"Why not do it the old way? The way we did it in 2001?'"
According to Vanity Fair's delightful Rebecca Keegan, who attended last Friday's TCM Film Festival screening of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY in Hollywood, where Douglas Trumbull participated in a "frank, reflective, two-hour discussion", this was the visual f/x maestro's proposition to Terrence Malick in response to the filmmaker's professed distaste for utilizing CG in his forthcoming TREE OF LIFE (and its spinoff IMAX feature).
And this, evidently, was all he had to say about his work on the film. So let the speculation commence: will TREE OF LIFE feature new practical f/x from Trumbull? It's certainly beginning to sound like it. If so, how will they be integrated alongside the CG images of prehistoric Earth Mike Fink discussed in early 2009?
Honestly, I don't want to know until I see the movie, but it's fun to ask these questions while we continue to wait for Malick to finish the film - which will miss Cannes in May*, but could be ready for the Toronto/Venice/Telluride triumvirate in early September. Not that anyone other than Malick, his producers or his DP Emmanuel "Chivo" Lubezki know for sure. Though I am encouraged by the news that there have been multiple screenings of the film in Austin over the last month or so (many of which have been convened by Chivo). I'll probably regret saying this, but I'm very confident TREE OF LIFE will screen commercially in 2010.
For more on what Trumbull's up to nowadays (and how he feels about the industry twenty-seven years after the failure of Showscan), be sure to read Keegan's piece at Vanity Fair. You're welcome, Rebecca.
*I'm told the Cannes selection committee gave Malick until 5 AM on the morning they announced the competition slate to accept their open invitation to unveil the film at the festival. At the last minute, he called to confirm that it would not be ready.
