Brainstorm

Douglas Trumbull started as an illustrator for Graphic Films, a small animation house that created a science-fiction film for the 1964 World’s Fair in New York. Stanley Kubrick saw the film and hired Trumbull’s colleague Con Pederson to work on 2001. Trumbull got Kubrick’s telephone number in England from Pederson and cold-called the director, who hired him for the film, a gig that lasted nearly four years.

Although Trumbull created and directed many of the film’s most spectacular moments (the “slit-scan” sequence at the end was purely his creation), Kubrick usurped the credit when he inserted a title card in the credits stating “Special Photographic Effects designed and directed by Stanley Kubrick.” Trumbull and Kubrick maintained an uneasy relationship for years thereafter as a result.

Nonetheless Trumbull was awed by the experience, and set about dedicating his life to making movies with the same grandeur as 2001 – movies that enveloped the audience.

He got his first chance to direct in the movie “Silent Running” which was produced on a shoestring budget. The film was a commercial disappointment, but Trumbull’s visual style was once again on display, with giant, majestic cargo ships, trips through Saturn’s rings (an effect wanted for 2001 but impossible to produce in time), and lovable miniature “drone” robots.

Trumbull became pidgeon-holed as the special-effects genius he was rather than the director/producer he wanted to be. He would later direct his third film “Brainstorm”, but not before doing SFX work for Bladerunner, Close Encounters, Andromeda Strain, Star Trek the Motion Picture, and The Towering Inferno (for which he was uncredited.) Like “Silent Running”, Brainstorm was a commercial disappointment, and the ending had to be drastically rewritten due to the untimely death of star Natalie Wood.

Meanwhile, the age of big screens was coming to an end, and Trumbull realized that his dreams of producing epic films like 2001 couldn’t be realized in a multiplex world. He redirected his creative energies towards producing amusement rides, several of which are still in use today.

In the 90s, Trumbull moved to Sheffield, Massachusettes in the Berkshires, where he ran a small special-effects shop. He later closed the business and sold the assets to a California company. He’s largely dropped out of sight since then, though there are reports of occasional sightings. IMDB indicates that his wife passed away, so that may have contributed to his seclusion of late.

By any standard Trumbull remains one of the geniuses of modern cinema, far more than a mere “special effects guy”. Silent Running remains one of the most heartbreaking ecology/sf films ever made, directed by a pioneer who’d just turned 30 years old. —IMDb