It was a happy night for George Lucas and his Industrial Light & Magic crew at the 5th annual Visual Effects Society Awards at the Kodak Grand Ballroom. Not only did "Pirates of the Caribbean" sweep six awards, and ILM's eight-time Oscar winner Dennis Muren get the VES's lifetime achievement award, but the final awards were presented by a former ILM hand, "Heroes" star Masi Oka, who thanked ILM "for not letting me be a starving actor." Oka said afterwards that when he worked in vfx, he used to get very excited when an actor would come to see a shot, and now that he's on a show, even the old hands at ILM treat him a little differently. "I wanted things to stay the same, but..." he said.
The gathering included Lucas himself, who presented Muren's lifetime kudo. Lucas said that he considers Muren a peer but that Muren's hair had grown white from all the times Lucas had beaten him up to get what he wanted. On which movie did he beat him up the worst? "The first 'Star Wars,'" said Lucas after a pause. "I beat him up pretty bad on that one."
Also in attendance were "Pirates" helmer Gore Verbinski, vfx legend Phil Tippett, Pixar's Andrew Stanton, JibJab's Evan Spiridellis and even Apple computer co-founder Steve Wozniak. "Pirates" vfx supervisor John Knoll talked Macintoshes with Woz, and later told Variety that "(Wozniak) is a hero of mine from way back. My first exposure to a real live computer was in 1978. My Dad bought an Apple II and it changed my life." Woz, for his part, said "I'm almost trembling" to meet so many vfx pros. "Their movies have affected my life more than the computer has affected theirs," he said.
Muren and the older presenters, including Lucas and Landis, noted how different the huge and elegant gathering was from their early days, when there was no visual effects industry, only a handful of "special effects" people who shared their work in hole-in-the-wall theaters. Presenter Landis got perhaps the biggest reaction of the night, noting that when he started in movies, most exploitation films were pretty good until the monster or spaceship showed up. Now, he said, the effects are brilliant; "the difference is the movies are shit." Afterward Tippett sought out Landis to call the speech "music to my heart." Landis, tongue firmly in cheek, said of Tippett "This guy's an asshole, but he's one of the most brilliant guys I know. It doesn't make up for him being an asshole, but he truly is extraordinary." (D. Cohen)
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