Memories of the “Sneakers” Shoot (2012)

https://web.archive.org/web/20130128143144/http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2012/09/robert_redford_sidney_poitier_ben_kingsley_dan_aykroyd_what_it_was_like_shooting_the_movie_sneakers_.html

by ColinWright • 5 years ago

344 198 5 years ago

web.archive.org

myself2484• 5 years ago

RIP Sir Sidney Poitier KBE, 1927-2022.

jmuguy3• 5 years ago

I absolutely love Sneakers. Whenever folks talk about Hackers or the Matrix or any movies or shows that feature tech I argue that Sneakers is the best movie about hacking. I feel like a crazy old man ranting about it to some of my younger coworkers. It makes me sad that my handle (mother) on a lot of gaming services is much more likely to elicit a comparison to Danzig than Dan Aykroyd's character.

willcipriano2• 5 years ago

Sneakers was the best technically, but Hackers captured the spirit of hacking during the time the best. Wargames is inbetween those. I'd argue Weird Science and Ferris Bueller are at the same level as the Matrix as far as the hacking content goes.

jmuguy3• 5 years ago

Yeah its probably not fair to compare them really, because I think Hackers (and Wargames) are great too. Just in terms of the movie itself (and cast... I mean my god) its great.

jkingsman• 5 years ago

While I completely agree with you, as a very minor point, The Matrix Reloaded features Trinity correctly using nmap to find an exposed SSH server, and then correctly using SSHNuke to exploit an era-appropriate CRC vuln -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PxTAn4g20U

wcarss• 5 years ago

I feel Wargames is often underrated.

It was one of the very first movies about the topic (1983), and yet it balances being an entertaining blockbuster with very realistic depictions of many kinds of hacking, from waiting around for a port-scanner, to patiently shoulder surfing an administrator, to dumpster diving and just doing research on your opponents, plus many others. It even bases the overall plot on AI-training-set-poisoning! To this day that topic remains pretty far out of the public consciousness as a concern, but it's probably gonna be a pretty big deal.

It also captures a core hacker cultural feeling of "curious grey-hat teenagers having fun exploring" versus "large powerful entities getting very mad at the wrong people over their own failures to implement basic security safeguards."

It even manages to stuff a nuclear deproliferation + broad antiwar morality play in there, and through all of this, there's not a single crazy imaginary hacking visualization! It's a great hacker movie.

excalibur• 5 years ago

Obviously not a movie, but Mr. Robot deserves a mention here anyway for the highly realistic hacking supporting its less realistic plot.

bena• 5 years ago

I wouldn't say Hackers captured the spirit, but more like captured an aspirational desire. Everyone wanted to be a slick William Gibson cyberpunk inspired digital cowboy. Truth is, there were way more Dan Aykroyds than Jonny Lee Millers.

runjake3• 5 years ago

Having been actually hacking in the time when WarGames came out, it portrayed exactly how it was for me and my sphere of young hackers (sans the NORAD visits, of course).

I found Sneakers great, too. Great story, and the TTPs (techniques and tradecraft) were mostly spot-on. Has anybody else been to NewHackCity West (in the bay area, now defunct, AFAIK) and remember the sign out front? :)

Maybe I'm not giving it a fair shake, but Hackers looks awful. I never saw Hackers completely, only scenes and such, but it never interested me and seemed silly and outlandish, as if it were written by some Hollywood outsider who was trying to be as imaginative against stereotypes at the time as possible. It doesn't resonate with me at all (from the scenes I've watched).

pmarreck5• 5 years ago

Hackers also had that early-90's "before it was cool" techno soundtrack vibe.

Ansil8496• 5 years ago

Sneakers was the best technically

How so? In terms of technical accuracy, Wargames is vastly more accurate (everything down to the old paperclip trick to get free phone calls, a very old school fone phreaking trick) than Sneakers, or Hackers for that matter.

qzw2• 5 years ago

Seconded. One of my favorite movies, period. The story was great and the cast was not only star-studded but stellar across the board. The hacking was not overdone and served the story rather than just inserted for fan service. It's one I never get tired of rewatching.

Avshalom2• 5 years ago

Right? god, what a cast. I remember coming back to some years after I first saw as a kid and realizing just how absolutely stacked it was. Hell even has super early career Donal logue

shadowgovt• 5 years ago

I still tell people that if they want to see a fun fantasy computer movie, see Hackers. It's hilarious.

... but if they want to see a hacking movie, see Sneakers. The real people trying to break into your company and rifle through your shit look a lot more like the ones in that movie than the ones in the other movie.

myself2484• 5 years ago

I've always just said Hackers is a comedy whether or not they knew they were making a comedy.

Sneakers is a drama and might as well be a documentary except for two scenes, which I'll accept would've bored audiences to tears if they weren't graphicalized.

queuebert• 5 years ago

Hackers is to hacking what Hamilton is to Hamilton.

dylan604• 5 years ago

My first thought on the "mother" handle would be the computer from Alien(s) before Dan Akroyd.

toomanyrichies2• 5 years ago

Sneakers is one of the few hacking-related movies that I can really enjoy, because it doesn't come off as pretentious the way that others do (to me, at least).

It was unapologetically nerdy; it doesn't try to "be cooler than it is". The filmmakers didn't feel compelled to include a scene filmed in a nightclub (like Swordfish or all 3 Matrix movies). They didn't feel compelled to gussy up their characters in absurd costumes (like Hackers or, again, all 3 Matrix movies). The plot and the characters were interesting enough on their own.

The result was that I never felt like they were talking down to me or pandering to me. As a side benefit, I'd argue that Sneakers has aged much better than other hacker movies have.

hammock2• 5 years ago

They had an advantage because the movie is mostly about social engineering (which requires acting), and less about actual hacking (computer screens and such which are less exciting to watch on a silver screen).

The pandering comment is funny to me though, because every single Robert Redford character has the same humblesmug, morally superior talk-down-while-encouraging-his-students "cool professor" vibe to me.

gibolt• 5 years ago

For someone who hasn't seen it, how does it compare to Mr. Robot? (Season 1)

deanCommie4• 5 years ago

tl;dr: I love Sneakers, and I love Hackers, and I love The Matrix, for entirely different reasons, and I don't think your criticism is warranted.

I hear what you're saying, but I'm a completely uncool nerdy software engineer, and I *ADORE the Hackers and Matrix aesthetics.

Both are not set in the real world, remember. Hackers is a semi-idealized Generation X view of disruption and techno (technology AND music)-fueled youthful exuberance.

And the hackers in the Matrix were hackers that saw through the Matrix, and literally hacked their reality to know kung fu, gunplay, and change the world around them.

When done right (and Swordfish is a good example of when it isn't), it can be a hyper-stylized love letter to the concepts. Not all cinema needs to be "realistic" and "grounded".

jancsika• 5 years ago

It was unapologetically nerdy; it doesn't try to "be cooler than it is".

Who didn't have a screensaver of the Matrix glyph waterfall? What action movie/cartoon/video game hasn't copied or given an homage to Gaeta's take on bullet time? Who here on HN can't pull up a mental image of Trinity's acrobatic kick or the sound of Smith's voice?

To top it off, all of those things I just mention happen in the first six minutes of movie. If you're seriously going to claim you weren't all in the moment Trinity inexplicably races toward a dumptruck toward a ringing phone in a phonebooth, I won't believe you without reading your galvanic response in realtime.

I also enjoyed Sneakers.

pcarolan• 5 years ago

Same. I was 14 at the time it came out and I can still remember how I felt walking out of the theater. Everything I love about the movies was there and it inspired me to want to lean more about computers.

sybercecurity• 5 years ago

I think that Sneakers was, at its heart, a heist movie and generally heist movies need to have a technical element and be generally believable. There was the "crew" and each member had their expertise.

It's strange how Sneakers never got the nerd love like Wargames and Hackers did. Maybe because the cast were older, established actors and not young people?

munificent• 5 years ago

Sneakers gets plenty of nerd love in all the social circles I'm in. Like you note, it's right up there with Wargames, Hackers, and the Matrix.

addingnumbers• 5 years ago

It's strange how Sneakers never got the nerd love like Wargames and Hackers did.

From where I was standing it did. A BBS in my toll-free range was reborn as "SETEC Astronomy". I used a variation of "myvoiceismypassport" as a password for longer than I should admit.

On the other hand, "hack the Gibson" was a back-handed taunt to mock users who were more into hacker "fashion" and leetspeak than software and tinkering.

War Games was neither diminished nor elevated in comparison to Sneakers, in my circles it just stood alone with unique, unassailable charm.

bredren• 5 years ago

I think the exposure is low in comparison to those other films. I’d attribute it to branding and the understated style.

I haven’t heard “Sneakers” used to describe anything computer / security related when it came out or today. Sneakers are shoes.

It also lacks whiz bang effects and violence delivered in The Matrix. (It’s good for other reasons too)

That said these are great reasons to like the film then and today.

(Unless you were in charge of the studio at the time it was released.)

iszomer• 5 years ago

One of the best films portraying Robert Redford's work. Crazy how all the scenes they were filmed in were easily recognizable as SF Bay area locations, such as their office above the current FOX theater in Oakland, the San Mateo Bridge, and the Embarcadero building that is now one of Google's San Francisco locations. I couldn't place the main villain's headquarter location but I imagined it to be somewhere in Hayward's industrial park areas.

PopAlongKid• 5 years ago

I worked in downtown Oakland office building during the time of this filming and walked by one filming location, and remember how they faux prettied up the outside of the Fox Theatre adjacent to the office you refer to. This was pre-renovation Fox, it was more or less boarded up at the time.

jedberg3• 5 years ago

They Playtronics HQ is actually in SoCal: 2900 North Madera Road in Simi Valley, California.

mmazing• 5 years ago

A few years back at DEFCON it was supposed to be the movie during movie night.

I showed up and at the last minute it was changed to something else. Cue my immense disappointment. :(

laumars• 5 years ago

Not seen Sneakers but i will watch it now based on your recommendation.

For me, one of the biggest underrated hacking movie is Antitrust. Nobody ever seem to talk about it.

packetslave4• 5 years ago

I LOVE Antitrust. Tim Robbins' performance as "totally not Bill Gates, wink wink" is wonderful. I'll admit I wasn't quite able to suspend my disbelief enough to buy Ryan Phillippe as a geek, though. He's just too... himself.

tootie3• 5 years ago

Techies love it for the accuracy but it's also just a really fun, high quality movie with an all-star cast. Robert Redford and Sidney Poitier are worth the price of admission if the movie was about typewriter.

hooande• 5 years ago

Antitrust is a cult classic to people of a certain generation. It's a terrible movie, but I love it. The hacker character was a pretty boy in glasses (Ryan Phillipe) instead of a total nerd. And Tim Robbins is the worst Bill Gates ever. I need to watch it again some day

VikingCoder• 5 years ago

Please read Daemon and Freedom by Daniel Suarez.

daveevad2• 5 years ago

This movie is incredible.

Fellas, Janus' little black box is on his desk, between the pencil jar and the lamp.

daveevad2• 5 years ago

Oh pooch, looks what you've done to Doris' purse.

This is sublime screenwriting.

jzellis• 5 years ago

I still wanna get some old Cray XMPs and use em as office benches. RIP Sidney as well. A great actor and, by all accounts, a great man.

thakoppno2• 5 years ago

I hope he finally gets those two round-trip, first-class tickets to Athens, Lisbon, Madrid and Scotland and Tahiti.

qzw2• 5 years ago

But Tahiti is not in Europe.

rjsw• 5 years ago

It is part of a European country.

acheron• 5 years ago

I want peace on earth and goodwill towards men.

sv123• 5 years ago

One of my all time faves, was thinking about this moving this morning when I saw the news abut Sidney Poitier. Setec Astronomy.

twic• 5 years ago

Hmm: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...

pier25• 5 years ago

One of my favorites movies. It has this brilliant blend of thriller with humor and the music by James Horner is fantastic. Although I generally hate comedies, it's probably one of the few movie that makes laugh, even though I know it by heart.

Overtonwindow• 5 years ago

What a great read. I wished more actors took pen to paper to talk about their times behind the cameras.

ISL• 5 years ago

Particularly poignant for today:

I sat listening, but my predominant thought was "Damn, Sidney Poitier is a handsome man."

VonGuard• 5 years ago

Their headquarters is the Fox Theater, now fully renovated and open, in Oakland.

bcl• 5 years ago

Shameless plug for my side project - Sneakers HQ https://movielandmarks.com/#lm-1036

b3morales• 5 years ago

It’s a technology movie that still isn’t outdated even though it was released 20 years ago and features cradle modems.

This is a great point. I guess it's because they kept it realistic. Except for the box itself (of course) and maybe the voice-activated mantrap, there wasn't really any crazy futuristic spy tech. It was all plausible for the time, so it hasn't been invalidated by the actual future.

Avshalom2• 5 years ago

Even then, the box: "an ASIC implementation of a newly discovered crypto attack" complete with a massive white board full of linear algebra is about as good a muggufin as you can ask for in any computer adjacent movie.

myself2484• 5 years ago

The only thing I don't love about it is the macguffin-ization itself. An algorithm is an idea and could've been communicated, published, spread around the world in the blink of an eye.

Some years ago I wrote down a sketch of a sequel based on this exact idea, but the paper is encrypted and the key is sharded, and much of the plot revolves around trying to convince the trusted people who hold the shards that the researcher is actually dead and they should unseal the document, while the adversary tries to convince otherwise.

KennyBlanken2• 5 years ago

The social engineering in the movie is pretty much the same stuff everyone talked about in DEFCON conferences even a decade or two later...and really, still topical today (phishing.)

I think The Box was pretty realistic. It absolutely looks and acts the part of an FPGA type device.

Finding a "shortcut" through computationally expensive encryption is plenty realistic (look at all the wifi attacks, for example), and while they keep saying "any encryption", it's pretty clear they're talking about DES, which the NSA was pushing everyone to adopt.

Remember how in the film the crew realizes that the NSA wants The Box to be able to snoop on the FBI et al? What did the NSA almost mandate be used for encrypting everything government related?

Everyone strongly suspected right from the get-go that the key size for DES was far too short...to allow the NSA to brute-force it. We now know they turned out to be right.

DES was published in '77 and almost immediately strongly criticized.

According to Wikipedia:

Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes first conceived the idea for Sneakers in 1981, while doing research for WarGames.

Doesn't seem like much of a coincidence that work on the Sneakers script started not long after DES was published and almost immediately viewed as a joke by the crypto community.

I think Sneakers was a lot more realistic and well-researched than people give it credit.

vanderZwan• 5 years ago

I think Sneakers was a lot more realistic and well-researched than people give it credit.

Given that the screenwriter worked on it for nine years (something I just learned via this article) it sounds very plausible that he thorougly did his homework

evgen• 5 years ago

it's pretty clear they're talking about DES, which the NSA was pushing everyone to adopt

Nope, this was filmed in the mid-90s. Public-key encryption was the new hotness and DES was very old skool by this point. Since the 'A' in RSA was one of the technical advisors you can be fairly certain that the intended suggestion was that Janick's little black box could do linear time factorization of composite primes and recover the private key for a given public key. The story may have been in development for almost a decade but not the specific McGuffin used in the film.

owlbynight3• 5 years ago

I grew up about a mile away from the federal reserve they hacked in this movie, and other than the X-Files, Sneakers is the only media I've ever heard my small hometown of Culpeper, Virginia mentioned in. So Sneakers has always held a place in my heart. But it's also the best hacking movie ever made, in my opinion.

aksss5• 5 years ago

Ha, I made a point to visit Culpeper specifically because of the TV show Turn (and the book it’s based on, Washington’s Spies).

I guess the Culpeper spy ring in the Revolutionary War was named for this town that George Washington had surveyed in his younger years.

I happened to be road-tripping through VA and NC, saw it on a map and thought, I can’t not go there.

crmd2• 5 years ago

You might enjoy this brochure which explains how the FedWire Culpepper Switch worked:

http://coldwar-c4i.net/Mt_Pony/culpsw01.htm

owlbynight3• 5 years ago

Whoa, I just started watching Turn. That's cool. I had no clue Culpeper had any history like that. When I was growing it up, it was all Fredericksburg, Fredericksburg, Fredericksburg.

Rebelgecko• 5 years ago

I think Culpeper was also referenced in an episode of Homeland

bttf• 5 years ago

Great read.

Years later I ran into Phil at the symphony. I asked him I how he was able to come up with such a great script. He blushed and said he had worked on it for nine years. I know spending a long time writing something doesn’t guarantee success. But not giving up on a good idea almost always does.

arminiusreturns• 5 years ago

This is a highly encouraging comment, and just what I needed today.

dwighttk• 5 years ago

Stephen Tobolowsky’s podcast is a great listen if you liked that short article https://tobolowskyfiles.com/

brk• 5 years ago

Loved Sneakers when it came out, it was one of the few computer/technology movies that seemed to make an effort to get things right. Or, at least as close to right as you can in a movie.

Side story, the article mentions the Universal backlot and the tour buses that come through. Years ago I was working with Universal on a security project. I'm being driven around with my sales guy on a golfcart. We're in the back seat, facing backwards, with a guy from Universal, and my sales engineer in the front seats. The driver and my SE are dressed super casual, the sales guy and I both have sport coats and are dressed just well enough to look "important". Tour bus comes by with the driver doing their spiel and I see a few people looking at us trying to figure out who we are. I wave to the bus and smile, a couple of people point, and then about 30 people all point their cameras at us and start snapping pics. It's worth mentioning that the overall makeup of the group looks like a lot of people here on vacation from other countries. I can only imagine those people going back and looking at their pics and trying to figure out who they took pictures of.

illwrks• 5 years ago

Love that anecdote :D

I used to work at a film marketing agency, which involved going to private screenings of films before general release.

On one film we were working on, a colleague and I attended a screening of a close-to-finished film. I was tasked by the agency with taking notes on anything of importance that might be usable from a marketing perspective. There were a crowd of others at the screening also, another agency and random people.

Throughout the film I was checking my watch (for timestamps) and taking notes. Afterward when milling about in the lobby it turns out the director was sitting just behind me and he was getting more and more worried and nervous as I continued to check my watch and take notes...

It was only his second film, a rehash of an older classic one, and he thought I was one of the journalists who were also at the screening and would slate the film... I often get a smile thinking of the panic and dread that must have went though his head every time I checked my watch. It was a good film though and went on to do well.

duxup• 5 years ago

The main speech from the film still rings true (SPOILERS)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0UB3LD2EoA

Soundtrack was AMAZING.

Legion2• 5 years ago

Robert Redford. Sidney Poitier. David Strathairn. River Phoenix. Mary McDonnell. Timothy Busfield. Dan Ackroyd. Donal Logue. Ben Kingsley. James Earl Jones. Stephen Tobolowsky.

There may exist movies with better casts than Sneakers, but there don't exist many.

rsync2• 5 years ago

"Hurlyburly"[1]

    Sean Penn
    Kevin Spacey
    Robin Wright Penn
    Chazz Palminteri
    Garry Shandling
    Anna Paquin
    Meg Ryan

One of my favorite movies.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurlyburly_(film)

pmarreck5• 5 years ago

I've never heard of this movie. Why is its rating so mediocre?

dhimes• 5 years ago

RIP Mr. Poitier :,(

EDIT: Sir Sidney

thedevelopnik2• 5 years ago

If you’re gonna call him Mr., then you call him Mr. Tibbs.

aksss5• 5 years ago

The cast list in True Romance always shocks people unfamiliar with it. A different generation of greats though. Val Kilmer, Dennis Hopper, Chris Walken, Brad Pitt, Gary Oldman, Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, James Gandolfini, Jack Black (deleted scene), Samuel Jackson, and more.

sneak2• 5 years ago

Two of my favorites!

There's also Glengarry Glen Ross, another of my top-all-time:

Al Pacino; Jack Lemmon; Alec Baldwin; Ed Harris; Alan Arkin; Kevin Spacey; Jonathan Pryce

hindsightbias• 5 years ago

I miss the comedic dramas with ensamble casts back in that day. Today, they're all CGI, shoot-em-up, gratuitous explosions.

Another unappreciated example, The Man with One Red Shoe. Tom Hanks, Dabney Coleman, Charles Durning, Carrie Fisher, Lori Singer, Jim Belushi, Edward Herrman, David Ogden Stiers, Tom Noonan, Irving Metzman, David Lander.

pfarrell• 5 years ago

Ardy bekko. Inyo. See far ogle.

That had always stuck in my head since seeing it. Good movie.

LargeWu• 5 years ago

Glengarry Glen Ross: Al Pacino, Kevin Spacey, Alec Baldwin, Jack Lemmon, Alan Arkin, Ed Harris, Jonathan Pryce.

taylorius• 5 years ago

Cattle mutilations are up...

sumtechguy2• 5 years ago

Heh, I used say that line to people. Most do not get it. But when they do... awesome.

pengaru• 5 years ago

My perception of Akroyd's character completely changed after hearing some of his recent podcast interviews when he was peddling his vodka brand.

Either he's a conspiracy theory nut irl, or he still hasn't broken character since filming Sneakers.

aksss5• 5 years ago

The messenger arrived with a big envelope. I opened it. It said Sneakers. My heart sank. It sounded like a bad teen comedy about a hapless junior-high basketball team that is saved when they recruit a girl point guard who’s a great shot.

thatoneguy• 5 years ago

I got immense joy out of working in Google's original SF office that was right above where the "handoff" scene took place and it's funny in the movie how there's a long hill of dirt in the shots that look out towards to the bay as that's where a MUNI line is now.

Also, in case anyone is wondering, the acoustic modem in the movie they use to make an "untraceable satellite call" is an Atari 830. Finally acquired one during lockdown last year while I was building an in-home dial-up ISP because I never really understood how they worked...it looks just as cool in person as in the movie.

endgame2• 5 years ago

Please tell me you're taking notes somewhere, because that sounds like a really fun project.

Legion2• 5 years ago

River Phoenix asking for Amy Benedict's phone number will always be one of the smoothest moves in cinema.

packetslave4• 5 years ago

Yep, he was smooth enough that he got her weapon totally wrong ("Um, the young lady with the... Uzi?" ... nope, she's holding an MP5) and STILL got her phone number!

Minor49er• 5 years ago

I recently watch a copy of it on Laserdisc. I love this movie

Ansil8496• 5 years ago

I love Sneakers, but you have to admit that the central MacGuffin is nonsense. A magic literal black box that decrypts literally anything when you touch a solder plate...um ok. If the film itself were poorly done, this would be ridiculed to no end.

Angostura2• 5 years ago

Quantum Blockchain - that's all you need to explain it.

thakoppno2• 5 years ago

The scene depicting the NSA tracing the phone call also seems very dubious from a technical standpoint.

Ansil8496• 5 years ago

Yes, exactly. And them knowing which relay points the NSA had tracked. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a great film, but I feel like because it's a great film overall, technical-minded folks sweep all the technical bullshit in it under the rug. Whereas a film that everyone can agree is hot garbage, like Swordfish, gets ridiculed for having ridiculous crap in it, while Sneakers is (rightly so, I think) given a pass.

nullc2• 5 years ago

Long distance phone tracing used to require calling from switch operator to operator while the circuit was active, -- the only unrealistic part is their visualization of the trace progress and the era-inappropriateness of that kind of tracing.

One could imagine knowing trace progress if one imagined they'd also compromised the transit exchanges well enough to see if someone was accessing the service console.

sumtechguy2• 5 years ago

Considering who the consultant on the movie was I think they had a pretty good idea that it was bogus.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1409687/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm

Ansil8496• 5 years ago

And Hackers had Emmanuel Goldstein, and Wargames had Willis Ware as consultants.

But all three were still Hollywood films, which means they mixed in a heavy dose of nonsense alongside some technical accuracy. Doing it 'knowingly' doesn't particularly matter.

nitrogen• 5 years ago

It's kind of fun to imagine "what if" in these situations. Like, what would it take for such a box to be real? It doesn't seem all that far off from a low pin count bus, or from a modern game console mod chips that spike the voltage outside normal ranges at just the right time. You could extend that idea and wonder if a single contact would be sufficient, given the right out-of-spec, no holds barred, analog waveform, to both read from and write to an arbitrary circuit.

Maybe the single contact is just for establishing a common ground level, and all the magic happens with ultra-high-angular-resolution wireless beamforming. Like, just imagine what you could do with a bidirectional 2D beamforming array with the same resolution as a cell phone camera sensor.

pmarreck5• 5 years ago

One of my favorite movies.

Angostura2• 5 years ago

One thing I don't think anyone has mentioned so far. I really like the musical score. James Horner jumping on pianos as is his wont - but really fun music

parenthesis• 5 years ago

Branford Marsalis, too.

rotexo2• 5 years ago

Me too. The score gave the scene where they comprehend the capabilities of the box such a terrifying edge.

sneak2• 5 years ago

I don't think I have to say many words to emphasize how much this movie has shaped my life. I've had this nick since I was 13 or 14.

jdofaz• 5 years ago

Sneakers is in my Blu-ray collection, when I need to test a microphone or something I often say my voice is my passport, verify me. Not too many get the reference but that's ok

skibble• 5 years ago

My memory of this is hazy, but when I was younger Apple had a feature where you could log in with your voice. Really! It would have been either OS 7 or OS 9, probably OS 9. I'm almost positive this is either the phrase you had to say, or at least one of a few options. I don't imagine it was in any way secure, especially compared to the likes of Touch ID or Face ID, but it felt pretty cool at the time.

dantheman0207• 5 years ago

You’re right! https://youtu.be/lXzD_oTL4XA

r00fus• 5 years ago

Clearly someone loved Sneakers at Apple because that's the default voiceprint password.

parentheses• 5 years ago

poitier!

cobrabyte2• 5 years ago

My all-time favorite movie. RIP, Mr. Poitier.

perardi• 5 years ago

I have an extreme nostalgic attachment to Sneakers.

I went to a summer camp for kids interested in computers (was it called Cybercamp? who knows, this was in like 1999, Google was barely even a thing yet) at Illinois State University for several years in a row when I was in junior high and high school. And every year, to cap it off, they’d gather us in an auditorium to watch Sneakers.

So this movie is now inextricably linked up with, well, adulthood for me. We were staying in college dorms, and working in real computer labs, and going to head shops with the computer science kids who were the camp counselors…such good times for a nerdy kid from the boonies. The movie just felt sophisticated to a hillbilly like me—I mean, Sidney Poitier and and Robert Redford having a cocktail party after pulling off a heist, all set to a minimalist jazz soundtrack? So urbane.

BTCOG• 5 years ago

Not as popular or liked, I also like The Net (Sandra Bullock) as a cheesy, guilty pleasure hacking movie. Didn't see it mentioned here.

jmuguy3• 5 years ago

Loved some of the quirky application props they had, like "Mozart's Ghost". I definitely remember making some Visual Basic programs that had a little pi symbol in the bottom corner of the screen. I don't think I even knew how to program, was just making UIs that did nothing.

birriel• 5 years ago

"I leave message here on service, but you do not call." XD This line was referenced in "Halt and Catch Fire." Good stuff.

anaphor• 5 years ago

They referenced the movie on Stranger Things as well with a line similar to the one River Phoenix's character says: "It's fascinating what 50 bucks will get you at the county recorder's office"

crmd2• 5 years ago

It warms my heart that this thread is at the top of HN today. RIP Sir Sidney Poitier and long live SETEC Astronomy!

MR4D• 5 years ago

Great read, and a nice way to honor Sidney Poitier. RIP.

awestley• 5 years ago

RIP Sidney Poitier

caymanjim• 5 years ago

One of the best things about Sneakers is that it doesn't play down to its audience. There's little to no expository dialog. There are flashbacks that drive the plot, but no flashbacks or other artificial constructs that explain technology or terms. Everything is presented smartly, and the writers and director trust the audience to understand what's going on.

It manages to be specific about technical things without feeling aged, even now.

I might be biased since I'm an old 80s phone phreak/cracker/hacker, but I can think of few other examples that capture what things were really like, with social engineering proving as (or more) valuable than hacking, dumpster diving, and a group of people driven more by geeky interest than profit motive (although not entirely, of course). The only other hacking film that comes close is War Games, but only the first half.

madrox• 5 years ago

A scene was shot right next to my muni stop at Embarcadero and Folsom. I’d think about this movie every day, if for no other reason thinking about how they made that area look like no traffic existed.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 5 years ago

Who posted in the PTP thread?

at_a_remove• 5 years ago

This is the film that inspired me to learn how to move slowly enough to defeat motion detectors.

briHass• 5 years ago

Ha, yep. As a pre-teen kid in suburbia, creeping past the neighbors' motion detector-activated outdoor flood lights became a fun game.

MobileVet• 5 years ago

My home WiFi is and will always be SETEC_Astronomy.

What pains me the most is how many people I have to explain it too.

skygazer• 5 years ago

Try “cootys rat semen” — it stands up on its own, no explanation necessary. If you don’t mind the looks of disgust.

bryanrasmussen2• 5 years ago

Sidney Poitier, who played Crease, just died at the age of 94 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29849171 obviously he's been in more culturally significant movies, but I always liked his poor no-nonsense guy having to deal with all these darn wackos portrayal in this movie.

loxias• 5 years ago

Thank you so much for this! Such a wonderful story about my favorite movie!

Memories of the “Sneakers” Shoot (2012)

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