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since 1997 | by maryann johanson

from Facebook: the movie Fox thought would be a hit (instead of Star Wars)

Wed Nov 18 2015, 04:16pm | 15 comments


posted in:
easter eggs
  • Tonio Kruger

    I’m guessing this is the wrong week to admit that my mother actually watched The Other Side of Midnight. She didn’t seem to think it was a bad movie but then again I notice she never went out of her way to record it on her DVR either.

    Anyway, I wasn’t aware that the movie was that much of a flop. I know it wasn’t exactly a big success compared with Star Wars but it didn’t exactly provoke the same jokes about its bad box office that Heaven’s Gate did.

  • RogerBW

    I think that an underplayed point in that article is that Star Wars was driven by passion, which (like having a writer-director-lead) often pushes a film to stand out, though that can be in a good or a bad way.

    The other thing of course is that there are lots of films which might have “changed Hollywood” which didn’t take off; betting the farm on any one of them would generally be an error. Most of the time, “more of the same” will make adequate money, and it’s always easier to get in a derivative script and generic competent production crew than to come up with something original.

  • Surely lots of people saw *Midnight.* No shame in that.

  • Bluejay

    I’ve read that a studio passed over E.T. in favor of making Starman. They missed out on a huge hit, but on the other hand I quite like Starman.

  • Me too. Starman is a wonderful movie.

  • Danielm80

    I really liked the TV show. I may be the only living person who remembers it.

  • Bluejay

    No you’re not. I was a big fan of the show as well. I learned how to cock my eyebrow from watching Robert Hays. And I taught myself how to play the theme song on the keyboard. #TMI

  • I loved the TV show — it was even better than the movie. In the late 80s I published a Starman fanzine that won a fan award. (This fan wiki incorrectly list a coeditor — it was solely my project.)

  • Bluejay

    Ooh, any pdf’s? :-)

    I kind of feel like a Starman rewatch now, but it doesn’t seem to be streaming anywhere, and I’m worried the plots might not hold up after decades of more sophisticated TV.

    Still love those opening credits.

  • bronxbee

    i absolutely remember it, and keep hoping one of my cable channels that runs old tv shows will pick it up and rerun it, now that they seem to have finished with The Fugitive and Man on the Run, and Route 66.

  • bronxbee

    “more sophisticated tv”? any show that is based on a character and his/her/its reaction to the world around it is still compelling.

  • Danielm80

    That’s true, of course, but every time I’ve watched Star Trek: The Next Generation in the past year or two, I’ve noticed how old-fashioned the storytelling seems to me, compared to more recent shows that place an emphasis on moral ambiguity and multi-layered characterization.

  • bronxbee

    that may be so, but when ST tried a show with lots of layers, varied cultures and moral ambiguity (Deep Space Nine) the fans hated it. as for me, DS9 was definitely one of my favorite STs, but i notice it’s never on repeats anywhere. demand for complicated shows is lower than you’d think. and i think in 10 or 15 years time, what we’re watching now will seem simplistic and slow too.

  • No PDFs, sorry. And my only copy is packed away in storage in NYC, so I can’t make PDFs at the moment.

  • Bluejay

    and i think in 10 or 15 years time, what we’re watching now will seem simplistic and slow too.

    That was kind of my point. :-)

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