June 27th: REAL GENIUS (Martha Coolidge, 1985)

A new teenaged arrival at a west coast science university is assigned to live with an older, irreverent student, and both are part of a research team developing technology that may be connected to the government.

Neal Israel and Pat Proft were screenwriting partners in the 1980s, responsible for comedy hits Bachelor Party and the Police Academy series, with Proft also working with the team behind The Naked Gun films and Hot Shots!  The duo wrote a new script about life on a fictional campus modeled after Caltech, which wound up with producer Brian Grazer and was rewritten by his and Ron Howard's frequent collaborators Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel (Splash, City Slickers) as well as Coolige and Second City/SCTV writer and actor Peter Torokvei. Some of Caltech's recent history and lore were used in the story as well as real pranks pulled by students at various science universities.

Director Martha Coolidge attended RISD and NYU, where she made various short films, and then spent time at Francis Ford Coppola's film collective Zoetrope Studios. She found early success with her third feature Valley Girl, which was independent but a considerable hit, and became part of a  wave of women comedy directors along with Amy Heckerling and Susan Seidelman. Despite not writing the script herself, Coolidge did a fair amount of research after signing up to direct Real Genius, including months of studying the laser technology that features prominently in the film, as well as the practices of the CIA, and conducted numerous interviews with Caltech students.

The cast is headed by Val Kilmer, whose only previous credit was a lead role in the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker film Top Secret! Also starring is another newcomer Gabriel Jaret, Michelle Meyrink (Revenge of the Nerds), William Atherton (Die Hard), and Valley Girl star Deborah Foreman. Future screenwriter and producer Dean Devlin (Independence Day, Stargate) has a small role.

The film was shot in Southern California, at Pomona and Occidental colleges and the local Veteran's Administration hospital in Los Angeles as well as San Diego. Behind the camera, perhaps surprisingly because of the production's size, were veteran cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond (Close Encounters of the Third Kind, McCabe & Mrs. Miller) and editor Richard Chew (Star Wars, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), both Oscar-winners. The musical score was composed by Thomas Newman (Desperately Seeking Susan, The Lost Boys).

Some of the film's elaborate set pieces involved long planning and construction phases. For the climactic scene, almost 200,000 pounds of popcorn were made, which took several months. Another involved the students covering the hallways of a dorm in ice. To promote the film, Coolidge and Kilmer participated in the first "computer press conference" in the industry, answering questions via early service provider Compuserve.

The film made over $12 million at the box office, a considerable success based on the small budget. It also received mostly positive reviews. Kilmer would soon be propelled to stardom with appearances in Top Gun and Oliver Stone's The Doors. Real Genius has become a cult favorite and is considered one of the more intelligent comedies of the 1980s.

Running time is approx. 1 hr, 45 min.