September 12, 1995
Web posted at: 11:24 p.m. EDT
From Correspondent Dennis Michael
![[Hackers clip]](hacker_clip.sm.gif)
HOLLYWOOD, California (CNN) -- They call themselves "keyboard
cowboys" on film, but many of the principal participants in
the new movie "Hackers" found cyberspace an unknown
territory.
"I'd never been on-line, I'd never been on the Internet before beginning to work on this movie," says director Iain Softley. "I was vaguely aware that there was something happening and the possibilities." Actor Fisher Stevens was similarly uninitiated. "It was a world I was completely terrified of before the film, and it's a world I became familiar with when I made this film," he says. (1M QuickTime movie trailer)
![[Iain Softley]](softley.sm.gif)
Softley discovered a bug in the way computer movies are
programmed: Any movie about computer
culture is going to have shots of people sitting down,
looking at screens.
"What I wanted to do with the movie was to get away from that completely, and to try and show an equivalent experience to the audience in the cinema of what a hacker feels when he's moving through cyberspace in his mind," Softley says.
And so, the special effects scoot the hackers through a metaphorical city of data and links. "The hacker looks at the world almost with second sight, as if they're looking through the skin of the buildings in the real city and seeing the connections and the neurons and the data links," the director says. "What it is that gets them hooked is the idea of surfing through these labyrinths and making those connections, and I wanted to make that an exciting ride for the audience, and I wanted to make it vibrant and bright and three-dimensional." (145k .aiff sound)
![[Angelina Jolie and Jonny Lee Miller]](jolie_miller.sm.gif)
Much of the vibrancy comes from the young cast,
particularly Angelina Jolie, the daughter of screen veteran
Jon Voight. She and leading man Jonny Lee Miller play rival
hackers whose crosstalk strikes sparks.
The actors say they felt they had an interactive director. "He's very open, I think. Very inclusive with the actors. He keeps you very up-to-date with what he's doing," Miller says. This interaction played an important role, says Miller, especially in a film that relies heavily on special effects.
"Hackers" opens Friday, September 15, on screens around the country. Its home page on the Internet is already up and running.
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