“Tell them all they love will die...”

I always was aware as a child of a strange melancholy in grown-ups, especially elderly grown-ups. You could see it in their eyes. There seemed to be a sadness attached to them that children weren’t supposed to be privy to. I would often catch my Grandma gazing out of her window at the sky with a heartbreaking sadness in her eye quite startling to me. I would try to retreat from these moments when I encountered them for fear of intruding. But it seemed to surround me everywhere I went and it was always of the eyes.

Now I’m a grown-up and I have it too. And I don’t suppose I could ever explain it to a child either. It’s the effect of life lived and the culmination of stepping through a long series of doors which you can never return through, an awareness that all the things that you took to be permanent proved to be anything but. When you start out you are told that life is precious and wonderful, a thing to be celebrated but it takes time to appreciate that it’s the life in you and others that is precious and not life the experience; that life, the journey, the concept, the ride is neither precious, sentient, compassionate or kind, it just is. A relentless treadmill, constantly changing.

The world that you have known will thin with time, it will become less certain, it will fill more and more with ghosts until you, yourself are one. A cherry blossom lost to the dust. There is nothing to be done about it. I heard this week that Douglas Trumbull has passed away. It’s strange to think how hearing news like that about somebody you’ve never met or known can make you feel so sad. It’s strange how the idea of them can affect your life so much and it can feel as though they are somehow part of you. Doug Trumbull was a true genius of cinema. He will, I expect, be most remembered for the groundbreaking and pioneering special effects that he created but he was also a film maker and director and a designer of interactive simulations.

It’s hard to describe to somebody brought up only in a digital age just how inventive and revolutionary physical movie effects were from the late 60’s into the 80’s, just how exciting that world was to my brother and I reading about kit-bashing, motion-control, traveling mattes and go-motion. Doug Trumbull was such a huge part of that revolution. From 2001 through to the visual effects masterpiece of Blade Runner and beyond.

Blade Runner itself is still utterly faultless in terms of visual effects and in my opinion has never been surpassed. Like the movie's incredible Vangelis soundtrack the visual effects transform the movie in terms of atmosphere and texture to a degree that they become intrinsic to the entire experience. A perfect example of separate creative components knitting into one organism so much bigger than the sum of its parts. The first time we saw that movie as kids, my bother and I were completely blown away, we literally forgot what day of the week it was when we left the cinema. And as the passing weeks went by visions of that stunning opening and snippets of melody from the score would drift back to us like aftershocks. Having Douglas Trumbull’s name attached to a production was always a thing of great excitement for us. It is as a film-maker that I will remember him most and in particular for Silent Running. Silent Running is a true masterpiece and it's been of real importance to me since I first saw it on television as a child of seven or eight. It’s a film without peer. A grown-up Science fiction movie with sadness in its eyes. The tragedy and pathos of Lowell, his desperation and horror at what he’s done, what he felt had to be done. The sheer utter loneliness of that character seems to echo inside me more and more as time goes on. And my god! those robots…

Trumbull took Science Fiction out of genre and childishness. He made a mature art movie set in space.

Silent Running had such a profound impact on me as a child. A film ahead of its time in terms of what it has to say and the way in which it says it... although was it? Actually, when I think of it I can’t imagine a movie that mature or thoughtful being produced in Hollywood today so perhaps that’s misleading, perhaps it wasn't ahead of its time, perhaps it only could have been made at that moment in time.

Bruce Dern is stunning as Lowell, his performance is an overlooked tour de force. You completely believe in him, you completely feel his pain. And Peter Schickele’s wonderful score has never been far from my turntable since I bought the album of it from the record shop that used to stand next to the Regal cinema in Shanklin when I was a child. Douglas Trumbull, Bruce Dern, Peter Schickele, Joan Baez. What a wonderful, magical set of ingredients.

So I would just like to say farewell to Douglas Trumbull and thank him for all the wonder and magic that he created and for the huge impact his work has had on me. He didn’t just bring magic and wonder to the films that he made and worked on though, he brought soul and I suppose that is what has inspired me most.

I am very sorry not to be sharing the world with him any more but he’s gone to tend his garden in the sky and I wish him well on his travels in the next world. Douglas Hunt Trumbull 1942-2022