NEW MARLBOROUGH — I’d venture to guess it was 1990 when an innocuous sign-up sheet appeared on the weekend activities board at my high school (Miss Hall’s School in Pittsfield). Volunteers were being sought to demo a simulator ride, allegedly destined for Universal Studios, at a defunct mill in Housatonic. Its subject was rumored to be “Back to the Future” — the blockbuster movie hit released in 1985, when I was 10 years old, so I quickly signed up.
I remember very little about the actual experience: the brick building in Housy was entirely unassuming, we were packed (eight at a time) into a very loose replica of Doc Brown’s 1982 DeLorean DMC-12 before being jostled around for 15 minutes while intense lightning and a giant T-Rex loomed. I did not visit Universal Studios when Back to the Future: The Ride debuted in May 1991; I definitely did not know that Doug Trumbull, the pioneering visual effects artist and Berkshire County resident, was partly responsible for the magic.
Fast forward three decades when, on a journalistic quest to learn more about Trumbull’s MAGI theater pod — and having accepted an invitation to visit Trumbull Studios — I realized the special effects genius was my neighbor.
Arriving at Trumbull’s 50-acre property was nothing short of surreal. I remember being nervous as I traversed the extensive dirt driveway, through a menagerie of Sicilian miniature donkeys, pygmy and mixed breed goats, heritage breed Jacob and Cotswold sheep and a large flock of chickens before arriving at Trumbull’s doorstep. Two things struck me that afternoon as entirely unexpected: the first, an observation that the “pastoral landscape [stood] in stark juxtaposition to the technology being created there” was included in a piece I wrote for Berkshire Magazine; the second, my surprise at Trumbull’s genuine graciousness throughout our time together, I kept to myself.
Trumbull described himself as an L.A. kid who grew up on a concrete street, and the irony of having to build a state-of-the-art facility to the explore the future of cinema — deep in the woods of Berkshire County — was not lost on him, a self-proclaimed adventurer and explorer in the film industry. In addition to creating the futuristic worlds found in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Blade Runner,” Trumbull devoted the bulk of his career to exploring ultra high frame rate. He and his wife, Julia, entered into the venture “not knowing we were going to have to build a theatre ourselves” Trumbull joked during our interview.
Trumbull, who rarely used the term “film,” identified what he calls “major moments in the history of movies” that have catapulted the industry forward despite the historic threat of television and a steadily eroding audience. He pointed to the change from “silents to talkies,” the subsequent invention of color, and the move to widescreen format as defining moments for Hollywood. At the time of our meeting, in the spring of 2016, he was poised to unveil what, for the industry, might very well be “a potentially important kind of stepping stone, a watershed” with the introduction of his MAGI process — an immersive boutique cinema format concept thought to one day rival IMAX. Trumbull collaborated with Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee on the film “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” (2016), touted at the time for its use of Trumbull’s new technology with a resolution four times what is normal, in 3D, at a speed of 120 frames per second for the first time in film history.
I experienced a fleeting moment of deja vu as Trumbull showed me to my seat in his otherworldly MAGI pod — far more sleek, refined, and spacious than my original voyage in the simulator, and evidence of Trumbull’s career evolution in the ensuing three decades. Then I watched with rapt attention as he screened “UFOTOG,” a 10-minute, forward-looking demo (an experimental sci-fi short story about a lone man attempting to photograph UFOs). It was not only written and directed by Trumbull, but also demonstrated his new process: in essence, a cinematic language that invites the audience to experience a powerful sense of immersion not possible using conventional 24 frames per second or 3D standards.
I witnessed Trumbull’s patented, single-projector process while seated alone in the 1,300-square-foot MAGI pod, a freestanding 60-seat theater boasting a curved screen that envelops the audience and offers a wider field of view. Trumbull’s goal, “to bring back movies in theaters,” was timely considering at-home streaming capabilities were now capable of rivaling some of the best movie theaters. Film critic Roger Ebert called him “a man with an idea, and the idea is that movies could look more realistic and be more involving than they are.”
My time with Doug Trumbull left an indelible mark on me. Perhaps his comment that most resonated with me was this: “I’m a misfit, I’m an outsider,” he said, in a nod to his unconventional ideas and an ambitious project that might not have come to fruition had he remained in Hollywood. Upon our parting, Trumbull shared with me that his favorite part about the Berkshires — a locale he found “fabulously beautiful” when he visited for the first time — was the autonomy he found here, and the ability to work “quietly, off the radar.” These were gifts for him as well as those lucky enough to cross his path, if only for a moment.
Trumbull, who died on Monday at the age of 79, spoke about the correlation between state-of-the-art special effects and the illusion of time travel, when, in 1991, the four-minute, multi-million dollar ride film he directed made it to Universal Studios. “This is a new dimension of thrills and excitement that must be experienced to believe,” he said, which makes me wonder if the same might be said of a creative life well-lived.
