Harryhausen's greatest creature?

[Radioactive Rod Whitenack]

I got to do a sit down interview with Ray Harryhausen for a local news weekly at his first Wonderfest appearance, and I asked him that very (obvious) question about why he retired after the great reviews of his work on "Clash of the Titans." His answer was simply, "I thought it was proper to retire while I was still on top."

As a lifelong fan, of course, I didn't want him to retire and it took awhile for me to see the wisdom of his thought process. I think Harryhausen could see the winds of change in the special effects business. "Star Wars" and the creation of ILM had changed almost everything four years prior to the release of "Clash of the Titans," and this last film was the first time he just wasn't able to complete the enormous amount of animation himself and had to bring on a team of animators to help.

It was the end of an era, and now entire companies would be put to work doing the same work that Ray used to do all by himself. Today, there aren't even many craftsmen left in the effects business, just mostly computer programmers. Maybe Ray left the business at just the right time, and his legacy is eternal.

[Haunted hearse]

Thanks RRW.  CGI was just comming in around 1980, and that does make sense.  Tim Burton had initially wanted to do "Mars Attacks", with stop motion puppets, but he ended up doing CGI Martians.  I'm glad that he went back to stop motion with "Frankenweenie".

[Paladin]

I got to do a sit down interview with Ray Harryhausen for a local news weekly at his first Wonderfest appearance, and I asked him that very (obvious) question about why he retired after the great reviews of his work on "Clash of the Titans." His answer was simply, "I thought it was proper to retire while I was still on top."

As a lifelong fan, of course, I didn't want him to retire and it took awhile for me to see the wisdom of his thought process. I think Harryhausen could see the winds of change in the special effects business. "Star Wars" and the creation of ILM had changed almost everything four years prior to the release of "Clash of the Titans," and this last film was the first time he just wasn't able to complete the enormous amount of animation himself and had to bring on a team of animators to help.

It was the end of an era, and now entire companies would be put to work doing the same work that Ray used to do all by himself. Today, there aren't even many craftsmen left in the effects business, just mostly computer programmers. Maybe Ray left the business at just the right time, and his legacy is eternal.

I agree. He left the biz at just the right time but his creations and work will go on for all times.
The CGI stuff is visually exciting (at times...) but stopping to think about the creativity that Ray invested into his work is absolutely unheard of in today's world of the superficial.

[McDougals House of Horror]

At Monsterpalooza, 25 minutes of fantastic clips were shown from a great new documentary about Ray, "Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan". It was done by a couple of Frenchmen named Gilles Penso and Alexandre Ponset in conjunction with the Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation. The docu is loaded with interviews with influential film folks who were in turn influenced by Ray (everyone is influenced by Ray!) Better still it is loaded with previously unseen materials and amazing side-by-side comparisons of some of Ray's creature battles vs. battles from more contemporary films like Star Wars, etc. Ponset said they are working on a DVD for release in the US -- I told him I'll buy the first copy!!



Penso and Ponset
 

[Radioactive Rod Whitenack]

Wow, I hadn't heard about that documentary! Now I won't be able to sleep until I've seen it and have the DVD in my collection. Thanks for the tip!

Rod