Just watched the preview and I have to say I found it kind of odd. In one scene he's typing away on a computer. I grew up through the 80s and I remember personal computers being a pretty rare thing, particularly in the early 80s when it says this is set. They were usually associated with wealthier familes, which he doesn't appear to be.
Anyone here remember having a computer in the early 80s?
I would agree. My dad got an At&T Bell Labs computer and brought it home in like 1984. The only reason he was able to do this was because he worked with a university so he got it paid for him by the college. If he had not worked for the university he would have never been able to get one because a personal computer at that time was mucho expensive.
I looked at the featurette of this movie and saw the main character's computer. I looked around and tried to find out what computer it was. Discovered that it is a Commodore VIC-20 released 1981. The cost of the computer was at that time US $299. Compared to other computers at that time, that is incredibly cheap...BUT STILL, this is mighty darn expensive for a poor 19 year old living in texas. It was a keyboard microprocessor that you plugged into a Tv box from the back with a VIC modulator cord. Back then, the computers didn't have floppy disks yet (not until 1982) so you instead saved things on a cassette tapes. you will see next to his computer a tape deck which was plugged into the computer. If you look closesly you will also see from a side view (:08 seconds into the featurette) that there is black opening on the side of the keyboard. That was where the ports were for the joystick (which came with the computer for game use). you can even see in one scene (at :40 seconds into featurette) the joy stick sitting on top of the tv box.
To give you an idea, if you watch the movie "Wall Street" which came out in 1987 but was set 1985, primitive computers were found on Wall Street and in offices of major CEOs and rich business men like Gordon Gekko, not usually in the bedroom of an early 80s lower middle class teenager who has to work at a roller rink to make a buck. Not too long before this, computers were high enough that they touched the ceiling and wider than a bureau desk.
Just because he doesn't appear to come from a wealthy family doesn't mean he couldn't have saved up for a $299 computer, especially if it was something that caught his fancy in a big way and became one year's obsession. It's no different from kids today who save up for video game consoles that can cost over $600 when launched and play games that cost $60 a pop - they're not all rich.
I don't know the specific year in which this film is set, but $299 in 1983 would be about $671 today.
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I'm only five foot one
I got a pain in my heart
Whilst you're right in saying that it wasn't an extraordinary amount of money and its feasible that he could have saved up and bought it, I still find it unusual. Computers back then weren't really useful for a lot. They were cumbersome to run, the software was ordinary, and often incredibly glitchy. Unlike today, computers then weren't a fashionable thing, nor were they a necessity. They were in fact very different from games consoles today (which through the power of media marketting and peer pressure have become ubiquitous).
I'm wondering if the writer/director simply wanted to show how technology was back then, and showing what a computer was is something people can relate too. It's a fair enough point to make I guess, but I don't think it accurately reflects the times. This is simply my opinion, if anyone else noticed in those days computers becoming a popular thing to own I'd be interested to hear your story.
I think you're forgetting that the Commodore 64 was released in 1982, sold in retail stores, aimed at the middle-class, and is still the best-selling home computer of all time. I was too young to know what the general attitude to computers was, but it's clear that that's when they began to become fashionable, or, rather, attainable and desirable, especially to dreamers hungry for the future. A lot of those kids whose dreams were influenced by George Lucas, and by Gene Roddenberry a decade or so prior, would have been dying for a computer, even if they had muddy ideas of what they could do with it.
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I'm only five foot one
I got a pain in my heart
I didn't forget the 64. that was actually my first choice. they actually look nearly identical except 64 has more features and was released in september 82. this movie is set in fall of 1983. In April 1983 Commodore dropped the dealer prices on the VIC-20, which allowed it to drop below US $100 retail, the first color computer to hit that mark. Later in the year the Commodore 64 was dropped to $200. I'm just going with the hunch that a 19 year old on a limited income would probably rather buy the computer that was $100 cheaper. Of course it could have been the Commodore 64 on his desk and not the VIC. I just see it as more likely that this character got a computer that was two years released and discounted than a model that had only been out for exactly one year.
I would agree that a lot of 'nerds' at that time would have been dying for a computer. I just haven't seen enough from the trailer to tell me that this character is the type. It starts out making it seem like he was more of a writer journalist, like a grown-up William Miller (kid from "almost famous"). Maybe he was a rare Val Kilmer 'Real Genius'/ Walter Cronkite hybrid.
According to Wikipedia, the Commodore 64 was $595, which is roughly equivalent to $1500 in 2015. So the OP has a point. That's pretty expensive for a time when most people didn't have a need for home computers.
It was definitely a Commodore 64. They zoomed in really close and it said so right on it so it's unmistakable.
My family got our first computer in 1982. It was definitely a step up from the one Ritchie Wheeler uses in Skateland. But my family was more well off than his, so I think him having that type of computer I'd plausible~ especially since he was a writer. The type he had was basically just a keyboard hooked up to an old tv.
shareI could see in one scene without pausing, that it is a 64 that he has. I grew up pretty poor in California, which is expensive to live in, and my dad took advantage of the price drop of the vic-20 to $100 and got me one in '82 or '83. Otherwise, he probably wouldn't have been able to swing it. He found it important to get me one though, because he saw a future in it. I was only 7 in '82, so I didn't do much with it. We had the cassette to write programs to as well. It had a 1.1mhz cpu and 5kb of ram, with an option for 64mb of memory which could be bought separately and was in a cartridge that stuffed into a slot. The commodore 64 that replaced it came with that much memory without the upgrade. Same cpu. We wrote a Pong program from the text of a spiral book that was included. Good times...
shareI bought my first computer (a Commodore VIC-20) at Montgomery Ward, and I think it was about 1982. I "upgraded" to the Commodore 64 (which is seen in the movie) when it came available a year or so later. It wasn't cheap at the time, but less than $300, as I remember. The stuff shown on the screen would suggest he was writing code, but we saw no evidence of that and he got a scholarship for his essay.. Not everything made sense in this film, but they get points for finding a Commodore 64, and showing an accurate display.
shareThanks for your interesting replies all, I'll happily stand corrected.
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On a similiar subject, when did u ever see ripped jeans in the early 1980's (for those of u old enough to remember)? During the first party at Kenny's house, Ritchie is wearing a pair of clean jeans, with a tear at the right knee. I remember jordache and then calven klein jeans becoming popular during that time period. Stone-washed and torn jeans were later. Wait, I think that I now understand. Ritchie was "big" into roller-skating.lol
Also, as others have said, he was a writer. Going from a typewriter, even a good one like the Smith Corona Coronet XL they show in the beginning, to a word processor were you can back up and fix typos and delete and retype. I don't think you could cut and paste text, but still. It seems incredibly primitive now, but it was
a huge leap.
Though it would have been terrifying to rely on a tape or cassette memory system without a printer. Still, if the kid really wrote a lot, he would have saved up for it.
I got my first Commodore computer just like the one in the movie in 1982.
And we were far from rich people... middle class -- barely.