Standing at the Event Horizon with Gary Nelson, Director of “The Black Hole” (1979)
Born in 1934, film director Gary Nelson has spent much of his life in Hollywood. As early as 1955, he was second assistant director on Nicholas Ray’s classic Rebel without a Cause with James Dean. He worked in that same capacity on a number of other films (including on John Ford’s The Searchers in 1956) before becoming assistant director for television shows like Have Gun – Will Travel, working on 38 episodes of it between 1961 and 1963.
Nelson quickly moved up the ranks, becoming director on six episodes Have Gun –Will Travel, which led to similar work on The Andy Griffith Show,The Patty Duke Show, F Troop, Gilligan’s Island, Get Smart, The Doris Day Show, Love, American Style, and many others during the sixties and seventies. For his acclaimed mini-series Washington: Behind Closed Doors (1977),starring Cliff Robertson, Jason Robards, and Robert Vaughn , Nelson was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award.
Along with a number of TV movies, Nelson also began directing theatrical releases, including Disney’s classic, live-action film Freaky Friday (1977), with Barbara Harris and Jodie Foster. During the years that followed, he directed a large array of films (including Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold in 1986), TV movies (including Get Smart, Again! in 1989), and episodes of television series like Early Edition (1997–2000).
However, Nelson is probably best known for directing Disney’s landmark film The Black Hole (1979), which remains a favorite for sci-fi buffs and fans of 1970s movies. Thematically dark and visually stunning, The Black Hole remains a classic of its genre, one of the best of its kind.
GARY D. RHODES: Let’s start at the beginning. How did you first get involved in The Black Hole?
GARY NELSON: I had done a picture for Disney called Freaky Friday, and Ron Miller, the producer, sent me the script for The Black Hole and asked me to do it. I read the script, and really didn’t like it at all. It was very sappy, about a spaceship stranded near a black hole. It was a rescue mission to go up and save everyone on board. It was like a whole city in jeopardy: people, kids, dogs, cats, a typical Disney format. And I didn’t really see any value in it at that time. So Ron said, “Why don’t you meet with Peter Ellenshaw, and he’ll walk you through some of the renderings he’s done for the spacecraft.” I told him I thought I’d be wasting his time. But he said, “No, no. Just meet with him.” Peter was head of the matte department, and we met at the studio. And he showed me his renderings, and I was blown away. Absolutely blown away by his ideas about how the vehicles would look. And I signed on, hoping of course that we could change the script enough so that it would be more interesting.
GDR: Aside from a vague idea, the average person knew very little about black holes in the 1970s. Did you read any of the available scientific literature to get a better idea of what they were?
GN: I did, and we had at one point in the development of the script as it went along. We had meetings with Carl Sagan, worked rather closely with one of the astronauts who flew the Gordon Cooper, and so we tried to get as much information about black holes as possible, and what they could or could not do. That’s how the script slowly evolved.
GDR: The project had been in pre-production for some time before you became director. Is that right?
GN: Yes, that’s true. As a matter of fact, the project was around before George Lucas’s Star Wars, a couple years prior to that, and they could never quite get it together enough to go forward with it. It went through several rewrites until I came on board. Disney realized there was a market out there after Star Wars was released and so they brought it forward. They had made some miniatures before I signed on, but that was it.
GDR: Bob McCall had created a good deal of artwork in the pre-production phase, but in the end, the film looks quite different than his designs. Do you recall why?
GN: It was Peter Ellenshaw’s influence. He had his own ideas of what the vehicles should look like and he went way beyond McCall. We just went 180 degrees from McCall’s designs.
GDR: Is it true that there was no ending to the film’s story when you began production?
GN: That’s true. In the original script, the rescue mission was successful and they managed to avoid the black hole. But I felt, and Peter felt, we had a chance to do something quite different, so we worked on the ending continuously throughout the entire shoot, before we decided what we were going to do. We never put anything on paper, because we didn’t want it leaked before picture came out. And we also couldn’t make up our minds. It took us several months before we actually decided how the film would end.
GDR: At the same time, I have heard a large number of storyboards were in place before shooting started.
GN: Yeah, the whole project took two years to do, so there were some storyboards. But they were mainly design storyboards, not particularly individual sequences and shot-by-shot images. Just where a scene was going to take place. I didn’t work too much with storyboards.
GDR: Were you involved in casting the film?
GN: Oh yes, definitely. Everyone was cast after I signed on.
GDR: Maximilian Schell is extremely good as Dr. Reinhardt, the villain. What was he like to direct?
GN: After the project was a go for me, I really wanted Schell to do the part, and so we sent him the script. He was in Austria filming Tales from the Vienna Woods (1979), and he called us back and said he would be interested, but only if he could meet with the director face-to-face. At that point we had already started shooting miniatures, and I called him on the phone, and said I’m filming also, and he said, “Well, I’m directing over here, and I can’t get away.” But he said we should meet. I said, “Well, maybe we could meet half way.” He said, “Halfway is in the middle of the Atlantic.” Then I said, “Maybe we could meet on your U-boat.” And then there was a long pause. And I thought, he has no sense of humor. So I got on a plane, and he had me picked up and driven to the studio where he was watching the dailies of his film, and afterwards he said, “Why do you want me in the picture?” “I think you’d be absolutely perfect.” He said, “Several weeks ago I got a call from Stanley Kubrick advising me to look at a TV mini series, saying it was the best he’d seen in quite a while. After looking at it, I realized Jason Robards would be better than me to play your role.” I thought he was setting me up, because he was referring to Washington: Behind Closed Doors, which I had directed. But he wasn’t. He really didn’t know. So I told me I directed it, and he just took a beat and he grabbed me and gave me a big hug and kiss. And then he said, “I will do your picture.”
GDR: The rest of the cast was strong, meaning Robert Forster, Joseph Bottoms, Ernest Borgnine, Yvette Mimieux, and Anthony Perkins, as well as the voiceover work that Roddy McDowall and Slim Pickens did. Are there any memories you have of working with them?
GN: Well, originally Yvette Mimieux was not cast as the female in the picture. We had cast someone else. On the first day of shooting, I did a sequence with that actress, and she was good-looking with beautiful long hair. After we had done this first day, I said to her, “We’re going to half to cut your hair, it isn’t right for zero gravity.” She was really against it. But I convinced her it would be right for the film. And that evening she brought in her hairdresser, Vidal Sassoon or somebody, and they went up to her dressing room, cutting her hair one inch at a time. And then drinking one glass of wine. Then cut another inch and then drink another glass of wine. Finally it was short enough to be right for the picture. That night, when she drove home, she had an accident, and we had to recast her the very next day.
GDR: I’ve heard that you appear in The Black Hole in a cameo role, as one of the humanoids. Is that true?
GN: No, that’s not true. I don’t know who started that rumor. I was never in the movie.
GDR: The two major science fiction films before The Black Hole, certainly the two recent successes, were 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Star Wars (1977). The Black Hole seems very different than those films, not only in its storyline, but how it looks. Was that a conscious effort on your part?
GN: It was definitely a conscious effort to stay away from the look of those two films as much as possible. In a way we did accomplish that, I think.
GDR: The spaceships look very different than any prior sci-fi films, including those of earlier decades.
GN: That was Ellenshaw’s contribution. He was influenced by Buckminster Fuller. What was wonderful was that Peter would say, “In space you don’t have to have something that is solid. There’s no atmosphere to hold back your movement through space.” The Cygnus that he designed [to be Dr. Reinhardt’s ship] was just magnificent.
GDR: The effects work on The Black Hole consisted of three basic types: miniatures, matte and lab work, and the effects created on set. Which posed the biggest challenge?
GN: They were all difficult to do, really. We built most of it on the sound stages at Disney. A lot of them were full-size, and many of them included matte shots Peter had done. It was very challenging to do that kind of work.
GDR: Do you recall how the special effects for the black hole itself were created?
GN: It was accomplished by many, many, different and very unique elements that we put together to shoot it live, rather than create it in the matte department. We shot cameras straight down on a giant body of water that was spinning like a washing machine, adding different paint and things to it to get the color. We realized that if you make a black hole black, it’s black. It won’t show anything, like a non-color, so it took several weeks to get the design in the right feel that it could be used in the film.
GDR: The Black Hole was produced roughly at the same time as Paramount’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), which seems more influenced by 2001: A Space Odyssey than your film.
GN: We just had to divorce ourselves from everything that that had been done before.
GDR: Were there any effects people that you think were particularly responsible for what we seen onscreen?
GN: Peter Ellenshaw’s son, Harrison, who had taken over the matte department. Harrison was involved in a lot of ways, including the film’s ending. Of course, the effects guys were all great, some Academy Award-winners. Top of the line guys at Disney back then.
GDR: What about John Mansbridge, the art director?
GN: Peter did the designs, and it was up to Mansbridge to have them built. So he was in effect the art director. But Ellenshaw was responsible for the film’s visual style. He was a genius.
GDR: And Frank Phillips, the cinematographer?
GN: He was my first choice, and he had done a couple of pictures at Disney. I worked with Frankie as far back as Have Gun — Will Travel, and he was really a first-rate cameraman.
GDR: John Barry’s score for The Black Hole is extremely memorable. How did you two work together.
GN: I spoke with him, and gave him ideas. Barry of course came up with what he felt was the best interpretation. We were very fortunate to get him to do the picture. When we went to do the scoring, we had to go to Warner Bros. to use their scoring stage, because the one at Disney was not large enough. There were over 100 musicians. There wasn’t enough room for all of them at Disney. There was only one little part of the music I didn’t think was right, so I had Barry take another turn at it. He had no problem with that at all.
GDR: The opening credits, with the green, grid-like representation of a black hole seemed completely original at the time.
GN: That was designed for the trailer for the movie. We didn’t want to show any scenes of the black hole itself. Today you practically see the whole movie in a trailer. We didn’t want to show any live action from the movie, so we could peak the interest of the potential audience. That was done deliberately. I wanted “Walt Disney Presents” off of the credits too. Everybody, at the time, if you made a Disney movie, thought you made it for kids, and things like that, and I didn’t want to limit the audience, a more adult audience. If it came out as “Walt Disney Presents,” they’d think it was just a movie for kids.
GDR: The first shot of the Palamino, the heroes’ ship, is really wonderful because it lasts so long, showing the ship moving slowly at an angle from screen left to right. All the time, we hear the actors conversing, but we don’t see them.
GN: That was to get everyone immediately involved, and focus on the visuals. I think it was very effective. We had photographed the actors saying those lines, as an interior, but we didn’t use that for the first minute or so of the film.
GDR: When the crew encounters the sheer force of the black hole, the cameras turn and the actors turn. It really visually evokes the fact that there isn’t actually an “up” or “down” in outer space. That’s true of the ending of the film, as well.
GN: A lot went into that, to be in zero gravity, and of course we didn’t have the ability to CGI these people. So it took a lot of preparation to make all that work: to hide wires, the placement of the camera, how to move the camera, and to make everyone look like they are really floating.
GDR: The three most important robots in the film hover, and at times we see the human characters floating too. I’m thinking, for example, of Reinhardt’s body drifting in outer space at the conclusion. Were those kinds of images difficult to achieve?
GN: It was tough to make the wires “go away,” and yet not be extremely costly. We did a lot of the scenes upside down, the camera upside, so the wires would go to the bottom of the screen, where no one would be looking. That way, if the wires weren’t completely concealed, the audience would be looking in the wrong place for them.
GDR: Something like the kind of visual misdirection that magicians use?
GN: Exactly. That’s exactly what it was.
GDR: There are so many memorable images in the film, but one of the most arresting has to be the enormous meteor that rolls through the ship’s interior, heading straight for the heroes, who are on a bridge. It looks as amazing now as it did in 1979. How was that effect achieved?
GN: It was achieved with about five different elements, including the set itself, which from the center on down was real. Above center was a matte, and the meteor was process that took four or five different elements to put it all together. The meteor itself we built, and photographed that separately. It was incorporated into the final, overall shot. Really quite complicated. It required match shots, miniatures, and live action. It took several days for that one shot.
GDR: The color red seems like an important motif in the film, from the robot Maximilian to Dr. Reinhardt’s clothing to the meteors, the final appearance of the black hole, and the Hellish inferno. Was this a conscious choice?
GN: It was a very conscious choice. And there again, that was Peter Ellenshaw.
GDR: Was it mere coincidence that Reinhardt’s evil robot in the film was named Maximilian, and Reinhardt in real life was Maximilian Schell?
GN: Totally coincidence.
GDR: In the film, Reinhardt and Maximilian have a really wonderfully complex relationship. Reinhardt created him, but is also scared of him. And Maximilian clearly chooses not to help Reinhardt when he’s dying. Then the two literally merge at the end of the film, with Reinhardt’s eyes inside Maximilian’s body. Early in the film, the dialogue references Dr. Frankenstein. Is that how you saw their relationship?
GN: Yes. You create something, and what you’ve created takes over your life.
GDR: Do you recall if those are actually Maximilian Schell’s eyes inside of the robot’s body at the end of the film, or was it a stand-in?
GN: That was actually Schell. That was another part of the film that was not written. We came up with it late in the production.
GDR: To return to the film’s conclusion, it is really extremely memorable. It seems to me that Reinhardt and Maximilian are in Hell, with all its damnation and flames on view, and the heroes are ushered through the black hole safely thanks to an angel. Is that close to what you intended?
GN: You are on the right track. Another part that didn’t make the cut was that I had this idea that, at one point in their travels through the black hole, they would be touched by the figures in the Sistine Chapel, and so I got Peter Ellenshaw to fly to Rome and, with permission from the Pope and the Catholic Church, to photograph the ceiling. At one point, the space ship was going to travel through the outstretched fingers in Michelangelo, God and man. After we put all that together, we thought, maybe we’re getting a little off in the wrong direction in terms of the religious theme. I was the last one to hold out for it, but it didn’t make it into the film.
GDR: Was there any particular influence on how Hell would look?
GN: Most of that came from Ellenshaw’s brain.
GDR: One of my favorite things about the film, when I first saw it in 1979 and to this day, is how unique it is. It’s a science-fiction adventure that not only draws on the supernatural, as in the ending, but also on the paranormal, since Dr. Kate McCrae (Yvette Mimieux) is able to contact V.I.N.CENT. using ESP. Was that in the original script?
GN: That developed along the way. It was not in the script originally. It sort of evolved.
GDR: The film is rather dark in tone as well, particularly for a Disney movie. Along with the images of Hell, there’s the humanoid funeral, the eerie reveal of the humanoid’s face, and of course Maximilian’s brutal murder of Dr. Alex Durant (Anthony Perkins).
GN: That’s exactly why I wanted to take Disney’s name off the picture. So there weren’t preconceived notions about what might be seen. I think we did the right thing by releasing under Buena Vista instead of the Disney name.
GDR: In 1979, there was a comic book adaptation that tried to convey what happened to the heroes on the other side of the black hole. As a director, did you have anything in your mind about what happens to the characters next, even though it isn’t shown in the film?
GN: There was some talk about a sequel if The Black Hole was a runaway hit. But it wasn’t. It didn’t garner the box-office success it might have. So any ideas for the sequel, and what happened next, ended.
GDR: How long did you end up working on The Black Hole, roughly speaking?
GN: Two years. Two years from the day I came on board to the day we got the answer print.
GDR: At the time, American Cinematographer wrote that the budget was 20 million dollars. How did that compare to most other films at the time?
GN: We made it for 19 million dollars, and at the time Freaky Friday was about 2 and a 1/2 million dollars. But the Star Trek movie that year cost forty million to make, so we really were in the low end for a picture of that magnitude.
GDR: In 1979, shortly after finishing The Black Hole, you spoke about the “total commitment” it required from you. What did that mean?
GN: It meant that there were times when the film almost becomes your life, my life. Its a seven-day-a-week total commitment, and its kind of dangerous to do that, because I had a family, too, you know, but it is just that a project of that size becomes part of your life, a great part of it. Weekends too, going into the studio, thinking about what I’m doing the next day, the next week. But I do that on every project I’m on.
GDR: At roughly the same time, you said, “the rewards on a film like this come later, when its finished and accepted as a neat film.” To this day, The Black Hole has legions of fans. It really has made a deep impact on many of our lives. Is that part of the reward you described?
GN: I never expected that The Black Hole would have such a long life. I wondered if anyone would remember the picture two or three years after its release. I’m surprised at the influence it has had on so many different kinds of people. Occasionally I teach at a university, and most of the students were born long after The Black Hole was released, but they all seem to have an interest in it. I thought the idea of the picture, meaning black holes, would continue to fascinate people, but not the actual movie. The fact you are writing are about the picture fascinates me. Those were the rewards I was thinking about.
