Hollywood's Unreality: Challenger And The Unfortunate Timing of 'Space Camp'

Pity Hollywood. When art imitates life — like in the September 12th-and-every-day-after film Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close — everyone misinterprets it as exploitative and manipulative and demands you stop using video footage of the Twin Towers burning to advertise your film right next to Ground Zero. Worse still, life will occasionally preempt art and fill "the summer's greatest adventure" with pathos it doesn't deserve and can't handle. Such was the case for 1986's Space Camp.

Picture being Harry Winer in January of 1986. You're on your way to view the final cut of the film you've directed about a plucky boy, the robot he befriends, and their wild adventures, when a space shuttle mishap launches a bunch of kids and the woman from Temple of Doom into space. With a name like "Winer," what could go wrong?

"The first time we looked at the final cut of the movie was the morning of the Challenger – an hour after Challenger blew up," Winer told The Morning Call in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania in a 1986 interview. "We were, needless to say, devastated. Just before I'm leaving my place going to the screening, which I'm all excited about – and then to see this thing on the air."

That morning the space shuttle Challenger broke up 73 seconds after launch, claiming the lives of its seven crew members. The launch had been delayed due to trouble getting the shuttle Columbia back on the ground, and a severe cold snap hit Florida while the Challenger waited on the launch pad. Unknown to NASA at the time, the cold had weakened the rubber O rings on the right solid rocket booster. During the rocket's burn, hot gas shot from where the O rings were failing and flames began shooting from the hole. The fire weakened the struts that connected the booster to the giant liquid fuel tank, and the base of the 149 foot-tall rocket collided with the giant, 66,000 pound, external liquid fuel tank, which erupted in an explosion that broke the shuttle into pieces.

In a bitterly ironic twist to a situation that needed none, NASA had selected Christa McAuliffe, a schoolteacher, to go on the mission and conduct lessons from space. This meant the launch was broadcast live and the tragedy was witnessed by thousands of children and students. The goal of sending McAuliffe into space was to highlight the importance of teachers and high tech careers; instead the shuttle program was shut down for two and a half years and public support for the space program eroded.

While the Challenger disaster happened two weeks before I was even born, we did discuss it at the actual space camp in Huntsville, Ala. when I attended as a 12-year-old. We sat in the shadow of giant rocket, as one of the counselors described what had happened, holding an inflatable toy space shuttle to demonstrate. Even now, a dozen years removed, I remember him describing that while the explosion may have killed up to five members of the crew, the pilot and commander likely had a moment of dawning comprehension as they continued to shoot upward before the fall and lack of oxygen killed them.

Remarkably — and unfortunately for Winer and his crew — the Space Camp plot hinges around an error with the right solid rocket booster too. The aforementioned sentient friend robot starts the booster on a path to either explosion or launch the shuttle while his best friend and the rest of a lovable band of misfits are sitting inside.

Just like the live CNN feed that shows the explosion in an extremely tight shot, you can't blame the filmmakers for the deep feeling of dread that the scene now inspires. You might judge them for going ahead and releasing the film six months later anyway though. Just because Roger Ebert says, "[t]he time is not right for a comedy thriller about a bunch of kids who are accidentally shot into orbit with their female teacher," doesn't mean that you have to listen.

In the director's estimation, "the movie would provide a real emotional release — seeing the shuttle touch down again." So rather than delaying the release date, the filmmakers went ahead and released it on June 6, 1986, the same day the Rogers Commission delivered its report on the accident to President Reagan.

If the weary nation was looking for catharsis, it didn't look for it in theaters showing Space Camp. The movie earned just under $10 million domestically in the summer of '86, and is now condemned to forever wander cable television late at night. Aside from reminding everyone of a national tragedy, it's a pretty subpar film that has aged badly.

The echoes of tragedy have only gotten worse. At the climax, Lea Thompson (riding high off Back to the Future's success a year earlier) has to keep the shuttle angled just so, to keep it from breaking up upon re-entry—which is the disaster that befell the shuttle Columbia in 2003.

Even a non-tragic piece of trivia — it's Joaquin Phoenix's first movie role, and he's credited as Leaf Phoenix — is marred by the fact that it's about Joaquin Phoenix.

So if you're so inclined, go ahead and hate away; Winer has been expecting it. "No matter what we would say or do in light of an all-too-cynical world, we would be called to task for appearing exploitative," he said back in 1986. Maybe they will, and maybe they did, Mr. Winer, but according to a Dec. 1985 review in Variety, the movie is still "[h]ampered by cliché-ridden dialog, performances suffer from a weightlessness of their own."

As we mark the 26th anniversary of the Challenger disaster this year, remember to save some pity for those brave Hollywood filmmakers, the true — actually, never mind.

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