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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ghostwind" data-source="post: 1428041" data-attributes="member: 3060">--final page of the NY Times article... Among Conran's first official hires was his brother, Kevin, his longtime collaborator since the days they shared a bedroom and wore capes. He is a professional illustrator and was the film's production designer. Together, Kerry and Kevin filigreed the film with cathedral-like touches that only they and the angels will see: the ship that carried King Kong in the 1933 movie, lying on the ocean floor; a line of deactivated robots, leaning against a wall in the exact same positions the Fleischer brothers had them in their moody 1941 Superman cartoon, ''The Mechanical Monsters.'' You will not know unless I tell you that the smudges in the zeppelin cockpit are real actors, because even though you can barely see them, Kerry decided that he would not computer-generate a human being. But he was determined to computer-generate everything else. Even in the briefest close-ups, say, of Polly reaching to retrieve a blueprint from the floor, the carpet at Radio City is an effect, a computerized image based on a photograph of the actual carpet, which Kerry has never seen in person. (As much money as they have supposedly saved, I still wonder if perhaps it wouldn't have been cheaper, at least for this scene, to just buy a rug sample.) These are the types of details, superfluities and in-jokes that make up the secret language that the Conrans have been speaking since Flint, and it is, in large part, Jon Avnet's to decode. ''I am a non-nerd channeler of Kerry's vision,'' Avnet said. His pride and affection for Conran are apparent, and he expresses them restlessly, constantly -- though he also reminded me, and himself, that the movie must be more than what he calls ''boys with toys.'' ''After all this incredible technological breakthrough is said and done, how's the story?'' he asked. ''People may be impressed that it was made, but they're not going to substitute being impressed for being entertained.'' In some ways (especially with a deadline looming), the technique offers the director too much flexibility, too much opportunity to haggle over every anxious shadow. As Avnet put it, it is the ''world of pure choice.'' Conran admitted that he might have been working on the movie for 20 years had Avnet not pulled it out of him. ''We joked,'' Avnet said, ''that after the film goes in the theaters, he'll finish it again for DVD, and then five or six years later, he'll have one-quarter of the film finished the way he really likes.'' Conran walked into Avnet's office in a plain black T-shirt, looking a little apprehensive. He had agreed to watch the original six-minute short with me and Avnet, and it was clear he wasn't looking forward to it. It opens with a black-and-white version of the film's signature shot, a zeppelin docking at the Empire State. I had seen this sequence in one form or another perhaps a dozen times in the last three days. I can't begin to guess how many times Conran has seen it: airship and skyscraper, two antique promises of progress meeting to announce our final liberation from earthly concerns. The short was rudimentary compared with what I'd seen, to be sure. And Conran grimaced throughout. But I was stunned when I considered the painstaking labor with no promise of reward, or even end, in sight. And I thought of all the computers in just this building, each one thousands of times as powerful as a Mac IIci, in the hands of eager, young, lettuce-munching dreamers, and I wondered what worlds they were constructing in their spare time between snowflakes. On the screen, Sky Captain flies to the rescue. I happen to know from Kevin that it's Kerry himself behind the goggles. Naturally, he's masked. The short ended. Conran blinked a little and smiled. ''Wow,'' he said. ''That was embarrassing.'' Both Avnet and Conran are convinced that ''Sky Captain'' will usher in a new kind of filmmaking. And perhaps this will indeed change the economics of the summer blockbuster. In effect, it's an indie giant-robot movie, taking the digital-video revolution to people who, like Conran, like to push the scale button up to enormous. And you get the feeling that this is what Conran wants the movie to be judged on first -- even more than how much money it makes at the box office, or how real the robots look. It may be a newfangled movie technique, but it is a very old-fashioned movie story: a fiercely protective producer offering an unheard-of chance to a kid out of nowhere. In the end, it seems to me that this movie is not so much about ushering in the world of tomorrow as it is about realizing ''the World of Tomorrow,'' the vision that has haunted Conran, and now Avnet, for so long. When it is done, Kerry Conran may make a sequel or go on to other projects, or, as Avnet suggested, he may just want to keep working on this one. When I asked Conran what he would do on opening day, he shook his head. ''Almost my entire adult life has been leading up to this,'' he said. ''I just don't know. I only knew I wanted to do this for a long time.'' --End</blockquote>

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