"The Only Winning Move Is Not To Play"

TOM'S GAMES: Home computers were in their infancy at the time of "WarGames."

JOHN BADHAM: Oh, absolutely. And yet, at the same time, when we equipped his room with computers, we made sure that we did it with outdated computers. Because the question would come up, any logical person would say, "Where would this kid get the money to buy this crap?" And what happened was, Hacker #1, who he kind of hangs around with, has some older stuff that he's throwing out. "Here kid, take this stuff," [he said, referring to] the old modem where you had to put the handset into the cradle. You can look at the screen, and that's exactly what you'd see on the screen in those days. I don't even think we're talking about DOS language, I think it was Cobol and some of those primitive programming languages.

TG: Did you also want the technology in the film not to be too hi-tech for audiences to understand?

BADHAM: Absolutely. I had a huge war internally, and I had to assert myself as the director. But I knew that what they wanted me to put on the screen - the tech guys, that is - was way too techie. And mind you, I was ignorant about computers at the time, but I told them I just wanted to see the guy log in. I don't want to see 19 screens. I just want him to type JOSHUA and get in. Don't give me all this crap, "Oh well, we'll never get any respect..." I said, "I don't give a sh*t about respect. The audience will be bored to tears, and they won't care. They don't have the patience for that. I'm going to be the audience, I'm going to select this stuff out and we'll make it real easy." So they kind of grumbled and carried on, but we kept simplifying it so that even your grandma could follow the story. But we also made sure it was accurate. Just real simple stuff, and if you understood enough computer language, you might be able to migrate your way through it.

The list of games David Lightman finds after hacking into the WOPR.

TG: At the time of "WarGames" release, there was a lot of anxiety over nuclear war. Do you feel it was a factor in the success of the film?

BADHAM: No. I honestly don't. I think it was a residual benefit, but I think what they reacted to was here's a young appealing kid who's in way over his head. I know in my daughter's school at the time, they were hot to trot to see this movie just because it was based on a cute kid and they identified with him on nothing more than that he was doing something that looked like it was really cool. But the fact of getting into war, we didn't want to look like we were preaching anti-war, because that's a turn off, so you kind of slip that stuff in when people aren't looking. Right at the very end he goes, "This is a very peculiar game. The only winning move is not to play." There's the message, and if you don't get it, you probably wouldn't get it if I came out and gave an hour lecture. It certainly didn't hurt you to be able to agree with it. When you saw the message, you were kind of preaching to the choir, and that's pretty good.

It's like when "The China Syndrome" movie came out. The great fear of nuclear technology in general gave that movie a lot of support; it's that idea that some people could be asleep at the switch and we could have some terrible incident. Of course, in time we had Chernobyl, enough accidents had happened; it gave the movie a boost. When this movie came out, many reviews said, "This is complete bullsh*t. Nothing like this could ever happen," and "This is ridiculous." And I started to get worried that Larry and Walter had made up more of this than they were copping to! And then along comes, I think they called them The Milwaukee 414, it was like the area code of Milwaukee, and it was a bunch of kids that hacked their way into the defense department's computer. Were they inspired by "WarGames"? Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. They certainly had to have enough knowledge to be able to do that. That's pretty impressive stuff, and I'd say it happened within three or four weeks of the movie coming out. Every so often something would come along, and people sent me e-mails saying, "Oh, my God, look at this!"

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