their families are all traveling on the same plane at the moment, and something might happen to the plane. Now all the astronauts need to do is sit around, occasionally make fake broadcasts home to their families, and pretend everything went according to plan after the mission. And so he and a few other trusted collaborators cooked up the fake news story that all is well and the rocket to Mars launched successfully with the men aboard.

Mission director Hal Holbrook arrives shortly thereafter, a rock-steady presence of steely confidence, and confesses to the bewildered astronauts that something went wrong in the construction of the rocket, which would have caused a long delay in the mission and likely lead to N.A.S.A. The rocket takes off without them and the world watches, transfixed. astronauts who are pulled from the first mission to Mars moments before their rocket is set to launch. It's a triumph, a film that stars James Brolin, Sam Waterston and O.J. After directing two more films based on scripts by others (romantic comedy Our Time and mystery comedy Peeper), Hyams was finally offered the opportunity to direct his own, original Capricorn One script. He made his feature debut with the crime comedy Busting in 1974, which he also wrote. He directed his own teleplay for the crime comedy Goodnight, My Love, which earned him a lot of interest in Hollywood. Later, Hyams described himself as a writer 'who didn't want to write for anyone else,' which led him to televison. Baskin in 1971, which he also produced Herbert Ross directed. I knew that I wanted to combine imagery with writing and relevance.' After spending six years in television journalism, he left his job with CBS News and wrote a script - which sold! He had already begun writing: 'Not well, just prodigiously. Hyams was educated in the arts and 'became consumed by photography,' as he told interviewer Luke Ford in 2002. The reaction was, 'Get your car out of the parking lot!' It kind of baffled me and I put it aside for a few years.' So I was watching these simulations and I wondered what would happen if someone faked a whole story.' Reaction wasn't what he expected, however. 'My generation was brought up to believe television was true, and that was bullshit too.

I grew up in the generation where my parents basically believed if it was in the newspaper it was true. Louis where there was a simulation of what was going on. 'Whenever there was something on the news about a space shuttle, they would cut to a studio in St.

'I'd been germinating this idea for some time,' filmmaker Peter Hyams told Empire in 2014. (The film is available to stream via FilmStruck, which is how I watched it, and also Amazon Prime.) In our current era, in which the term 'fake news' is hurled as an insult, without rhyme or reason or evidence, it's fascinating to rewind to 1978 and watch Capricorn One, based on the idea of an outrageous fake news story. 'A funny thing happened on the way to Mars.'

Where to watch capricorn one