Capricorn One (1978)

Peter Hyams should be ashamed!!!  He's a smart guy. Without a doubt he knew there would repercussions once this movie was released.  Why did he make it?  How COULD he make it?  Many people will go to their graves insisting that Apollo was a hoax. Hyams' movie only made that kind of thinking legitimate. I'm not interested in any of his other movies. CAPRICORN ONE was disgraceful and seriously affected people in a negative way. I repeat, he should have known that would happen, and he should have passed on the film. All these years later, the movement he help build is still making headlines (granted, this is from a year ago, but can anybody say it's likely anything changed?):
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Millions Still Believe the 1969 Moon Landing Was a Hoax

By Ken Schwartz

July 20, 2019 07:07 AM

Despite the huge amount of evidence, the dust and rock samples, the television footage, and the hundreds of thousands of people who made it happen, polls show as many as 6% of Americans believe the Apollo 11 astronauts never landed on the moon.

Conspiracy theorists continue to insist the entire mission 50 years ago was an elaborate hoax, produced at the Area 51 Air Force testing range in Nevada or on a Hollywood movie soundstage by legendary director Stanley Kubrick.

The rumors first got traction just a year after the first moon landing, when the Vietnam War had led millions of Americans to question their government.

A July1970 poll found 30% of Americans declaring Apollo 11 to be a fake. That number remained relatively high throughout the '70s, when several books were published and a 1978 film about a phony mission to Mars, Capricorn One, convinced many that a moon landing was also a scripted piece of high-technology bunk.

NASA file image shows Neil Armstrong on the moon next to the Lunar Module Eagle

Buzz Aldrin, 2nd Man on Moon, Recalls 'Magnificent Desolation'

Art Harmon, a former legislative director for the U.S. House or Representatives, currently leads the Coalition to Save Manned Space Exploration.

He has two words for conspiracy theorists who say men never went to the moon – "absolute nuts."

"They’re just troublemakers. There's always people who will say 'this never happened' or 'that never happened.' They’re just trying to divide people. We went," he said.

But those who insist the U.S. did not put astronauts on the moon have claimed their own "evidence" to a faked landing.

The conceit of Peter Hyams’ Capricorn One is that in the near

future, NASA fakes a manned Mars landing by using

Hollywood’s tricks of the trade, sets and special effects.

They question why the flag astronaut Neil Armstrong planted on the moon could not possibly be rippling, because there is no air on the moon. In reality, the astronauts bent the metal frame holding the flag, causing the ripples.

** FILE ** In this July 20, 1969 file photo, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin, the first men to land on the moon, plant the U.S. flag on the lunar surface. (NASA) Apollo 11's Astronauts Snapped Photos for Science.

The conspiracy minded claim photos the astronauts took on the moon do not show any stars in the background. In reality, the cameras were unable to capture the faint light emitted by stars,

If the moon landing was real, they ask, why didn't the lander scatter dust when it touched down? In reality, the lander was traveling horizontally much of the time and the thrusters that controlled its landing were not pointed down. Radiation from the sun also made the dust highly charged and it clung to the moon’s surface.

Every claim that no one went to the moon can be easily explained by science, physics or evidence brought back to Earth, Harmon said. He adds the conspiracy theories are "an insult to those 400,000 Americans who worked to get us to the moon and back."

Those hundreds of thousands of people, including scientists, engineers and factory workers, were scattered around the world.

One astronaut who actually walked on the moon in 1969 has no tolerance for those who call it a massive hoax.

When one conspiracy theorist challenged Buzz Aldrin and called him a liar, Aldrin punched him in the face.

 * * *

I had to think long and hard whether to include this movie in my book Mars in the Movies: A History. While it is ostensibly about the USA’s first flight to Mars, it is actually a flick about a government conspiracy run by the higher ups at NASA, a conspiracy that adds some Government-sanctioned murder into the mix for a little spice. Frankly I think such a notion is reprehensible. But in the end, I decided that there would be quite a few readers who would expect to find this movie in this sort of book, so I relented.

Summary. Before take off, it’s discovered that the first manned mission to Mars is in jeopardy because the landing capsule is flawed and the astronauts would not survive. This is not acceptable because public interest and government funding for NASA must not be lost, or else the U.S. space program would go belly up. A quick plan is designed and implemented, which would remove the astronauts from the flight just before the rocket takes off, hide them away for the allotted number of months, let them do video broadcasts from a simulated capsule and from a phony movie-set-style Mars surface tucked into a military warehouse, as necessary for verisimilitude. 

Once the return capsule returns, the astronauts would secretly be returned to their craft, and the world can have its tickertape parades. But there is one problem: the return capsule burns up on reentry. Well, you just can’t have three astronauts running around when they’re supposed to be dead. So NASA does everything it can to kill and dispose of the astronauts so they can be properly mourned by the world. A news reporter accidentally becomes aware of the plot, doggedly tracks down all the people and places involved in the scheme, saves one of the three astronauts, and breaks the story.

Peter Hyams is a director who frequently does his own cinematography. This is not at all usual and puts him squarely in the camp founded by the great William Cameron Menzies, who fought for industry-wide acceptance of the Production Designer and Director of Cinematography being recognized as essential to filmmaking as the Director. Capricorn One was his fourth Hollywood feature film; it was followed by, among many more in his 40-year career, Hanover Street (1979) with Harrison Ford, Outland (1981) with Sean Connery, The Star Chamber (1983) with Michael Douglas, 2o10 (1984) with Roy Scheider, The Presidio (1988) with Sean Connery, The Relic (1997) based on the best-selling novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child,  and End of Days (1999) with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and at least three pictures with Jean-Claude Van Damme.

A few of Peter Hyams' films.

Hyams’ body of work comprises mainly genre films of the science-fiction type, but also includes a number of straight dramas. Capricorn One was probably his first attempt at a real A-list movie, and his output thereafter mostly fell into this same league. He hit the jackpot when he headed up the film version of Arthur C. Clarke’s best-selling novel 2010, the first sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Clarke’s novelization of one of the all-time great science fiction films directed by Stanley Kubrick and co-written by Clarke and Kubrick.

Frankly I don't understand how Clarke could have, in conscience, agreed to allow Hyams to make 2010. One of Clarke's dearest friends was Wernher von Braun, who headed the Apollo Project. Clarke, too, had lived almost all his life promoting spaceflight. How could he sell the rights to 2010 to a man who probably did more to undermine the U.S space program than Richard Nixon—the man who had the power to cancel and mothball our space program . . .  and did!

Among the highlights of 2010's production design was the effort made to replicate various sets and props and the spaceship from the 1968 film. Since these no longer existed, they all needed to be remade using photographs from the first film.

Copyright 1984

However, in my view, Hyams’ choosing Roy Scheider to play the William Sylvester role (from 2001: A Space Odyssey) could not have been more ill-advised. In fact, the first sentence of Clarke’s first ever e-mail (Sept. 16, 1983) to Hyams, as recorded in The Odyssey File by Arthur C. Clarke and Peter Hyams, says, “William Sylvester (Dr. Floyd in ‘2001’) phoned recently from L.A. and talked at some length—but I’m not clear if he was after his old role or not (he said he was semi-retired). You might contact him.” One of the secrets of all good story telling is suspension of disbelief, yet Scheider’s presence never let me immerse myself in 2010, which took all the fun out of it for me. Yes, I am fully aware of the commercial and financial considerations that dictated using a star in the leading role, and Scheider was certainly a big star in those days. But my concern still stands; I could not and have not been able to enjoy the movie despite many attempts.  It seems to me that when a character from an earlier movie makes an appearance in a sequel using a different actor, some attempt must be made to correlate the two. To blatantly choose an actor whose presence on screen is the polar opposite of the original actor is a problem in my view. (The same unnecessary disconnect happened when Leonard Nimoy chose Robin Curtis to replace Kirstie Alley’s Saavik in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock; there simply had to be a more relatable choice.) But of course this could simply be chalked up as my foible.

From Clarke’s point-of-view, Hollywood’s being interested in 2010 must have been a highlight. Clarke was always one to be seduced by the glare of Hollywood. Many of his stories and novels were optioned over time, but none of them panned out except, of course, 2001, which just happened to be one of the most important movies ever made. Still, by ten years later, he had no better luck with movies than before 2001, so he probably leaped at the chance of having 2010 filmed. He must have enjoyed his fleeting cameo sitting on a park bench. Of course, in the days of pan-and-scan, thankfully pretty much extinct these days, he would have been chopped from the left side of the screen!

USA/UK. Sir Lew Grade, Associated General Films, Lazarus/Hyams Productions, Capricorn One Associates, Incorporated Television Company (ITC). C. 2.35:1. 123m

CREW: Director Peter Hyams. Script Peter Hyams. Producer Paul N. Lazarus III. Score Jerry Goldsmith. Director of Photography Bill Butler. Production Designer Albert Brenner. Editor James Mitchell. Casting Mike Fenton, Jane Feinberg. Special Visual Effects Van Der Veer Photo Effects.

CAST: Robert Caulfield Elliott Gould. Charles Brubaker James Brolin. Kay Brubaker Brenda Vaccaro. Peter Willis Sam Waterston. John Walker O.J. Simpson. Dr. James Kelloway Hal Holbrook. Judy Drinkwater Karen Black. Albain Telly Savalas.

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