Pulse (1988)
Pulse marks Paul Golding’s debut feature directorial effort, as well as his last. His only other directorial credit was when he co-directed a three-minute short film in 1966 called Herbie with George Lucas in their USC film school days. Golding broke into the business as an editorial consultant for the impactful 1969 film Medium Cool.
Golding grew up in Troy, NY, with love for science fiction and a boyhood dream to become a theoretical physicist. He also had an artistically creative side, crafting reels of audio comedy skits with his friends. The audio soon took on a video component when Golding obtained an 8mm film camera and began making experimental home movies.
As the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union heated up in the late 1950s, opportunities in the field of theoretical engineering dissipated. But Golding discovered a new avenue might be open he was equally eager to pursue. In 1963, Golding caught a screening at Cooper Union, a private college in Manhattan, of a rough-cut film by Ron Rice called, The Queen of Sheba Meets the Atom Man. The film was shot with a 16mm camera in various places in New York. Golding felt Rice’s effort closely resembled the kinds of short movies he’d been making for years. Golding suddenly had a new identity as an underground filmmaker. Not long afterward, Golding read a newspaper article about programs at USC and UCLA that taught filmmaking. When choosing a college, Golding opted for USC to pursue his newly chosen career. It’s there that he collaborated with the likes of future big-name directors like John Milius and George Lucas.
After graduating and editing Medium Cool, Golding pursued several promising Hollywood projects that never found their way in front of cameras. His first commercially produced work came on television. He’d co-written a script called Littlefoot with David Irving about a boy lost in the woods who encounters a young version of Bigfoot. They took it to Disney, who seemed interested but declined because they didn’t want to promote the Bigfoot myth. Thinking fast on his feet, Golding offered to change the character of “Littlefoot” to be the last of a tribe of Indians. Disney approved. The script’s title changed to The Secret of Lost Valley. Eventually, the screenplay was chopped into two parts and directed by actor Vic Morrow for the Disney-produced TV show, “The Wonderful World of Disney,” and shown in April 1980. Despite earning Golding a Writers Guild award, he despised the changes made with his story and vowed to fight more for his vision on future projects.
During this frustrating period, Golding came up with an idea he would title at various times House, Tract, Currents, and, ultimately, Pulse. Golding had recently divorced and lived in a tract house in Eagle Rock, CA, between Glendale and Pasadena. He felt lonely and occasionally invited friends from his USC days to stay with him. One was cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, the father of actresses Zooey and Emily. Golding’s house had a water heating system, a boiler that made loud noises that made Deschanel feel uneasy. He’d stir in bed when the furnace turned on and off, and the pipes creaked from temperature changes. When Deschanel described the house as seeming alive and taking care of them, Golding thought of a darker story idea. He envisioned a film about a haunted house that used its utilities to torment its inhabitants it didn’t want there.
A bit later, Golding heard from a friend working in the computer industry whose team designed a device for a telephone company that detected communication errors within their phone lines and printed out the results for the repair division to investigate. Over time, the number of errors reported waned as if the errors fixed themselves or the device reprogrammed itself not to find those errors. They stopped the program, but this anecdote fostered within Golding the scary notion of a future where humans increasingly rely on technology that might someday decide it doesn’t want to cater to us anymore.
Golding mused about how reliant humans have become on electricity to sustain us and frighteningly dangerous it is for society should these utilities we count on to push progress forward turn against us. Golding adapted his premise to a smaller scale involving a married couple living in a haunted home that used the appliances against them. But he hit a creative wall that plagued each revision: the couple could always easily leave. He needed more than a mortgage investment that kept the couple stuck there. Golding’s solution: write in a child for the couple who had nowhere else he could go. Better yet, a child visiting his divorced parent who was left alone and unfamiliar with how to shut down the security system protecting the house to escape.
In the story, electricity lines between the houses in a suburban Los Angeles neighborhood allow an unseen but powerful malevolent force to enter homes, where it begins twisting the house’s wiring and everything that is plugged into it to its liking. Eventually, it begins using the home’s appliances (the TV, washing machine, dryer, heating system, and garage) to torture the inhabitants within. In one home on a cul-de-sac, the father went crazy and began destroying his home. Now it seems to be threatening the home across the street, where an 11-year-old boy named David is visiting his divorced father for the summer. David seems to know what’s going on, but he can’t leave until he convinces his skeptical father before they’re stuck in a high-voltage death trap.
Over the next few years, Golding estimates that he entered into deals surrounding his screenplay ten times, including one for television, none of them panned out. With the release of Poltergeist in 1982, studios felt there were too many similarities and lost interest. Golding shifted attention toward other projects, including the screenplay for what became Beat Street, released in 1984. Golding was shaken when the original director and co-writer for Beat Street, Andrew Davis, was fired. But Davis’s ability to do bigger and better things later encouraged Golding to continue to pursue Pulse, especially when his next project, Bad Dates, a screenplay collaboration with A Nightmare on Elm Street 2‘s director Jack Sholder, also didn’t pan out.
Finding financing was difficult because Pulse didn’t offer easily understandable explanations of what the entity is and why it haunts the home. Studio suits persistently asked Golding to include a moment that explains everything to the audience. Golding pointed to 1982’s Poltergeist being a great movie until the nature of the hauntings is explained. Humans fear the unknown. The more you reveal about the monster, the less fearsome it becomes.
In 1986, Golding received support from a friend, William McEuen. McEuen put Pulse into development with his Aspen Film Society, which coordinated with Columbia Pictures for its distribution. Columbia was in a time of upheaval, with its parent company, Coca-Cola, selling off many film assets, including Embassy Pictures and its home entertainment division, and the Walter Reade Organization. British film producer David Puttnam had just been named the chairman/CEO of Columbia. Puttnam immediately shifted Columbia away from star-studded packages in favor of smaller productions and prestige efforts. Columbia’s president of production, David Picker, was a producer on Beat Street and took a look at Golding’s script. He felt Pulse was exactly the kind of film Columbia should be making. Puttnam acquired it and put it in development with an initial budget of $6 million.
Columbia allowed Golding to pick his line producer, and he chose Patricia Stallone. Stallone joked to the press that Pulse would appeal to people from all walks of life who use electricity. For casting, Picker advised Golding not to go for big stars. Being a first-time director, stars were liable to cause more trouble. They auditioned several actors, including Tommy Lee Jones, for the father, Bill. The casting agents had previously worked for the TV show “St. Elsewhere,” so they brought in David Morse, who blew them away with his audition. Morse seemed a lock until they looked at the tape and found none of the power he projected in person came through on the screen for reasons they couldn’t explain. Eventually, they settled on Cliff De Young, with Roxanne Hart securing his second wife, Ellen.
After an extensive casting call for eleven-year-old David Rockland, they selected Joey Lawrence, a cast member of the TV show “Gimme a Break,” who wowed them in the audition. Golding found it challenging to get Lawrence to stop his TV acting tendencies. Exaggerated mannerisms were preferable on the small screen, but on the big screen, acting required subtlety, as emotions were read via facial expressions rather than body movements. When Lawrence kept gesticulating unnecessarily with his arms, Golding would have him sit on his hands to assure he would act more with his face than his body. Joey Lawrence’s brother Matthew (who also had a recurring role on “Gimme a Break”) also came to the audition to play Stevie, the neighbor kid. Matthew couldn’t read but easily memorized a long speech written for Stevie. Golding had an easier time with Matthew due to the malleability of his inexperience.
Golding uses the advancement in technology and the interconnectedness of all of us within our cityscapes as a metaphor for the internal circuits within the electronic devices that can go awry if left to those with evil intent. Just as the entity within Pulse can cause great destruction to the order of things through the abuse of advancements in human technology, so too can our society be destroyed by those who exploit those advancements for harm on a larger scale.
Scientific explanations are left to the viewer’s imagination as we ponder whether the force is demonic, alien, or artificial intelligence in origin brought about by changes in the grid after a lightning strike. Charles Tyner is the kooky electrician surreptitiously studying the phenomena who might not be as crazy as he appears. His character gives insight into the phenomenon by stating that paranoia is another way of saying “heightened awareness.” He reveals that the only power we have to protect ourselves is by unplugging ourselves from the grid.
David is apprehensive about being on an airplane (clutching his toy horse) or living in the hustle and bustle of a large city. His father obviously hasn’t spent enough time while apart to get to know his son. He tries to impress David with a racecar-themed room, which doesn’t represent him. David prefers the simple life of skateboarding and inner-tubing with a fishing pole.
Editing the film was done during the production. Although Golding was an experienced editor, he let the person he hired for the job, Gib Jaffe, do the work. The original cut ran two hours. However, Golding felt the film dragged, which prompted cuts to tighten the pacing down to a lean 95 minutes. Some cut scenes involved David in Colorado with his mother before heading to Los Angeles. Golding felt the film should get more quickly into the action. Another excised sequence involved David and Ellen in a conversation near some electronic transmission lines; Ellen relates a story from her childhood about how the tract housing cropped up in her neighborhood once these big powerlines were put in. Although it added context, Golding felt it took from the momentum of tension.
Golding wrapped Pulse on schedule and a million dollars under budget. However, Golding was strongly cautioned by a colleague that the studio would be more suspicious than impressed. Studios know exactly what each project should cost and feel cheated if the money they invest isn’t fully used. To spend the remainder, Golding had an idea of using macro photography inserts to show technology going haywire close-up. Golding had contemplated working with his friend George Lucas’s Industrial Light and Magic when he was approached by Oxford Scientific Films, renowned for their nature documentaries. After being blown away by their demo reel, Golding hired them and traveled to Oxfordshire to oversee photography on actual circuits and microcircuits in states of change. For a moment in which the inside circuits of television appear to be realigning, the sequence was shot with the macro photography process and then played backward in the film to look more unnatural.
A test screening for Columbia execs went well. After the showing, David Picker told Golding to feel his hands, covered with sweat from the tension. Picker intended to release Pulse as a 70mm print for the New York and Los Angeles markets to build momentum before rolling it out nationwide as Columbia’s big summer release. However, Picker and Puttnam were soon out the door at Columbia, and incoming head Dawn Steel ordered the release of whatever they had ready to go into theaters between January and March 1988.
A dispute erupted from the producers of Pulse claiming that Columbia Pictures had dumped their film. Rather than a national release, Columbia gave Pulse a regional release in March of 1988 in 125 theaters in Oklahoma and Texas without much push for advertising. Golding, along with executive producer William McEuen and producer Patricia Stallone, accused new president Dawn Steel of having a bias against the remaining releases put into the Columbia slate under outgoing president David Puttnam.
Pulse builds good suspense and mystery as to what it’s about. The visuals are arresting, especially the close-up action capturing the electrical processes gone haywire within household appliances. The photography by Peter Lyons Collister is a major asset, as is the macro photography provided by Oxford Scientific Films to get in close to frying circuit boards and melting solder is quite stunning purely on a technical level. The sound design and electrical effects of those moments provide effective aesthetic creepiness and the hint of otherworldliness.
In addition to its severely curtailed rollout, Pulse may have failed to resonate in the 1980s because the world had fully embraced consumer electronics by 1988. Many families firmly were sold on the comfort of suburbia, the white picket fences, and the lawn that’s always green and well-manicured. The yuppie generation viewed defined a person’s worth through their possessions. The appearance of one’s clothes, car, and home projected success or failure in this changing society.
Golding’s warning about entrapment within a life of ease was considered against the grain of the societal mindset. With the internet and cable TV taking hold, everyone was excited to tune in and turn on, not drop out and unplug. They didn’t feel these things walled them off from the outside world, even though the value of their possessions made them add bars on the windows and locks on every door. Meanwhile, the level of sophistication of these devices has increased exponentially in the computer age. There are so many new circuits and chips in modern technology that even repair technicians no longer know what’s going on inside. They follow the manual on how to fix it and hope for the best.
And if even skilled technicians aren’t aware of how these devices work, it calls into question whether anyone knows what they’re doing to people who live nearby. David’s father smokes cigarettes, a nasty habit promoted by commercialism that sells status to its customers in exchange for health. David’s mother says people smoke because people don’t like themselves. She also doesn’t use her microwave, claiming it will make you sterile, further fostering her son’s suspicion of modern technology.
And yet, here’s a movie about how technology destroys families, neighborhoods, our sense of community, and our connection with nature. In Golding’s Pulse, our possessions are the things that will possess us. David feels resentful about leaving his home to spend his summers cooped up with electronics and no one to connect with. Bill and Ellen would rather impress people of higher status than spend time with David, who they let be entertained by their television while they’re at dinner schmoozing with Madison Avenue types to watch baseball or other TV shows full of commercials that constantly push more products as the means to a fulfilled life. David implores his father to move to rustic Colorado, but it’s out of the question in Bill’s mind. He can’t give up the job that gives him a comfortable life of leisure. Bill bought into consumerism after being bombarded by commercials and game shows on television, with a steady drumbeat telling him that providing his wife and child with nice things is more valuable than providing emotional closeness.
The presentation of the acting is a bit stiff. Still, Roxanne Hart gives a good performance as the stepmother trying to be accepted then slowly realizing that there’s more to what her stepson is saying than a cry for negative attention. Pulse is a vastly overlooked suburban gothic entry from the 1980s that deserves to find a larger audience. Golding himself thinks it a pretty good film and modestly says he’d grade it a solid “B+.” Despite good talent shown here as a director, this would mark the end of Golding’s output in that capacity, and he soon left Hollywood mostly behind him after finding success with an internet store.
- Golding wrote a screenplay right after completing Pulse that he calls a thematic sequel with different characters. The title was originally Aames but changed to Macrochip over the years. However, Golding mostly retired from the business, and it remains unproduced. In recent years, he’s contemplated turning one of the early unproduced screenplays that he co-wrote with Zalman King into a novel.
- Cliff De Young and Roxanne Hart appeared as husband and wife together again in 2000 in the Hallmark Hall of Fame TV movie called, The Runaway.
Qwipster’s rating: B
MPAA Rated: PG-13 for disturbing images, violence, and language
Run time: 91 min.
Cast: Joey Lawrence, Cliff De Young, Roxanne Hart, Matthew Lawrence, Charles Tyner
Small part; Tim Russ, Robert Romanus
Director: Paul Golding
Screenplay: Paul Golding