The Hacker Movie Canon: WARGAMES

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.