Speaker 1: Hey there, it's Jonathan Strickland, and I'm here to introduce
Speaker 1: a playlist of ten episodes of my podcast tech Stuff
Speaker 1: that are all about entertainment and entertainment related fields, from
Speaker 1: video games to television series, two films to internet videos
Speaker 1: from yesteryear. So I hope you guys enjoy these episodes.
Speaker 1: You can go to the tech Stuff podcast page and
Speaker 1: subscribe to listen to all sorts of episodes about tech
Speaker 1: from all realms, and hopefully this will provide a little
Speaker 1: bit of entertainment, a little bit of education, and probably
Speaker 1: more than a few puns, because that's kind of how
Speaker 1: I roll enjoy this playlist. Welcome to text Uff, a
Speaker 1: production from I Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to
Speaker 1: tex Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive
Speaker 1: producer with iHeart Radio and I love all things tech
Speaker 1: and we're listening to another playlist episode. This one is
Speaker 1: called Tron He Fights for the Users, where we speak
Speaker 1: with the director of the original movie Tron and how
Speaker 1: all of that came together. It turns out that was
Speaker 1: a pretty remarkable effort. It gave the look of computer
Speaker 1: graphics in some places where it was really hand drawn animation. Uh,
Speaker 1: it did use c g I as well, but it
Speaker 1: was an interesting, you know, kind of marriage of all
Speaker 1: those arts, live action, computer animation and hand drawn animation.
Speaker 1: So let's take a listen. Tron follows the story of
Speaker 1: a character named Flynn, who is a video game designer
Speaker 1: and hacker who once was the employee of a corporation
Speaker 1: called InCom. One of Flynn's co workers named Dillinger, stole
Speaker 1: Flynn's work and arranged Flynn's removal from the company and
Speaker 1: covered it all up. Flynn plans a daring computer raid
Speaker 1: on the company with the help of two of his
Speaker 1: former co workers. His big goal is to uncover the
Speaker 1: actual evidence that in fact, Dillinger stole Flynn's work, and
Speaker 1: his big opponent in this raid is an artificial intelligent construct.
Speaker 1: It's a piece of code. It's some software. It's called
Speaker 1: the Master Control Program or m c P. Now, originally
Speaker 1: that started out as a chess game, but it had
Speaker 1: started to assimilate other programs into its own code and
Speaker 1: systematically growing more powerful as a result. So imagine sort
Speaker 1: of like the borg absorbing other entities to gain more strength.
Speaker 1: That's kind of what the m c P is doing.
Speaker 1: He gets more and more capability as it absorbs other programs.
Speaker 1: So while Flynn is trying to break into Incom's systems,
Speaker 1: the m c P detects him and uses a laser
Speaker 1: to convert Flynn into digital information and essentially upload him
Speaker 1: to the computer. That pulls Flynn into the computer world
Speaker 1: and their Flynn encounters programs and in the world of
Speaker 1: the computer simulation or the computer environment, these programs have
Speaker 1: the appearances of humans in this universe, they also resemble
Speaker 1: their creators, whoever programmed them. One of those programs is Tron.
Speaker 1: The name is short for Electronic. Tron is a security
Speaker 1: program and is designed to keep an eye on the
Speaker 1: m c P. But he also acts kind of like
Speaker 1: a gladiator in various games that the m c P
Speaker 1: forces programs to participate in, and as some people mentioned
Speaker 1: within the context of the film, he fights for the users.
Speaker 1: It's one of my favorite quotes from Tron. Users in
Speaker 1: the Tron universe are sort of seen as like odds.
Speaker 1: They are the creators, and the programs look to users
Speaker 1: for guidance and for approval, and they have had all
Speaker 1: communication cut off by the m c P, so they
Speaker 1: wonder if the users are still out there. There's this
Speaker 1: whole existential crisis going on in the world of Tron,
Speaker 1: and that's an interesting piece of the mythology of the movie.
Speaker 1: Flynn eventually, of course, helps bring down the m c
Speaker 1: P and he escapes the computer world. He's also able
Speaker 1: to prove that Dillinger stole his work, and he ends
Speaker 1: up becoming the new head of Income as a result. Now,
Speaker 1: the film was not a big success at the box office,
Speaker 1: but it did find itself a cult following and also
Speaker 1: had a profound impact on the way people would visualize cyberspace.
Speaker 1: I would even say that you could see elements of
Speaker 1: the design from Tron find its way into early implementations
Speaker 1: of virtual reality, and the production of the film itself
Speaker 1: relied heavily on some really innovative work from numerous people
Speaker 1: in order for the film to actually come into being.
Speaker 1: So Ramsey the Wonder Producer arranged for me to have
Speaker 1: an interview with the writer and director of Tron, Stephen Liszburger.
Speaker 1: What follows is our conversation about the technology he used
Speaker 1: to create the movie, as well as his philosophy about
Speaker 1: technology and stuff in general. Really the things that informed
Speaker 1: the creation of Tron. I hope you enjoy Stephen Lisztburger,
Speaker 1: it is a pleasure to have you on the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining Tech Stuff my pleasure. Now before
Speaker 1: we jump into Tron, and I've got a lot of
Speaker 1: things to ask about for Tron. Uh. Maybe my listeners
Speaker 1: would probably appreciate understanding a little bit about your background
Speaker 1: leading up to Tron. You had a background in animation
Speaker 1: leading up to that. I come from the East Coast.
Speaker 1: I was born in New York and went to college
Speaker 1: in Boston at TOPS and went to the School of
Speaker 1: the Museum of Fine Arts, where I studied film for
Speaker 1: five years in looting animation, and I had my own
Speaker 1: company in Boston that did some live action but primarily animation.
Speaker 1: And uh. We eventually ended up with a studio on
Speaker 1: the East Coast and went on the West coast we're in.
Speaker 1: Our biggest job was doing Animal Olympics for the NBC
Speaker 1: television network, and during that we developed Tron and then
Speaker 1: tried to do it independently, but we couldn't pull it off,
Speaker 1: so we were fortunate enough to get in business with Disney. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I imagine a project with the scope of Tron would
Speaker 1: have been extremely challenging to pull off without some some
Speaker 1: pretty major help. And I also imagine that Disney's background
Speaker 1: in animation uh led to some some aid when you
Speaker 1: guys were working on Tron, because I don't know that
Speaker 1: people who have seen the film are really aware how
Speaker 1: much actual hand drawn animation techniques were incorporated. This was
Speaker 1: an era before computer graphics had reached that digital age
Speaker 1: where you do everything you know digitally on a computer
Speaker 1: and then you can just export to a video file.
Speaker 1: This is way before all of that, so I imagine
Speaker 1: Disney's involvement was somewhat helpful because that was a studio
Speaker 1: that actually understood animation. Yeah, all of that is true,
Speaker 1: And just to unpack that, if we had tried to
Speaker 1: do it independently, I think it would have we wouldn't
Speaker 1: have made it eventually. We would have had to either
Speaker 1: go under or bring in someone else because we were
Speaker 1: somewhat naive. We had an idea how we would do it,
Speaker 1: but we in retrospect the scale of it was something
Speaker 1: that none of us had experienced with. On paper, we
Speaker 1: thought we could work it all out. It added up
Speaker 1: and made sense, but when we got into it at Disney,
Speaker 1: many times I thought I'm really glad we're here and
Speaker 1: not in any other studio, because, as you said, we
Speaker 1: we had we had hundreds and hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: pieces of artwork, um put any in just the frame
Speaker 1: blow ups, Every individual frame of the electronic world blown up,
Speaker 1: shot at seventy moment are blown up. They were when
Speaker 1: they were stacked up. They filled two entire moving vans.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was tons and tons and tons of
Speaker 1: images and it it didn't freak Disney out because they said, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're used to handling millions of pieces of artwork. And
Speaker 1: in the end, that was totally the strength production wise
Speaker 1: of the project because we all of us working on
Speaker 1: it were familiar with animation. Even the live action people
Speaker 1: had quite a bit of experience and animation. So we
Speaker 1: sort of took the best from live action and then
Speaker 1: we turned the whole live action movie into an animated movie.
Speaker 1: And once it was at that level, you could treat
Speaker 1: it like mass production. You could just keep multiplying the
Speaker 1: number of teams working on the individual scenes. And and
Speaker 1: there was a system there. We weren't reinventing the wheel.
Speaker 1: That system existed. People knew how to do you know,
Speaker 1: animated effects and how to work with these numbers of
Speaker 1: probably it had to be over a million pieces in
Speaker 1: the end. And the funny thing about it is how
Speaker 1: efficient it was, because we ended up doing all of
Speaker 1: the special effects in Tron one in half the time
Speaker 1: that it took to do them in Tron too well,
Speaker 1: and and correct me if I got this, get any
Speaker 1: of this wrong. I want to see if I can
Speaker 1: kind of lay out for my listeners sort of a
Speaker 1: general approach to the electronic world sequences which took up
Speaker 1: more almost an entire hour of Tron I think about
Speaker 1: somewhere around the realm of fifty three to fifty five
Speaker 1: minutes something like that of a footage in this electronic world.
Speaker 1: So the thing is, there was an underlying template that
Speaker 1: I had in mind, which is, you know, a sort
Speaker 1: of live action short at the beginning then followed by
Speaker 1: an animated movie. Is what Disney used to make. And
Speaker 1: you know they always did that with their live action
Speaker 1: films and animated and live or live and animated, and
Speaker 1: so that combination is what I was going for. You know,
Speaker 1: it's sort of a it's it's kind of an animated
Speaker 1: feature in terms of that length of about seventy minutes
Speaker 1: with the live action being kind of a short at
Speaker 1: the beginning. So and the way that would work out,
Speaker 1: like you said, you shot on seventy millimeter in large
Speaker 1: each frame. Because to remind my listeners, some of whom
Speaker 1: are are too young to really remember the days of film,
Speaker 1: you're it's really funny, you know, once time moves on
Speaker 1: and people forget about how difficult it was in the past.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit like the next generation doesn't really
Speaker 1: care how difficult it was before. And you know, there
Speaker 1: was no way to composite film if you that was efficient,
Speaker 1: if you did effects and you had characters, and you
Speaker 1: had a fantasy background, there really was no good way
Speaker 1: to put all of this together. Blue Screen existed, but
Speaker 1: I've shot blue screen, and you know, if if you
Speaker 1: at the time, if you had twenty or fifty blue
Speaker 1: screen shots in the film, that was a lot. Well,
Speaker 1: we had nine h composite shots that we had to do,
Speaker 1: nine shots that had you and beings in worlds that
Speaker 1: didn't exist, plus their costumes who were supposed to be glowing.
Speaker 1: And there was no digital compositing. You couldn't even run
Speaker 1: computer animation consecutively. We only had enough computing power. We
Speaker 1: had total two megabytes, and we only had enough memory
Speaker 1: to render one frame at a time period, so you
Speaker 1: could never look at the light cycles moving. You could
Speaker 1: only look at this individual frame. Then you had to
Speaker 1: wait forty five minutes and render the next frame and
Speaker 1: look at that one. And the only time we ever
Speaker 1: saw the stuff put together is after we set up
Speaker 1: a film camera and clicked like an animated movie, one
Speaker 1: frame at a time off of this computer animation, and
Speaker 1: then weep would all go into the screening room and
Speaker 1: sit there. Even the guys that did all the computer
Speaker 1: work had never seen it moving, and we saw it
Speaker 1: for the very first time when we filmed it one
Speaker 1: frame at a time and then ran it back. And
Speaker 1: so to put all of this together, to composite it,
Speaker 1: the only way we could do it was to do
Speaker 1: blow up every frame and make it into an animated movie.
Speaker 1: And what we did to combine it with the computer
Speaker 1: animation was to try to find a sort of middle
Speaker 1: ground where the live action would look like it had
Speaker 1: been rendered by a computer and the computer animation wasn't
Speaker 1: too attempting to look too real. Because we couldn't do
Speaker 1: real many of the looks in the computer aspects of
Speaker 1: Tron look the way they look because not because you
Speaker 1: sat there and said, oh, wouldn't this look great in
Speaker 1: wire frame instead of fully rendered. No, no, no, it
Speaker 1: was wire frame because that's all we could do, and
Speaker 1: it's phenomenal to to give a sense of scale. You're
Speaker 1: talking about twenty four frames a second with film, every
Speaker 1: single one of those frames being for the electronic world
Speaker 1: being blown up so that animators can go in and
Speaker 1: and hand draw elements onto those frames. Each of those
Speaker 1: frames having to go through multiple exposures depending upon how
Speaker 1: many colors you had, because each time you added a
Speaker 1: different color, you had to do another love you had
Speaker 1: to photograph everything all over again. Uh, you're you're talking frames.
Speaker 1: If you start doing the math, if you're thinking fifty
Speaker 1: three minutes more than that, because well, I don't want
Speaker 1: to do the math right now, but I think, well,
Speaker 1: this thing is, it's um if it goes through the math,
Speaker 1: you say this can't be done because just doing the
Speaker 1: colors on each frame, the average number of exposures was
Speaker 1: I think eighteen. Some of the frames in Tron were
Speaker 1: exposed thirty six times, and because everything had to be
Speaker 1: held in focus, so that the blow ups were sharp,
Speaker 1: and the blow ups are about the size of place. Matt.
Speaker 1: There was no depth of field at seventy millimeter had
Speaker 1: those light levels, So it wasn't those cameras, though seventy
Speaker 1: millimeter cameras were used by David Lean to shoot Lawrence
Speaker 1: of Arabia, and afterwards I really understood why, because in
Speaker 1: the desert there's enough light. But for any of the
Speaker 1: situations we were in, I had to shoot characters when
Speaker 1: they were speaking to each other and over the shoulder shots.
Speaker 1: They had to be shot on separate passes. So I
Speaker 1: would have Bruce and the Ford round with no Jeff
Speaker 1: that he was talking to looking at and I get
Speaker 1: him in focus and then I get him out of
Speaker 1: the frame, and then I bring in Jack and he'd
Speaker 1: say his lines and I chewed them separately, each one
Speaker 1: held in focus, and then they were put together. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that the in animation, there's a thing called an exposure sheet,
Speaker 1: and it's showed. It tells the animation cameraman what levels
Speaker 1: are photographed and what order, and there there's about, I
Speaker 1: don't know, three seconds of animation per exposure sheet. And
Speaker 1: so what we did was we took those exposure sheets,
Speaker 1: and instead of that sheet being filled in for three seconds,
Speaker 1: which is seventy two frames, it was one frame in tron,
Speaker 1: one exposure sheet per whole heat three seconds of animation
Speaker 1: per individual frame. But again it was only possible to
Speaker 1: put all of this together through animation. We were under
Speaker 1: an extreme deadline, I heard all. I never was given
Speaker 1: a real good reason by Disney why we were in
Speaker 1: such a rush, but we were. And I've heard various
Speaker 1: theories over the years that there was, you know, some
Speaker 1: competition in the marketplace that summer, and so that's why
Speaker 1: they wanted us to come out then. But sometimes I
Speaker 1: wonder what would have happened if we had come out
Speaker 1: the following winter, which made more sense, and that would
Speaker 1: have given us six more months. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: the deadline was so severe that, UM we took only
Speaker 1: one day off every fourteen days. That was the legal limit.
Speaker 1: So UM we would work thirteen days and then we
Speaker 1: get one day off, and then we were thirteen days
Speaker 1: in it one day off, and to complete the re
Speaker 1: photography of all these blown up frames. UM. At the end,
Speaker 1: I think we had twelve this division animation stands going
Speaker 1: twenty four hours a day, three shifts on each and
Speaker 1: the strain on the film in terms of getting it done.
Speaker 1: From a director standpoint, that was kind of crazy. But
Speaker 1: because I was new to this, you know, I just
Speaker 1: accepted it. But the picture was after I shot all
Speaker 1: the live action that the film had to be completed
Speaker 1: in three weeks locked, so not one frame of the
Speaker 1: movie could be changed. Frames could be taken out and removed,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't change or add anything. So you know,
Speaker 1: now directors get three or four months to live with
Speaker 1: their movie in the editing room. I had three weeks
Speaker 1: after that it was locked. And the thing that's interesting
Speaker 1: is what I had to lock was actors in there
Speaker 1: unaltered tron suits on an all black stage. And then
Speaker 1: I had no computer animation yet because that wasn't done.
Speaker 1: So when I locked the movie and said this is
Speaker 1: the movie I'm making, there were no effects in it.
Speaker 1: There were no colors in it. It was black and white.
Speaker 1: Many of the scenes just had individual actors because you know,
Speaker 1: it was one or the other, like I said, and
Speaker 1: there was just storyboards are a little little brains that
Speaker 1: said effect goes here a solar sailor. And at that
Speaker 1: point I had to say Okay, I signed off. This
Speaker 1: is the movie we're going to release from there on.
Speaker 1: We just did nine months of filling it all in.
Speaker 1: It's um yeah, in retrospect it was insane. But the
Speaker 1: time compared to working on Tron to Drown Legacy, where
Speaker 1: everything was composited in real time, where you could just
Speaker 1: put the you know, computer animation together with the backgrounds,
Speaker 1: together with the actors, and you know, you could make
Speaker 1: changes up until like I don't know, a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks before the movie was in theaters. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: a time where you can't even you can't even review
Speaker 1: the footage immediately afterward obviously because you've got the filt
Speaker 1: you have to process everything. So oh yeah, of course
Speaker 1: there's no video tap. I mean you know, you shoot
Speaker 1: it and it goes off to the lab and then
Speaker 1: you see it the next day in dailies at lunchtime. Um.
Speaker 1: There was also no time to do reshoots or reduce um.
Speaker 1: I mean it was andred procedure on Tron Legacy that
Speaker 1: when affects shots or shots were composited, that there would
Speaker 1: be multiple reduce on each shot, every frame. It was
Speaker 1: none of that. I mean we were flying blind and
Speaker 1: then we had to commit um. Once in a while,
Speaker 1: when something was really screwed up, I would get to
Speaker 1: redo it or reshoot a recomposite. But often what we
Speaker 1: did we say, Okay, there's a mistake. How can we
Speaker 1: incorporate this mistake into the visuals or into the story,
Speaker 1: and uh, we just went with it. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I imagine that meant that you had a lot of
Speaker 1: story boarding that was very precise from the very get go,
Speaker 1: so that you could you could as the team of
Speaker 1: talented people I had was unbelievable, once in a lifetime.
Speaker 1: I it was one of the great joys of making
Speaker 1: the film. And uh, yeah, incredible. I mean the team
Speaker 1: I had from Listener Studios, my guys, some of whom
Speaker 1: came from Disney originally and then left Disney work at
Speaker 1: Listener Studios and then ironically they found themselves back at Disney.
Speaker 1: But we storyboarded the whole film before we ever got
Speaker 1: to Disney, and we did all this artwork for all
Speaker 1: the different thing you know, aspects the m c P
Speaker 1: and all Solar Sailor and on the life cycles. That
Speaker 1: was all done, but it was done by us in house,
Speaker 1: and it was it was interesting that then when I
Speaker 1: got to Disney and they said, well, you know, if
Speaker 1: you wanted, if you could have a dream, what would
Speaker 1: it be. And I would say, well, I'd like Mobs
Speaker 1: to go over these storyboards, and then I'd like sit
Speaker 1: me to go over vehicle design, and both of them
Speaker 1: to go over my costume designs, and I like Peter
Speaker 1: Lloyd to go over production paintings. And so what what
Speaker 1: worked out great is that we never approached these great
Speaker 1: artists and said to him, we just have a blank
Speaker 1: piece of paper and now I'm going to explain to
Speaker 1: you what I'm trying to get to. It was. It
Speaker 1: was so much better that we said, look, this is
Speaker 1: as good as we can get this, and we're pretty
Speaker 1: confident that, you know, there's more room to improve this.
Speaker 1: And they never let us down. And I think they
Speaker 1: really like that, you know, because they look at our
Speaker 1: artwork and they go, yeah, this is really nice, but
Speaker 1: this or why didn't you do that? Or why didn't
Speaker 1: you do this? And Mobius would say, you know, you
Speaker 1: could shoot this this way, but if you shot it
Speaker 1: from this angle, and if you showed this, then the
Speaker 1: audience wouldn't know that, and uh, yeah, it was amazing
Speaker 1: that's that's it's awesome, and it's great that you already had,
Speaker 1: you know, a nice idea to go in with and
Speaker 1: not have to run the risk of asking an artist
Speaker 1: to contribute and then say, oh, but that doesn't really
Speaker 1: fit in what I was you know, it says that.
Speaker 1: And the thing is I wasn't used to this part
Speaker 1: of it either. The team that you know, my guys
Speaker 1: at Listener Studios, we would throw stuff out all the
Speaker 1: time and we would say, well, you know, that looked
Speaker 1: good last week, but why don't we try this LFE
Speaker 1: cycle design this week. And it was a learning curve
Speaker 1: for me to work with you know, Sid and Mobius,
Speaker 1: and they would say, no, this is it. There are changes,
Speaker 1: there's no revisions. I'm not doing this again. That was amazing.
Speaker 1: It would be at a little bit like walking up
Speaker 1: to Da Vincian saying, yeah, yeah, it go that way.
Speaker 1: Could you put some of the life cycle and he
Speaker 1: hands it to you. You don't say to me, said
Speaker 1: what about this? We do that? You know, you know
Speaker 1: how about mud flaps And it's like, now, I don't
Speaker 1: think so one thing that happened with the life cycles
Speaker 1: I will interject this and it never bothered said, is
Speaker 1: that we sent the life cycles to MAGI, which was
Speaker 1: Phil Middleman's company UM in New York. We had three
Speaker 1: computer companies. One was in New York State and that's
Speaker 1: where Chris Wedge used to work, who went on to
Speaker 1: Great Blue Sky Studios and do ice age. And then
Speaker 1: we had a company out here called Triple I, where
Speaker 1: Richard Taylor was, and then we also used Robert Abeles
Speaker 1: company who was in Hollywood. But when I sent the
Speaker 1: first LFE cycle drawings that said to uh, Magi, they said,
Speaker 1: we can't do this. The curves are too complex. We
Speaker 1: render this, we don't have enough you know, power, it
Speaker 1: won't work. And I knew that, you know, it was
Speaker 1: an incredible design. We all loved it, and so I
Speaker 1: thought about it this I remember this was over a weekend,
Speaker 1: some Sunday, and so then I said, how do I
Speaker 1: keep the integrity of Sid's designed but simplify it for
Speaker 1: the computer? And already you gotta imagine, it was already
Speaker 1: really simple in terms of color and shading. And then I,
Speaker 1: I don't know how where I got this idea, but
Speaker 1: I got the idea of what if you took the bike,
Speaker 1: which was very three d and squeezed parts of it
Speaker 1: between two pieces of glass. To imagine that squeezing it
Speaker 1: between two pieces of glass. So if you look at
Speaker 1: it from the side, what I did was I kept
Speaker 1: that faring in the front the way SID designed it,
Speaker 1: but I flattened everything else that was also full of
Speaker 1: all these compound curves, just like I was pressing a
Speaker 1: piece of glass against it, and that did it. We
Speaker 1: got enough of the complexity out of it so that
Speaker 1: the computer guys could do it. And by the way,
Speaker 1: I want to say one thing about Magi that it
Speaker 1: was pretty funny, which is that they're One of the
Speaker 1: main reasons their tanks in the first Tron movie is
Speaker 1: because when I first went to Magi, which was really
Speaker 1: early on, I was keeping track of their capabilities, like
Speaker 1: years before we ever Matron. Their first major contract was
Speaker 1: with the military to do tank simulations. This was all
Speaker 1: the way back in the mid seventies. This was totally
Speaker 1: like far out crazy stuff, you know, darkas stuff, and
Speaker 1: mag I was doing, you know, it looked like very
Speaker 1: crude video games, but it was tank oriented. So and
Speaker 1: then I at some point came to them and said,
Speaker 1: if you know, if these chases vehicles are tanks. You're
Speaker 1: going to be able to, you know, do a lot
Speaker 1: of this pretty effectively because of your tank experience. And
Speaker 1: they said, yeah, so that's why you know the tanks
Speaker 1: worked out so well. Well, I'm I'm curious now kind
Speaker 1: of stepping back from the the meta tech of how
Speaker 1: the movie came to be and kind of diving into
Speaker 1: the the actual content of the film itself. This is
Speaker 1: a really big treat for me because not only do
Speaker 1: I get to talk about filmmaking approaches and technology that
Speaker 1: I totally geek out about, but I can also talk
Speaker 1: about the mythology of Tron, which is incredible. It's very
Speaker 1: prescient in a lot of ways that I'm not even
Speaker 1: certain that you guys were aware of at the time,
Speaker 1: Like things that that to me became really big conversation
Speaker 1: points a decade or more further out from when the
Speaker 1: film came out. Oh yeah, I mean, I'll tell you
Speaker 1: something that will boil your mind. I had a revelation
Speaker 1: about the mythology of Tron the first movie two days ago.
Speaker 1: I'm serious, because in discussions about Tron two and discussions
Speaker 1: about you know, theoretical discussions about what the Tron three
Speaker 1: would be all of a sudden, it sheds light all
Speaker 1: the way back to the first film, and I realized, oh,
Speaker 1: this is why I was doing that. And I never
Speaker 1: really understood that that clearly until you know, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's that aspect of it. It's funny because I like
Speaker 1: to talk about the technical achievement of Tron and the
Speaker 1: incredible work and all the talented people that worked on it,
Speaker 1: and I mean talked about unsung heroes, you know, Richard
Speaker 1: with Richard Taylor and Bill Kroyer did and and there
Speaker 1: the teams and all the three companies. I could go
Speaker 1: on all day about how great that whole group was.
Speaker 1: But then people go, see, listener, he's such a geek.
Speaker 1: You know, he doesn't love story or characters. And that's
Speaker 1: not true at all. I mean, what what actually got
Speaker 1: Tron gave me the energy to make Tron was not
Speaker 1: the geeky energy of computer graphics. What what motivated me
Speaker 1: for years and made me put everything on the line
Speaker 1: were the characters. And it was that story in particular.
Speaker 1: And then I got so excited because I saw that
Speaker 1: there was a chance we could actually do it with
Speaker 1: this technology. But looking back at it, um I have
Speaker 1: to say it, you know, I was. I was inspired
Speaker 1: by the experiences of my own life up to that point,
Speaker 1: even though I was young, and the story works on
Speaker 1: many levels for me personally. Um, so yeah, I care
Speaker 1: about that pretty deeply. I would say, well, it's the
Speaker 1: effects of the film are phenomenal and I love them.
Speaker 1: But as people have pointed out numerous times over the years,
Speaker 1: effects don't make a story. And if you rely too
Speaker 1: heavily upon the the bedazzle of effects and you sacrifice
Speaker 1: the story, then you know, I don't find myself talking
Speaker 1: about those films later on, right, I don't know what
Speaker 1: you mean. There's nothing but nothing to hang on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, well, they don't resonate past to the know,
Speaker 1: the moment. The thing that I've been thinking about and
Speaker 1: the revelation I just had recently, is that if you
Speaker 1: look at if you look at a movie like Star
Speaker 1: Wars or Um or an Avatar or Um, Wonder Woman
Speaker 1: or four thor is a good example, the worlds of
Speaker 1: those films are epic. I mean, there's nothing more epic
Speaker 1: than Nordic mythology and spaces as epic as it gets,
Speaker 1: and it's infinity, it's everything. So what happens in those
Speaker 1: films is that Star Wars or a thor what happens
Speaker 1: is that you get to have comedic characters because that
Speaker 1: they make the epic grandeur of the setting relatable. So
Speaker 1: you know, it's called Star Wars, which is about as
Speaker 1: epic a title as you could ever come up with.
Speaker 1: But then you know, Luke is kind of a goofy
Speaker 1: farm boy with his you know and his robot friends
Speaker 1: are you know, pretty funny. So you know, that's how
Speaker 1: we relate to the epic. And the what I'm getting
Speaker 1: at where this connects with Tron is that Tron has
Speaker 1: is kind of the opposite formula if you think about it,
Speaker 1: because when we did Tron one, all there was was
Speaker 1: you know, pong games, and no one looks at a
Speaker 1: palm game and says this is epic. You know, people
Speaker 1: stand out at night and look at the stars and
Speaker 1: say this is epic, but they don't stand in front
Speaker 1: of a palm game in a bar and you know,
Speaker 1: look at the the pongk bar table and say this
Speaker 1: is epic. So what we did was we kind of
Speaker 1: with the character of Flynn, we added it's kind of
Speaker 1: an epic character. Two, a non epic world. And I
Speaker 1: think that for the people that struggled with Tron, and
Speaker 1: some people still do and say, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: get that movie. Why are people excited about it? I
Speaker 1: think what what they struggle with, even though they wouldn't
Speaker 1: necessarily say it, is they struggle with the idea that
Speaker 1: something epic can come and significant or grand can come
Speaker 1: out of something that isn't well. And and to kind
Speaker 1: of continue your your point, uh, you know, if you
Speaker 1: look at it on on the scale of something like
Speaker 1: Star Wars or thor you're talking about this cosmological scale,
Speaker 1: and when you're talking about Tron, you're talking about diving
Speaker 1: into a virtual space that's confined within a very you know,
Speaker 1: limited physical space. It's within a computer. It's almost like
Speaker 1: you're literally going as small scale as you can get.
Speaker 1: We're talking about information, not even a physical thing at
Speaker 1: this point, right. Well, that's that's I think one of
Speaker 1: the reasons people are drawn to take sort of sanctuary
Speaker 1: in the digital world, and we do it all the time,
Speaker 1: is because we control it. It's finite. You know, even
Speaker 1: though it's gotten as complex as it is compared to
Speaker 1: the universe, it still feels like it's ours. We can
Speaker 1: manage it, we put it together, we can alter it.
Speaker 1: But you know, the universe, We're getting really bad at
Speaker 1: dealing with the universe. And so I think, well, it's
Speaker 1: also this is all very generational because my generation traditionally,
Speaker 1: and certainly people older than me just I can't tell you.
Speaker 1: I don't know how old you are, but I'm sure
Speaker 1: you're younger than me. People were terrified of computers, just terrified,
Speaker 1: and Disney was terrified, every you know, everybody was and say,
Speaker 1: it's like gelling. People come along and they say, well
Speaker 1: that this scares the hell out of my parents. What
Speaker 1: power is actually here that does that? A little bit like, yeah,
Speaker 1: if dad has a problem understanding this and it freaks
Speaker 1: them out, I got to learn what this is about.
Speaker 1: And so the idea that something significant was going to
Speaker 1: come out of these you know, these limited worlds with
Speaker 1: this you know, information storage and manipulation that was embraced
Speaker 1: by the next generation, but it was, you know, none
Speaker 1: of something that older people wanted to accept, and they
Speaker 1: created this weird schism over the years with tron. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, some people said, oh my god, you know
Speaker 1: how this is terrible If things go in this direction,
Speaker 1: and then twenty years later they were doing ads for
Speaker 1: Apple computers and I've I've seen that arc and people
Speaker 1: don't change, generations change, and um. The other thing, as
Speaker 1: long as I'm thinking down this avenue is that I
Speaker 1: think the fundamental change with the threat of computers at
Speaker 1: the time, you know, everybody was worried about, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: the computers are going to take my personal data and
Speaker 1: they're going to use it against me. I'm gonna lose
Speaker 1: my privacy. And who could have predicted that they would
Speaker 1: take all our personal data but they wouldn't have to
Speaker 1: battle us for it. We would line up to hand
Speaker 1: it over. It's called Facebook, okay, it's called you know
Speaker 1: everything else that you know wants our credit card number.
Speaker 1: And so that has been you know about No one
Speaker 1: anticipated that, no one back then, and Trom didn't anticipate
Speaker 1: that either that. You know, I talked to some of
Speaker 1: the heaviest people in the field of computers back then,
Speaker 1: and you know, they would give me notes and some
Speaker 1: of them would give me story suggestions, but no one
Speaker 1: ever gave me a note that said, you know, we're
Speaker 1: going to hand It's not that we're gonna fear it
Speaker 1: and battle it. We're gonna run towards it as fast
Speaker 1: as we can. And it's and I've spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time thinking about how that really happened or on
Speaker 1: what that really means, what are the repercussions of that?
Speaker 1: And what I came away with on that is that
Speaker 1: that computers put us, put the users in a situation
Speaker 1: where they said, look, we'll take care of the cognitive problems,
Speaker 1: so you're liberated from that, and what what you can
Speaker 1: do with your extra time is indulge your feelings, and
Speaker 1: you know, because that's what we like to do. You know.
Speaker 1: We we get adding machines so we don't have to
Speaker 1: do the math. So then we can, you know, go
Speaker 1: to the movies instead of doing the math, and we
Speaker 1: can enjoy our emotions and feelings. And that has continued
Speaker 1: to advance. You know. It used to be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to learn too much math because I
Speaker 1: have an adding machine, and you know, now I have
Speaker 1: spell check, well, you know, and then it's like, well
Speaker 1: I don't pretty soon I'm not even gonna have to
Speaker 1: drive my car drive itself. And so all these cognitive
Speaker 1: things are being you know, we're so called being liberated
Speaker 1: from and then we're just all about our feelings. And
Speaker 1: you know, we wanted that for a long time. But
Speaker 1: in the past, people humanity dreamt about it the other way.
Speaker 1: You know, for hundreds of years, people philosophers dreamt of
Speaker 1: a world that was guided by reason because it was
Speaker 1: too much about people's feelings. And you know, science and
Speaker 1: philosophy advanced so we could get to this point where
Speaker 1: reason sort of determined our our fate because reason is
Speaker 1: connected to underlying truth that endures. That's why, that's what
Speaker 1: reason is. But emotions don't work that way, you know.
Speaker 1: You can I think that it's worth, you know, dying
Speaker 1: one moment for something, you know, if I don't get
Speaker 1: invited to the prom I should you be better off dead?
Speaker 1: And then a month later you could forget that you
Speaker 1: ever felt that way. And so now we're we're kind
Speaker 1: of living in the age of Trump where I'm digressing,
Speaker 1: I know, but we're living in the age of Trump.
Speaker 1: We're it's all about these feelings every day, and we
Speaker 1: have we have the way of of expressing those feelings
Speaker 1: to a larger audience than ever before, instantaneously as soon
Speaker 1: as we feel you know, so the cognitive power of
Speaker 1: computers has ironically completely liberated our emotional feely side. Touchy
Speaker 1: feely side gets to send out every thought in his
Speaker 1: head because of Twitter whenever, whenever, whenever a disgruntled employee
Speaker 1: of Twitter isn't deleting his account. Yeah, so this weird
Speaker 1: relationship we've developed with technology, and I go all the
Speaker 1: way back to you know, the early chron days, and
Speaker 1: I can see what we thought then, and I can
Speaker 1: you know, I've experienced the arc you know, from there
Speaker 1: to hear it's it's really interesting. Well, what's fascinating to
Speaker 1: me is that, you know, you talked about this this
Speaker 1: thing about computers that were very scary to one generation
Speaker 1: and very promising to the next. Uh. My background is,
Speaker 1: interestingly for me anyway, not not in technology. My background,
Speaker 1: my scholarly background, was in medieval literature and history. And
Speaker 1: the funny thing is you see the exact same story
Speaker 1: play out upon the invention of the Guttenberg Press, because
Speaker 1: it was taking taking books away from monks, you know exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: instead of instead of it being the church that was
Speaker 1: completely in charge of creating manuscripts and books, and now
Speaker 1: be aim the domain of printers who could produce them
Speaker 1: much more quickly, which meant that people could actually own
Speaker 1: books for the first time because they weren't prohibitively expensive,
Speaker 1: and that transformed the Renaissance. Really, you could argue that
Speaker 1: was an enormous inforce on it, just as computers have
Speaker 1: been granted a much more accelerated but a similar transformative
Speaker 1: element in our own society. So this kind of knowing,
Speaker 1: this sort of stuff, I mean, granted, a lot of
Speaker 1: this stuff kind of evolved over the years since Tron
Speaker 1: has come out, and in some ways can change the
Speaker 1: way we view Tron, which I actually I think that's
Speaker 1: great for any piece of art, right that you can
Speaker 1: revisit that piece of art and it means something new
Speaker 1: to you based upon your experiences and the way the
Speaker 1: world has changed. That's one of the one of the
Speaker 1: things window into how what a relationship was with all
Speaker 1: of those things, the things of the moment and eternal
Speaker 1: thing at that moment in time, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you another sort of past and future mechanism
Speaker 1: that I thought about primarily after I made Tron, which
Speaker 1: is that you know, the character of Flynn is kind
Speaker 1: of you know, afterwards, I did quite a bit of
Speaker 1: study about the archetype of the shaman character and what
Speaker 1: it what does the shaman character do traditionally And traditionally
Speaker 1: he he heals a person who has lost their spirit
Speaker 1: because their spirit has gone into you know, the nether world,
Speaker 1: the spirit world, and that is why the person here
Speaker 1: is sick. And the shaman has the power to crossover
Speaker 1: into the spirit world. And then because he has powers there,
Speaker 1: he can retrieve the spirit of his friend, bring it
Speaker 1: back to this world and then put the two together.
Speaker 1: And I'm reading about this, like, you know, specifics about
Speaker 1: this twenty years later, and and then I'm thinking about
Speaker 1: what Flynn did in the first movie Alan and you know,
Speaker 1: Laura come to him and they're sick. Why because they've
Speaker 1: lost their spirit, They've lost their programs and it's making
Speaker 1: them sick. And he has lost information too. And then
Speaker 1: he ends up crossing over into the digital realm and
Speaker 1: you know what does he do there? He freeze them
Speaker 1: up so that they can now get in touch the
Speaker 1: you know, the information that is the Tron program can
Speaker 1: get in touch with the user can get in touch
Speaker 1: with it, and you know, and then he comes back
Speaker 1: to this world and I thought, you know, this is
Speaker 1: this is pretty crazy that it's the role of the shaman,
Speaker 1: but in a in a digital environment, and I wasn't
Speaker 1: really thinking about that when I came up with it.
Speaker 1: And not only that, but a role of a shaman,
Speaker 1: a shaman taking the role of essentially our protagonist, uh,
Speaker 1: the hero of the story, the one who makes the
Speaker 1: who defeats the bad guy at the end. You know,
Speaker 1: we have Tron, but we follow Flynn. Obviously, that makes
Speaker 1: sense because Flynn is from our world, so we're seeing
Speaker 1: the world of Tron through his eyes. That's very necessary
Speaker 1: for the grounding of that for the audience. But it
Speaker 1: is also interesting that that in a traditional narrative, we
Speaker 1: would be following the story of Tron right you start,
Speaker 1: you follow the story of the guy who slays the
Speaker 1: dragon at the end. Uh. And so instead we're following
Speaker 1: the character that enables that to happen. And it's pretty
Speaker 1: funny that moment when at the end of Tron where
Speaker 1: she says, you know, Flynn really did it, and Tron
Speaker 1: doesn't know that, you know, he managed to overcome the
Speaker 1: m c P because of what Flynn did. That that
Speaker 1: happened on a whole, whole dimensional level above his head literally,
Speaker 1: and he looks at her and he goes, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: you really know what to do with that information? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, And I just this thought popped into my head,
Speaker 1: which is that according to this definition of what a
Speaker 1: shaman is, you could almost say that, um Wizard of
Speaker 1: Oz is a shaman story that Judy Garland's character, she
Speaker 1: crosses over to the other world and what does she do.
Speaker 1: She helps her friends become whole. She gets them a
Speaker 1: hard brain. It's a very similar mechanism. Absolutely. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a interesting I had not even thought of that, but
Speaker 1: that is a very a very apt, uh comparison, especially
Speaker 1: since Dorothy again is going into a worldly unlike our own,
Speaker 1: that has its own rules, has its own history. I
Speaker 1: never thought of Dorothy as a shaman, but she is. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I have another question for you. This is one that
Speaker 1: that not only I need to know, but my producer
Speaker 1: Ramsey needs to know, and that is Master Control Program
Speaker 1: m c P. One one of the great villains of
Speaker 1: science fiction. What what what was? Did you have any
Speaker 1: specific inspirations for m c P, perhaps with any other
Speaker 1: organizations that might have three letters in their name or
Speaker 1: anything along those lines, or from the beginning, he was
Speaker 1: always machine like and when I want to, and there
Speaker 1: was a sort of Wizard of Oz component to him too,
Speaker 1: speaking Wizard of Oz, because you know, he was smoking
Speaker 1: mirrors and in the end he was that know a little.
Speaker 1: It all started with that little chess player. But um,
Speaker 1: when I went to Triple I, they had one of
Speaker 1: the three computer companies, they had created a juggling human
Speaker 1: character wearing a top hat who um looked very human.
Speaker 1: He barely moved. He just stood in one position and
Speaker 1: his arms moved and he juggled a bunch of balls
Speaker 1: and uh, but he didn't speak or anything like that.
Speaker 1: And I don't think he ever moved his speed either.
Speaker 1: And then I saw that I saw this, This image
Speaker 1: popped into my head that like the Wizard of Oz,
Speaker 1: we could have his face on this machine like exterior
Speaker 1: that we had been creating for the m c P.
Speaker 1: And uh. But then we couldn't render it in flesh
Speaker 1: tones and have it speak because we just didn't have
Speaker 1: enough computing power. So the only way we could actually
Speaker 1: do it was in wire frame. So you know, we
Speaker 1: we recorded David Warner's voice doing it, and then we
Speaker 1: altered his voice, and then we you know, did what
Speaker 1: animators have always done is sync up the images, you know,
Speaker 1: the face with the soundtrack and the MVP is really
Speaker 1: I guess the first talking had the first c G
Speaker 1: character that ever was. And I always liked the idea
Speaker 1: that you can be outside of him or you can
Speaker 1: be inside of him. The scene where Sark is actually
Speaker 1: you know, at the pedestal and the m CP surround him.
Speaker 1: I like that that. You know, it's that's a relationship
Speaker 1: with the technology. We can be objective to it or
Speaker 1: we can be subjected to being inside the technology and
Speaker 1: it's completely surrounds us. I always pictured him as kind
Speaker 1: of a it's funny processor, like a food processor, because
Speaker 1: he's kind of like a juicer you think about it.
Speaker 1: You know, he brings in these programs and he these
Speaker 1: entities and then he juices them to extract their information.
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you a little funny um story about
Speaker 1: the m c P and Flynn, which is that I
Speaker 1: didn't know that Jeff who's contribution. I can't stop bragging
Speaker 1: about how you know, great he is in that role,
Speaker 1: but um and I cast him so the uh that
Speaker 1: was my contribution. He did the rest, but he UM,
Speaker 1: I didn't know he was going to do this persona
Speaker 1: and so we started filming the tank scene and he
Speaker 1: was doing it and it was really cool and it
Speaker 1: was a daring move on his part. But then the
Speaker 1: m c P, the recognizers common they capture Clue and
Speaker 1: then they put him in the m c P and uh,
Speaker 1: he starts getting d rez and then he starts screaming
Speaker 1: for his life and Jeff delivers this great, you know,
Speaker 1: heartfelt moment of like, you know, I'm not giving into
Speaker 1: you m c P. But he doesn't do it in
Speaker 1: the Clue voice. He does it as in his real voice,
Speaker 1: and neither of us caught that. No one caught that
Speaker 1: inconsistency that if you think about it, that should have
Speaker 1: been in the Clue program voice, but and you know,
Speaker 1: but it isn't. And it's a little bit like it's
Speaker 1: kind of freaky because it's a little bit like Clue
Speaker 1: was dying. And then the last thing he did was
Speaker 1: act like you know, a user just before the end,
Speaker 1: so that's you know, it was kind of a happy accident.
Speaker 1: But anyway, the the m c P was it was like,
Speaker 1: you know, a food processor with people or characters, and
Speaker 1: that design actually did not change all that much. I
Speaker 1: mean it was it was worked over brilliantly by Sid
Speaker 1: Mead and improved a lot, but that the through line
Speaker 1: went back years. Well, I guess, uh, you know to
Speaker 1: me just seeing that that image, uh, that that enormous
Speaker 1: had that booming voice, it's consuming the the information uh
Speaker 1: from from other programs to me today, like when I
Speaker 1: think of the Internet voice, that's the voice that's in
Speaker 1: my head. It's the of m C p as as
Speaker 1: it's consuming and you know, talking again about pressions, like
Speaker 1: there's so much here about the emerging of what it
Speaker 1: is to be human and the technology that we created.
Speaker 1: It really really seems like the singularity, like that concept
Speaker 1: of the singularity of of humans elevating themselves to the
Speaker 1: next level, perhaps merging with machines or incorporating machines in
Speaker 1: some way. Sometimes it doesn't involve that, but but a
Speaker 1: lot of the versions of the singularity do this seems like, uh,
Speaker 1: it was very much in that that sort of vein,
Speaker 1: like this idea of you know, there were no we
Speaker 1: didn't use the term user before Tron, and people didn't
Speaker 1: know what the word meant, and people didn't have computers.
Speaker 1: I mean, there were no really you know, handful, but
Speaker 1: people were and they were crude at best. So, um,
Speaker 1: this whole idea of your sort of your alter ego,
Speaker 1: your avoc are being you know, in there in the
Speaker 1: form of your information, that just keeps building every year,
Speaker 1: so that you know, it's it's getting to the point
Speaker 1: where we really are creating as much as possible, a
Speaker 1: double ganger of ourselves digitally. And I mean, I think
Speaker 1: what's interesting is that Nintendo, i've heard, has done studies
Speaker 1: on how people texture themselves in their mind's eye, and
Speaker 1: they've come to the conclusion that we imagine ourselves this
Speaker 1: is somewhat a cartoon version of ourselves. And I think
Speaker 1: that's one of the reasons that Nintendo video games as
Speaker 1: successful and brilliant as they are. I mean, part of
Speaker 1: that success, I think comes from working with that theory
Speaker 1: that you know, they're not realistic, and I think that
Speaker 1: the idea of a realistic double ganger, a sort of
Speaker 1: copy of ourselves, I think that that's a in some
Speaker 1: ways maybe more challenging, and I think that's part of
Speaker 1: the challenge that we're actually facing that you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's a little bit like not only we're creating a
Speaker 1: double gang or Earth and a digital one. And like
Speaker 1: I said earlier, I think we feel good about that
Speaker 1: because it doesn't confound us like the universe. You know,
Speaker 1: it has problems like hackers and trolls, but yeah, we
Speaker 1: can deal with that. But you know, because ultimately those
Speaker 1: are people are and where we don't understand is CEO two.
Speaker 1: You know. I uh, well, Stephen Lisberger, this has been
Speaker 1: a huge thrill for me to to talk to the
Speaker 1: writer and director of a film that, you know what
Speaker 1: played a big part in my childhood and I watch
Speaker 1: it frequently, so I have, in fact, I want to
Speaker 1: take this opportunity to thank you for your quarters. Oh
Speaker 1: there have been an I didn't even get into the
Speaker 1: arcades section of this because I mean, you know, I
Speaker 1: just had to had one footnote because I can't resist,
Speaker 1: which is you know, people always talking about well, the
Speaker 1: first Tron. You know, it didn't make enough money, It
Speaker 1: wasn't eat well the movie paid for itself as a movie,
Speaker 1: but the video game paid for the entire movie. Too.
Speaker 1: Many a week's allowance went into discs of Tron. For me.
Speaker 1: I remember the full console, like the one you would
Speaker 1: step in and play and uh, and yeah, I played
Speaker 1: a lot of that game. Yeah, do you know about
Speaker 1: the Tron ride in Shanghai. I have heard about this,
Speaker 1: I have not made my way to Asia yet and
Speaker 1: set it out on YouTube Tron Shanghai and um, it's
Speaker 1: pretty amazing. They worked on that ride for over fifteen years.
Speaker 1: Actually happened. Yeah, I've heard. I've heard about a new
Speaker 1: one to do it in Florida now. So I'm really
Speaker 1: excited about that because, you know, the thing is, like
Speaker 1: you said earlier, people think of Tron and you know,
Speaker 1: it's sometimes too literally like, oh, you know, it's a
Speaker 1: small world in there. You know, it's a small world
Speaker 1: after all. And but it's funny because with the Tron ride,
Speaker 1: the world of Tron is immense and you're small and
Speaker 1: you get on the ride and in some ways that's
Speaker 1: the whole you know, that's the most thrilling part to
Speaker 1: be small and have that recognizer looming over your head,
Speaker 1: for instance. Yeah, to make that lead to realize, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, this world is not small, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really cool to ride. But anyway, yeah, the game
Speaker 1: and the ride, I mean, I can't wait to experience
Speaker 1: the ride. I really, I really am looking forward to that.
Speaker 1: The game remains one of my favorites. I'm a I'm
Speaker 1: a child of the seventies and eighties, so the Arcade
Speaker 1: experience was really an important one for me growing up. Also,
Speaker 1: Tron obviously being in that realm of for a lot
Speaker 1: of people, it was kind of their introduction to this
Speaker 1: concept of taking taking a very abstract idea in the
Speaker 1: form of computer program and really turning it into something relatable.
Speaker 1: I mean, to have a computer program that could technically
Speaker 1: just be oh well, this is just a spreadsheet program,
Speaker 1: but no, in this world that is a an anthropomorphic
Speaker 1: creation that can fight for you. That's uh pretty amazing concept.
Speaker 1: Uh I. This was a huge thrill for me. I
Speaker 1: thank you so much. Yeah, if you get a chance
Speaker 1: to get a word, and I mean, I'll totally be
Speaker 1: an extra in Tron three. I'm I'm happy to be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just sitting at sitting off at the side. I'm perfectly fine.
Speaker 1: I just want to I want to be in the
Speaker 1: room where it happens as they say, thank you for
Speaker 1: enjoining me again. Okay, you too. Bye. I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed that discussion with Mr Lisburger. I could have easily
Speaker 1: kept talking for another hour or two with him, and
Speaker 1: I get the feeling he would have indulged me for
Speaker 1: as long as he had the time to do so.
Speaker 1: I've always had an appreciation for Tron. I've always enjoyed
Speaker 1: that movie ever since it first came out, But now
Speaker 1: that appreciation is even more profound knowing the challenges that
Speaker 1: the team faced in order to produce this movie at
Speaker 1: the time that it was made, going to the point
Speaker 1: where you would swear this was computer generated imagery, and
Speaker 1: then knowing that it was hand animated, hand drawn on
Speaker 1: top of actual individual cells of film. It's incredible to
Speaker 1: think of how much work and care and love went
Speaker 1: into this film and created that distinctive look and feel.
Speaker 1: And also, I really do hope I can show up
Speaker 1: in Tron three The Balls in your Court, Disney call me.
Speaker 1: I hope you guys enjoyed that episode. With our conversation
Speaker 1: with the director of Tron, we will keep on going
Speaker 1: with this entertainment playlists, so stick around if you want
Speaker 1: to hear more, and if you have any suggestions for
Speaker 1: future episodes, send me a message. You can reach out
Speaker 1: on Facebook or Twitter to handle it's tech stuff. H. S.
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