Hal Barwood (producer, director, writer, videogame designer): “Colin Cantwell was one of my best and oddest friends”

Hal Barwood has been connected to the entertainment world since 1965, when he made a short animated film, A Child’s Introduction to the Cosmos, while enrolled at USC. He later worked as an effects animator on George Lucas’s directorial debut, THX 1138, and co-wrote Steven Spielberg’s theatrical debut, The Sugarland Express, with Matthew Robbins.

Barwood and Robbins went on to do script work on Spielberg’s 1977 hit Close Encounters of the Third Kind (little Barry’s kidnapping was one of their suggestions) and wrote several other movies together, including The Bingo Long Traveling All- Stars & Motor Kings (1976), MacArthur (1977), Corvette Summer (1978; it’s notable for starring Mark Hamill the year after Star Wars became a box office smash-hit), and the cult classic fantasy film, Dragonslayer (1981).

Barwood later worked on several videogames for LucasArts, including Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (1992), Star Wars: Rebel Assault II: The Hidden Empire (1995), and Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine (1999). In more recent years, he has written a dozen books for adults and kids through his own publishing house, Finite Arts.

Early days with Colin Cantwell

When I sat down with Hal Barwood to discuss his time with Colin, he started by pointing out: “I’ve had a lot of friends in the movie business and in video games over the years, which is where I’ve spent most of my time working. And I’ve had a lot of odd friends and a lot of good friends who were also odd. And among them, Colin was one of my best and oddest friends.”

That set the stage for a trip down memory lane, starting with his employment at a company called Graphic Films, where Colin also worked on an on-and-off basis, according to Hal. (Douglas Trumbull is another well-known Graphic Films alum, and he has his own connections to Colin that we will explore in future blog posts.) They worked together on what are known as “industrial movies” for Boeing, the Air Force, and other clients who needed to create films for specific audiences, such as when Boeing needed a presentation video for their new supersonic transport (SST).

Hal and Colin soon became friends, thanks to their mutual interests in everything from The Lord of the Rings to games to animation. In his spare time, Hal was creating some simple games based on the mechanics of “rock, paper, scissors,” where “each player has to make a decision without knowing quite what the other player is going to do and try to figure out, you know, how to outsmart the other player,” he explained.

He added: “Colin was very quick to analyze them and figure out all their flaws and so it was very valuable to sit there with him. And he knew when when a game had a quirk in it that allowed you to go past the problems and get to the solution a little too quickly.”

Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey

And then, Hal says, “I guess it was late ’66 — Colin just kind of disappeared … Part of the reputation he had among people who knew him from occasional visits and some work at Graphic Films, one of the characteristics they mentioned was that he comes and goes and you never know. You know, suddenly he’ll be gone and you just have no idea. Well, suddenly, Colin just disappeared. Where did he go? Well he followed Doug Trumbull, who was  our animation crane operator at Graphic Films, to London to go work on Stanley Kubrick’s movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey.” (Editor’s note: Doug Trumbull did more than operate an animation crane at Graphic Films.)

Hal’s next encounter with Colin was in Colin’s garage in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Studio City, where he was building the first concept models for Star Wars. “Among them, some of them, you know, he had the Blockade Runner [the first version of the pirate ship that became the Blockade Runner], and he had some kind of thing for the Jawas — the thing for the Jawas George never liked very well. And he modified Colin’s invention of the X-Wing to look differently but nevertheless, Colin was the person who figured out and said, hey we should have X-Wings. And I was just knocked out by that.”

A lifelong friendship between Hal and Colin

Hal and Colin stayed in touch off and on after that, as Hal’s career took him to the San Francisco Bay Area. Occasionally, he’d travel back to Los Angeles, where he would check in on Colin and his girlfriend, Carolyn Albright. Hal later relocated to Portland, Oregon and got together with Colin and his long-term partner, Sierra Dall, when they came to town during their tours of comic book shops and fan conventions, where Colin got to meet so many adoring fans.

My conversation with Hal touched on many other subjects that will be the basis of future content. He actually learned a few things from me about Colin, whose career was far-ranging and touched so many 20th century milestones, including the 1969 moon landing, advances in quantum physics, and more.