“2001: A Space Odyssey.” “The Andromeda Strain.” “Silent Running.” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” “Star Trek: The Motion Picture.” “Blade Runner.” “Brainstorm.” “The Tree of Life.” There’s no shortage of things to talk about when it comes to special effects legend Douglas Trumbull.
Trumbull died on February 7 at the age of 79 and took a part of the movies with him. Before the pervasive banality of CGI deadened the world’s senses, Trumbull fueled our dreams by forging new realities in which special effects were very special indeed.
Lew Place will be our guest this week, as we pay tribute to Trumbull, on the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. Leave us trembling with your insights in the comments section, when we livestream on Facebook, this Friday evening at 7:00 EST!
After “Jaws” and “Star Wars,” John Williams became everyone’s first choice. Too often, Jerry Goldsmith was left with the dregs.
But the man was a professional, a true work horse, who also had a rare talent for speed. He wrote the replacement score for “Chinatown” in ten days. When Randy Newman was dropped from “Air Force One,” again he saved the day, writing and recording the music in less than two weeks.
Unfortunately, not every film was “Chinatown.” For every “Planet of the Apes,” “Patton,” and “Papillon,” there was “The Mummy” (with Brendan Fraser), “The Haunting” (remake), and “Looney Tunes: Back in Action.”
Williams got “Superman.” Goldsmith got “Supergirl.” Williams got “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Goldsmith got “King Solomon’s Mines” (with Richard Chamberlain). Williams got “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.” Goldsmith got “Baby: The Secret of the Lost Legend.”
But even when the movies were terrible, Goldsmith’s music was like a consolation prize. And nothing can take away the classics. He was one of the last of the greats, and he lived through a great era, so we certainly have enough to cherish. He just had the bad fortune to have more stamina than the movies themselves, which got weaker and weaker and weaker.
The composer himself expressed frustration at his music being drowned out by ever more-elaborate sound effects, which is why his scores tended to become more streamlined – and less memorable – in the ‘90s. He would have lost his mind in these days of laptop editing, when movies can be trimmed and shuffled within an inch of their lives, right up until the day of distribution.
For television, he wrote music for “Dr. Kildare,” “The Twilight Zone,” “Gunsmoke,” “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,” “The Waltons,” and “Barnaby Jones.” He was the recipient of five Emmy Awards.
Incredibly, despite EIGHTEEN nominations, he was honored with but a single Oscar, for his influential score to “The Omen” (1976). Goldsmith died in 2004, at the age of 75. If he were to come back today, he would mop the joint with all the Hans Zimmer knockoffs.
To honor Goldsmith, and as kind of a belated tribute to special effects artist Douglas Trumbull, who died earlier this week, let’s take a look at the show-stopping drydock sequence from “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” (1979).
In a tight spot in post-production when the effects work was proving to be lackluster, director Robert Wise reached out to and implored Trumbull to work his magic. Trumbull was already a legend in the field, having worked on “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Silent Running,” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”
“Star Trek” would require more composites than “Star Wars” and “Close Encounters” combined. Paramount Pictures was over a barrel, with an impending deadline that would result in a mega-lawsuit from exhibitors if it didn’t deliver.
Trumbull accepted the challenge, but he drove a hard bargain. In exchange for his services, he leveraged a considerable fee, release from his Paramount contract, and ownership of the technology he developed for “Brainstorm,” his dream project, long languishing in development hell, so that he could shop it around to other studios. Without flinching, Paramount blurted “Yes!” Trumbull assembled his crew, divided them into three teams, and they worked seven days a week, 24 hours a day, for the next seven months, to bring the picture in on time.
Say what you want about the movie, but the effects and the music are unimpeachable – especially this sequence, which Trumbull directed himself – a perfect marriage of music and visuals of a kind you will not find in movies today. This is how it’s done, kids.
As a post-script, we’ll be celebrating the legacy of Douglas Trumbull on the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. Because Roy will be participating in a live theater event with Country Gate Players this Saturday (“Radio Noir Murders” at 6 pm at Belvidere Manor in Belvidere, NJ), we’ll be taking the week off from our movie-fueled digressions. But we’ll be back at the base of Devil’s Tower, watching for your Kodály hand signals in the comments section, when we livestream on Facebook, NEXT Friday evening, February 18, at 7:30 EDT!
Coming at the end of a week in which way too many trees have been hacked down in my neighborhood by a bunch of butchers enlisted by the idiot property association, it’s perhaps ironic that our topic on the next “Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner” – formulated by Roy and me on Earth Day – will be the environmental cult classic “Silent Running” (1972).
This was one of only two movies directed by special effects legend Douglas Trumbull (of “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” fame).
Space botanist Bruce Dern – a little borderline even under the best of circumstances – is driven to employ desperate measures to ensure that he and his robot sidekicks, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, can continue to carry-out their reforestation mission in a floating geodesic greenhouse near the rings of Saturn.
None other than Peter Schickele wrote the music. Folk icon Joan Baez generates a queasy air of counterculture flower-powerlessness.
“Fields of children running wild
In the sun
Like a forest is your child, growing wild
In the sun
Doomed in his innocence
In the sun
Gather your children to your side
In the sun
Tell them all they love will die
Tell them why
In the sun
Tell them it’s not too late
Cultivate, one by one
Tell them to harvest and rejoice
In the sun.”
In short, you’re doomed, everything you care about will die, but it’s not too late to cultivate… Sounds pretty hopeful to me.
It would be cathartic to hack off a few arms to avenge every tree limb right about now. Dern doesn’t quite deliver on that scale, but “Silent Running” can still put a lump in the throat of anyone who cares at all about wildlife and the environment. It conveys the essential truth that no matter what century you live in, the majority of humankind is at best clueless.
“Tears of sorrow running deep
running silent in my sleep
running silent in my sleep…”
Join us as I preach a gospel of despair on Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. The only plant will be my fist in the face of all butchers, as we livestream on Facebook. Fill the comments section with your lamentations, this Friday evening at a special time – one half-hour later than usual – 7:30 EDT.
