Posts tagged Jeff Bridges

So for the very few of you who are new…You’ll notice that I’ve been a little heavy on Tron Legacy.  I’ll try not to take it personally that you haven’t scrolled back to August to learn that I work for The Walt Disney Company.  It’s cool.  Even if I weren’t here, I’d be really excited about this film.

Now that I’ve seen it, I can share with you a bit why.

When “Tron” came out in 1982, I was 12. A few months before it came out, a man I’d never seen before came into my classroom at school to introduce a new “computer science class”. There were three Apple II e computers in a small room. the man asked if anyone in my class of 38 were interested in signing up for the class. It would be an after-school program. Two of us raised our hands. I don’t know where Desmond is now, but he was a really bright guy who was very well encouraged by his parents to do anything math and science related. My parents encouraged me to do anything creative. I fell in love with science on my own.

So Desmond and I started in the first computer class at IS 318 in Brooklyn New York, a school now known for it’s championship chess club. I learned to program in BASIC and then learned about all the possible artistic applications. I spent most of my afternoons in an arcade halfway between school and home ( I am still one of the best Defender players in the tri-state area) and my Walkman was always filled with tapes of electronic music (or hip-hop) so I was clearly into the application of electronics into pop culture. In short – I was hooked. I saved gift money and my mom got me a Commodore 64. I had a Cap’n Crunch whistle. That’s all you need to know.

That summer, I was watching TV and a trailer came on for a new movie coming in July. It was Tron. A movie about a dude who gets teleported into a computer world. And the “Switched On Bach” composer (Wendy Carlos) did the music?! I was sold.

So there I went, opening day, at a movie theater on Fulton Street that’s long gone now…I saw “Tron”. The theater was half full. Mostly older people. Nobody of color except me and a Korean kid who was around the same age as me.

I had seen two Star Wars films by that time. But this movie affected my life in a way that no other set of moving pictures had since Star Trek:TOS. My mind raced. Was matter teleportation possible? Was it really just a matter of irradiating sections of your body part by part and storing the broken up pieces in the data stream? Reminder: I was 12 years old. ON the train ride home I decided two things: I was going to learn to play a synthesizer, and computers were going to be a major part of my life.

Fast forward 28 years and I have done both. I’ve built websites, sold websites, I’ve programmed and played synthesizer in bands, on remixes…you get the idea. A weird B-movie inspired me to do great things in real life. And I did them. Who will be inspired by this sequel? I don’t know. But I do know that this crazy story has become a part of my lifelong dedication to the pursuit of happiness and perfection in sight, sound, and science. And so I will continue to champion this story’s impact.