in red, that's a gel that they put
on the lens to make that part of the screen red because it was
still monochromatic. And it took one minute per every
frame of the of the. Films so just tedious as hell.
Every time you saw that missile kind of turn the arc, that was
one minute of them probably also cutting the gel to fit that spot
too. So I'm, yeah, crazy practical
effects for a digital technique. That's insane.
Can you, like, I'm surprised some producer didn't just come
in and be like, like, hey, guess what, We're cutting all of that
shit. You get to show the map one time
and that's it. Like, yeah, yeah.
We need to. Redo that actually.
The missile needs to go the other way.
God damn it. There goes another.
There goes another week. That could be why there's only
like 2 other sets in this movie, you know, like David's house and
yeah, Falcon's house. That's kind of it.
Yeah, there weren't really any other special effects.
You never, you never saw a missile actually flying.
Just at the very beginning, I I wondered how long did it take
the military to record all of the fake footage of the missiles
getting ready to launch and the towers opening?
Because like they show cuts of that and I think there is like a
monitor in there area. Like at least one of those video
feeds was in their area. So like, they must have rented
out the studio where they faked the moon landing or something to
get, you know, get those, get those videos to prep for this
stress test. Yes, yeah, it's crazy.
I wanted to ask each of you what was your, if you had to like
what pair another movie with this, you know, either like a
modern one or like one from the same time period.
Doesn't even have to be a hacker movie, but something that you
think like would make a fun, you know, sit down and watch them
back-to-back. Crazy Grace and Chuck,
obviously. I I sent you guys the poster of
this when I saw it, and I don't think it would have been my
pairing before, but I think that what is it for?
For Fortran, The Colossus project, yeah.
Oh my God. Because I wouldn't have thought
of this as like, you know, I, I would have paired this with like
sneakers. There's a lot of shared DNA kind
of similar vibes, even though it's made a lot later.
But it was really interesting watching this like for the first
time since we've seen a lot of widespread adoption of AI for
like pretty important decision making and automation.
And so I think that also Wargans is a much more watchable movie
than that. So if you do a double feature
and you put that second, that's how you keep people from
leaving. But I think that would be my
pairing. Yeah, what about you, Linds?
I feel like any movie with like with AII think would be
interesting to watch with this. Like I actually thought even
though I didn't like this movie, but the Mission Impossible
movie, what was it? Dead man, Dead Reckoning Part 1
with the, you know, they had their own kind of rendition of
like, you know, a rogue AI type of application.
I thought that was, you know, there were a couple interesting
parallels with with that one in this.
And you know, even even as like, you know, time has gone on.
There's it's just how it plays out in movies and in film is so,
so interesting to see. So and you know, it was funny is
that that that movie was specifically more about like the
AI like Enigma was like malicious, but it wasn't really
that way in in war games at all. Like I think, you know, the the
computer was just doing what it was programmed to do.
And like they had to teach it to, you know, eventually that
every everything it has the same life lesson as tic tac toe.
So, so, yeah, I don't know. I thought that would that was an
interesting pairing. Yeah, everything is futile.
That's the lesson, right? What about you, Pete?
You got a good suggestion. I've got I've got three that all
came because I saw War Games a couple years after it came out,
like VHS, like 1985. The other there were three other
movies. They're all kind of in a similar
vein, at least in my mind, that came out the same year. 85 was a
good year for smart mischief makers.
Real genius, which for me like war games and real genius might
as well be the also in the same cinematic universe.
You know, they're the the lasers, the existential threat
of providing of using academia for militaristic stuff.
Val Kilmer is just like top notch in that one in his
trueness. Weird science.
Same year, another one, you know, much more sort of, you
know, meatballs version of the same kind of thing.
But the computing sequences in that one are super fun.
And then the other one that's not like quite the same, but it
does. I think it was the first one
that came to mind was the Explorers.
Remember that one with the River Phoenix in them where it's, you
know, the the montage in that one is one of the best when
they're building this like sort of spaceship thing out of tilt a
world parts and stuff. And they kind of hack their
Commodore 64 to be the controller for it because they
figure out how to make this force field that lets them go up
to the alien ship. And it's just sort of a similar
thing. All these like mid 80s movies
about just sort of incredibly smart nerds, that it's not about
them being nerds. Like Revenge of the Nerds is
kind of the same, but it's so much about them being nerds, not
about them being smart. And these were all like really
nicely aggrandizing about the smarts of them or the adventure
adventurism of them being smart enough to go do cool things.
So I love all those. Those are great.
Yeah, real genius would have been my is my answer.
Yeah, that's that's something IA movie I absolutely love and is
definitely on this on the list for this podcast.
You could totally see Lightman being Val Kilmer, you know. 100%
and just like Uncle Rico living in the closet in his dorm room
and like. Hacking the lottery?
Incredible. And ending up with, like, a
winnow bagel full of toys and, like, a girlfriend at the end.
And, you know, now he's on White Lotus, which is, like, the
weirdest shit to me ever. Like, oh, wow.
I don't. Yeah.
Lindsay, have you seen Real Genius?
I haven't seen it now, but now I need.
Great one. OK, you so need to go.
So it's also amazing montage in that one too, when it just, so
it's a high school kid that goes to college early and like the
montage in the middle of it, they're all like doing their big
sort of laser project. And he keeps going to class
while everyone's certain to study for finals.
And like every time he goes to the lecture, there's fewer and
fewer people there. There's just tape recorders
until eventually the professor's not there either.
He just has a reel to reel machine set up to play his
lecture to the tape recorders. So good.
Yes and yeah. So God, what the hell is Uncle
Rico's the actor's name? John Grease.
Yeah, he's he plays like the kind of overarching bad guy in
White Lotus like that. I forget his character's name.
Like he's he's in that movie in real genius as like this kind of
shadow, not shadowy. But his name is Zaslow, right?
Or Laszlo. Laszlo.
Laszlo and it's like hacker like you just have to go watch it.
None of this makes any sense. It's a very 80s movie because of
course there's just like a bikini pool montage in the
middle of it for no real reason. There's Oh yeah, it's.
Great, it's a little bit like popcorn.
Contractual obligation for a mid 80s movie.
Some. Of the best, some of the best,
like practical effects and if I remember correctly, like most or
all of those were based off of pranks that had happened at MIT.
At MIT, yes. Yeah.
So it's based on like it's supposed supposed it's said it
like a fake Caltech type university, but a lot of it is
based on shit that happened at MIT years, like legendarily, you
know, things that went on there the the pranks, which is pretty
interesting. So our friend Wendy neither
knows one of the people that one of those characters was based
on. So she like when we started
doing these podcasts again, she like texted me.
It was like, I'm on the real genius podcast.
This is not a question. I was like, OK, that's fair.
We'll do it that way. So yeah.
Any other last thoughts though? I we didn't even talk about the
two nerds in the computer science lab.
That just delightful. That's another short one that.
Literally the dude from Revenge of the Nerds and then the the
most prototypical Unix sysadmin you could ever create in the,
like, sloppy bearded guy that is just like under the the desk,
like doing things before that was like a, you know, he looks
like Comic Book Guy before, like any of that was even a thing.
Yeah. Yeah, his shirt is too short.
You know, coming. Up, Mr. Potato Head.
But the other guy was not the dude from Revenge of the Nerds.
I always. Eddie, Eddie DS I mean, they
might as the Venn diagram is a lot of overlap there.
But yeah, I love that that that should have been a spin off.
Had War Games been made now, those two guys would have gotten
a spin off. They'd have a Netflix show right
now. The.
Continuing adventures of Bumblefuck and not the guy from
Revenge of the Nerds. I don't even know what their
character names are. It doesn't matter to me because
they just when he, it's obvious that like Lightman has some kind
of relationship with these two guys because he goes and knocks
on the window and is like, hey, it's me.
They're like, oh, Lightman, come on in or whatever.
Like he's obviously been going over there to like hang out with
these dudes and learn from them or whatever.
But yeah, like, it's just those two guys.
I could have used a couple more minutes with them, honestly.
Like some more backdoor puns would have been fun, yeah.
I remember jotting that down in the notes.
I think, you know, looking at like, the legacy impact that
this film had. You already brought up Dennis,
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The other big lasting impression
is that there was kind of a seismic shift in computing to
require a default password instead of no password on new
systems. Because before this, there was
just kind of the like, there was like a like, polite
understanding that you weren't going to mess with the system
unless you were supposed to. So like this was a big of, yeah,
of of I guess the first example of shifting left, you know?
To to be fair, there's still kind of that polite
understanding that nobody follows with all these default
passwords. They're just admin.
Yeah. Yeah, it's still a lot of
presumed expectation of just be cool, be cool.
An unnamed vendor that none of us know has had a news story I
swear about every other week for the last several months of
another system that had a hard coded a a static credential
vulnerability that's been exploited.
So yeah, we're still, we're still dealing with it today it.
Happened Lindsey. Yeah, I feel like the historical
significance of this film is funny though 'cause I, when I'm
trying to think of like more recent, you know, films that
feature hacking or hacker hacker movies, like, you know, they're,
I don't, I don't know if we're at a point in the security
industry where like something like a movie would trigger such
an impact. And I don't know, like what I
mean, there's not really a lot of movies that they all kind of
like pale in comparison to something like this.
So I thought just all those like historical ties and like the,
the impacts that came out of this was really interesting and
yeah, it would be really cool. And then like Dennis, you're
talking about like Barbie being like the top movie recent years.
So like I, I hope like another movie like this could come along
the future kind of view security.
I also love how much like nomenclature in this industry,
like you can really trace back directly to war games like war
dialing, war driving. Like I didn't realize that that
came from war games. I kind of thought both of those
all came from the same place. No, it came from war games the
movie, which is just awesome. Like I I aspire to ever coin
something that's like, long lasting.
I know so and the crazy thing is the two guys that wrote this,
Parks and Lasker, I think their last names are while they were
writing this, we're also sort of kicking around the idea for what
became sneakers. So like they were, you know,
they had, they had gone to a couple like early computer
conventions, like kind of the hobbyist side of things, not the
the ones that we've all gone to. And it met some guys that were
like, Oh yeah, there's this like generation of young kids that
are coming up that are really good at this stuff.
And then there's the, you know, what would have been an older
generation at that point, if you think about the sneakers group
of like guys that were doing those physical security
assessments and it had, you know, probably some kind of
background doing this stuff before, you know, hackers became
a thing. So you know, the fact that they
came up with the 2 my two favorite hacker movie
screenplays in the course of about 8 years is just wild.
It's crazy. And I think the other sort of
cultural impact was like hackers not being the bad guys in the
film. Like there's only so many of
those, especially at the time, like in the 80s, like hackers
were the notorious bad guy villain in in a lot of these
movies. So to see one, even if it was
sort of accidental but like to make the hacker the hero of the
whole thing was very cool and I think made almost a longer
lasting impression than any of the sort of techniques or plot
or nuclear Armageddon aspects of it for people in our industry at
least. Yeah, I think so.
Same thing for the the I guess AI, the same thing for Whopper,
where it isn't like malicious and intent on human destruction.
It's this idea of like it is following the logic based on
what it's been programmed to do. There's no malice, it's just
trying to achieve the objective that it was trained for, which
is like, I think it it took a lot longer before we saw more of
that as the driving factor for AI as Mac Guffin or AI as like
the threat. Right now, you're exactly right.
Yeah. Yeah.
All right. Well, you guys, we did it.
Thank you all so much for coming back and doing this.
Lindsay, great to have you on a Hacker Movie podcast finally.
It's really fun, yeah. Exactly, Falcons.
Version. Falcons version.
That's right. There we go.
You nailed it, Zoe. All right, you guys.
Thanks so much. Great to see you all, take care.
Thanks.