“It was a mammoth undertaking”: the movie that pushed Jeff Bridges to the limit
A multi-Oscar nominee and one-time winner, Jeff Bridges has tried his hand successfully at most film genres, though he is perhaps best known for two iconic roles: loveable schmuck ‘The Dude’ in the seminal Cohen brothers’ black comedy The Big Lebowski and adventurous computer programmer Kevin Flynn in portal fantasy classic Tron. The latter chartered vastly unexplored waters in cinema: creating a feature-length picture with extended computer graphics use. Unsurprisingly, Bridges found this rather challenging.
As special effects have improved exponentially in the last couple of decades, actors are more and more likely to find themselves on the set of a tentpole franchise instalment, monologing to tennis balls in a sea of green. Some, like Andy Serkis, have found innovative ways to marry physical and digital performance. Others find it depressing, such as Ian McKellen’s breakdown while making the first Hobbit film.
In 1976, a time when video games and computer animation were still in their infancy, Tron began its gestation period, spurred on by director Stephen Lisburger’s interest in the game Pong. That same year, Bridges was cast in a remake of King Kong, a franchise renowned for being effects-heavy; the ’70s iteration lived up to this legacy by scoring an Oscar for ‘Best Visual Effects’. It was also a box office smash, recouping its budget threefold worldwide.
In addition, Bridges already had his first two Academy Award nominations under his belt, one of which was for playing opposite Clint Eastwood. Safe to say, his name was in the ascendency, and a risky, wacky project like Tron was an interesting proposition at this point in his professional life. “It’s difficult to emphasise enough how terrified of computers and technology people were, and Hollywood in particular,” Lisburger told Variety for a 35th-anniversary retrospective. “The threat that Tron represented was that somehow computers were going to get involved with movie making and that they were going to get involved with our lives.”
For Bridges, it wasn’t so much the machines that bothered him – it was one very intrusive piece of clothing. “[Tron] was a mammoth undertaking,” he said to The Hollywood Interview in 1999. “It was shot on 70 mm, black and white, then hand-tinted in Korea. At the time it was very innovative, although I think it looks kind of dated now. Wendy Carlos did a great score for it. It was maddening, man. It was a long shoot, four months. I had to go to work every day and put on a dance belt, which is like a jock strap with only one strap–right up your ass! So sitting down or doing any sort of… it was terrible, man. All the sets were black velvet and we were wearing white clothes. After a month in there… I wish they’d explored the love triangle a little more.”
Visual effects supervisor Harrison Ellenshaw later acknowledged the unique challenges for the human performers and applauded their patience. “Great credit has to go to Jeff, Bruce Boxleitner, Cindy Morgan, and David Warner,” he also told Variety. “I’d be on the set and nobody complained, saying ‘I’m really tired. I’m in this uncomfortable costume and look stupid. I’m wearing a hockey helmet and I have to act against something and I don’t know what’s there’.”
None of this put Bridges off from signing up for the sequel, Tron: Legacy, almost 30 years later, imbuing aged Dude-like wisdom into Flynn. This time, green screen technology and digital makeup allowed for more on-set freedom for both the actors and effects teams. Jockstraps optional, we assume…
