Douglas Trumbull

Caste comes to the greyhound. Born on April 8, 1942, Douglas Trumbull was the son of Donald Trumbull, who was responsible for the special effects for The Wizard of Oz , from 1939. As a child, he liked to build mechanical and electrical devices, such as crystal radios, and enjoyed watching movies. of alien invasions. He took illustration classes with the goal of becoming an architect, but he crafted photorealistic images with such skill that he landed a job at Graphic Films, a company that produced short films for NASA and the Air Force.

At this company, Douglas Trumbull  shot the space travel film  To the Moon and Beyond  for the 1964 New York World’s Fair. The piece caught the eye of Stanley Kubrick , who enlisted Graphic Films for the special effects for 2001: An Odyssey. from space. When the director moved filming to London, he broke the contract with the American company, but Douglas Trumbull got his phone number and called him to tell him that he was looking forward to working on the film, and that he had already finished several pre-production jobs. . “I was only 23 or 24 years old when I worked on that film, but it was great. He would ask me what I needed, and he would send me to the city in his Bentley, with a driver, to buy strange parts. He was a great foreman,” he recalled in an interview . Because Douglas Trumbull was often credited as the sole creator of special effects for 2001 : A Space Odyssey , he received constant calls from an irritated Stanley Kubrick .. Although this created a tense relationship for many years, the technician described the director after his death as a “genius”. 

After the effects of The Andromeda Strain, Douglas Trumbull  refused to deal with those of Star Wars , and made his debut as a director with the correct science fiction film Mystery Ships. It was followed by the terrific virtual reality foreshadowing Project Brainstorm , starring  Christopher Walken  and  Natalie Wood , in their latest feature film (MGM canceled the shoot midway after he appeared to be drowning, but he managed to be allowed to finish it by arguing that he had already filmed all his scenes). After the commercial failure of the film (despite its good reviews), from then on he would only occasionally direct a few shorts. 

Curiously,  Douglas Trumbull  did not excel as a special effects technician, but when he collaborated on a film, he revolutionized the sector. He took care of Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Star Trek: The Movie (1979) and Blade Runner, from 1982, which he abandoned halfway through. But then he took a break until 2011 ‘s The Tree of Life , where he is credited as a visual effects consultant. The man who killed Hitler and then Bigfoot , from 2018,  was his last work for the big screen. 

Married to Ann Vidor, who is credited as responsible for the costumes in the two films he directed,  Douglas Trumbull  suffered the biggest blow of his life when she died in 2001. He later married Julia. 

Exhausted from Hollywood, he retired to the Berkshire Hills, western Massachusetts. “I wanted to get away from the lawyers and insurance agents in Hollywood, who gave me goosebumps.” From then on, he concentrated on developing new technologies for film production and for theme park attractions, such as the “Back to the Future Ride” at Universal Studios theme park. The death of Natalie Wood had a lot to do with his decision . ” I personally had to make a life decision many years ago when she died under very suspicious circumstances during the making of Project Brainstorm ..  I had to stop. I had been a writer and director my whole life and I decided it wasn’t for me because I had a really challenging personal experience. I think the story has never been told. I don’t know the story myself, but I know what my experience was. I decided to leave the movie business.”