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While the fictional Tech task force was absorbed in laser science, for purposes of the script, the filmmakers were grappling with their own technological problems. That exercise began in Lazlo Hollyfeld (Jon Gries)'s lair in the steam tunnels beneath the dorm. After several reconnaissance trips to the Cal Tech campus, production designer 'Josan Russo', special effects coordinator Phil Cory, and their respective staff, proceeded to create Hollyfeld's hideaway at the Hollywood Center Studios. Russo said: "The multi-directional elevator which takes him to his den was the first challenge". When completed, it consisted of a car, controlled by a rotating screw, which descended through an elevator shaft to a turntable. At that point, it met a horizontal track and a hidden drive-chain, like those used to operate roller coasters. At the end of the track, another rotating screw took over, plunging the car into the dorm's lower depths.There, the filmmakers created a slew of gadgets, mirroring the mind of a troubled genius who'd opted out of society, but had not rejected creature comforts. Typical was a toaster which not only browned the bread but sprayed on a stream of melted butter and jelly, and a quixotic coffee brewer, which operated on a microwave principle. The piece de resistance was the automated "scribbler" which enabled Hollyfeld to submit one-million, six-hundred- thousand separate entries to the Frito-Lay Sweepstakes, creating a mathematical probability of winning 32.6% of the prizes, including the car.
When Lazlo Hollyfeld (Jon Gries) sends in a large number of entries to the Frito-Lay contest, he is mirroring the actions of Caltech students Steve Klein, Dave Novikoff and Barry Megdal, who, in 1974, used a similar strategy to win a McDonald's sweepstakes. Their entries came to roughly 1/5th of the total entries and won them a station wagon, $3,000 cash and $1,500 in food gift certificates.
The "liquid nitrogen" coins have baffled viewers for many years, and are considered by many to be a goof. However, the very first draft of the script shows that it wasn't an error. The thermos contains liquid nitrogen, which in turn contains a column of super-cooled CO2 (dry ice), which is what Chris uses in the vending machine.
In the scene where the military is set up for the laser test fire, the cars in the procession on the dirt road are set up to replicate the JFK assassination.
During a crash course in laser technology, the cast and crew received a demonstration of the dye laser as it darted through the colors of the spectrum. Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond was troubled. "The naked eye can see the beam coming toward it," he explains. "But it's almost invisible to the camera when it's going away. We went through countless experiments before we learned to 'bounce' the beam and to fill the lab set with smoke, which 'scattered' the light and gave it definition. Otherwise, we would have had a special effect so special, no one would have seen it."
The film was predominantly inspired and loosely based on actual events at Cal Tech aka the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.