> Carpenter and O'Bannon set out to make the "ultimate riff on Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey," says Griffiths. While Kubrick's 1968 film, explains Muir, was one "in which viewers sought meaning in the stars about the nature of humanity, there is no meaning to life in Dark Star". Rather, says Muir, it parodies 2001 "with its own sense of man's irrelevance in the scheme of things".

It's said that 'every generation thinks they discovered sex', as if prior generations wouldn't imagine the things the new generation does in the bedroom. Every generation also thinks they discovered existential despair, and seem to have to same attitude about that: What a cool, knowing take-down of those old people and their simple-minded optimism. I see people doing the same these days (though right now existential despair is really having a moment).