Studios rejected thriller script

Press, 1 August 1989, Page 11

Studios rejected thriller script

“If we win any awards for this movie, the man I will have to thank is H. R. Haldeman,” said Peter Hyams, the director of “Capricorn One” (tonight at 8.30 on Two). Hyams, a former television anchorman for C.B.S. News in New York, Boston and Chicago, wrote the original screenplay for “Capricorn One” almost six years before it was made into a movie in 1978.

He was turned down by all the studios he approached.

“They reacted so hysterically, like ‘Here’s your script, now get your car out of the parking lot right now,’ I figured I had something. Studio heads never react so strongly to anything but pay cuts.” “Everyone thought the idea was too incredible until Watergate came along,” says Hyams.

That is when the American public became painfully aware that its Government might try to .hoodwink it and suddenly "Capricorn One,” a political thriller about the first manned flight to Mars became believable. James Brolin, O. J. Simpson and Sam Waterson portray the three astronauts who do not make it to Mars, but spend four months pretending they have in an aircraft hangar that simulates the red planet. Elliot Gould and Karen Black play the reporters who accidentally stumble on the hoax and begin to unravel it.

For "Capricorn One,” " the Martian surface is a

replica of the real thing and was re-created by Hollywood art directors based on photos taken by the Viking mission. With the help of N.A.S.A. and Pasadena’s Jet Propulsion Laboratroy, the surface was reproduced with ground granite dyed a reddish brown.

A command module was loaned to the film company by N.A.S.A., who

also assisted in all areas of scientific technology relevant to the manned space programme.

Such spirited co-opera-tion put a stop to one idea that was in Hyam’s head at the time he made “Capricorn One.”

“I’d have loved to have led off this film with ‘This picture whs made despite the efforts of N.A.S.A., but they were nice guys.”