The Secrets of TRON (Charles Solomon, Rolling Stone Magazine, 1982)

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CHARLES SOLOMON? article '"Sleeping Beauty". a Disney Masterpiece Is Reawakened” appeared in RS 301.

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film. But once we saw him at work on the sound stage filming the preliminary tests with the crew, and saw the command he displayed, we knew he was the one to direct the film.”

The innovative visuals of Tron may seem out of keeping with Disney’s rather staid reputation, but that reputation has been acquired in recent years. More than once, Walt Disney himselfhad gambled the future of his studio on the success of , some cinematic innovation. "If this studio’s been known for anything, especially in the area of effects, it’s taking chances,” comments Wilhite. "I think there was some resistance among the animators to this project, but now they’re the ones most excited about the potential of the computer images.

Those techniques .can do what the multiplane camera only started to do—that is, create a three-dimensional environment for an animated character.”

What these computer images create in Tron is an alternate world that exists inside a gargantuan computer—owned by ENCOM, a communications conglomerate—and is inhabit.

at Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts, he made Cosmic Cartoon, a film collage of brightly colored dancing stars and human bodies It received a Student Academy Award nomination and toured the country as part of the Fantastic Animation Festival. After graduating in 1974, Lisberger organized his own animation studio in Boston, doing commercials as well as title and feature segments for television programs, including Make a Wis/J and Nova.

But commercial animation is often a frustrating business, with small studios depending on whatever work is available.

Lisberger’s search for a more stable working environment led to the creation of his first major work, Animalympics. Lis— berger came up with an idea— an animated spoof of the Olympics—that he thought was commercial. He struck a deal with NBC for some seed money, moved his staff of twenW to California and produced the Animalympics TV specials. One was broadcast in February 1980, and the second was aired last month.

Meanwhile, Lisberger continued to work on his idea for a fantasy-adventure inside a computer. «I probably could have sold it to the networks as a special when I first got the idea,” he says. "I preferred to develop it first to see how valid it was.”

It took thirty-six outlines and eighteen rewrites of the script before Lisberger and _Kushner were satisfied. Then, unable to organize independent financing, they spent $300,000 of their own money creating a development pack— age to present to major studios. It included a draft of the script, story boards of the entire film, some of the designs, explanations of how the effects would be created and a sample reel of them.

'Disney bought the project during the summer of 1980— several months before the computerized video games craze took off—in part because the studio that had once pioneered many film techniques in such pictures as 20,000 Leagues under the Sea ( 1954), Darby O’Gill and the Little People ( 1959) and Mary Poppins (1964) was beginning to rebuild its animation and effects departments. ' “Several studios were interested in the project,” says Lisberger, «but we were excited at the prospect of working with Disney. Any studio that can produce Fantasia is okay by me. Still, they weren’t sure if the computer-generated imagery and some of the other experimental techniques would work on a large screen. So while we were negotiating and working on rewrites of the script, they gave us $50,000 to make a few minutes of test footage. The results were very favorably received.”

As for Disney’s perspective on the project, Tom Wilhite, vice-president of motion picture and television production, says, “We told them we were interested less than a week after they submitted their package. Initially, we had some concern about Steven’s directing the films—it was his first live-action feature. Although we realized he brought a vision to the project and knew what he wanted,we considered assigning an executive producer with some directing experience to the

0

InnSOLAR SAILER, A fragile—looking vehicle that resembles a satellite with _vast gossamer wings, glides along a beam of yellowish light.

As weightless as a spec— ter, it sails through great canyons of angled metal and above a floor that pulses with patterns of color, floating toward its” redoubtable destina— tion: the fortresslike headquarters of the Master Control Program, ruler of this strange, glittering world.

The most remarkable thing about this and other sequences in Tron, Walt Disney Productions’ new $20 million science-fiction feature, is that nothing in the frame has any physical reality. There are no models of the Solar Sailer, no miniature sets of the faceted canyons. They exist as ideas in the mind of writer-director Steven Lisberger, as sketches by his designers — including Moebius (Jean Giraud of Heavy Metal), airbrush artist Peter Lloyd and futurist Syd Mead— and as pulses of energy in the memory banks of computers.

Lisberger and his associate, producer Don Kushner, have been planning this fantastic adventure, which takes place inside the circuitry of a mammoth computer, since 1976. A stocky man of thirty—one with dark hair and dark eyes and a trim beard, Lisberger radiates an intensity and tension that sometimes suggest a toy that has been wound one turn too tight. His attention bounces from subject to subject, and he speaks with equal enthusiasm about right—left brain func— tions, elements of Chinese and Meso-American art, and Tron.

The idea for Tron was born when Lisberger saw a video game while directing Animalympics, a pair of animated television specials. “I saw real—time animation for the first time,” he explains, «a little electronic beam going beep- beepbeep across a screen. To me, it was living animation—I was thinking animation at the time.I had been studying computer graphics and was aware that the technology was making big leaps, both in the areas of producing small equipment that could be put in the home and of generating images. When I saw that crude little character in the Pong game, I realized that by melding the two ideas, I could use computers to tell a story about video games. It seemed like a natural marriage.”

At the time, Lisberger was already a noted animator. In 1973,1'n order to complete the equivalent of a master’s degree

llirnntnr Steven lislinrnnr: We’re trying in SllllW tliat thisnlnntrnnin dimension is really happening.

ed by computer programs that have taken on the characteristics of their designers. When Flynn (Jeff Bridges), a com— puter wizard and video—game champion, attempts to block ENCOM’S theft of game programs he has devised, he is blasted into this strange computer worldThere, he is forced to compete in video games that have been turned into gladiatorial combats by the Master Control Program (MCP), the tyrannical ruler of the electronic dimension.

Flynn joins forces with Tron (Bruce Boxleitner), a rebel program that happens to be the- mightiest of the video warriors, and together they challenge the MCP for control of the computer realm.

When Flynn and the audience first see Tron, he is engaged in battle with four MCP warriors. The gladiators stand at the compass points ofa game arena drawn in lines of light and hurl deadly discs of light at Tron, who is in the center. Like the beleaguered hero of a Peking opera, he ducks, dodges and hurls the discs back, destroying his foes.

“We’re trying to show that this electronic dimension is really happening,” states Lisberger, "that we as a society are creating this enormous other reality out ofall the information and ideas we are pouring into computers. The real question is how the kids who are growing up now are going to deal with it. I’m optimistic about the outcome.

“I think the fact that video games are a hands-on medium is pivotal. You’re a lot better off interacting with someone than staring passively at a television set. \Vhen you watch kids playing with video, games or home computers, you get the feeling that they’re giving much more than they’re getting, and this is very important for society. One of the ultimate ironies about this whole situation,” he says, "is that the older generation has no qualms about leaving us with dirty air, dirty water and 9000 nuclear wa "heads, but they’re worried about whether video games are 5 )L. tor us.

“I admit, a lot of the games look like a general’s wet dream, which I’m not too crazy about,” [ConL on 15]

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ROLLING STONE, AUGUST 19, 1982: 13

Jein Bridges

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ABOUT TWENTY—FIVE years ago, when Lloyd Bridges was snorkeling his way into America’s hearts as the star of Sea Hunt, his eight-year-old son, Je,ff did his first stint in front of the camera. The big event, not surpris— ingly, was a Sea Hunt episode. The young Bridges played a towheaded, all—American lad trapped in an underwater cave.

The highlight of this debut was an exciting rescue by his real-life father.

“That’s where my basic training comes from,” Bridges will tell you, looking no less all-American now than he did then. “My father would be doing a scene and he’d say, 'Just talk to me. Make it happen as if it’s happening for the first time.’ Real basic things.”

Basic, of course, is the key word about Jeff Bridges. The thirty-two—year-old actor manages to maintain a casual, regular—guy image that seems at odds with the Hollywood status he has earned. He has made eighteen feature movies since 1970; two of them, Thunderbolt and Lightfbot and The Last Picture Show, won him Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actor.

Bridges, for all his success, fits into no easy mold. The truth is, insiders wonder about him. Why isn’t he an even bigger star? \Nhy, for instance, would he jeopardize his heavy rep as a serious actor to star in Tron, a film in which characterization plays a distant second to special effects—in which even the star plays second fiddle to a computer?

The answer, perhaps, takes us back underwater to his acting debut, for Bridges’ professional baptism could not have been more cordial. It’s hard to imagine a more benevolent plunge into the biz. He never had to hustle for an in. Had his‘father been a bricklayer instead ofa TV star, one suspects that the son would have taken up the trowel with the same unthinking ease. Being an actor was, well, basic to him and his brother Beau (The Landlord, Norma Rae). Both simply took the path of least resistance.

Think of Jane Fonda. Or Liza Minnelli. Growing up in Hollywood, the scion of stardom, breeds a familiarity with fame that makes its pursuit unnecessary. It’s the kids from Indiana who ride into town on a dream and then blow

JERRY STAHL is a Calfio'mia— based writer; this is his first article for ROLLING STONE.

14 .- ROLLING STONE, AUGUST 19, 1982

‘l tank the film seriously because I saw that it was breaking ground.’

themselves out at twenty-three when things turn real. A boy like Bridges, a dreamland native who came up on the inside, wears his own status with the laid-back e’lan of the indigenous.

Indeed. It doesn’t take long to see what makes Jeff Bridges so different from other young stars. After a day on the set of his next film, Kiss Me Goodbye, a comedy withJames Caan and Sally Field, he strolls into 3 Brentwood saloon with a toothpick tucked behind his ear, his blond hair brushed back wet, surfer style. He’s clad in shapeless jeans and a rumpled Western shirt. He keeps his sleeves rolled up, like the man in the Camel ads. Bridges is handsome in a West Coast kind of way. He has the sort of friendly face men want their brothers-in-law to have; he looks as relaxed as any working stiff after a day on the job.

VVhat’s remarkable is that as crowded as the bar happens to be, no heads turn when Jeff saunters in. There’s no rush from the out—of—towners for an autograph, no hushed states from sophisticated locals. "That sort of thing is not a problem,” he said when discussing where in LA. to meet for a drink. And it’s clear that he’s not just being modest.

There is simply nothing glamorous about Jeff Bridges.

Plenty of stars play the celebrity in real life, but Bridges saves his acting for the screen. It’s not being an actor that gives Bridges his perks, it’s the acting itself that he finds magical.

When Bridges talks about acting, he tends to clutch the table. It’s as if his very enthusiasm could carry him off. “The beginning stages of a movie,” he says, nalways remind me of when you were a kid, of some kid calling on the phone and saying, QHe,y you wanna play with Johnny? He’s got all these neat costumes, and we’ll get to use the special electronic stuff he’s got over at his house.’ It’s the same kind of trip. It’s a gas!”

You won’t hear anyone from the New York Intense School — the De Niro-Pacino-Hoffman axis — mouthing such joyous stuff. Bridges brings more California mellow than Manhattan angst to the set, and it shows. Pauline Kael once wrote that he “makes us care so deeply for the com— monplace mugs he plays that, of course, they stop being commonplace and we really love them.” It’s a power that charged his role as Clint Eastwood’s sidekick in Thunderbolt and Ligbtfoot, as the struggling fighter in John Huston’s Fat City and as the fading gigolo, Bone, in Cutter} Way. Bridges’ secret may be that he’s macho enough to be amiable without being menacing. This fact also makes his,

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BY JERRY SIAIIl

views on acting— and life—less flaky than they might seem.

Onscreen and of,f he is obsessed with the clash of vulnerability and security. He’ll talk forever on the rigors of the ego versus the freedom of surrender. “I am probably more California, more the searcher, part of the whole Me Decade, est . . . all of that shit, than even I care to admit.”

It’s been a long and winding path that’s led him from LSD to I Ching to est. Lately, it’s dropped him off at the doorstep ofsalvation. Christand his teachings are Bridges’ [ Cont. on 52]

Jeff

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[Cont from 12] continues Lisberger. “There’s got to be a way to take all that energy and evolve it to a point where there aren’t such dangerous images. We tried to do that in Tron with the fighting discs. People are not going to look at this movie and then go out and kill each other with Frisbees.

We’re still generating all the energy of a contest that’s about survival of the fittest, but we’re presenting it in a more artistic way.”

The special effects in Tron represent a return to the spirit of innovation and experimentation that characterized the best Disney features. There are 1100 special-effects shots, the most ever used in an unanimatecl feature, Lisberger says, and 800 of them are composite shots involving actors.

Lisberger’s live-action footage was combined with conventional animation, back-lit animation (a technique in which glowing effects are created by placing a light source under the artwork being photographed) and computer-generated imagery.

While various forms of computer technology have been employed in special effects for several years, Tron represents the first use of computer-generated, three—dimensional images to produce effects that would ordinarily be achieved with miniatures, model sets and matte paintings. Each frame of film has been exposed twelve to fifteen times (as many as forty—five times in some sequences), and images are created with layers of light, in much the same way a watercolorist builds forms out of layers of translucent paint. The look is dazzling. " Tron is neither animation nor conventional special effects but something totally new,” states Richard Taylor, cosupervisor of the film’s special effects. Taylor has a calm, confident manner that contrasts sharply with Lisberger’s in-

‘lren’ so that the actors could try to get a hot streak going ad then ‘pep right in a the scene with thisadrenaline llllll:

tensity.

"The use of miniatures and models in today’s science—fiction epics involves techniques that have been used since the Twenties,” he continues, “yet everyone thinks they’re real up-to—date. The lenses and films are a little better, and they’re using computers to repeat camera moves, but the basic techniques are still out of the Twenties. The spaceships you see in those films are cluttered with stuff to make them look big and to prevent reflections. They can’t use a gleaming chrome—and-glass ship because it would reflect everything else surrounding the model on the stage. Using computer simulation, we can create a chrome spaceship and put in the reflections of the surface it’s supposed to be moving over.”

The computer images are generated onto special, highresolution video screens that contain 4000 horizontal and 6000 vertical lines. (An ordinary television set has a mere 525 lines running in each direction.) The lines form a grid,with a point, or pixel, at every intersection—24 million in all. Each pixel is assigned two digital values by the computer. One indicates its relative brightness; the other, its color — a proportion of red, blue and green. Forty—eight million bits of information'may be required to generate a single frame. The number of calculations needed to create some of the more complex visuals, like the Solar Sailer moving through the metal canyons, is staggering. Up to six hours were required to generate some individual frames.

For a high-speed chase sequence involving light cycles, upon which Flynn and Tron try to escape from their enemies, the actors knelt on a black set and grasped models of the steering bars. The cycles drew themselves around the human figures in lines oflight that were done with conventional hand animation. These, in turn, were replaced with computer-generated images of the cycles. Like many of the computer simulations, the cycles don’t really look like anything the viewer has ever seen. Their surfaces suggest airbrushed metal or plastic, yet are somehow different from both. As the cycles dart across the game grid and break through a wall into the guarded realm of the MCP, they resemble both drawings and photographs but, again, don’t really look like either—which is because nothing in the real world exactly corresponds to the computer—generated surface. r{The medium is the message of this film,” states Lisberger. "The main character is sent into an electronic world that he’s helped create, and he has to deal [Com on 52]

ROLLING STONE, AUGUST 19, 1982;

15

Bridges

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52 .- ROLLING STONE, AUGUST 19, 1982

' a contradiction in terms. But Jeff is a very sunny, unselfish actor.”

For an actor without a large ego, Bridges’ latest film, Tron, was the perfect leap of faith. Now that native generosity could be applied to more than a fellow actor. He could zap an entire production with '

In the August issue interview with MUSICIAN magazine, Pete Townshend expresses the anger, the passion and the paradox of his life and times, his work with the Who and his solo career—all in Part I of an extraordinary conversation. MUSICIAN also talks to Warren Zevon, the bastard son of California rock, pop stylists Squeeze; plus John Hiatt; and gives you the music, reviews and points of view that count.

Find out why MUSICIAN is the magazine being read by the entire music industry.

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amazing grace. Most of the scenes in Tron were shot against a black background. QAQ lot of the time we had no idea what kind of world we would be in,” Bridges says. “But Steven kept video games right on the set. If you were on a streak, people would gather around and he would postpone shooting. Then you’d pop right into the scene with this adrenaline buzz. I took the film seriously because I saw that it was breaking ground, as far as state—ofthe—art special effects. That was the most exciting thing for me.”

Tron has already generated $400 million worth of merchandising

“ii tie-ins. Asked if the prospect of spending the rest of his life as the man whose face adorns a video game in any way disturbs him, Bridges shrugs. “God knows what will happen,” he says. “I just hope the movie doesn’t turn out to be just an ad for a video game.”

Even if it does, chances are that Bridges will find a way to stay good and mellow through it all. He’s always got his wife, Susan, and his ranch in Montana to cool him out.

He’s also recently become the father of a girl, Belle, and that experience seems to have given him his current peace of mind. "I cut the umbilical cord mysel,f” he says, grinning. "The blood kind of shoots up on your face, and then you put the baby in that warm water and it just calms right out. It looks right at you and goes, ‘Thanks.’ The feeling is very subtle, but very strong.”

The birth of his daughter may have closed the door on Bridges’ own restless youth. “It has,” he claims, “left me with a little better understanding of what lust is all about.” After Kiss Me Goodbye, he’ll return to his ranch with his family. There, the self—styled seeker plans to concentrate on painting and songwriting until the

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[Cont from 15] with it. The filmmakers were put in a very similar situation. We had all these tools and devices, and had to figure out how to get them before they got us.

We had to humanize them, break them down and bring out their more human aspects—aspects that people can think about and deal with. Which parallels what hap— pens to Flynn in the film.

“The characters in Tron are supposed to be made of energy and light, and that’s what we were working with. Video games don’t exist anywhere on earth except as energy

next call comes over the wire.

Bridges is a fan of Talking Heads leader David Byrne’s self-referen— tial style of lyric writing. And he has no compunctions about putting down his glass and breaking into his latest effort.

"This one is about working,” Bridges announces, closing his blue eyes.

I’m working on not throwin g up my hands, on not calling it a day and walking away.

I’m working on seeing the dif? firenre I make, getting ofl on the chances I take.

I’m working on hanging in without thinking how humble I am.

I’m working on not making a job out of it, on not being a slave to my body, to my balls, to my friends, to my parents.

I’m working on doing my bit.

I work, I don’t quit, I grunt, I lie, I tell the truth sometimes, I’m ignorant.

I work, I don’t know why Must be some kind oftime—capsule inside.... .

HIOWNWHEND lNTER‘WEW-BARTl

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[Cont. from I4]newest groove. A large part ofthese, in Bridges’ view, relates directly to acting. He describes his brand of born-again Stanislavsky with a mixture of embarrassment and fascination, interrupting himself from time to time to wonder if he sounds as lame as, he feels when he discusses it.

"Prayer is a funny kind of technique thatI use. It’s like opening up to that God, or that energy out there, the Main Director. . . . You ask gWhat do I do?’ and it kind of opens your mind so you’re not so closed and focused with your own ego trip about what a scene should be. You go home one night and you learn all your lines and you figure, QOh, now, this scene’s going to be like this, and I’m going to be like this. . . . ’ But if you go in there so cemented, then you’re not going to be able to take advantage of the pow, the effervescence, the champagne bubbles of life. What I like to do is open my mind up in preparation for a scene, to get direction from little flies crawling on the wall or from the way someone is holding his face.” .

All of this mystical testimony goes a long way toward explaining why Bridges has played secondary roles in his last two films. In Cutters’ Way, his character, Bone, demanded the sort of backup performance most ego-ridden Hollywood types are loath to take on. As director Ivan Passer pointed out, “The part of Cutter [played by John Heard] had more flash. Bone was a part where Jeff had to reflect rather than generate action. It’s dangerous; you need an actor who is se— cure and generous, which is almost

The words come out less as performance than as some private elegy. “I don’t know what the fuck it is, he says when hes through.

What’s important is ust being able to say it.

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in computers, and the game tanks, the light cycles and the Solar Sailer in Tron exist only as electrical energy inside a computer. It’s nice when the making of a film lines up with the finished product.”

The technology that underlies this whole world of computer sim— ulation is as far removed from the average filmgoer as the experi— ments in animation, stop-motion and "trick films” of pioneers like Georges Me’lie‘s, Emile Cohl and Stuart Blackton were from audiences around the turn of the century. It suggests a return to the concept of cinema as magic, a return that confirms Arthur C. Clarke’s dictum: ‘A‘ny sufficiently advanced technology is indistin— guishable from magic.”

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