Westworld

Michael Crichton was directing for the cinema for the first time, after one television film, and said he had not particularly wanted science fiction: it was the only way a studio would let him direct. Every major studio passed except MGM. Producer Paul Lazarus says Yul Brynner took the Gunslinger for 75,000 dollars, wearing near enough his Chris Adams costume from The Magnificent Seven. Shooting took 30 days, among the last on the MGM backlot before it was sold to developers and demolished. The technical landmark is processed imagery, not generated: frames shot for the android viewpoint were colour separated and rebuilt as coarse pixels. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory quoted 9 months and 200,000 dollars for two minutes, so John Whitney Jr. did it at Information International, coming to about 2 minutes 31 seconds. All three nominations lost: Sleeper took the 1974 Hugo, and Soylent Green the Nebula, then called Best Dramatic Presentation, plus best science fiction film at the 2nd Saturn Awards. A good fit if you want to watch the breakdown spread across the park’s three worlds, knowing Crichton rebuilt the idea in Jurassic Park. Not for viewers who find the last stretch slow once it narrows to a chase; Crichton wrote that he recut the film because his first assembly struck him as long and boring.