It’s laborious to consider that Actual Genius will flip 40 in August of this yr. The 1985 Martha Coolidge-directed faculty comedy traditional starring Val Kilmer in simply his second film (and nonetheless one among Kilmer’s finest roles) wasn’t an enormous field workplace hit, and it’s typically forgotten about lately, nevertheless it turned a staple of cable TV within the mid-’80s. A technology of children raised on HBO and Cinemax has made it a beloved cult traditional.
The film follows the hijinks of a bunch of “nerds” at a fictional college (primarily based loosely on Cal Tech) as they construct a skating rink within the dorm, mess with the bully Kent (Robert Prescott), chase the mysterious Hollyfeld (performed by The White Lotus solid member Jon Gries) down into the steam tunnels, and, within the grand finale, destroy their professor’s home by redirecting a navy laser into his entryway and pop a large vat of popcorn. The popcorn actually pushes by means of the home windows and in the end knocks down the partitions because it expands. It’s an unbelievable scene, and I nonetheless like to rewatch all of it these years later. What I by no means knew till I puzzled about it just lately was how the stunt was pulled off in an age earlier than CGI. Properly, now I do know.
Sure, The Popcorn Was Actual
In keeping with the good William Atherton, who performed the hated Professor Jerry Hathaway (and was actually in every single place within the Nineteen Eighties), the crew was actually popping the corn for months throughout manufacturing. In an interview with AV Membership in 2010, he revealed,
They popped the popcorn for 3 months. There was a machine within the studio that did nothing all day lengthy however pop popcorn.
However that wasn’t all. Having an enormous quantity of popcorn flowing out into the road of the neighborhood the place the set was constructed could be an issue for wildlife, particularly because it was chemically handled to maintain it from catching fireplace. Atherton explains,
Then they needed to fear, as a result of they needed to be cautious that the birds didn’t eat it, as a result of the popcorn needed to be handled so it wouldn’t combust. So there was fireplace retardant on it, so that you didn’t need the birds to die or get excessive or one thing.
As a result of that they had to make use of sensible results, they made the scene and spectacle actually come alive. The mountains of popcorn flowing out of the home is an unforgettable second and a superb, hilarious ending for the film. Atherton defined simply how a lot went into the stunt,
It was actual old style stuff. Now they’d do it digitally, I assume, however in these days, you needed to pop the dang popcorn and put it in a truck and schlep it out to the valley.
The Laser Impact Is not Potential
Once I went to rewatch the scene just lately, I used to be reminded of an outdated episode of Mythbusters after they tackled the query of whether or not it was doable to pop popcorn utilizing a laser and simply how a lot and how briskly it may very well be accomplished. Whereas they proved {that a} laser might warmth a kernel up sufficient to pop, the quickly increasing popcorn didn’t have sufficient pressure to interrupt by means of home windows or partitions, as seen within the film. Plus, there isn’t a laser giant sufficient to pop that a lot corn that rapidly.
Ultimately, although, it doesn’t matter to me; the scene stands by itself as one of many finest finales to any ‘80s comedy, ever. Proper up there with the Keep-Puft Marshmallow Man in Ghostbusters and the one-ski ski race on the finish of Higher Off Lifeless. Actual Genius is a real traditional, and so they simply don’t make films prefer it anymore.