Here’s a quick story called “How to Not Get Ahead in Hollywood.” In the fall of 1999 I decided to take advantage of Emerson College’s Los Angeles program. All students in the program were required to hustle themselves up an entertainment industry internship for school credit. I won’t name the joint where I worked...but needless to say I chose terribly unwisely. Most of my days were spent getting screamed at for getting the bosses’ cream to coffee ratio wrong...getting screamed at for forgetting to open the bosses’ copy of Daily Variety to page 2 (why he could not just open it himself we do not know), and just getting screamed at in general. Once in a blue moon they would haul us interns (unpaid...all) into the boardroom and solicit our opinions on certain screenplays that had been submitted for consideration. Almost every script was a hard pass. In fact, out of the hundreds of screenplays that came through the office that fall only one of them eventually made it to the big screen. Anyway, one afternoon we were all handed a script called Silver Metal Lover and told to take it home, read it, and to prepare a list of potential actors and actresses we thought should be cast in the film. Silver Metal Lover was written by Randal Kleiser, who directed Grease...which was a big ass hit in 1978. I’m not sure how much clout Randy Kleiser still had in 1999 but I would say it was low to none. Low clout warning. I read the script and this is what it was about: A 16 year-old girl who runs away from home with a robot (made out of silver metal, natch). She teaches him what it’s like to be human. He, in turn, teaches her what it’s like to BALL!! He’s a fuckbot and she’s a child: from the director of Honey, I Blew Up the Kids! Man. I just about spat out my Koo Koo Roo when I read that shit. I went into the meeting the following day and offered suggestions similar to Michael Corleone’s offer to that corrupt Senator: nothing. None. No actors/actresses. The boss was furious. “Why didn’t you complete the assignment!?” I told him that the script was terrible and that the film would never get made. “But we have optioned the script!” he fumed, “It IS getting made! You aren’t allowed to say it’s terrible!!” I told him...you know...that’s fine...but I couldn’t imagine there was anyone anywhere that would want to act in a movie about underage robot sex (If I recall correctly they really wanted Tom Everett Scott for the robot). They told me my behavior was outrageous and that I was banned from all future script meetings. I told them that was fine too. Then I walked out of the office and straight into a 20 year stint waiting tables. Would you like fries or chips with that? Silver Metal Lover remains unmade.
Alright, we’re actually gathered here today to talk about the profoundly disturbing 1986 Disney sci-fi flick Flight of the Navigator, which was also directed by Randal Kleiser (kind of ties together with that last story, no? No?) Of all of the movies I watched that year; Halloween 2, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Friday the 13th 2, and lots of other terrible 2’s...Flight of the Navigator is the one flick that left me with permanent psychological scars. What happens is this: we open at the 1978 South Florida Dog Championship, which is basically ultimate frisbee but with dogs. I absolutely believe that this is an event that actually happens because Florida. The dogs are shown gracefully twisting through the air in slow motion much like the divers in Leni Riefenstahl’s 1938 film Olympia. This is perhaps the only Disney movie to open with an homage to the Third Reich’s resident propaganda filmmaker (note: none of these dogs are Nazis...at least not to my knowledge). One of the dogs belongs to a 12 year-old named David Freeman, who is played by Joey Cramer, a disgraced former child actor who is one letter away from sharing a name with the exceptionally average Aerosmith drummer Joey Kramer. David’s dog loses the frisbee match. His 8 year-old brother Jeff calls him a retard...because that sort of talk was not frowned upon in the 1980’s. After the what-have-you, Jeff heads to see his buddies and David heads home with his folks (with the GREASE soundtrack blasting in the car. Self-reverence will get you nowhere, Randal). Pop Freeman is veteran character Cliff DeYoung and Mom Freeman is Veronica Cartwright, who has been acting for 60 years but will always be known as the lady who barfed up a shit ton of cherries in Witches of Eastwick. They’ve got a swell mini mansion right on the water and a boat and a telescope and all that fancy white people stuff. Life is good.
But wait--before the family can boat out to celebrate the 4th of July they send David to retrieve his little bro. “Just go through the woods behind the house, ford the swamp, and cross the train tracks.” At NIGHT?? In Florida!? Do you have any idea what could be lurking in those woods?? Gators and The Gainesville Ripper and toothless meth addicts in cargo shirts with tribal tattoos and Carol Baskin’s murdered husband’s bones! David walks out by his lonesome and he’s a brave little toaster until jerk off Jeff jumps out of a bush and scares the shit out of him. Jeff runs off and David falls into a ravine and knocks himself out for like 20 seconds. He wakes up and shakes it off and figures he hasn’t been out for too long and that there’s still time to shoot off a couple of roman candles, right? WRONG!
When David arrives back at his house the door is answered by a Bea Arthur cosplayer, who has totally Golden Girls’d the place out; silver and gold wallpaper, pink flamingos, etc. David runs up to his bedroom where he finds his belongings have been replaced by an elderly man in an easy chair, sipping anisette and listening to Tito Puente albums on vinyl. What the what the WHAT!?? “Where are my mom and dad!?” the kid screams “why hath my home been turned into a geriatrics ward in just 5 movie minutes!?” He’s crying...the old folks are crying....I’M CRYING! David is brought to the police station where he tells his side of the story. The cops punch his name into their Tandy TRS-80 and immediately come down with a serious case of the “OH SHIT’S!” “This kid was declared legally dead years ago” says one of the cops. The year is now 1986! They ask David who the President is and says Jimmy Carter. More “oh shit” looks. Hey kid--at least you didn’t wake up in 2020 and find out that Donald Trump is the president and it is illegal to go outdoors.
The cops bring David to see his parents, who have moved to a shittier house. I guess they have fallen on hard times because of the house, yes, and also because their hair is often unkempt. When David sees that his little brother is no longer 8 but, in fact, 16 he passes the fuck out. Let’s pump the brakes here a sec: if the police found a boy who had been missing for eight years randomly showed up having NOT AGED A DAY would they really just bring him straight back to his parents? Without even calling to warn them first!? Shouldn’t they contact, like, a scientist or something? At least take the kid’s blood pressure and temperature for chrissakes. This stuff was WAY too heavy for my little brain to comprehend when I was 7 year-old. The idea of being lost for 8 years yet feeling like no time had passed at all kept me up nights. More than watching a Michael Myers squeeze a man’s head until his brain popped out? Absolutely. Parents: please keep your children away from Flight of the Navigator!
While mom and pop Freeman are getting reacquainted with their forever child, local authorities are called to investigate a clamshell-shaped UFO that has crashed into some power lines. Looks kinda like a travel soap container that I used to bring to summer camp back into the 80’s, this UFO does. As I sit here writing in May of 2020 the government has recently confirmed the sighting of an actual UFO, as predicted by the former lead singer of the band Blink-182, and NO ONE cared! The head NASA guy is played by Dr Johnny Fever himself, Mr Howard Hesseman, wearing a hideous pair of bifocals and an expression of “get me the FUCK out of here” at all times. Dude probably had some lag time between WKRP in Cincinnati and Head of the Class and needed some extra dough. Man’s gotta eat. NASA is psyched to have a real live spaceship but the frickin’ thing won’t open...which is a total buzzkill. I wonder if maybe the local kid who just arrived home after 8 years without aging has some answers?
David’s folks bring him to the hospital to run some tests because GAH! I’d be like get this changeling demon away from me! Or...I don’t know...can you get refunded for a funeral if the person is discovered to be no longer dead? Anyway, they hook tiny wads of tissue paper up to David’s noggin and his brain starts to transmit all kinds of coo coo stuff like binary code and images of that soap dish UFO. I wonder what you’d see if you hooked my brain up to that computer. Probably a crushed up PBR tallboy inside an empty bag of Doritos. Howie Hesseman convinces the Freeman’s to let David come live at NASA so they can run more tests. They give dude his own dorm room that comes tricked out with remote control cars and ColecoVision and shit. He’s even got his own 80’s movie buddy robot named Ralf to help fetch him Big Macs! Let’s play a quick round of Marry/Eff/Kill--Ralf...Johnny 5...or Jinx from Space Camp?
Speaking of killing...Ralf’s minder is none other than eventual Sex and the City superstar Sarah Jessica Parker. The Onion AV Club has this incredible series called Random Roles where they call up an actor and take a deep dive into their resumes, good, bad, and ugly. Everyone who has participated has been a good sport about it...even Nick Nolte! Everyone, that is, except SJP. The interviewer asked her about Flight of the Navigator and this was her asshole response:
“ What drew me to Flight Of The… Are you seriously asking me what drew me to Flight Of The Navigator? It was a part. Like, literally, I just got a part. I went and did it. That’s what I did for most of my career. Nothing drew me to it. I can’t—it was a job. That’s exactly a paycheck. That’s exactly what drew me to it. I can’t even tell you what it was about or who I played. You know, all you want is a job. You’re auditioning, you want to have as much experience as possible. You know, it was great.”
So there you have it--Sarah Jessica Parker is a goddamn jerk. In her (minimal) defense her character is completely useless. It’s never really explained what she does at NASA or why she has access to the kid. I thought she might be a love interest since the kid looks 12 but is actually 20...but that’d be a bit weird (like a robot having sex with a 16 year-old). She comes to hang out with David and he’s all “What happened to Starsky and Hutch? Who is this Mr Belvedere?” She asks David if he likes Twisted Sister. He says that he’s never heard of her. He asks her for coke. She asks if he'd like New, Cherry, or caffeine free. And so on...
When the NASA people hook David’s brain up to their computers they freak out. “His head is full! He’s showing us things that haven’t even happened yet!” You know...like Twitter and YouTube and YouPorn and Milli Vanilli. They figure that David was on the spaceship traveling at the speed of light...which is why he only felt like he was gone for a hot minute. David remains completely bemused during all of this. He mostly just sits in a chair and yells “HUH??” and “WHAT?” and asks for more fast food. At this point I look at my watch and realize that there’s only 20 minutes worth of movie left and that no one has flown anywhere! Zero flights. Kind of false advertising with that title, eh Disney? Maybe they should’ve called it “David Takes a Powder”...or simply “Florida Kid.”
Eventually David gets fed up with the poking and prodding and hops inside of Ralf, who gives him a lift to the UFO, which promptly opens up upon his arrival. The interior of the UFO looks like they stuffed the set of a Debbie Gibson video into one of those spinny Gravitron carnival rides from the 80’s (barf). David straps himself in and meets the alien robot ship commander--a mechanical eye named Max. Really? After all that we don’t even get to see any creatures? They couldn’t have taken a friggin’ Fraggle and spray painted it and glued some M&M’s onto it or something (note: there are some tiny alien critters on the ship but they are superfluous...like Sarah Jessica Parker...the person). The UFO takes off like a bastard. The flight scenes definitely have an “Epcot Center simulation ride in 1986” sort of charm to them. Max explains that humans only use 10% of their brains so the aliens are using David’s available storage as storage. This explains literally EVERYTHING! Back on the ground the NASA peeps are scrambling to track down the spaceship. SJP runs to warn David’s parents but the NASA guys follow her and tell the Freeman’s that they are gonna have to remain quarantined. Welcome to the club, bitches.
David and Max fly up to the Golden Gate Bridge and then down to the bottom of the ocean...continuing their existential jibber jabber along the way. David tells Max that he/it is too serious and that he should laugh more. Max starts to laugh and OH MY GOD it’s Pee Wee Herman doing the voice!! I had no idea! Payoff: complete. Now Max is super wacky and all “I know you are but what am I?” So...great....there’s five minutes left: shit or get off the pot, guys. Max agrees to bring David home but they somehow don’t have GPS on this spaceship. They’re lost. It’s cool though ‘cuz David’s big little bro is gonna set off fireworks so they can find the house. David says that he would much rather go back to 1978 instead of 1986 for extremely obvious reasons. “Those people are my family but it ain’t my home” David explains. Max says that he can bring David back to 1978 but that there’s a chance he’ll be vaporized in the trip. Shit man--I’d risk vaporization to get the hell out of 2020 and back to 1978! I’d go see Halloween in the theater...check out the The Sex Pistols final gig...maybe head to Worcester to witness my own birth.
David decides to roll the dice. When the UFO is finally over Fort Lauderdale lightning crashes (a new mother cries) and David finds himself back in the ditch. It’s 1978 and Jimmy Carter is still president and Randal Kleiser is still riding high off the success of Grease. He tears ass back to his house and finds his family young and rich and happy with kempt haircuts. When they hop on the family boat to watch the fireworks it’s revealed that David smuggled one of the tiny alien creatures off of the ship. Dude, don’t you know what happens when that happens!? That thing is going to grow 20 feet in like three days and KILL YOU ALL!!! The alien from Alien was cute when it was a baby too...just ask Veronica Cartwright! So that’s it. The end.