Interview:
Gary Nelson,
director,
"The Black Hole"
Disney’s 1979 The Black Hole will enjoy a retrospective screening during this year’s Other Worlds Austin SciFi Festival with director Gary Nelson in attendance. He also will receive the festival’s Defender of the Universe Award. A sci-fi epic conceived before Star Wars opened in 1977, and redeveloped in the wake of the success of the George Lucas classic, The Black Hole was made for $20 million—then the biggest budget for a Disney feature film—and was the first Mouse House production to earn a PG rating. The Black Hole stars Robert Forster, Joseph Bottoms, Yvette Mimieux and Ernest Borgnine as the crew of USS Palomino, whose return trip to Earth is interrupted when they discover the long-missing deep space exploratory vessel USS Cygnus dangerously orbiting a black hole. The only remaining member of the Cygnus is its commander, a scientist played by Maximilian Schell who has surrounded himself with a crew of robots in his bid to study the black hole. The crew of the Palomino quickly realize all is not right on the Cygnus and that Schell’s plans could result in all their deaths. The Black Hole will screen 5:35 p.m. Dec. 10 at the Flix Brewhouse in Round Rock during the Other Worlds Austin Sci-Fi Film Festival, with the festival’s Defender of the Universe Award recipient Gary Nelson in attendance. From 1962 through 2000, Gary Nelson directed hundreds of hours of episodes of TV shows, ranging from Have Gun – Will Travel, Get Smart, Gilligan’s Island, F Troop, Love American Style, Police Story, Crazy Like a Fox, and Early Edition. He also directed the Emmy-nominated 1977 ABC miniseries Washington: Behind Closed Doors. Gary Nelson also directed the films Molly and Lawless John, Santee, the 1976 version of Disney’s Freaky Friday, Jimmy the Kid, and Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold.
Aired: Dec. 7, 2017. Web site: http://www.otherworldsaustin.com/ |
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