Ray Harryhausen and some of his creations

But not everyone has abandoned stop motion — James and the Giant Peach director Henry Selick, for example.
HARRYHAUSEN: Henry's Selick's technique is strictly puppets. Just like Aardman Animation [producers of Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit], they're stylized puppets. I worked with George Pal [director of the 1960 Time Machine] for two years in the early days, and he would have his figures pre-animated by an animator who does cartoon work, then he'd glue them to a piece of wood and cut them out with a band saw. He did 25 separate figures to make one step [on film]. There wasn't much creativity in that for the actual animator. But I learned patience working with that technique. I prefer the [famed animator Willis] O'Brien technique. In The Lost World, he made stars of the dinosaurs. How many people remember who was in The Lost World? But you remember the dinosaurs.

Were you just a special-effects-guy-for-hire back in the early days, or did you have more of a hand in developing your projects?
HARRYHAUSEN: For 20 Million Miles to Earth, I originally brought the story in, but at that time I was very modest. It took me 50 years to learn that "modesty" is a dirty word in Hollywood. But I always worked with the writer directly, and many times I'd bring in the basic idea. I originally had a three-page outline for 20 Million Miles to Earth, which took place in Chicago with the rocket ship crashing into Lake Michigan. But then I thought, "I'd like a trip to Rome." [laughs] So I got my trip by switching locations. We found the right location and made new ruins among the old.

Which movies or characters of yours proved to be the most challenging?
HARRYHAUSEN: [Animating] multiple figures was a big challenge. Usually, we only had one figure in our pictures. When we did Jason [and the Argonauts], there was also a strict censorship at that time, and you couldn't have rotting corpses coming out of the ground. Later on — my god! The things you see today! [laughs] Enough to frighten the Devil. But at that time, we didn't want to get an "X" [rating], so we had clean-cut skeletons in the daylight. But we don't make horror films, we make fantasy films.

Are you amazed that your films continue to inspire?
HARRYHAUSEN: I think our pictures are more appreciated today than when they first came out. [Jason] was completely ignored. The Academy ignored it; it wasn't even nominated. But today, it's a classic. Nothing like it has ever been put on the screen.

[At this point, Harryhausen's manager informs him that "someone" would like to say hello. Enter Ray Bradbury.]