Prince is Pissed at YouTube ... More Original Content for MySpace ... Tron 2.0?

- Prince is suing YouTube.

"YouTube ... are clearly able (to) filter porn and pedophile material but appear to choose not to filter out the unauthorized music and film content which is core to their business success," a statement released on his behalf said.

Good point, Prince. How well are all those much-promised content filtering tools working at YouTube? Clearly not well enough to automatically keep people from posting videos of Britney on the VMAs (which is content owned by Viacom, YouTube's primary law-suitor.)

- 'quarterlife,' a new online video series from Marshall Herkovitz and Ed Zwick ('My So-Called Life' and 'thirtysomething'), will debut November 11th on MySpace. There will be 36 eight-minute episodes, and Herkovitz is promising that they'll spend more producing it than any Web series so far. (Is that really the right objective?) The preview clip does look sorta promising, though.

Clearly, a goal of all these Web efforts is to produce something that can later be monetized in another way ... on DVDs, foreign TV, cell phones, etc.

- Looks like the 'Tron' sequel is closer to starting production...and Steven Lisberger, director of the original, is serving as a producer. From Borys Kit's story:

When making the original, in order to convince the studio to take a chance on a first-time director, Lisberger shot a test reel, financed by the studio, involving the deadly Frisbee battle. In a case of historical synchronicity, sources said one of the things Kosinski will be doing is working on a sequence involving the movie's Light Cycles to work out his vision for the movie. Sources also said visual effects personnel, for many of whom "Tron" was an inspiration to enter the business, already are jockeying for pole position to work on the sequence.

The Wired blog has some cheeky commentary.

Tron's 25th Anniversary: A Chat with Director Steven Lisberger

An e-mail from Michael Coate reminds me that today is the 25th anniversary of the release of 'Tron' in 1982.

'Tron' was the movie that served as the "shot heard 'round the world" for computer-generated visual effects. Coate notes that 'Tron' was nominated for two Academy Awards, in sound and costume design. But it wasn't nominated for Best Visual Effects.

I had a chance to chat with 'Tron' director Steven Lisberger last month for a book project I'm wrapping up, and I asked him why that was.

"We found out that the statement that was made was that we had cheated when we used computers," he said.

Amazing.

Some other snippets from our conversation...

"When we did 'Tron,' there was very much a feeling of standing at the frontier -- that it was all possible."

"There was a spillover from the 1960s rebellion and counter-culture, and that was reflected in 'Star Wars' -- the rebels taking over the establishment. I had some of that energy. There was a sense that things were possible in Hollywood, because 'Star Wars' had gotten made."

"Even if it failed, it was gonna be revolutionary. We looked at it like a 'Fantasia' kind of thing -- this is what artists do when you give them freedom -- they go for it. What we did was impossible." He said 1100 effects shots were completed in nine months.

On the complexity of making 'Tron,' and then having Disney executives nit-pick about the final result, Lisberger said, "It was like we had just made a jet plane out of recycled Coke cans, and those guys weren't amazed that it flew, but they were asking what the meal was." Disney's legendary 2-D animators didn't offer much help throughout the production process.

Lisberger said that when 'ET' came out a few weeks before 'Tron,' Disney executives told him they wished 'Tron' had turned out more warm and fuzzy... like 'ET.' ('ET' won the Best Visual Effects Oscar for 1982.)

We talked a bit about how visual effects look today, and how they're incorporated into movies. "The technology dances and jumps through the hoops like a trained monkey," he said. "It doesn't feel dangeous. The new sense of danger is the enormous money in production and marketing, and the only thrill is, will it get its money back? There isn't the same sense that there was in the pioneering days."

These days, Lisberger is writing screenplays -- and doing some pretty amazing woodworking at his place in Santa Monica.

There's a certain thrill in that, he noted. "If that piece of wood flies off the lathe -- that's dangerous."

Late Notice: 'Tron' and 'Star Trek II' playing in Santa Monica w/ directors present

Just a quick link... if you're in the LA area, here's an option for Sunday evening: a double feature of 'Tron' and 'Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.' 'Tron' director Steven Lisberger and 'Star Trek II' director Nicholas Meyer will be there for a discussion, too.

The Aero Theatre has dubbed 1982 (the year both films were released) as "the greatest year in geek cinema." Pretty cool.