Tron's 20th Anniversary / Director discusses groundbreaking computer animated film

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In 1982, throngs of prepubescent kids got a glimmering, formative, Disney-backed glimpse of their digital future. That year, "Tron" -- the highly anticipated film that not only pioneered the use of computer animation but linked it to live action as well -- planted the cyber-trippy seed for an army of future multitasking, Web-surfing dot-commers.

Although "Tron" holds historic landmark status as the first film to present a computer-generated, three-dimensional universe in which the action unfolds, it never quite garnered the same degree of critical support as did "Blade Runner," another '80s film that charted a futuristic cultural shift. But "Tron" launched a number of computer games and, most important, unleashed a new visual aesthetic -- one with major techno-whoa! appeal.

This year marks the twentieth anniversary of "Tron" -- and a fine time to revisit this groundbreaking cult film. The now-adult fans eagerly awaiting the January 15 release of the "Tron" special-edition DVD -- with behind-the-scenes bonus material -- can also catch the original on the big screen Thursday, January 10. "Tron" is the opening feature of "The Seventh Art," a new monthly film series showcasing films that push the boundaries of the art form. The series is organized by the San Francisco Film Society and the media-arts department of SFMOMA, which is hosting the screenings in its theater.

(In addition to "Tron," the series includes other films with tech angles: a May 9 showing of "Hotel," Mike Figgis' multiple-perspective, digital-video follow up to "Timecode," and, on June 13, Lynn Hershman-Leeson's "Tecknolust," a romp through issues of cloning and computer viruses that stars Tilda Swinton.)

Each screening will feature an invited guest who was intimately involved with the creation of the film. In the case of "Tron," director Steven Lisberger will be in the house to offer insights into the making and the meaning of his project. Since the release of his most famous film -- others include the less memorable "Animalympics" and "Slipstream" -- the 50-year-old filmmaker has been writing screenplays, including one for "Tron 2" (or "Tron 2.0," depending on which fan Web site you consult), and enjoying a resurgence of interest in his film -- which can be charted on any number of fan sites.

"To see it now, 'Tron' amazes me in a historical sense," Lisberger says in a phone interview from his home in Santa Monica. "I think it holds up better artistically than I'd hoped it would -- though some of the live action smacks of the late '70s. When the film came out, there were no PCs or Internet. People were so bowled over by the complexity of the computerese. Now, 10-year-olds see it and think it's incredibly simplistic."

The digital world Lisberger created serves as the glowing backdrop for a tale of computer-company intrigue, hacking and authorship issues. These days, when computer games are increasingly complex (and lucrative) and Web access makes virtual environments a daily encounter, its difficult to imagine a cultural landscape without the kind of digital features and issues raised in this film. "Tron"'s prescience may account for its fervent fan base (though there are those who find the poorly paced film a snooze).

The plot follows Flynn, a game programmer played by Jeff Bridges, whose authorship and royalties for his successful "Space Paranoids" title have been swiped by an evil executive and an ominous, HAL-like master computer system. Through a serendipitous set of circumstances, Flynn ends up inside the system -- a gamelike digital universe of floating wire-frame structures, glowing fiber-optic strands and geometric landscapes -- where he battles against the system's virtual soldiers in an attempt to restore his authorship.

Lisberger says the narrative came from observations of people working in the burgeoning computer field at the time. "I was researching technology in late 1970s," he explains. "People still looked at computers with the evil HAL idea [from '2001: A Space Odyssey']. But I thought the people who were trying to develop a personable PC were up against IBM. It was sort of the Bill Gates story." Back then, Gates was the little guy up against the big corporate machine, and keeping that in mind may enhance the experience of viewing this film in a contemporary context.

In discussing the making of the film, Lisberger, who says he'd rather putter in the garden than surf the Net these days, points to the maverick spirit he brought to the filmmaking process. "We were out on a wire without a net," he says. "I was 29 when I made the film. I'm amazed at the audacity we had. We tapped into some of the daring '60s and '70s energy that peaked in the early '80s. I try to explain to young movie execs now that the intention was to go past what had been done. The fun was to see what would happen when we went out there, pushing the technology and the visuals.

"My primary interest was artistic," Lisberger adds. "It was to take this technology and use it to make art.

"The technology didn't exist to composite the film digitally, so we shot the actors in black and white and turned it into a semiconventional animated film," he says. It was, Lisberger adds, a challenge for the stars, who had to do their work on virtual sets, as well as for the animators, who were working in uncharted territory. The filmmakers used an old-fashioned hand-tinting process that, befitting the Disney backing, involved hundreds of artists working to create individual film frames.

One of the most intriguing results is the film's eerie visual look. The actors, who wear glowing Art Deco-ish costumes designed by noted sci-fi film designer Syd Mead, have a retro look, as if they had one foot in an early 20th-century silent film, specifically Fritz Lang's "Metropolis," and another in a more futuristic realm featuring sleek animated vehicles designed by cult-comic-book artist Jean "Moebius" Giraud. The latter elements were composed on early-1980s state-of-the-art digital tools and make up a solid half-hour of the film's length. (The movie gets another kind of retro fashion lift in the fully live-action sequences, where the guys wear tinted aviator sunglasses and Cindy Morgan, the requisite researcher/love interest, is an ABBA-esque blonde.)

Not that traditional Hollywood took notice of the film's technical innovations. "We used computer-generated imagery as an actual environment, which hadn't been done at that point," Lisberger recounts. "We did all those effects in about seven months, which included inventing the techniques." "Tron," however, wasn't nominated for a special-effects Oscar. "The Academy thought we cheated by using computers," he scoffs.

Although he's a pioneer in the field, Lisberger sounds skeptical about the current cinematic use of computer effects. "The more advanced the technology in films these days, the more conventional the film," he says. "'Titanic' is a perfect example. Pixar films use cutting-edge technologies to make things look like living plush toys. It seems like our revenge on tech for making things impersonal is to turn it into kitsch. The most powerful machines in the world are being used to make carnival toys."

"Tron"'s influence can also be found in more recent films like "The Matrix" that employ the narrative conceit of characters entering an alternate digital universe. And, as with Keanu Reeves' character in "The Matrix," Bridges' Flynn is so consumed by his computer work that he literally enters into it.

"'Tron' explores the metaphorical idea of falling into a digital world," says Benjamin Weil, SFMOMA's media-arts curator who co-selected the title. "The kind of blurring of reality and fiction is the kind of thing we live with all the time in the digital age. The movie is the grandfather of that idea."

"'Tron' broke a lot of ground," adds Roxanne Messina Captor, executive director of the San Francisco Film Society, who also lobbied for the inclusion of Lisberger's film. "The concept of a programmer going into his own program definitely still resonate with viewers. With this series, we're trying to get people to come to see movies that make people think. 'Tron' does that in the way it's shot and the concept of taking technology a step further."

Lisberger, however, doesn't see much connection between "Tron" and projects like "The Matrix," which he views as much more nihilistic. "I like to think death is something more than Keanu in a trench coat," he says.

"One of the things about 'Tron' is that it has an insane amount of optimism," he continues. "When we made it, there was this hope that technology would put us in touch with the best of ourselves. One of the reasons the dot-com bubble burst was because we realized technology wasn't putting us in touch with anything higher, just [with] each other. It was horizontal; it was downward, with porn, etc. Perhaps the next generation can bring some idealism back."

This state of affairs obviously poses a challenge to Lisberger's conception of the narrative for the sequel, which is in development. Web rumors report that Jeff Bridges may return, with his character living on in cyberspace. The director's been advised not to discuss the plot, but he does admit that "Tron 2" "goes back in time and takes another fork on the freeway."

Having created an influential vision, Lisberger has a definite challenge before him: to replicate the spot-on prescience of his first film and tap into the next frontier. "We're in a time of cynicism," he says. "I think we've been waiting for some kind of clarity or new beginning." This time, one gets the sense the answer may not be so securely housed inside the machine.

"Tron" screens Thu., Jan. 11 at 7:30 pm at SFMOMA; tickets are $15. Call (415) 931-3456 for more information, or go to the San Francisco International Film Festival's Web site for a complete schedule. The Seventh Art series screens monthly.