Comment by StopTheWorld
9 hours ago
The writer of Hackers, Rafael Moreu, went to New York 2600 meetings and talked to various members of MoD (a hacker group which had a book written about them by a local New York reporter, Joshua Quittner, who later worked for Wired and then Time/Pathfinder if anyone remembers that).
The names and handles of the movie reflect this - Cereal Killer, Plague, Joey, Razor - all handles of local New York people. Phreak in a sense too. Some of the kids went to Stuyvesant high school, where scenes were filmed. The kid getting raided in his shower happened locally. The plant worker almost getting shot by a flare gun held by people trashing happened locally. As did other things.
Some other national things made it in, like the Hacker's manifesto written by an LoD member.
Some things were invented for the movie. There was no attractive 19 year old Angelina Jolie type hacking along with the boys as shown in the movie. These guys were not rollerblading through Manhattan together. There was no Cyberdelia nightclub everyone hung out at, although some of the guys might have gone together once in a while to the nightclubs popular at the time (The Tunnel /Limelight / Palladium / Club USA / Webster Hall).
Oh man, Limelight!
LoD and MoD's heydays were more in the 1980s. By the first year or two of the 1990s, both were pretty much defunct, if my memory serves.
I was acquainted with several members of both groups, and I don't remember them really resembling the Hackers movies in appearance or personality. But I lost touch with them in about 1989-1990 or so, due to the next phase of my life kicking off.
In July 1992 five MoD members were charged with hacking, and they were basically defunct as an active hacking group after that. LoD was mostly defunct even before that, although the movie used the Mentor's manifesto. New York LoD members, or those affiliated with them, had been busted in July 1987. So yes, a lot of the 1995 movie was covering stuff that had happened from the 1980s up until mid-1992. When the movie was released, some of the MoD members were on probation and not allowed to associate with one another until probation ended. The busts, trials, prison terms, and probations were all happening around the time the movie was being written, filmed and released.