Capricorn One
(1977)
(SPOILERS) As far as ultimate conspiracy theories go, ones
that have captured the zeitgeist and simultaneously the opprobrium of any who
view talk of such sinister intrigues and machinations as conclusive evidence of
tin foil hat-wearing detachment from a reality in which we are always told the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, the Moon landings are in the
top tier, jostling with JFK for primacy. Certainly, there are far more people willing
to admit to doubts over the official account of the assassination of President
Kennedy than whether the trio of Apollo 11 astronauts actually touched down on
the lunar surface. Yet the faked Moon landings theory is by no means a new one.
It wasn’t born from the post-The X-Files
popularisation of conspiracy theories; it merely gained greater acknowledgement
and corresponding derision.
There was a groundswell of disbelief from the first and,
less than a decade later (referenced in the period “Making of” Capricorn One documentary short), 28% of
the American public affirmed their belief that the US did not put a man on the
Moon. It’s little wonder then, that someone would get around to making a
fictionalised account of the truth behind this purportedly fictional recent
history. That someone was writer-director-cinematographer journeyman auteur
(not often those latter two words collide) Peter Hyams, and the result, Capricorn One, occupies not dissimilar
“alluded to” territory as the JFK-by-another-name Winter Kills. Capricorn relates
man’s first mission to Mars, rather than the Moon, but otherwise attempts to
engage with the “Just how would they accomplish it if they did accomplish it?” scenario. The picture’s only real problem in
that regard is that you have to go beyond the “success” story of 1969 for
dramatic effect; following after a vibrant first half, the movie slowly falls
to pieces. In an entertaining – at times so ludicrously entertaining its
impossible to resist its nerve – fashion, but one that punctures any serious
intent behind the project.
Not for Hyams the bleak
impossibility of battling nefarious and enigmatic powers-that-be seen in The Parallax View, released only four
years earlier. Capricorn One was made
during, and came out just following, the bright new dawn of Star Wars. George Lucas’ movie heralded
a glittering era of false optimism and triumphant merchandising, where the old myths
could be re-embraced and heroism and victory over the forces of darkness were
possible. Subconsciously or not, or maybe just because it’s a Lew Grade
production, Capricorn One attaches
itself to those coattails, having spent the previous 90 minutes establishing
the hopeless might of the system and its capacity to delude and destroy us. A
Telly Savalas-ex machina, if you will.
Any broaching of the subject of a notional Moon landing(s)
conspiracy is not only divisive, it’s often positively combative; the
conversation quickly descends into cheap insults and aggressive posturing, as
one party refuses to entertain the other’s partial evidence. For such unknowables,
I tend to find the Robert Anton Wilson approach of healthy scepticism and
moderate openness to either argument the more promising tack. It’s not as if we
should doubt that governments lie to us, that they have lied to us, and that
they continue to lie to us. That doesn’t mean that they always lie to us, just
that some sort of moral imperative doesn’t guide them; the adage about power
corrupting conquers any concerns over rectitude. The Moon landings conspiracy,
like 9/11, is a particularly
push-button conspiracy theory, however; in both cases, the implications, if it were discovered we had been hoodwinked,
would shatter the foundations of the order that currently martials us all. Our
paradigm would be forever shifted.
It would be unfeasible to attempt a précis of the debate on
the component parts of the Moon landings conspiracy here, the pros and the cons
that could, and do, fill whole websites of discussion. Besides, while Oliver
Stone’s JFK engaged with the nuts and
bolts of the different theories about the JFK assassination, Hyams is only
really interested in the most surface of conversations about the technical
obstacles of both getting to another planet (or moon) and staging a mass
deception. It’s the idea that holds the power and, as with much of his work, he
introduces his subject with considerable verve but somewhere along the line
runs out of the steam that would carry it into greatness.
Hyams’ interest in the subject stemmed from his time working
in TV news, and observing the cuts to simulations from McDonnell Douglas when
reporting on anything astronautical. He realised this was as a “one-camera story”; “… if you could screw with the camera, you could screw with the story”.
Underpinning this was the jaded, post-JFK assassination, disillusion with our
elected representatives and their capacity for honesty; the understanding that,
just as his parents believed everything in the newspapers, Hyams’ generation
swallowed all that was announced on the goggle-box. This was the germ of Capricorn One but one should be wary of
concluding that, because he ran with a wild idea, Hyams also endorsed it. Interviewed last year, the director framed his own thoughts on duping the American public,
and the world, in no uncertain terms; “It’s
absolutely absurd”. For those interested in a recent contribution to the
Moon landings debate, try Phil Kouts’ Is There Any Hope for a Moon Base?
That Capricorn One
sat on a shelf for three or four years after it was written is perhaps unsurprising,
given how forgotten the director’s prior pictures are. Anyone recall his first
feature, with Elliot Gould (Busting)?
His 1940s private eye picture with Michael Caine (Peeper)? Hyams had been writing his own scripts from his feature
debut (not Peeper, though, and he
didn’t direct Telefon or The Hunter, McQueen’s final picture) and
is credited as cinematographer from the time of 2010 (Bill Butler lensed Capricorn
One; he also contributed to the same year’s memorable Demon Seed). Multi-hyphenates tend to be more auspiciously
recognised than Hyams. Few would call him a hack, but he does tend to get
lumped in with the likes of John Badham as a second-rate safe pair of hands;
the studio goes to him when someone else hasn’t panned out. And anyone familiar
with his later career (he was 35 when he directed Capricorn One, but by the time he was 50 he was pretty much a
gun-for-hire) would be forgiven for assuming he really is just a hack. The guy
they gave End of Days to when the first
choice (Marcus Nispel, and what a great career he’s had!) was nixed. The guy who ended up directing a succession
of Van Damme movies (three, as well as lensing the Muscles from Brussels on his
son’s Universal Soldier: Regeneration).
Still it could have been worse; it could have been Seagal.
But, post-Capricorn
One and until the end of the ‘80s, Hyams was riding on a relative high. He
blipped with a post-Star Wars “work-as-much-as-you-can-because-you-might-not-work-again”
Harrison Ford in Hanover Street. Then
came Outland (not a huge hit, but laudable
for pulling off a convincing post-Alien
milieu and casting a resurgent Sean Connery), The Star Chamber (a neat, semi-forgotten secret society conspiracy
thriller with Michael Douglas), 2010
(Hyams dared to sequelise Kubrick; of course, he didn’t come close, but there’s
some undeniably masterful sequences in there), Running Scared (Billy Crystal as a cop!), The Presidio (Connery again and, alas, Mark Harmon) and Narrow Margin (remake of the 1952
B-movie with Gene Hackman; an underrated little thriller). None of these are
classics, but the science fiction pictures in particular have much to offer.
Lew Grade’s ITC funded Capricorn
one, a patchy outfit when it came to feature work, with the renowned nadir
of Raise the Titanic only a few years
away (at least Heaven’s Gate could
lay claim to artistic merit, for all the profligacy involved). Grade recognised
the post-Watergate appeal of the conspiracy yarn, and, with a keen eye on TV
audiences and sales, dictated Savalas as the crop-dusting pilot; still starring
in Kojak at the time, his scenes were
completed in one day.
Hyams lifts off with the astronauts, Brubaker (James
Brolin), Willis (Sam Waterston) and Walker (O.J. Simpson) preparing to board
their rocket for the first manned mission to Mars. Hyams will ensure we keep
time with nine-month “expedition” (a conservative estimate of how long it would
take, it seems) with “JAN 4” appearing over a black screen,
and similar subtitles identifying its stages. Capricorn Control lists the astronauts’
breakfasts and an eager technician offers Brubaker, ”I’d just like you to know, all I’ve ever worked for has meaning today”.
He then gives Brubaker a Bible, emphasising the hokey all-American hold the
Moon landings exert.
However, even before the astronauts are escorted from the launchpad
and transported to a disused desert air force base, we have encountered a
pervading cynicism sweeping across the whole affair. This is a world where,
seven years on from Apollo 11 (although the time frame of Capricorn One is unspecified), landing on other planets, even
planets previously unvisited, is old news. The President can’t make lift-off,
busy as he is with other matters “like
getting re-elected”. Congressman Hollis Peaker (David Huddleston) is
nonplussed that his vested interests are being ignored (I admit, I didn’t picked
up that he is the owner of Con-Amalgamate, the company that provided the life
support system for the mission), while the Vice President (James Karen)
delivers the stark verdict on why the space programme is no longer a priority
(and, as we shall see with Kelloway’s speech, a legitimate reason for the
subsequent decline of the real space race):
Vice President Price:
Hollis, there are a number of people who
feel that we have problems right here on Earth that merit our attention before
we spend billions of dollars on outer space.
Indeed, even the adoring technician has commented on the
$4bn price tag of the Mars expedition. It’s when Hal Holbrook’s Dr Kelloway,
the NASA man in charge, arrives to address the decamped astronauts that the
total perspective is offered. It’s a wonderfully juicy monologue, and Holbrook
(who was indelible as Deep Throat in the previous year’s All the President’s Men) delivers it with just the right air of
calculated zeal. Kelloway runs the gamut from ingratiating himself with the
crew and chocolate box memories of their careers together (in particular
Brubaker; “Captain Terrific and the Mad
Doctor”???!!), before setting himself and NASA up as the victims of public
apathy and a short-sighted Washington. The programme has gone from crowds
gathering to watch Glen’s first orbit of the Earth and tears when Armstrong
stepped on the lunar surface to complete indifference.
Kelloway: You know, when Apollo 17 landed on the Moon,
people were calling up the networks and bitching because reruns of I Love
Lucy were cancelled. Reruns, for Christ’s
sake! I could understand if it was the new Lucy show. After all, what’s a walk on the Moon? But reruns! Oh, geez! And
then everybody starts talking about how much everything cost, for Christ’s
sake? Was it really worth 20 billion to go to another planet? What about
cancer? What about he slums? How much does it cost? How much does any dream
cost, for Christ’s sake?
It’s a masterfully couched speech, summoning the spirit of
‘60s idealism to justify the ultimate cynicism of lying to the nation. After
all, it isn’t NASA’s fault; it’s the evil corporations who supplied a faulty
life support system (a neat precursor to the privatisation of all things
public, and the company politics that inform first Alien and then Hyams’ Outland;
ethics and morals are of negligible value when the bottom line is on the table).
Con-Amalgamate made “a little too much
profit”, and the astronauts would be dead after three weeks in space. It’s
clear here that, while Hyams is riffing on the
conspiracy theory, he presents it as one where all concerned has a venture to
Mars as feasible; Kelloway has had two months to lash up his fiction after
things went pear-shaped. As such there is none of the over-arching pre-planning
required by the Moon theorists. One might argue Hyams doesn’t need to go there
anyway; the analogy is clear in the succinct reference to the life support
system. Anyone planning to go beyond Earth’s orbit and into deep space or other
bodies would soon snuff it.
Asked by Brubaker who knows about the plot, Kelloway
responds, “Almost no one”, which is
about as much of a riposte one can hope for to those who find it inconceivable
that an alleged charade on the scale of Apollo 11 would go undetected for all
these years. It’s humorous to note that Hyams, who would go onto make a second
chapter to Kubrick’s most revered picture, is dipping his toes in a pond that
ties that reclusive director into one of most intriguing of Moon legends; that
it was Kubrick himself who directed the Moon footage (the upcoming Moonwalkers with Ron Perlman and Rupert
Grint offers a comedic spin on this) and it’s notable that Hyams originally had
a more satirical (Strangelove-ian?)
approach in mind for Capricorn One
(the often hilarious dialogue is perhaps the one surviving sign of this).
Kelloway’s “Well, I don’t know” in
response to Brubaker’s “You don’t think
you’re really going to get away with this?” is a near- meta-aside to the
idea that we could have swallowed such a whopper.
Kelloway presents himself as the man with no choice,
although he quickly becomes the guy who will do anything, including murder, in
the name of his cause. First he threatens the astronauts’ families, and then
plans a nasty end for the trio when unforeseen developments cramp his plans
(the fault that develops on the heat shield, destroying the returning craft on
re-entry). Holbrook plays against Kelloway’s more single-minded goals; he is
able to rationalise his actions, which makes him all the more chilling, and
Hyams is able to interject the scene in which he visits with Brubaker’s wife
Kay (Brenda Vaccaro) and persuade her to attend the memorial service. Another
actor would have played up unequivocal duplicity, but Holbrook emphasises the
unease of betrayal. When he says, “I feel
like Jack the Ripper for even asking” you know that, as calculated as the
comment is, it’s partially true.
Kelloway: There are people out there, forces out
there, who have a lot to lose. They’re grownups. It’s gotten too big. It’s in
the hands of grownups.
Kelloway’s excuse, that his back’s against the wall, invokes
non-specific higher forces, although Capricorn
One ultimately nurtures the more typical Hollywood conspiracy narrative;
the localised, factionalised element which, once closed down, enables order to
be restored (see also Enemy of the State).
Kelloway certainly has significant resources at his disposal, however, if we’re
to believe it is entirely down to him. Unspecified agencies manifest at his
whim; they replace irksome employees who ask too many questions (Robert
Waldon’s Elliot) with cover story impostors who claim no knowledge of him, attempt
to murder an investigative reporter Caulfield (Elliot Gould) and despatch black
helicopters (conspiracy, and especially UFO, lore’s ominous signifier of the
most covert and subversive strands of government) to recapture our escapee
astronauts. Despite Kelloway’s protestations, the multipliers suggest quite a
number of people are in on this deal, wittingly or just following orders. It’s
these logistics that foster a character like Elliot; if there’s a chance of discovery
then surely some bright spark somewhere, not in on the deal, will unravel it
and need to be silenced?
Arguably, the developments that overtake Kelloway suggest
he’d have been better off not bothering in the first place. When the fault
develops and the astronauts “die”, this isn’t an Apollo 13 tale where,
against-the-odds, a beleaguered crew refurbish themselves as heroes; it’s a
Challenger-esque affair that puts the very programme Kelloway is attempting to
save in doubt; “You tell me. I ask you, I
ask all of you here. How could we best serve these men? By giving up on their
dream? By saying that it was all for nothing? You give me the answer.”
The potential for disaster is, of course, one of the
explanations some give for faked footage (rather than there necessarily being
no landings for reasons of practical impossibility, it was a safeguard against failure).
Other theories go in an entirely
different direction; there were Moon
landings, but they had to be faked because we already knew there were aliens on
the Moon (and there are even transmissions confirming the fact). Still more
arcane versions have it that there is a fully conversant space programme, far
more advanced than anything we plebs are privy to; Mars bases are
meat-and-potatoes reality and have been for decades (this links in to the Alternative 3 hypothesis, based on the
fake documentary broadcast in 1977 that only provoked counter-charges of
plausibility when its makers came out and said it was all a hoax). The further
one goes down the rabbit hole of any given grand conspiracy, the less likely
one is to stumble across certitude, unless one indiscriminately latches onto
one pet theory.
Brubaker: If the only way to keep something alive is
to become everything I hate, I don’t know if it’s worth keeping it alive.
The moral dilemma of the lie enforced on the trio,
compliance under pain of threat to their loved ones, would be a believable
enough stick to wield. One of the popular reasonings for poster boy John Glen
doing the rounds while Neil Armstrong kept a low profile is that the latter was
never comfortable with espousing the deceit. Hyams gives good (often great)
dialogue for the most part, but nothing can save the schmaltz of Kay telling
hubby of her son’s school essay where he announces “He is doing something for everybody to live a better life”. What
self-respecting dad wouldn’t drop a coded message about the truth after such an
emotional assault?
Walter: Listen to me and listen good. I
don't like you, Caulfield. You're ambitious. You think the way to get ahead is
to come up with the scoop of the century. Woodward and Bernstein were good
reporters, that's how they did it. Not by telling me they've located Patty
Hearst three times like you did or that brilliant piece of investigative
journalism you pulled off by finding an eye witness to the second gunman in the
Kennedy assassination The small fact that the man had been in a mental
institution at the time never deterred you, not 'Scoop' Caulfield. Now, most
reporters are like me. They are plodders. They spend a lot of their time
checking little things... like facts.
They cover mundane stories like wars and trials and hearings. You never seem to
have enough time in your busy schedule to stoop so low as to cover a story. You
occupy your time with tips from people who never existed. Driving your car into
water and claiming it wasn't your fault. Getting shot at by unseen gunmen.
The parallel plotline Capricorn
One presents us with is as extinct as the space programme itself; the
bastion that is investigative journalism. Crumpled – as ever – Elliot Gould
weaves his way to the truth, blessed with enormous luck in the leads that land
in his lap; his is the path of guesswork and good old-fashioned being in the
right place at the right time. It’s hardly surprising that his long-suffering
editor Walter (David Doyle) calls him out for not being the real deal. Walter’s
tirade against Caulfield is the comic flipside to Kelloway’s defence of his
actions. It’s an effective takedown of conspiracy journalism, except of course
that everything Walter says is wrong. Well, except Caulfield’s historical duff
leads. But Caulfield works on hunches, and this hunch is the right one.
Walter’s world would never stray upon a story (Capricorn One’s is a world where the MSM is not told what to say
down to the letter, so it’s possible for the truth to be told about a fake Mars
landing – always assuming the freeze frame happy ending isn’t a ruse, and
there’s an immediate news blackout on any of reporting of what transpires at
the memorial service).
Hyams plays with quick-fire sparky dialogue in the Caulfield
scenes, whether with Walter, colleague Judy (Karen Black – “Go jump yourself”), or even Kay. So we see
Caulfield pleading for 48 hours because he saw it in a movie, and Walter gives
him half of that (“I saw the movie too,
it was 24”). This scene is an effective means of taking in the gamut of
popular conspiracy lore, from the exception-that-proves-the-rule Watergate
sleuths (leading some cynics to the conclusion that, for Watergate to have run,
Nixon’s demise must have been sanctioned from the true powers behind the throne)
to the unbeatable second shooter.
Kay: You haven found what you’re looking for.
You’re embarrassed about bothering me again. However, there are one or two
questions more you’d like to ask me. It’s something personal, and you won’t
bother me anymore.
Caulfied: I haven’t found what I’m looking for. I feel
embarrassed about bothering you again. However, there are one or two more
questions I’d like to ask you. It’s something personal, and I won’t bother you
anymore.
For anyone unfamiliar with his late career resurgence in
supporting roles, it’s hard to countenance how iconic Elliot Gould was
throughout the ‘70s. From M*A*S*H
onwards, Gould represented the quick-witted whip-smart anti-hero. The guy who
was antithesis of the macho heartthrob, equally suited to comedies,
relationship dramas, and offbeat thrillers. By the time he made Capricorn One he could simply show up
and be Elliot Gould, relying on presence alone. The end of the decade saw his career as a star pretty
much vanish overnight, however. Gould didn’t stop working during the next two
decades, but you’d be hard-pressed to cite a great movie role (or Friends aside, a memorable television
one). Soderbergh put him back on the map with Ocean’s Eleven but, to a lesser extent admittedly, like his M*A*S*H co-star Donald Sutherland, Gould’s
most vibrant immortal period is found in the ‘70s.
Caulfield’s presence is closer to an upbeat version of
Warren Beatty’s character in The Parallax
View than anything approximating All
the President’s Men. He’s subject to repeated attempts on his life (his
brakes are messed with, he is shot at on the set of a western town), but only
then do his aggressors decide to frame him (haven’t they got that the wrong way
round?) It might have been interesting to attempt the picture solely from the
astronauts’ point of view, but it would have been narratively more problematic
and much more austere in tone.
Caulfield, and Gould, keeps things lively and light. “Can I have one more guess?” he asks
Savalas’ Albain in response to which of “A&A”
the crop-dusting pilot is. His exchanges with Judy are almost Howard Hawksian, just
with more vulgarity, and his interplay with Kay is also surprisingly witty.
Which almost makes up for the clumsy feeding of Caulfield clues. It’s surely
enough for him to discover that Brubaker and his family went to Flat Rock, not
Yosemite, the year before (Brubaker references this when speaking to his wife
“en route home”), suggestive of a deception he wants recognised. The subsequent
viewing of a home movie and the exchange regarding a movie hubby saw being
filmed adds very little other than over-enunciating the clues (“He couldn’t get over how something so fake
could look so real. He kept on saying with that kind of technology you could
convince people of almost anything” – really, almost like… a Moon landing?!)
and the filler scene in which Caulfield visits the aforementioned location.
Brubaker: In the name of all peoples of the Earth, I
take this step in the journey of peace for all mankind. We hope our visit will
increase the understanding of the human race.
The lot of the astronauts in Capricorn One can’t compare once they are on the outside. It’s actually
an interesting choice by Hyams not to
show the crew between their incarceration and the faked Mars landing (131 days
later). And again between that point and their contact with their families
(they don’t appear to have done very much on Mars either, apart from depositing
a foot there). But it also reduces them to near-cyphers; we aren’t interiorised
on their experiences. The positive side is that it allows Hyams to emphasise
the lapse of time., and there’s only so much they could say (which is why, when we see Brubaker again, he is still
debating the morality of his decision). It may be significant then, that given
their functional status, Hyams pulls off one of the movie’s defining visual
during their “expedition”. It’s the pièce de résistance of the picture, informing
its essence; the slow pull back of Mars lander to reveal the studio lights, the
set, and the hangar beyond, to the accompaniment of voiceover oozing irony as
it proclaims “Now you, the men of
Capricorn One, have shown us how wonderful we can be, by showing us how high we
can reach”. It sets in perspective the walls that would come tumbling down
if the Moon landings were publicly proclaimed fake; such an illusion must be
maintained, no matter how pervasive the doubt.
Brubaker: If anyone ever sees us again, the whole thing
falls apart.
There are other nice touches during this part of the picture;
the constant surveillance the trio are under as they plot possible responses,
the hand hovering to cut the feed as Brubaker appears to be veering off script.
Hyams emphasises the sense of a watertight operation. So his failing is all the
more glaring when, realising their cards are up, the astronauts decide to
escape the base… and do so with consummate ease. There are no guards at their door,
only one standing guard of a handy waiting jet. The sequence informs the
downward spiral of credibility the picture takes once they are loose.
Nevertheless, their desert adventure offers some rewards. Brubaker goes all
survivalist, exhibiting the wherewithal to conceal himself beneath the sand as
helicopters fly by (he’s like Arnie in Predator!)
His later encounter with a snake (followed by a brush with a scorpion; everything’s
against him!) is less compelling, his decision to reluctantly eat it bordering
on parody. Elsewhere, Walker is apprehended in double-quick time while Willis
gets to tell a long-winded joke as he exhaustedly scales a tricky cliff face (“She’s on the roof!”). The real punchline to his joke is perfectly
acidic, however; he reaches the summit only to find black helicopters already waiting;
Hyams’ pull back aerial shot is almost as perfect as the one in the hangar.
Willis: Here we are, millions of miles from Earth,
and we can still send out for pizza.
It says something about the movie making times (there was no
compunction to dot every “I” and cross every “T” narratively, to wrap
everything up in a palatable bow), or perhaps just the disregard with which
Hyams holds his characters, that we never learn whether Willis and Walker were
executed as soon as they were re-apprehended. O.J.’s presence now stands out
for reasons of obvious infamy, but also because he really isn’t very good. It’s
just as well he has minimal dialogue. Waterston, in contrast, all but steals
the picture with his cavalcade of quips and one-liners. He breaks up the
solemnity of talking to his family from space with “I told you never to call me here!” and responds to his wife’s “You sound so close. It’s really hard for me
to believe you’re so far away in space” with “It’s hard for me to believe it too”. Later he tells jokes about
their doomed aircraft (“I told you never
to take a trip without checking the tank”) and giving enemas to elephants.
He is also prized with one of the most memorable screen exits in the aforementioned
mountaineering monologue. Waterson, unlike most of his co-stars, went on to some
of his most memorable work during the 1980s, including The Killing Fields and a couple of Woody Allen pictures.
Brolin is the ostensible lead (although his Mr Streisand is
trumped by Elliot Gould’s ex-Mr Streisand in both screen presence and engaging
plotlines), but he has made a career from never quite being a star; perhaps his
sudden departure from Westworld set
the stage for a career in which, like Gould, he’d pretty much disappear after
the end of the decade (his biggest hit, The
Amytville Horror, came in ’79), with only a cameo in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure to mark out the ‘80s. Now of course, he’s
just known as Josh Brolin’s dad.
15 minutes from the end of Capricorn One, and with no ostensible way of resolving matters, who
should rock up but Telly Savalas (Hyams had wanted Donald Pleasance). It’s the
ultimate scene-stealing part, in that it’s not only very funny (“And I think you’re a pervert!” he
accuses Caulfield; everyone’s a pervert!) but also utterly preposterous. Just what Caulfield expects to find out in
the desert is anyone’s guess but he finds it anyway, asking Albain to tail the
black helicopters and then giving Brubaker a timely ride (the astronaut tops
the tide of unlikely developments, eluding his captors by leaping through a
window and hightailing it to Albain’s waiting biplane). It’s exuberantly, irresistibly,
nutty nonsense, and complemented by some stunning aerial footage. But it also
underlines that this isn’t really at all a serious-minded conspiracy movie, in
spite of the cogent reasoning of failing public support, economics, politics
and big business that lead to the events. Top that off with the slow motion
arrival at the memorial service (it must have been a really long service for Caulfield
and Brubaker to get there before the end) and you’re left thinking “This definitely never happened to Beatty”.
Moon landing conspiracy lore is now so embedded in the mass
consciousness, it no longer needs to be banished to the fringes; just so long
as it is referenced in humorous tones or loaded documentary “investigations”
that systematically debunk such crazy talk, all may be seen to be well. The
recent revival of Arrested Development
had little Ronny Howard, he of Apollo 13,
lampooning his most fêted movie as he sits in the “actual” Apollo 11 capsule that
was used to film the “actual” landings in a TV studio. There hasn’t always been
such self-conscious playfulness. Michael Stipe set his paean to Andy Kaufman, Man in the Moon, amid a world of grand
illusions where, if you think they put a man on the moon then “nothing is cool”. And yet, only two
years after the landings, Diamonds are
Forever featured Connery’s Bond happening across a studio set of a staged moonwalk
before making his escape across the (yes) desert in a very silly lunar buggy.
As Vacarro observed in the 1977 on-set documentary, “Initially, when they did step on the Moon, there were lots of people
who said that was not true. We just don’t know what to think any more”.
It stands as one of those now baffling ironies that Capricorn One actually received technical
assistance from NASA (including use of a prototype lander). Producer Paul
Lazarus had a cordial relationship with a space agency employee from Futureworld, who gave him the good ahead;
had Hyams’ vision reached the ears of his superiors it would no doubt have been
nixed.
After all, the picture announces, “At a time when cynicism was a national epidemic, they gave us something
to believe in”, which isn’t far from summing up the national landscape of
the Moon landings. Capricorn One was
released in the US in the summer of 1978 (it opened in Japan at the end of
’77), moved back from February to fill the gap created by Superman’s problematic production. It wouldn’t arrive in the UK
until the beginning of 1978 (this was an era when Star Wars could open in Britain seven months after its Stateside
debut). The movie was reportedly a reasonably sized hit, but this type of
science fiction was on the way out. The formidably budgeted blockbuster (or
ultra-cheap imitation) was soon to be the order of the day. Grounded sci-fi, along
with the conspiracy movie generally, was headed for the backburner for the time
being. The flipside of Capricorn One’s
gleeful dubiety is The Right Stuff’s eulogy
for the archetype of the American hero. The latter is a classic, achieving what
it sets out to do with consummate skill. One wouldn’t label it facile, however;
infectiously optimistic would be a better expression. Capricorn
One lacks the serious-minded follow-through of its conspiratorial
predecessors (and also the archness of satirical takes like The President’s Analyst) so cannot
summon their resonance in the final analysis. Many of Hyams’ better pictures
set out their store with panache but then run out of ideas; Capricorn One doesn’t quite fit that
bill since it brings in a completely leftfield one. It’s highly entertaining,
but detours into a borderline narrative-non-sequitur.
