Page created 22 Feb 2003 by pedro
Here's for any discussion of the 1982 documentary, TRON.
Bait away.Shredzilla: I think you confront populism first as a reaction against it, and then maybe secondly in order to learn more about it. I could be wrong though.
I got him the DVD when it first came out and watched it with him - believe it or not it was the first time I'd watched it. I liked it well enough. Jay's a nut though. He's got the movie posters from the original release and like, placards because he was working at a theater at that time.So I can't bait you much pedro, lest I unfairly stir the marital kettle.
Ladytron is a synth-diven electro-pop group from the UK. they're pretty fun. they did a gig last year where they screened TRON and they played live music over it.ladytron is playing at the metro this friday and i sorely wish i could afford it.
oh, and what is the story behind the inside-jokeish reference to TRON as "the 1982 documentary TRON"? is it just funny cause its not a documentary, or is there a story behind it?
I'm not sure what you're talking about. It was a documentary, filmed by Steven Lisberger and friends.
ED DILLINGER: WHERE IS HE NOW?
------------------------------by Bob Klaatu and Peter Cameo
Ed Dillinger made his mark in the early 80s with his meteoric rise to the top of laser-maker and security software company ENCOM, albeit through the deceitful and underhanded stealing of another software engineer's work. As explained in the 1982 Steven Lisberger documentary "TRON," young Ed Dillinger stole several video games from his ENCOM associate Kevin Flynn. Since the video game craze of the early 80s had just begun, Dillinger marketed Flynn's games as his own (with Flynn's original titles) and won a huge promotion within ENCOM's ranks. Flynn found himself out in the cold, operating a video arcade, where it was his games (stolen by Dillinger) that made the most money. Flynn could barely scrape a few quarters away for himself.
While Dillinger was rising in the ranks, he was also working on a complex security/system monitoring program called the "MCP" -- Master Control Program. It ruthlessly monitored the system software, and with advanced "Artificial Intelligence", appropriated the functions of programs it could use, and derezzed the programs whose functions it did not require. Engineers Alan Bradley, Dr. Walter Gibbs, and Dr. Lora Baines found themselves watchdogged and limited by the MCP after a break-in "forced" the MCP to tighten security.
The break-in was masterminded by none other than Kevin Flynn.
The documentary retells that Flynn, Bradley and Baines snuck into ENCOM late at night so that Flynn could have a chance (on a local terminal) to prove that the video games were his -- but the MCP had a score to settle: Flynn was digitized into the computer world, where he fought battles and met up with Alan Bradley's security program TRON, in order to free the system and destroy the MCP. When the smoke cleared, Kevin Flynn was the new CEO of ENCOM, and Ed Dillinger was in prison.
Ed Dillinger's sentence was cut short as he was released from minimum-security after just 3 short months, and his fine was paid with money that industry experts believe should have been Flynn's all along. Dillinger bounced this way and that, into and out of managerial positions, and spent a year as a homeless, alcoholic bum.
That was 17 years ago.
Once Ed got himself cleaned up and back on the wagon, he sold the Master Control Program to Burroughs (soon to become Unisys) and with that capital, found a position waiting for him at a small California computer firm -- Apple. Dillinger and whiz-kid Steve Jobs became good friends. In fact, it was Dillinger's experience with the Xerox PARC that convinced Jobs to go with an integrated GUI for Apple's new dream machine, the LISA.
The LISA was personal computing poison.
However, once his GUI was implemented in production machines, Dillinger quietly forced the young company to pay him millions of dollars in intellectual-property damages. His friendship with Jobs in shambles, Dillinger left for greener pastures.
As it turned out, those greener pastures were Packard Bell. Dillinger helped fund Packard Bell in 1986, putting its army of cheaply made and inexpensive personal computers into the hot little hands of middle class families everywhere. In fact, it was Dillinger masterminded Packard Bell's policy of planned obsolesence and warrantee-timed breakage, two powerful weapons in the Packard Bell arsenal. But, like Apple, Packard Bell was just a stepping stone for Dillinger. He sold off his stock 4 years later and moved his operations to the growing Internet.
Dillinger's days at ENCOM helped him foresee the ability of the Internet to connect people and families with businesses and banks, not to mention retail services -- and those people who were shaving the profits off of those retailers stood to grow very rich, thought Dillinger.
His first venture was an independently run gopher site that was to market lumber -- "Gopher Wood" was a resounding failure.
"I really hadn't considered much about the practicality or interest of users online in ordering lumber via the Internet. I had rather hoped that the catchy name would convince them to try my system. It was quite a spectacular failure," Dillinger admitted in a 1992 interview. Yet it was precisely this venture and failure that geared Ed Dillinger up for the coming E-conomy of the late 1990s and new millenium.
Today, Ed Dillinger is the CEO of several dot.com startups, including: yachtsonline.com, pricefind.com, deckamonth.com (a playing card subscription club), dillingersrecipes.com, carpetcity.com, diapers24-7.com, andover.net, and several "adult entertainment" ventures. Dillinger also runs a web design firm, design2000.com, and two venture software firms, MegaSoft, Inc -- a security firm specializing in Windows NT, and MasterTECH, an Artificial Intelligence house. (Neither firm has released any software to date.)
Ed Dillinger has also embarked on a brand new venture that in a May interview he called the "'f-business model' -- the logical extension of our new e-business culture. It's still very much under wraps; our legal department is working on patenting the algorithms and processes involved in entering and increasing your profitability the f-business world, so of course we're not quite ready to spread that information around just yet," Dillinger offered with a strained smile.
"I feel very optimistic about the future," Dillinger said in the same interview. "My prospects are good, the past is behind me, and the Internet is only bringing me and my goals closer together -- it's the ticket to my future. I predict that in 5 years, my ventures and I will be worth around one billion dollars. If you're smart, you'll start investing in Dillinger Enterprises now." (NASDAQ: DILL)
After all these years, the only thing that still manages to ruffle his feathers is the mention of Kevin Flynn, the boy wonder who dethroned him in 1982. When asked about Flynn, he pursed his lips tightly and responded cooly, "I have seen young Kevin only twice since the Encom hearings: once was at a pathetic consumer electronics show, and the second at Walter Gibbs' funeral in 1995. We had little to say to one another, and it has been quite some years since our interests collided. We are really in two different businesses now."
When asked if he was referring to Flynn's successfull businesses and his own Potemkin start-ups, he ended the interview with one word:
"Cute."
i get it!its actually a documentary!
But, I liked Tron as a child and I like it now. (Now that about $.02 for ya Grady)
Yeah -- the only thing I don't get is where they got the tiny cameras to go inside the computer. That's genius though!
...is the reason i decided to make science documentaries in the first place. I mean, Spinal was cute and everything, and Waiting for Guffman was pretty good, but when I saw TRON, I realized just how far the wonderful world of documentary filmmaking could go.hey, pedro, do you know if Flynn's still alive? It would be great to do a follow-up documentary on him and Dillinger.
Yeah, Dillinger's given address is a post office box in Nice, France, but the WHOIS information for deckamonth.com lists a flat in Hoboken, New Jersey. You decide where he really lives.Last I heard, Kevin was on a houseboat in Seattle. It's hard to know what he's done, because he always works under an assumed name because of all the fanboys. He's definitely had some contracts with the government, and the word on the street is that he's been involved with some game design over the last 10 years or so, but it's hard to say which games. I wouldn't be surprised if he was a consultant on TRON 2.0, which is supposed to come out this spring.
Alan and Laura are still living in the LA area with their son, Jet.
it wasn't that the lisa was a bad machine...it's just that it was a 10k$ machine