I’m a huge fan of 1983’s WarGames starring Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy. The film, currently available with a Prime Subscription, also has a wonderful supporting cast that includes Dabney Coleman, Barry Corbin, James Tolkan, and John Wood, who plays Professor Stephen Falken. It’s that last role that I recently learned was originally conceived to be played by none other than John Lennon. That wouldn’t come to pass, of course, but I find myself daydreaming about what it would have been like.
Falken Was Written With Two People In Mind
Recently, I was watching a behind-the-scenes feature for the surprisingly influential WarGames that included an interview with co-writer Walter F. Parkes. In the piece, Parkes talks about him and co-writer Lawrence Lasker writing the initial script in 1980. The working title of the film was The Genius, and at the center of the story was the Falken character, who the writers loosely based on Stephen Hawking, but with the face of John Lennon. I had to dig deeper.
In 2008, Parkes and Lasker were interviewed for a story in Wired magazine about the movie, and Parkes talked about it again, saying:
We always pictured John Lennon, because he was kind of a spiritual cousin to Stephen Hawking.
Lasker went on to say that casting Lennon was further on in the process than I would have thought. Lasker told Wired:
We had communicated with Hawking — not directly. And through David Geffen, we'd communicated with John Lennon, and he was interested in the role.
So Lennon was keen, apparently. Sadly for the movie, and even worse for the world, Lennon was shot and killed as Lasker and Parkes were still writing the script in December of 1980, so they were forced to change directions, and ultimately it was John Wood would get the role. Wood is fantastic as Falken, and I can’t imagine Lennon would have been better, but it sure would have been surreal.
The Making Of WarGames Was A Bigger Mess Than I Ever Knew
Martin Brest was WarGames’ original director, but after disagreements with the movie's producers, Brest left the project, and John Badham took over. This is another “what-if” I’d like to see in an alternate timeline. As I said, it’s one of my favorite movies, so I think Badham (one of the most underrated directors of the '80s) did a wonderful job on it, and apparently made a version that wasn’t as dark in tone as Brest had in mind.
Still, at the time, Martin Brest was a hotshot director who directed two of the best ‘80s movies, in my opinion: Beverly Hills Cop in 1984 and Midnight Run in 1988. Both of those are comedies, as is his underrated Going in Style from 1979, so seeing his vision of a darker WarGames sounds intriguing to say the least. Alas, like John Lennon starring as Falken, it’s something we didn’t get to see. I can’t say I’m mad, because I think WarGames is almost perfect as it is, but those are really tempting fantasy ideas.
