Starman
Short description
An alien spacecraft is shot down over Wisconsin, and the being inside survives by taking on the appearance of a recently deceased man. He seeks out the man's widow, Jenny Hayden, and persuades her to drive him to Arizona, where a ship will collect him within a few days. Jenny is at first unwilling and frightened, but as the journey continues, her feelings toward the visitor change. Meanwhile, government agents pursue the pair across the country, determined to capture the alien before he can leave.
John Carpenter directed the film, the tenth of the twenty-two features he has made in chronological order, following Christine and preceding Big Trouble in Little China. Bruce A. Evans and Raynold Gideon wrote the screenplay, and Larry J. Franco produced. Jeff Bridges plays the visitor, with Karen Allen as Jenny, supported by Charles Martin Smith, Richard Jaeckel, Robert Phalen and Tony Edwards. Thirty-eight cast members and seventy-one crew are credited.
Made for about 22 million dollars, the film took in roughly 29 million worldwide. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7 out of 10 from around 57,000 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6.9 out of 10 from some 1,000 votes. A critics' rating of 7.2 out of 10, drawn from 112 reviews, is slightly above both audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- Producer Michael Douglas considered several directors, including Mark Rydell, Adrian Lyne, John Badham, and Tony Scott, before choosing John Carpenter.
- Preparing for the role of an alien, actor Jeff Bridges studied ornithology and the behavioral patterns of birds, from which he borrowed some nuances, in particular, sudden, jerky head movements. Bridges assumed that there would be nothing human about the alien, and that in a human body it would act and move like an animal.
- At Columbia Pictures, work on the script was underway at the same time as another project about a visit to Earth by aliens. They didn't want to shoot both films at once, so management had to choose which film would be shot first. The second script was realized as Steven Spielberg's "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" (1982). It became extremely popular, and Columbia Pictures put "The Man from Earth" on the shelf for almost three years before it saw the light of day.
- When Jeff Bridges' character comes out of the house naked, it seems as though his hair is standing on end. This was achieved by filming Bridges hanging upside down, and then 'flipping' his image and overlaying it on an image of the surroundings.
- The film's director, John Carpenter, wanted the filming location to be "the United States itself," so the film crew had to travel extensively around the country before returning to California and finishing work on the film at The Burbank Studios.
Similar movies
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
