Altri testi su "A.I."
Super-Toys Last All Summer
Long
By
Brian Aldiss
The inspiration behind Kubrick's ongoing AI project, a tale of humanity and of the aching loneliness in an overpopulated future.
Though Brian Aldiss bristles at being pigeonholed as a sci-fi writer, the British author has won every major science fiction award. He has also sparked director Stanley Kubrick's imagination with the short story "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long." First published in Harper's Bazaar in 1969 and later anthologized, this tale of humanity in an age of intelligent machines and of the aching loneliness endemic in an overpopulated future is the inspiration behind Kubrick's ongoing AI project. Aldiss's story offers richly suggestive details that one hopes will make the cinematic cut. But just in case they don't, read the original.
In Mrs. Swinton's garden, it was always summer. The lovely almond trees stood about it in perpetual leaf. Monica Swinton plucked a saffron-colored rose and showed it to David.
"Isn't it lovely?" she said.
David looked up at her and grinned without replying. Seizing the flower, he ran with it across the lawn and disappeared behind the kennel where the mowervator crouched, ready to cut or sweep or roll when the moment dictated. She stood alone on her impeccable plastic gravel path.
She had tried to love him.
When she made up her mind to follow the boy, she found him in the courtyard floating the rose in his paddling pool. He stood in the pool engrossed, still wearing his sandals.
"David, darling, do you have to be so awful? Come in at once and change your shoes and socks."
He went with her without protest into the house, his dark head bobbing at the level of her waist. At the age of three, he showed no fear of the ultrasonic dryer in the kitchen. But before his mother could reach for a pair of slippers, he wriggled away and was gone into the silence of the house.
He would probably be looking for Teddy.
Monica Swinton, twenty-nine, of graceful shape and lambent eye, went and sat in her living room, arranging her limbs with taste. She began by sitting and thinking; soon she was just sitting. Time waited on her shoulder with the maniac slowth it reserves for children, the insane, and wives whose husbands are away improving the world. Almost by reflex, she reached out and changed the wavelength of her windows. The garden faded; in its place, the city center rose by her left hand, full of crowding people, blowboats, and buildings (but she kept the sound down). She remained alone. An overcrowded world is the ideal place in which to be lonely.
The directors of Synthank were eating an enormous luncheon to celebrate the launching of their new product. Some of them wore the plastic face-masks popular at the time. All were elegantly slender, despite the rich food and drink they were putting away. Their wives were elegantly slender, despite the food and drink they too were putting away. An earlier and less sophisti- cated generation would have regarded them as beautiful people, apart from their eyes.
Henry Swinton, Managing Director of Synthank, was about to make a speech.
"I'm sorry your wife couldn't be with us to hear you," his neighbor said.
"Monica prefers to stay at home thinking beautiful thoughts," said Swinton, maintaining a smile.
"One would expect such a beautiful woman to have beautiful thoughts," said the neighbor.
Take your mind off my wife, you bastard, thought Swinton, still smiling.
He rose to make his speech amid applause.
After a couple of jokes, he said, "Today marks a real breakthrough for the company. It is now almost ten years since we put our first synthetic life-forms on the world market. You all know what a success they have been, particularly the miniature dinosaurs. But none of them had intelligence.
"It seems like a paradox that in this day and age we can create life but not intelligence. Our first selling line, the Crosswell Tape, sells best of all, and is the most stupid of all." Everyone laughed.
"Though three-quarters of the overcrowded world are starving, we are lucky here to have more than enough, thanks to population control. Obesity's our problem, not malnutrition. I guess there's nobody round this table who doesn't have a Crosswell working for him in the small intestine, a perfectly safe parasite tape-worm that enables its host to eat up to fifty percent more food and still keep his or her figure. Right?" General nods of agreement.
"Our miniature dinosaurs are almost equally stupid. Today, we launch an intelligent synthetic life-form - a full-size serving-man.
"Not only does he have intelligence, he has a controlled amount of intelligence. We believe people would be afraid of a being with a human brain. Our serving-man has a small computer in his cranium.
"There have been mechanicals on the market with mini-computers for brains - plastic things without life, super-toys - but we have at last found a way to link computer circuitry with synthetic flesh."
David
sat by the long window of his nursery, wrestling with paper and
pencil. Finally, he stopped writing and began to roll the pencil
up and down the slope of the desk-lid.
"Teddy!" he said.
Teddy lay on the bed against the wall, under a book with moving pictures and a giant plastic soldier. The speech-pattern of his master's voice activated him and he sat up.
"Teddy, I can't think what to say!"
Climbing off the bed, the bear walked stiffly over to cling to the boy's leg. David lifted him and set him on the desk.
"What have you said so far?"
"I've said -" He picked up his letter and stared hard at it. "I've said, 'Dear Mummy, I hope you're well just now. I love you....'"
There was a long silence, until the bear said, "That sounds fine. Go downstairs and give it to her."
Another long silence.
"It isn't quite right. She won't understand."
Inside the bear, a small computer worked through its program of possibilities. "Why not do it again in crayon?"
When David did not answer, the bear repeated his suggestion. "Why not do it again in crayon?"
David was staring out of the window. "Teddy, you know what I was thinking? How do you tell what are real things from what aren't real things?"
The bear shuffled its alternatives. "Real things are good."
"I wonder if time is good.
I don't think Mummy likes time very much. The other day, lots of days ago, she said that time went by her. Is time real, Teddy?"
"Clocks tell the time. Clocks are real. Mummy has clocks so she must like them. She has a clock on her wrist next to her dial."
David started to draw a jumbo jet on the back of his letter. "You and I are real, Teddy, aren't we?"
The bear's eyes regarded the boy unflinchingly. "You and I are real, David." It specialized in comfort.
Monica walked slowly about the house. It was almost time for the afternoon post to come over the wire. She punched the Post Office number on the dial on her wrist but nothing came through. A few minutes more.
She could take up her painting. Or she could dial her friends. Or she could wait till Henry came home. Or she could go up and play with David....
She walked out into the hall and to the bottom of the stairs.
"David!"
No answer. She called again and a third time.
"Teddy!" she called, in sharper tones.
"Yes, Mummy!" After a moment's pause, Teddy's head of golden fur appeared at the top of the stairs.
"Is David in his room, Teddy?"
"David went into the garden, Mummy."
"Come down here, Teddy!"
She stood impassively, watching the little furry figure as it climbed down from step to step on its stubby limbs. When it reached the bottom, she picked it up and carried it into the living room. It lay unmoving in her arms, staring up at her. She could feel just the slightest vibration from its motor.
"Stand there, Teddy. I want to talk to you." She set him down on a tabletop, and he stood as she requested, arms set forward and open in the eternal gesture of embrace.
"Teddy, did David tell you to tell me he had gone into the garden?"
The circuits of the bear's brain were too simple for artifice. "Yes, Mummy."
"So you lied to me."
"Yes, Mummy."
"Stop calling me Mummy! Why is David avoiding me? He's not afraid of me, is he?"
"No. He loves you."
"Why can't we communicate?"
"David's upstairs."
The answer stopped her dead. Why waste time talking to this machine? Why not simply go upstairs and scoop David into her arms and talk to him, as a loving mother should to a loving son? She heard the sheer weight of silence in the house, with a different quality of silence pouring out of every room. On the upper landing, something was moving very silently - David, trying to hide away from her....
He was nearing the end of his speech now. The guests were attentive; so was the Press, lining two walls of the banqueting chamber, recording Henry's words and occasionally photographing him.
"Our serving-man will be, in many senses, a product of the computer. Without computers, we could never have worked through the sophisticated biochemics that go into synthetic flesh. The serving-man will also be an extension of the computer - for he will contain a computer in his own head, a microminiaturized computer capable of dealing with almost any situation he may encounter in the home. With reservations, of course." Laughter at this; many of those present knew the heated debate that had engulfed the Synthank boardroom before the decision had finally been taken to leave the serving-man neuter under his flawless uniform.
"Amid all the triumphs of our civilization - yes, and amid the crushing problems of overpopulation too - it is sad to reflect how many millions of people suffer from increasing loneliness and isolation. Our serving-man will be a boon to them; he will always answer, and the most vapid conversation cannot bore him.
"For the future, we plan more models, male and female - some of them without the limitations of this first one, I promise you! - of more advanced design, true bio-electronic beings.
"Not only will they possess their own computer, capable of individual programming; they will be linked to the World Data Network. Thus everyone will be able to enjoy the equivalent of an Einstein in their own homes. Personal isolation will then be banished forever!"
He sat down to enthusiastic applause. Even the synthetic serving-man, sitting at the table dressed in an unostentatious suit, applauded with gusto.
Dragging his satchel, David crept round the side of the house. He climbed on to the ornamental seat under the living-room window and peeped cautiously in.
His mother stood in the middle of the room. Her face was blank; its lack of expression scared him. He watched fascinated. He did not move; she did not move. Time might have stopped, as it had stopped in the garden.
At last she turned and left the room. After waiting a moment, David tapped on the window. Teddy looked round, saw him, tumbled off the table, and came over to the window. Fumbling with his paws, he eventually got it open.
They looked at each other.
"I'm no good, Teddy. Let's run away!"
"You're a very good boy. Your Mummy loves you."
Slowly, he shook his head. "If she loved me, then why can't I talk to her?"
"You're being silly, David. Mummy's lonely. That's why she had you."
"She's got Daddy. I've got nobody 'cept you, and I'm lonely."
Teddy gave him a friendly cuff over the head. "If you feel so bad, you'd better go to the psychiatrist again."
"I hate that old psychiatrist - he makes me feel I'm not real." He started to run across the lawn. The bear toppled out of the window and followed as fast as its stubby legs would allow.
Monica Swinton was up in the nursery. She called to her son once and then stood there, undecided. All was silent.
Crayons lay on his desk. Obeying a sudden impulse, she went over to the desk and opened it. Dozens of pieces of paper lay inside. Many of them were written in crayon in David's clumsy writing, with each letter picked out in a color different from the letter preceding it. None of the messages was finished.
"My dear Mummy, How are you really, do you love me as much -"
"Dear Mummy, I love you and Daddy and the sun is shining -"
"Dear dear Mummy, Teddy's helping me write to you. I love you and Teddy -"
"Darling Mummy, I'm your one and only son and I love you so much that some times -"
"Dear Mummy, you're really my Mummy and I hate Teddy -"
"Darling Mummy, guess how much I love -"
"Dear Mummy, I'm your little boy not Teddy and I love you but Teddy -"
"Dear Mummy, this is a letter to you just to say how much how ever so much -"
Monica dropped the pieces of paper and burst out crying. In their gay inaccurate colors, the letters fanned out and settled on the floor.
Henry Swinton caught the express home in high spirits, and occasionally said a word to the synthetic serving-man he was taking home with him. The serving-man answered politely and punctually, although his answers were not always entirely relevant by human standards.
The Swintons lived in one of the ritziest city-blocks, half a kilometer above the ground. Embedded in other apartments, their apartment had no windows to the outside; nobody wanted to see the overcrowded external world. Henry unlocked the door with his retina pattern-scanner and walked in, followed by the serving-man.
At once, Henry was sur-rounded by the friendly illusion of gardens set in eternal summer. It was amazing what Whologram could do to create huge mirages in small spaces. Behind its roses and wisteria stood their house; the deception was complete: a Georgian mansion appeared to welcome him.
"How do you like it?" he asked the serving-man.
"Roses occasionally suffer from black spot."
"These roses are guaranteed free from any imperfections."
"It is always advisable to purchase goods with guarantees, even if they cost slightly more."
"Thanks for the information," Henry said dryly. Synthetic life-forms were less than ten years old, the old android mechanicals less than sixteen; the faults of their systems were still being ironed out, year by year.
He opened the door and called to Monica.
She came out of the sitting-room immediately and flung her arms round him, kissing him ardently on cheek and lips. Henry was amazed.
Pulling back to look at her face, he saw how she seemed to generate light and beauty. It was months since he had seen her so excited. Instinctively, he clasped her tighter.
"Darling, what's happened?"
"Henry, Henry - oh, my darling, I was in despair ... but I've just dialed the afternoon post and - you'll never believe it! Oh, it's wonderful!"
"For heaven's sake, woman, what's wonderful?"
He caught a glimpse of the heading on the photostat in her hand, still moist from the wall-receiver: Ministry of Population. He felt the color drain from his face in sudden shock and hope.
"Monica ... oh ... Don't tell me our number's come up!"
"Yes, my darling, yes, we've won this week's parenthood lottery! We can go ahead and conceive a child at once!"
He let out a yell of joy. They danced round the room. Pressure of population was such that reproduction had to be strict, controlled. Childbirth required government permission. For this moment, they had waited four years. Incoherently they cried their delight.
They paused at last, gasping, and stood in the middle of the room to laugh at each other's happiness. When she had come down from the nursery, Monica had de-opaqued the windows, so that they now revealed the vista of garden beyond. Artificial sunlight was growing long and golden across the lawn - and David and Teddy were staring through the window at them.
Seeing their faces, Henry and his wife grew serious.
"What do we do about them?" Henry asked.
"Teddy's no trouble. He works well."
"Is David malfunctioning?"
"His verbal communication-center is still giving trouble. I think he'll have to go back to the factory again."
"Okay. We'll see how he does before the baby's born. Which reminds me - I have a surprise for you: help just when help is needed! Come into the hall and see what I've got."
As the two adults disappeared from the room, boy and bear sat down beneath the standard roses.
"Teddy - I suppose Mummy and Daddy are real, aren't they?"
Teddy said, "You ask such silly questions, David. Nobody knows what 'real' really means. Let's go indoors."
"First I'm going to have another rose!" Plucking a bright pink flower, he carried it with him into the house. It could lie on the pillow as he went to sleep. Its beauty and softness reminded him of Mummy.
Copyright © 1993-99
The Condé Nast Publications Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright
© 1994-99 Wired Digital, Inc. All rights reserved.
The Intelligence Behind AI
By
Paula Parisi
The on-again, off-again story of Stanley Kubrick's new vision of thinking machines.
Some are born to greatness, others have it thrust upon them, and still others have it programmed into their operating systems. Such was the case with HAL, the iconoclastic digital antagonist of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Debuting in a science fiction cinema whose conception of artificial intelligence amounted to clunky chunks of rolling metal like Robby and Gort, the sophisticated, subtly neurotic HAL redefined Hollywood's portrayal of thinking machines. It should surprise no one that Kubrick - who has applied his skills to a variety of material, from pulp to period drama - now appears ready to turn his attention back to the themes of man and automation. True, he's currently directing the conventionally fabulous Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut, but it's another, more enigmatic project that has his fans on the Net checking in regularly to alt.movies.kubrick.
For almost a decade, Kubrick has been developing a film project known as AI (as in artificial intelligence), which promises to graduate from computers to an android who thinks, is self-aware, and ages. Inspired by "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long," the short story by British author Brian Aldiss (see page 134), AI is set in a future when scientists have, as Aldiss writes, "at last found a way to link computer circuitry with synthetic flesh."
"One of the fascinating questions that arises in envisioning computers more intelligent than men is at what point machine intelligence deserves the same consideration as biological intelligence," Kubrick mused in a 1971 interview for the book Stanley Kubrick Directs.
"Once a computer learns by experience as well as by its original programming, and once it has access to much more information than any number of human geniuses might possess, the first thing that happens is that you don't really understand it anymore, and you don't know what it's doing or thinking about. You could be tempted to ask yourself in what way is machine intelligence any less sacrosanct than biological intelligence, and it might be difficult to arrive at an answer flattering to biological intelligence."
Kubrick followers will recall that for all the imaginative spark of Arthur C. Clarke's The Sentinel - the story that inspired 2001 - it contains no HAL, no Jupiter mission, no enlightened, club-wielding apes. There's no telling how Kubrick's imagination will transform "Super-Toys." Aldiss says that in the early '90s, he and the director made two collaborative attempts to turn his story into a script. "I can't tell you how many directions we went. My favorite was when David and Teddy got exiled to Tin City, a place where the old model robots, like old cars, were living out their days. Stanley definitely had the ambition to make another big science fiction movie, but in the end, we didn't get anywhere. Stanley called in Arthur Clarke and asked him to provide a scenario, but he didn't like that, either."
Kubrick, meanwhile, is as secretive as ever about his plans and insisted that powerful Warner Bros. co-CEO Terry Semel and Kubrick's then-agent, Michael Ovitz, fly to England to read the AI material under his personal supervision. The notion inspired awe and amusement in Hollywood, where the proud tradition of kicking "geniuses" around begins with D. W. Griffith and continues up through von Stroheim and Welles. Kubrick, who was born in the Bronx, has for the last 35 years lived a secluded existence in a palatial British estate in Hertfordshire.
Ovitz says there was a method to the madness. "It's true; he doesn't feel comfortable sending his scripts out, but we also wanted to have everyone in the same room, and you know Stanley doesn't fly. By the next day, Terry and I had a deal for Stanley to make the movie."
Of course, some information always leaks out - in this case, news that Kubrick has set AI in a future in which the polar ice caps have melted, drowning some well-known coastal cities such as New York. After having a special effects epiphany while watching Jurassic Park in the summer of 1993, he contacted the movie's digital effects supervisor, Dennis Muren of Industrial Light & Magic. Kubrick wanted animatics depicting computer-generated fly-throughs of a submerged Manhattan, its skyscrapers rising totemically from the tidal stew. Muren obliged (and flew to England to present the work).
Though it was reportedly well received, Kubrick was keeping his options open. In the summer of 1994, James Cameron flew to England when Kubrick asked the younger filmmaker to show him True Lies. "I was really honored, 'Oooh, Stanley Kubrick wants to see my movie!'" remembers Cameron. "But it turns out that he does this with everybody. He's like a brain vampire. He likes to get people and suck what they're doing out of their heads." The two viewed the film on an editing machine at Kubrick's home and talked about the effects shot by shot.
As for AI, Cameron reports that "Kubrick was interested in Digital Domain, passingly, to do some visual effects, and he showed me some of the artwork for AI. There was a lot of water interaction stuff - very difficult." But beyond that, Cameron is as tight-lipped as Kubrick. "It's his movie," says Cameron. "He can talk about it if he wants to."
But apparently he doesn't. Word began circulating that Kubrick planned to do all the AI effects himself, in his home workshop. The filmmaker has been known to operate his own handheld camera, and his hands-on enthusiasm is legendary. Kubrick will call up a given technology company - the manufacturer of a sound system, a film stock, or a piece of camera equipment - have the thing delivered, test it exhaustively, and notably not pay for it, explained one industry observer. Then Kubrick will send back extensive notes on what the machine can and can't do. Though this R&D ethic causes some grumbles in the industry, it works - companies develop new technology specifically for him.
In this case, Kubrick got the local boys from Quantel to set him up with a demo of the Domino, a computer graphics workstation known for its ease of use and real-time playback. Although the machine was said to have enthralled the filmmaker, his plan to do the special effects himself seems to have been scrapped; Kubrick put in another call to ILM this fall, this time requesting that Muren fly to England to read the script he had written himself. Muren, well under way with Steven Spielberg on The Lost World (aka Jurassic Park part two), declined. "Stanley's been having conversations with Dennis for years," says an ILM staffer. "It's hard to feel like the train's about to leave the station."
Will the 68-year-old Kubrick ever realize this high tech opus? According to some of the more out-there speculation, he's already begun. One rumor - popular on the Net - holds that he's filmed two short segments of AI since the project began almost a decade ago to incorporate the natural aging of his young star, said to be Jurassic Park's Joseph Mazzello. While a spokesperson for Mazzello confirmed that in 1993 there was a deal brokered between the actor and director, she said it was for another stalled Kubrick project, The Aryan Papers, and had nothing to do with AI.
A more plausible scenario, circulating not on the Net but in Hollywood, is that Warner Bros. - gun-shy after lackluster returns on Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket - balked at the big-budget bucks it would take to film AI and convinced Kubrick to first tackle the commercially bankable Eyes Wide Shut. Then they'd set him loose in the toy shop.
One hopes, when all is said and done, that Kubrick still has the desire to play. "I have a feeling, having worked with him, that he hasn't got the dashing confidence of youth," says Aldiss. "But of course, with age, you acquire a different sort of confidence." The director's creative vision, meanwhile, is clearer than ever. "Stanley embraces android technology," Aldiss notes, "and thinks it might eventually take over - and be an improvement over the human race."
Paula Parisi (73404.720@compuserve.com) is an editor at The Hollywood Reporter. She wrote "Shot by an Outlaw in Wired 4.09.
Copyright © 1993-99
The Condé Nast Publications Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright
© 1994-99 Wired Digital, Inc. All rights reserved.
June 18, 1999
Features
The late director left behind a slew of unfinished projects,
including a much-rumored-about sci-fi film. Now the F/X whizzes
called in to create its title character give a rare insiders'
look at A.I.
by Ron Magid
For much of the late 20th century, the world had come to him.
Whether his films were set in a haunted hotel in the Colorado
Rockies or a bombed-out city in Vietnam, Stanley Kubrick somehow
re-created that world in the studios of his adopted home base,
England. Tied by an electronic umbilical cord to the rest of the
world, he lived on the telephone, constantly sending out queries
and incessantly, obsessively asking questions. Now, consumed with
a dream project called A.I., he had summoned a pair of
visual-effects masters to his Hertfordshire mansion.
It was late in the evening of Thanksgiving 1993. Dennis Muren,
senior visual effects supervisor at George Lucas' Northern
California effects powerhouse, Industrial Light & Magic, and
his colleague Ned Gorman, ILM's visual effects producer, arrived
at Kubrick's fortresslike estate. The car the reclusive director
had sent to pick them up drove through a series of security gates
along a road that wound its way to the estate's carriage house,
now Kubrick's office/library/editing bay/screening room/kitchen.
Inside, the 65-year-old expatriate American had prepared a
traditional Thanksgiving dinner for his guests.
Though Kubrick peppered his speech with British slang like
"I don't know what you're on about," more than 20 years
of living in England had failed to take the Bronx out of the man.
In a strong New York accent, Kubrick discussed his past technical
triumphs and his latest equipment between bites of turkey and
stuffing. Expecting to encounter an icy, Howard Hughes-esque
recluse, Muren and Gorman instead found themselves in the company
of a jolly, energetic man who chatted breezily about everything
from the latest laserdisc release of Dr. Strangelove to Muren's
Oscar-winning work on Jurassic Park. "He'd jump up and say,
'Oh! I gotta show you this!' and he'd come back with a photo he
had of the big front-projection system that had been built for
2001," Muren remembers. "Then he started telling us
about some of the gear he had, including a couple of 70 mm
cameras that he'd bought for Barry Lyndon. He said he didn't know
if he was going to shoot A.I. with them or not."
"Everywhere you looked there were old IBM electric
typewriters and computers that had sort of come and gone,"
Gorman says, remembering a cubicle littered with the rubble of
technologies past. "I got the impression that Stanley
immediately obtained whatever new technology was available, but
as soon as it was displaced, it literally got heaved in the
corner for the next thing."
Kubrick's career was also littered with abandoned projects: the
Western he'd surrendered to Marlon Brando that became One-Eyed
Jacks; the Napoleon film idea he'd worked on for years with A
Clockwork Orange author Anthony Burgess; and the Holocaust-themed
Aryan Papers, among countless others. His indifference, like his
obsessions, knew no bounds.
But Kubrick was also a master strategist. As the discussion
turned to A.I.--short for artificial intelligence--he revealed
only the barest details of his project's plot: The ice caps were
melting, New York City was suddenly underwater, and his proposed
hero was a boy who might very well be a robot. "'Need to
know' would be the way to put it," Gorman says of Kubrick's
elusiveness. "I think he was meting out just [enough
information] to see, 'Is this something I can accomplish without
spending the Bank of England?'"
Kubrick had already consulted several British effects artists
about either using makeup on a child actor or creating an
animatronic puppet for the "robot boy." What he wanted
to know from the ILM experts was whether he could achieve even
greater results using the emerging digital-effects technology.
Only the summer before, Jurassic Park's effects had awed
moviegoers. Now the director wanted to learn what ILM and Muren,
who had unleashed those digital dinosaurs, could do to visualize
the world of A.I., the director's first foray into
technology-driven science fiction since 1968's 2001: A Space
Odyssey.
And so, after dinner, Kubrick ushered the F/X maestros into a
small screening room to view the digital test footage his guests
had brought from California. The test, for a proposed period
piece that was never made, featured a computer-generated pirate
ship on the high seas. Kubrick, who was already planning to swamp
the high-rises of New York in A.I., wanted to see just how real
the computer-generated water looked. He enthusiastically headed
for the projection booth, where he personally threaded the 35 mm
digital film clip. And when the lights came up, the ILM test had
apparently satisfied the famed perfectionist. "Stanley was
duly impressed," Gorman says.
But then it was quiz time. Kubrick pulled out a pen and clipboard
and began grilling his guests, trying to determine just how
difficult it would be for ILM to transform say, oil derricks into
New York's submerged skyscrapers. It rapidly became clear that
Kubrick, who knew almost as much about digital technology as his
guests, "had done the 'Stanley version' of a university
course," Gorman relates. "[Stanley] had prepared a very
thorough list of questions, and the next seven hours were just
incredibly intense. At one point he said, 'Is this possible? And
I'm asking you that because I think you are the last two people
on earth anybody would try to fool.' And I have a sense that what
he was saying was 'Don't try to fool me!'"
Muren and Gorman did their best to keep up with their host, whose
focus never waned, but Gorman admits it "was a very
difficult balance to maintain. We really wanted to ask him all
the questions. I mean, how often do you get to meet Stanley
Kubrick?"
Class was finally dismissed in the wee hours; the meeting had
begun late in the evening so Muren could remain on Pacific time,
losing only a day of preproduction on Casper, which was to
feature the first CG film protagonist--and perhaps held the key
to creating A.I.'s robot boy. Muren and Gorman flew back to
California that morning, elated by the possibility of bringing
their talents to bear on what was arguably Kubrick's most
ambitious project ever. "I can't remember everything we
talked about with Stanley," Muren concludes. "I think
we were just sort of in awe."
But because Kubrick had given them so little information about
the project, they were largely on their own. For clues, Muren and
Gorman read Brian Aldiss' short story from the late '60s upon
which A.I. was to be based, "Super-Toys Last All Summer
Long." But it wasn't clear whether the story would provide
any more insight into the final product than Arthur C. Clarke's
"The Sentinel" did about 2001. Without more specifics
from Kubrick, it was going to be difficult to choose an approach
to the monumental effects issues A.I. presented.
Almost immediately, the phone calls from England began. But for
all of Kubrick's questions, the filmmaker remained vague about
the robot boy. He now said he was envisioning something along the
lines of a painted Victorian doll. As reference, he sent Muren
and Gorman a photocopy of Gainsborough's The Blue Boy.
To get Kubrick's concept on paper, Muren turned to one of ILM's
reigning visual-effects art directors, TyRuben Ellingson
(Jurassic Park, the Star Wars special editions). Ellingson, who
has since left ILM to form Combustion Studios with partner D.J.
Marini, also began with the Aldiss short story, "but
everything I'd heard about the movie didn't match the story at
all," he says.
While it is ambiguous whether the child protagonist of Aldiss'
story is absolutely human, "Kubrick had an idea that this
kid should look too perfect to be real," Ellingson explains.
"I thought Stanley was probably looking to set up a
situation where the kid didn't look human, but he behaved like he
was, and in the end, he [became] the most humane character"
in the film.
But Ellingson wondered how the audience would know that this
synthetic human was a robot if he appeared to be a real boy.
"So the first exercise," he remembers, "was coming
up with a list of like 50 ways to tell the difference. I was so
f---ing freaked out by Kubrick that I just went way out on a
limb, you know? I was coming up with everything from an internal
manifestation of mechanism--some semblance of lights coming from
inside the body--to symmetric freckles and moles across the kid's
face. Kubrick wanted the kid to look androgynous and kind of
blank, so I started thinking, 'What makes a doll's eyes look
doll-like? It's because dolls' eyes don't focus on a point in
space, they just focus off into nowhere. They're blank.' I was
pulling out every stop. We had already done Jurassic, so there
was a sense that we could do anything."
Since real human faces are invariably asymmetrical, Ellingson
envisioned the robot boy's face as being inhumanly balanced. He
also decided that the dozens of complex servomotors theoretically
needed to imbue such an automaton with believably subtle,
lifelike movements would create certain "spatial
issues" and cause the robot boy's head to have strange
proportions. For example, Ellingson thought that the eyes might
be farther apart than those of a normal human being, giving the
robot boy an alien look.
And so Ellingson sat down at his computer and went to work.
"I did a Photoshop study of this young child's face that I
had found in a magazine," he says. "I mirrored the
child's face right and left, so it was absolutely symmetrical,
and put the eyes further apart."
Kubrick sparked to this approach. But the effects artists had a
caveat for the director. Since no one had successfully created a
digital human character that spoke dialogue and interacted
realistically with a live environment, "we told him, 'You're
going to want to use a real kid some of the time, because you
don't want to make [the robot boy] all digital-effects
work,'" Ellingson recalls.
It would have been cost-prohibitive to create an entirely digital
character as A.I.'s lead actor, especially given Kubrick's
penchant for doing dozens of takes with live actors. If presented
with an infinite palette of possibilities for creating the robot
boy's animation, the ILM team feared Kubrick might just keep
tinkering with those shots. "We didn't want to get ourselves
locked into a corner where the kid had to be done digitally if we
could avoid it," says Ellingson.
The "CG or not CG" debate raged on for an entire year.
On one hand, "Stanley had an idea that maybe this kid could
be a puppet that was puppeteered mechanically off camera,"
Ellingson says, "and we tried to convince him that we could
use computer graphics technology to remove the wires and rigs.
But then Stanley would say, 'Well, if his eyes are going to be
further apart, can't we just use a child actor and digitally
replace his head?'"
Meanwhile, Muren asked Ellingson for a storyboard sequence of the
robot boy walking, in order to show Kubrick which shots could
involve an actor, which might effectively use animatronics, and
which might require computer graphics. "Kubrick wanted a
menu that he could choose shots off of by dollars,"
Ellingson offers. "He wanted a breakdown showing Kid
Close-Up, Kid Mid-Shot, Kid Far Away."
But even then, Kubrick didn't want to commit to the length of the
shots. "He wanted to know, 'How much money for how many
minutes?'" Ellingson recalls. "Stanley wanted effects
shots with extra footage so he could edit any way he wanted to.
He wanted to give himself the option to move around, just like
shooting all those takes in his movies. But that's something you
just don't do [in effects work]."
As time wore on, Kubrick insisted on keeping his options open.
"I don't think there was anything he looked at and said,
'That's it!'" Muren says. "He was just always
searching. That's the way I'm going to remember Stanley--he was
always searching."
Eventually, Kubrick commissioned a test helicopter shot of oil
derricks in the North Sea, which he wanted to digitally replace
with the sunken spires of New York. But then, with no
explanation, his interest in A.I. apparently began to cool.
Kubrick turned his attention to Eyes Wide Shut; meanwhile,
Ellingson left ILM, and Muren and Gorman went on to oversee
effects for The Lost World: Jurassic Park, consult on the Star
Wars special editions, and embark upon the visuals for The
Phantom Menace.
Kubrick's phone calls continued until just weeks before the
director's death, as the effects of Menace were on the verge of
completion. Astoundingly, Kubrick--the man who never stopped
shooting until he achieved perfection, even if it took 100
takes--wanted to alter a shot in Eyes Wide Shut after the fact.
"He said he wanted the camera to pan when it had
tilted," Muren says. "So I talked to him a little and
said, 'This is what I would do,' and then I asked, 'So, how is
A.I. coming?' and he said, 'Oh, yeah...'"
On March 7, 1999, Stanley Kubrick died in his sleep at home. He
was 70. Like so many of his unfinished projects, A.I.--never
fully cast or scripted--will remain as enigmatic as the director
himself. While filmmakers and film lovers around the world
mourned him, Gorman realized that in addition to a personal loss,
Kubrick's death was "a professional tragedy. It would have
been fascinating to see what Stanley would have done with digital
technology, and where he would have taken it. Everybody was
hoping that A.I. would be that. And now it's not going to
happen."
Spielberg to Write and Direct Kubrick's 'A.I.'
BURBANK, Calif. --- March 14, 2000 -- Academy Award-winning
filmmaker Steven Spielberg will write and direct the eagerly
anticipated epic science fiction tale "A.I." for Warner
Bros. Pictures and DreamWorks Pictures, starting production on
July 10, 2000, it was announced today by Lorenzo di Bonaventura,
president of Warner Bros. Worldwide Theatrical Production, and
Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald, co-heads of DreamWorks
Pictures. "A.I.," which stands for "artificial
intelligence," will be written and directed by two-time
Oscar winner Spielberg, whose films are among the most acclaimed
and highest-grossing of all time.
Jan Harlan, brother-in-law to the late Stanley Kubrick, who has
produced all of Kubrick's films since "Barry Lyndon"
and has long been associated with the project, executive produces
the film with Walter Parkes. Kathleen Kennedy, Bonnie Curtis and
Spielberg produce the film, a Stanley Kubrick Production, which
will be distributed domestically by Warner Bros. Pictures and
internationally by DreamWorks.
"There is only one person who can direct `A.I.,' and we
couldn't be more excited and honored that he has agreed to make
it his next movie," di Bonaventura said. "Steven
Spielberg is one of the greatest living directors and I am sure
that he will bring his singular humanity and unique vision to
this incredible story."
"Stanley had a vision for this project that was evolving
over 18 years," said Spielberg. "I am intent on
bringing to the screen as much of that vision as possible along
with elements of my own."
Harlan said, "During preparations for `A.I.,' Stanley came
to realize that Steven would actually be the ideal director for
the project, and I know they talked extensively about a
collaboration."
Steven Spielberg has directed, produced or executive produced
seven of the 20 top-grossing films of all time.
In 1999, Spielberg won the Oscar for Best Director and was
nominated as a producer of the universally acclaimed top-grossing
drama "Saving Private Ryan." The film won five Oscars
and garnered the director his third Directors Guild of America
Award, the others having come for "Schindler's List"
and "The Color Purple." He also won his second Golden
Globe Award for Best Director, after winning for
"Schindler's List." In 1994, Spielberg won two Academy
Awards -- one for Best Director and another for Best Picture for
his work as a producer -- for the internationally lauded
"Schindler's List."
The film collected a total of seven Oscars in addition to
receiving Best Picture honors from several of the major critics
organizations, and seven British Academy Awards, including two
for Spielberg. He also won the Golden Globe Award for Best
Director.
Spielberg has also been recognized with Academy Award nominations
for "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial," "Raiders of the
Lost Ark" and "Close Encounters of the Third
Kind." Additionally, he earned DGA Award nominations for all
of those films, as well as "Empire of the Sun,"
"Jaws" and "Amistad" for a record nine DGA
nominations.
Spielberg is also the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award
from the American Film Institute, the prestigious Irving G.
Thalberg Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences, and most recently, the Lifetime Achievement Award from
the DGA.
DreamWorks SKG was formed in October 1994 by its three principal
partners -- Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen
-- to produce live-action motion pictures; animated feature
films; network, syndicated and cable television programming; home
video entertainment; records; books; toys; consumer products; and
interactive entertainment.
*****
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Spielberg's Kubrick Connection
Wednesday March 15 2:27 AM ET
By Steven Gaydos, Daily Variety Executive Editor
HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - Stanley Kubrick may be gone, but neither
the auteur's devoted fans nor one of his most legendary projects
show any signs of slipping quietly into the night.
With the announcement of Steven Spielberg's decision to helm
``A.I.,'' look for Web site chat rooms to start buzzing with
excitement, speculation and rueful ruminating on how Stanley
would have handled the material that Steven is now bringing to
life. The connections between the film that Kubrick couldn't
crack and the two crackerjack filmmakers are dazzlingly fraught
with symbiotic significance that will keep cyberspace abuzz.
Consider:
- Back in the early '70s, when Spielberg's career was just
beginning, already anointed genius filmmaker Kubrick set about
adapting Brian Aldiss' 1969 short story ``Super-Toys Last All
Summer Long.'' In 1977, according to Aldiss, Kubrick was
completely turned off by Spielberg partner-buddy George Lucas'
``Star Wars,'' and he saw ``Super-Toys'' as a potentially major
sci-fi picture with both the integrity of Kubrick and box office
strength of Lucas.
He abandoned the project to make ``The Shining'' but was quite
taken with Spielberg's ``E.T.,'' which provided a kind of compass
point to return to ``Super-Toys'' in 1982.
- Kubrick moved on to film ``Full Metal Jacket,'' but returned to
the Aldiss tale in 1989. Frustrated by the inadequacies of f/x at
the time, he bailed again. Kubrick then switched gears in the
early '90s to ``The Aryan Papers,'' a concentration camp tale
that got derailed, according to reports, by Kubrick's feeling
that Spielberg's ``Schindler's List'' had covered that ground.
- In 1993, the advances in f/x demonstrated by Spielberg's
''Jurassic Park'' convinced Kubrick that ``A.I.,'' as the project
was now known, could be cracked. He enlisted the help of
(Lucas-owned) Industrial Light & Magic f/x pros Dennis Muren
and Ned Gorman. Muren won the Oscar for ``Jurassic,'' and Gorman
worked on the ''Jurassic'' sequel.
- The star of Kubrick's last film was Tom Cruise. The star of
``Minority Report,'' the project that Spielberg moved from his
schedule for ``A.I.,'' is Tom Cruise.
- Kubrick was represented by Creative Artists Agency when he was
developing the project. Spielberg is represented by CAA.
Reuters/Variety
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