The Rachel Maddow Show   |  February 06, 2013

When helicopters chased bi-planes and journalists were heroes

Rachel Maddow remembers fondly the 1970s science fiction thriller Capricorn One about a Mars landing hoax.

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This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>>> an exceptionally -- i can say it. the 1970s were an exceptionally paranoid moment in pop culture history. did you ever see the 1978 movie "capricorn one." there is a manned mission to mars and the astronauts are sam waterston , the "law & order" guy, and james brolin , the barbra streisand guy, and o.j. simpson , the o.j. simpson guy. only the whole thing is a fake because of budget cuts and a corrupt profiteering government contractor . and also because of hal holbrook , because it's the 1970s . anyway, the landing occurs on a totally faked mars, which is actually a tv studio on an old military base in the desert. and nobody knows about it being a fake. and nobody would have ever known about it being a fake except for charming dishevelled 1970s leading man elliott gould . he is a journalist who figures it all out there. are chase scenes, and there is a crop duster and telly savalas and brenda vaccaro . even attack helicopters , because you know black helicopters . but elliott gould survives it all, and spoiler alert , the truth is revealed. journalists it turns out are heroes. yay, 1970s . see the crop duster and the attack helicopters together in the estimate shot, i know, right? "capricorn one." right. tonight we have a debunction junction. elliott gould already debunked it in the movie. about a real life totally faked thing by the government. and there totally is an elliott gould journalist debunker character in this story who is sticking to her story, even as everybody else tries to say it's false. crazy, right? that's