Making Megaforce

One of the best documentaries I’ve seen in the last few years was Robert Weide and Don Argotts’ Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time, which not only recounted the life of the author, but more prominent was the endearing friendship formed between the filmmaker and his subject, with Weide being a lifelong Vonnegut aficionado and collaborator. But what does that have to do with Bob Lindenmayer’s Making Megaforce you may ask?

Well, the parallels are not as far afield as you might imagine. For one, like Weide, Lindenmayer was touched by Megaforce at an early age, and two, like Weide, he was inspired enough by what he saw that day in a movie theatre in Arizona to devote all the years in between two, not only gathering as much about Megaforce as he could. But also sharing his love and passion for the unrequited greatness the 1982 cult classic offers with those he meets.

Lindenmayer sets out to find as many of the people involved in the film’s making. He loves the most. The list is impressive and extensive, including designers, members of the camera department, stunt men, and even the boys responsible for making things go BOOM! The quest leads him across America, as Bob and fellow Megaforce fans, seek the locations used in the movie, including a pilgrimage to the Salt Flats of Nevada where the most awesome battle in 80s cinema was captured by Hal Needham and his crew using over thirty tanks, a dozen or more armored troop carriers, Hercules aircraft and one hundred men.

Just when you thought a documentary about a movie that wasn’t popular couldn’t get any better, Making Megaforce does, as Lindenmayer then lets the audience, in on the beautifully tempestuous and irreverent bond he has formed with Barry Bostwick. Again, like in Weide’s film, watching a friendship balloon and blossom as Bob and Barry share moments shooting the breeze, hunting down movie artifacts, and joining in on the hilarious, sometimes revealing, and most times entertaining recollections of the men who made the movie is worth the price of admission alone.

“…a pilgrimage to the Salt Flats of Nevada where the most awesome battle in 80s cinema was captured…”

Another note of complexity comes when Lindenmayer brings his personal life into the context of the picture, and how Megaforce for him is in part a search for the father figure that abandoned him. The banter between him and Bostwick, you can see on the director’s face, brightens and moves him, as well as we watching on in kind. So, too, there’s a moment towards the truly stellar climax of the film, again, when Bob and Barry are seen side by side. The smile on Lindenmayer’s face perfectly embodies a statement made by him earlier in the picture, in which he talks about being side by side with Ace Hunter, riding hard and fast across the desert, psychologically transporting himself back to the magic of the moment when he experienced Megaforce for the first time.

Making Megaforce is a gem like no other. As the film’s advertising states, it’s a documentary that no one asked for, about a film that’s largely forgotten. But that is not the experience that is Making Megaforce. You see, passion is contagious, and to watch Lindenmayer’s eccentric and illuminating odyssey unfold, with moments of sheer joy and exuberance blitzed together with the remembrances of those who made the magic together with those the magic touched, is at once enthralling, inspiring, and deeply moving. The credo of Megaforce is DEEDS NOT WORDS. Bob Lindenmayer is taking this maxim to heart, putting it into practice, with a lot of heart, and has delivered to us a definitive look at the movie he loves, and its hero, whom he is lucky enough to call his friend.