Apparently, TRON Was All About Butts [News]

A new book called “The Making of Tron: How Tron Changed Visual Effects and Disney Forever” goes in-depth into the production of the original TRON. There’s a great article in Jim Hill Media with some excerpts. While there’s a lot of great stuff in that article, I couldn’t help noticing how often problems with butts kept coming up. Two quotes stood out.

Bruce Boxleitner says:

“There were no pants. (The male costumes for TRON were) about as close to being naked as you could be. It hid nothing. Thank God we were only thirty or thirty-one years-old and in good shape. I think there was a situation where we had to wear bathrobes if we went outside or to the commissary. The old secretaries were having the vapors with these young butt cheeks standing there.”

Then there’s another part where the book discusses the problems of the lighting on the costume, specifically the butt. Harrison Ellenshaw, the visual effects supervisor, explained:

“Steve Lisberger [writer, director] was in dailies one day and noted that because there was so much black circuitry on Bruce Boxleitner’s original costume butt, the final shots as finished made Tron’s butt glow a lot.”

Glenn Campbell, the animation compositor, said:

“All the guys would be running down the hallway and they’d be looking like blue butt baboons because they have this glowing a**!…I still have daily reports that say this shot approved, this shot approved, this shot needs butt grads. [Which] meant that that a shot had to go back and someone has to go through every frame, by hand, and airbrush a darkening density on a guy’s a** so it doesn’t glow as much.”

[Via jimhillmedia.com]

If you love TRON, you should check out the evolution of TRON vehicles.