William Joyce talks 'Metropolis,' opening June 18

Written by Alexandyr Kent June, 11 2010 2:45 PM

Author, illustrator and moviemaker William Joyce loves a mad genius. And on June 18 at 8 p.m., he'll get a chance to publicly celebrate Fritz Lang by introducing the restored version of "Metropolis." Joyce's Moonbot Studios is sponsoring a weeklong run of the classic (June 18-24).

For the Big Picture, I spoke to Joyce about the significance of the 1927 sci-fi masterwork.

It's not hard to see how the visual landscape of "Metropolis" underlies  futurescapes seen in Joyce's "Robots" (2005) and "Meet the Robinsons" (2007). "Metropolis" has also influenced countless other moviemakers who admire Lang's Expressionist masterpieces.

"There are certain movies that sort of create the language of film," Joyce said. "And it is an ever-changing language. And 'Metropolis' is one that gave us so much of what is the DNA and alphabet of movies now. There had been epics before 'Metropolis,' but there had never been a science fiction epic."

Joyce also noted that Lang also pioneered the spy movie ("Spies," 1928), the psychological thriller ("M," 1931), and even the fantasy epic ("Die Nibelugen," 1924).

You can tune into our conversation at 4:32 p.m. today on Red River Radio. Or you can download the mp3 here, or subscribe to the iTunes podcast here.

IMAGE: Affectionately borrowed from Moonbot's blog.