The first movie I saw in a theater was Star Wars. Darth Vader made me close my 4-year-old eyes, and the epic horror of the Death Star chilled my heart. But two years later, I encountered a to-this-day unappreciated Walt Disney-produced film called The Black Hole that would stagger my imagination to a greater degree. With its insane, megalomaniac spaceship captain and his eviscerating robot bodyguard, the movie was an eye-opening, if very dark, taste of Dante’s Inferno set in outer space. Indeed, the motley team of men and machines in The Black Hole begin dying even before the psychedelic vortex of dead-star matter drags them to hell with an uncanny storyline that is equal parts Moby Dick and The Haunting of Hill House and 2001: A Space Odyssey. En route back to Earth, a U.S. probe discovers a once-lost vessel mysteriously hovering near a giant rip in the space-time fabric without getting sucked in. The probe’s crew investigates and ends up being held hostage by the ship’s scientist-commander, who’s determined to go through a black hole. I remember thinking as a child: I’d love to meet the people who made this! I recently got my chance to fulfill a childhood fantasy upon learning that the director of The Black Hole – and 1976’s Freaky Friday (starring Jodie Foster) and Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (starring Sharon Stone) and numerous TV shows, pilots and movies – will be inducted in March into the Nevada Entertainer/Artist Hall of Fame at UNLV. “I love The Black Hole!” I tell him on the phone. “You are my hero.” “There must be something wrong with you,” he teases. His name is Gary Nelson, Las Vegas resident and journeyman filmmaker. He lives in an unassuming house with a modest swimming pool in a gated Westside enclave with his two sons. Framed posters of his films line the walls. […]
