I filed this report for Wired News today about the Directors Guild of America’s annual Digital Day event, which gives filmmakers a look at revolutionary new movie-making gear. Future-lit legend Ray Bradbury (who hatehatehates being called a science fiction writer) spoke there.
“When I go into meetings at the big studios, I try to hide the fact that I love movies,” Ray Bradbury told an audience of filmmakers at the Directors Guild of America’s yearly Digital Day event this weekend.
“You, too, have to disguise the fact that you love making movies…. If you revealed it to them, you’d never get paid.”
Addressing an overflow crowd of more than 600 at the guild-members-only gathering, the 85-year-old author admitted to being a voracious film fan since childhood — so much so that he keeps a TV set in his home tuned in to classic movies all day.
Bradbury’s name appears in more than 50 years’ worth of writing credits for movies including It Came From Outer Space, Fahrenheit 451, and the big-screen adaptation of Moby Dick for director John Huston. But he expresses little love for some of Hollywood’s more recent big-budget blockbusters.
“I hope we start making better films,” he said, acknowledging that some of his own midcentury favorites might seem silly to audiences today.
“We’ve been making a lot of lousy ones lately. But I’m writing an article called ‘Better Silly Than Stupid,’ and anyone who’s seen Van Helsing knows what I’m talking about.”
Link to story. Image: Ray Bradbury at DGA Digital Day, courtesy Joe Coomber.