The scene: London's Intercontinental Hotel, recent venue of the great 007 media jamboree for Moonraker. The time: one hour after the first european screening of Disney's super-secret space fantasy, The Black Hole. Reviews aren't written yet as critics assemble with a few other assorted media folk, notebooks and tape-machines in hand, quaffing Disney hospitality (ever tried a min-an-tonic?), partaking of a fine buffet lunch (now you know how budgets get inflated), and queuing for raps with some of the film's team. Starburst's Tony Crawley bypassed Yvette Mimieux - "pity, I wanted her to compare Maximilian the robot with Hector, the robot in her husband's Saturn 3" - and the balding Robert Forster and a newly moustachioed Joseph Bottoms, in order to concentrate on three holers in particular: director Gary Nelson, handsome Emmy-award winner for Washington - Behind closed doors, director for five years of Buck Henry's Get Smart, and several Disney TV specials. The Black Hole is his third movie after Glenn Ford's Santee and Disney's Freaky Friday, and he's due back in London about now for his fourth, The Attack, a terrorist thriller, with Sylvester Stallone. Production designer Peter Ellenshaw, out of retirement for this movie after a 45-year movie career spanning Korda's Things to Come (1936) Kubrick's Spartacus (1960) and 34 Disney films, from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to Spielberg's favourite, Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959), plus Mary Poppins (1964) and Island at the Top of the World (1974). Swiss star, Maximilian Schell - the man, not the robot - alias Dr Hans Reinhardt, commander of the USS Cygnus, or indeed, alias Capt Nemo in space? […]
