Inside trivia about the movie from an extra - made at NASA
Much of the movie was made at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. I was an extra in the movie. I also ran computers in Mission Control for the last two Apollo missions and for all of Skylab. I was back in college when this movie was being produced. A poster was up in Rice's film making department. I got one of the extras jobs.
It was funny to be back in some of the places I had worked in a few years before. Several of the close-ups of hands turning dials are me. You can also see me as one of the technicians at a console when Peter Fonda and Arthur Hill walk away from the dream machine. I had one line, but they re-shot it with one of the main actors. Oh, well.
You see some of the actors running around a closing door into this extra large room which was supposed to create weightlessness. This was actually an enormous vacuum chamber which NASA used to check the spaceworthiness of space craft. The area inside the room was very large. The movie was done during the long break between Skylab and the Shuttles. So, NASA had plenty of equipment which was not being used.
They shot at least one other main story line. This was where Futureworld invited lots of world leaders to visit. While there, they would replace the world leaders with exact android copies. In real life, there were quite a few sets of twins around so they could show the world leaders interacting with their clones. The clones were supposed to return to their country and then do the bidding of the Futureworld masters. The story line did not really make it into the final cut.
They did lots of closeup still photos of the major stars. I remember watching Peter Fonda sitting in front of a bright light being photographed from just a couple of inches away. They had thought they would use these pictures as zoom-in closeups to show details of the android cloning process. I was surprised how long Peter could stare into those bright lights without blinking.
Another set-up was also not really used. They had several extras who were amputees. They were used to show androids who were in the process of being repaired. It was supposed to make things look very real as a new leg or arm was being replaced. I don't remember this making it into the film either.
Fonda, Blythe Danner, Stuart Margolin were all very friendly. Margolin would hang around with the film crew a lot.
I joked with one of the A.D. about all of the women extras being so good looking. He said that since they were supposed to be androids, why not make them pretty. Makes sense to me... :-)
IMDB lists me as a technician on the movie; but I played a technician in the movie.
Two of the clips I was in are here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9dQdHHo2ak
Phil Konstantin