Jaws 3D par Romain Néophyte

Quoi de plus normal qu’ une légende de la 3D rende hommage au pionnier du cinéma stéréoscopique? Lenny Lipton fait partie des poids lourds de la discipline. De StereoGraphics à Oculus3D en passant par Real D Cinema, c’ est pas moins de 30 ans passés au service du procédé. A l’ occasion du décès de Chris Condon survenu le dimanche 19 décembre, Lenny Lipton a accepté de se livrer aux lecteurs de www.jaws-3d.com :
« Chris was his own worst enemy — if ever that expression had any meaning it applies to Chris.

From the moment I met him he revealed things about himself that were imprudent but endearing. I had a business relationship that lasted for several years and was frustrating and not financially profitable. But I learned a lot. In that time he made me part of his family and taught me a lot about the business of stereoscopic displays.

He never stopped trying. as of a few months ago, when he was walking with difficulty and he attempted to sell me an inventory of 400 stereoscopic lenses that he had manufactured in a deal for India. He built these on his own nickel without getting an advance payment and then got stuck. The disaster, which is typical Chris, occurred in the wake of a riot in a theater in India that was using one of his projection lenses. The movie was so terrible that the patrons not only demanded their money back they tore the theater apart.

That scotched his ability to sell more lenses to India and stuck him with a giant inventory that for 30 years he attempted to unload. I remember sitting in Encino in front of a coffee shop on a sunny day telling Chris that I was not going to buy his 400 lenses.

My last memories of him are of him in the hospital and the convalescent home. He was at the point where you think things like: why keep somebody alive when they have already entered the twilight zone?He was a friend, he is gone, many people will miss him. And I am one of them« .

Lenny Lipton avait collaboré avec Chris Condon sur l’ excellent Dogs of Hell/Rottweiler (Rottweiler: les chiens de l’ enfer en France) réalisé en 1982 par Worth Keeter. Profitons justement de l’ occasion pour vous livrer une anecdote de Lipton plutôt sympathique concernant le lien entre ce film et notre Jaws 3D:  » (…) A year later I sat in a screening room in the shadow the Black Tower at Universal Studios, watching a print of Rottweiler with the head of Universal Optical, Pete Comendini, and the man who was going to be the director of Jaws 3D, Joe Alves. I was peddling my services and Condon’s lenses for use on the new production, which promised to be the biggest budget stereoscopic film in years. Pete and Joe sat in the row directly behind me and as the film unfolded they began to speak over the dialogue. I turned around and saw Joe removing his cardboard 3D glasses: “The 3D is great. This is the best I’ve seen. Easy on the eyes and the effects are great. Much better than anything else that has come through the door. You would be amazed what crap people have shown us. But the picture itself, it is shit,” he said.

“Yes,” Pete offered, “This is a terrible picture. I don’t think we can show it to the guys in the Black Tower.” The Black Tower is the office building on the edge of the Universal lot. They felt that given the poor quality of the picture, they could not screen it for the executives who would make the final decision about who would get the job of doing the 3D on the film.

Another year later I sat in a mammoth theater in the outskirts of Detroit wearing cardboard 3D glasses watching Jaws 3D. This film was just as crappy as Rottweiler but the 3-D was a disgrace. My feeling was that I was sitting through one of the worst movies ever made with technical mistakes so serious that it was only with an effort of will that I was able to continue to look at the screen ».

 N’ hésitez pas à visiter le site de Lenny Lipton pour en savoir davantage sur son travail. Encore merci pour son intervention.