The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad
225
In this film, was there any one sequence that cemented you into the
fantasy?
Landis: The film itself just made a huge impression on me in its creating
a completely different world. Instead of being this little kid in a theater in
west L.A., being transported to this magical place, really going on these
adventures. I think it’s similar to what Lord of the Rings does to younger
people now. It’s what Wizard of Oz can still do. There are only certain
movies—Wizard of Oz, 2001—there are very few movies that can do that
to adults.
Everything about a movie, and I mean this sincerely, is who you are and
where you are when you saw it. Because it’s hard just to say, “This movie is a
piece of shit,” because depending on who you were and where you saw it, it
can be a great and important thing. There are great films that are completely
misunderstood because the people weren’t ready for them. Or they were
seeing them under bad circumstances. There are too many wonderful films
that people disregard.
I actually met Ed Wood. Forry Ackerman actually brought Ed Wood
to the cast and crew screening of Schlock. That was in 1971, and he was so
amazed that I knew who he was. When Tim Burton made Ed Wood, Wood’s
movie Plan 9 from Outer Space, which had always been a fringe movie that
was known to certain people who enjoyed its camp value, became more
profitable than Ed Wood. It sold all these copies.
Harryhausen called his handcrafted animation “Dynamation.” As a
director, what is the difference in seeing physical effects versus computer
animation?
Landis: The big breakthrough, the big revolution that was really demonstrated
the first time in Jurassic Park, was not the computer-generated animation
so much as the new digital technology that allowed the animation to
be placed in a way that looked in the picture instead of on the picture.
Some of Ray’s stuff is hampered by the old sodium screens and the superimposition
of things. Ray’s brilliance was to make things interact between
the animation and reality and make it seem so seamless. Now, with the new
digital technology, you can put these things in a picture and have them run
around you in a much more convincing way.