"Shall we play a game?" "Ohhh" Hi, I'm Jeff and welcome to A Million Movies... and did you know that the 1983 movie WarGames
played a key role in raising awareness about cyber security and computer
hacking? In fact, President Reagan watched the film at Camp David the day after the
movie was released in theaters, and the following week during a meeting on
national security he asked if it was possible for someone to break into our
computer systems. General John Vessey, who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, dug into the question and found that not only was it possible, but it was
plausible, especially since the US government had been hacking into China's and the USSR's systems for years. Cybersecurity became a key focus for the
US government, and in the following year, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act was
passed to protect US businesses and our citizens from unauthorized access to
computers and computer systems. And that's the first of 16 facts I'm going
to share today about WarGames, so if you're sitting comfortably then I'll begin. "Are
you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin." Not only did WarGames lead to changes in cybersecurity policy, but it also helped shape the language of hacking itself. For
example, WarGames is the first movie to use the term firewall to mean a barrier
or protective measures meant to block access to a computer system. "Can we
invade the deep logic?" "We keep hitting a damn firewall." Now, of course, the term
firewall have been around since at least the 1850s, but only in the context of a
barrier to prevent fire from spreading, as in a building or between the engine
compartment and the rest of a car, but WarGames is one of the earliest, if not
the earliest, use of the term firewall to mean a protective barrier in a computer
system. Initial interest among the studios for wargames was actually pretty
low most of the studios didn't understand the story and they thought it
was science fiction only United Artists MGM showed interest in it and understood
that instead of being science fiction wargames was likely science fact even so
while they were writing the script screenwriters Lawrence Lasker and Walter
Parkes thought the story might be a little too
Farfetch'd until one day when Parks was watching the news and he saw a report
where the US government thought they were under attack because someone left
the simulation program in one of the computers that convinced him to keep
working on the story a big reason that wargames was able to be so far in front
on the topic of hacking is because of the research the screenwriters Lawrence
Lasker and Walter Parkes did as they were developing the script among the
hackers they met with were John Captain Crunch Draper who discovered that
blowing into a whistle that she could find in the bottom of a cereal box could
unlock the networks of the Bell Telephone systems allowing him to get
free telephone calls and david scott lewis who had especially of being able
to find backdoor entrances into more secure systems many of david scott
lewis's techniques such as what he calls war dialing where you have the computer
dial sequential phone numbers to try and find access points and doing research on
your subject to find backdoor passwords were used in the movie it's even been
reported that the trick of setting the number of players in a game to zero was
inspired by hacks Draper lewis and other hackers told the writers is they're not
going to make it play itself yes number of players 0 Lasker and Parks made so
many connections into the hacking world that they use these stories is the basis
for a later movie they wrote together as well
the 1992 cyber thriller sneakers in the war dialing scenes where David's
computers automatically calling thousands of numbers we see whose
members don't have the usual 555 prefix we're used to seeing in the movies
instead we see that all the numbers are for the 3-1-1 area code using 3-1-1 as
the area code solves the same problem since the area code for 3-1-1 does not
exist and will never be used for real telephone numbers that's because three
111 was set aside years ago by the phone companies three reserved for special
purposes just like for one one and 911 a three one one is used primarily for
non-emergency government services like getting local information or for
reporting potholes or graffiti Matthew Broderick's character of David Lightman
wasn't the only clear based on a real person the roller
professor Falken was inspired by Stephen Hawking in fact professor Hawking was
approached about appearing in the movie but he decided against it another early
choice for the role of Falcon was John Lennon who has shown some interest in
the role after John Lennon was shot in 1980 the team gave the role to English
actor John Wood now the idea of having the Falcon character using a motorized
wheelchair was still in the script though but the idea was dropped after
they realized the character might appear to be too much like dr. Strangelove in
addition to playing professor Falken John wood also provided the voice of the
computer of Joshua to get the delivery he wanted director John Badham
had the actor read the lines word by word but in Reverse he felt that if you
have to read a sentence in Reverse it's very hard to build a rhythm to that
sentence and the phrase will come out flat or like a computer might sound so
instead of shall we play a game you record game a play we shall which were
remixed into the correct order sounds like this shall we play a game adding
some modulation effects and you'll sound just like a computer shall we a final
character that was based on a real person was the role of general behringer
played by barry corbin while they were developing their script Lasker and Parks
arranged to take a tour of the real NORAD and as they were leaving NORAD's
commander James Hart enger' came up behind them and asked him if these were
the guys that were going to write a movie about him and invited them to have
a drink with him the commander was such an interesting
person but they included a lot of his personality and characteristics into the
character of general behringer somebody's playing a game with us
general manager of course oversees the NORAD command center and at the time the
NORAD set was the most expensive set ever constructed with a price tag of a
million dollars since the producers weren't allowed into the real command
center they had to build the set based on what they imagined
look like it was later pointed out that the real NORAD command center was not
nearly as elaborate as the one in the movie for the exteriors of the command
center the production didn't head all the way up to the Cheyenne Mountains
instead they just headed over to Griffith Park in Los Angeles where they
used the tunnel just up from the Griffith Observatory and if that tunnel
looks familiar it's because you've probably seen it in
movies like Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Back to the Future Part 2 that location
was also the site of a stunt that went wrong according to director John Badham
the scene where the Jeep crashes through the gate and then turns over was an
actual accident the Jeep was supposed to continue through the gate but when the
Jeep rolled over they decided to make that part of the action and added the
scene of the characters running from the Jeep and down the tunnel making all
these decisions about what stays in a movie or gets cut out is the job of the
movie's director while John Badham is listed as a director for wargames
Martin Brest was actually the first director on the film Brest had a darker
thriller style movie in mind rather than the fun hacker adventure the studio
wanted and after two weeks of shooting the studio didn't like what they were
seeing and they replaced him with John Badham now - the scenes that Martin
Brest shot did make it into the final film though one is the scene where David
goes to meet the hackers hey what's that and there's also the scene where he
hacks a payphone after sneaking out of NORAD Korena bottom part of the problem
with the work breast had done was that Matthew Broderick's and Ally Sheedy
scarus weren't having any fun the characters were coming across as if they
were in a conspiracy thriller when initially they just wanted to change
their grades and play some new games to get a little more fun injected into the
film he encouraged the actors to improvise Ally Sheedy trapping Matthew
Broderick with her legs was an improvisation that came out of this
attitude as was most of Barry Corbett's dialogue including this class of mine
damn it piss on the spark plug if I thought it'd do any good let the boy in
there major humor became a big part for the
production and one joke in particular from an early scene stands out
it happens when David makes a joke directed at his teacher about asexual
reproduction maybe you could tell us who first suggested the idea of reproduction
without sex your wife the laughter hurt afterward was supposed to be only from
the kids in the classroom but some of the crew didn't know the punchline and
they laughed out loud and their laughs made it into the movie that's not to say
the movie is all laughs John Badham recognized that he needed to add some
other emotions into the film especially during the last act of the movie which
is filled with action sequences it seems full of tension he wanted to give the
audience a chance to catch its breath so we reached out the screenwriter and
noted script dr. Tom mankiewicz who created the scene on the shores near
Falcons house with Matthew Broderick regrets not ever learning how to swim
you can't swim no I can't okay Wonder Woman I can't swim one doesn't even know
how to swim I never got around to it okay I always thought there was gonna be
plenty of time unlike a lot of 80s movies there isn't a big hit song
featured in the film crosby Stills and Nash did submit a song for the
soundtrack called wargames but it was edited out of the film just before the
movie was released and even though it wasn't used in the film United Artists
still released a song and made a video for it using clips from the movie over
the years wargames has continued to have an impact on our culture for example the
tic-tac-toe scene was used as part of a montage in The Strokes video for their
song hard to explain and reenacting the movie as David Lightman line-by-line was
one of the puzzles in earnest clients novel ready player one and finally one
of the largest hacker conventions in the world took its name Def Con from
wargames and that brings us to the end of our list of facts about wargames if
you have another piece of trivia about this movie that I missed please share it
in the comments below and if you enjoyed this video please think about
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again for watching and I hope to see you again here soon on a million movies
Great film!