For Bradbury, his master ability to weave stories of the fantastic, terrifying, touching and thought-provoking helped elevate the genres of fantasy and science fiction to a new level of appreciation with his countless short stories, numerous screenplays and more than 50 books, including Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles. Meanwhile, in Hollywood, Harryhausen would blend his love of fantastic creatures and cinema, becoming the champion and foremost artisan of stop-motion animation for three decades in film. His jaw-dropping integration of intricate models into live-action footage with films like Jason and the Argonauts, First Men in the Moon and Clash of the Titans spurred the imaginations of countless filmmakers today, from Tim Burton to Steven Spielberg and Sam Raimi (to name only a few).

Today their combined ages give them more than 170 years of incredible experience and stories to share with contemporary audiences, who are still captivated by these titans of creative expression. Happily, even into their advanced 80s, both Rays are still animated, enthused and plenty feisty when traveling down memory lane together. The two living legends sat down with SCI FI Weekly in San Diego recently for a conversation about their friendship, their creative inspirations and the secret key to artistic success.How did you meet?

Harryhausen: Oh, way back in 1938, I think.

Bradbury: That's right, yeah.

Harryhausen: At the Science Fiction League. We met through our mutual love for dinosaurs. He was going to write the great dinosaur epic, and I was going to animate it. We never got to work together except by chance on The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. What was the movie going to be about?

Harryhausen: We were going to make an epic!

Bradbury: When you are 18 years old, you don't know! [Laughs.]What inspired you as artists?

Harryhausen: King Kong (1933) inspired us both to appreciate dinosaurs, and The Lost World (1925). They were unusual films at the time, The Lost World particularly in the silent film era. Nothing like it had been done. People believed things. Today you can put different heads on actors and create people that were dead long ago!What were some of the other films that influenced you after King Kong?

Harryhausen: She (1935) influenced me enormously. You see shades of She in First Men in the Moon (1964). I was so impressed by giant staircases going up!

Bradbury: My first influence was Lon Chaney. I was 3 years old. I remember when I was born! I have total recall from the moment of birth on, so that makes me a goddamn good writer, doesn't it? [Laughs.] When I saw Chaney in The Hunchback of Notre Dame I thought, "Oh God, I have to grow up and be a hunchback." Then when I was 6, I saw The Phantom of the Opera and I fell more in love with Chaney. In that same year, I saw The Lost World and dinosaurs became a constant in our life. See, these things teach you about love. When you are young and you fall in love, stay in love with it for a lifetime and create out of that. I knew I was going to be a dinosaur when I was 6!

I also collected comic strips, and Buck Rogers influenced my life when I was 9. When I was 12 years old, I did acting on the stage. I went to a radio station and got the job of reading the comic strips to the public every Saturday night, playing the parts. But the real thing was my pay—how did I get paid? I got free tickets to King Kong, Wax Museum and The Mummy. You can't do better than that, can you? I was rich!

When they did the 50th anniversary of King Kong some years ago, they invited Ray and me to Grauman's Chinese Theater because they did a re-premiere. They sent a big yellow 1928 Packard with a double windshield. We arrived like two celebrities. We walked up into the arms of Kong! Then a woman runs out of the audience and jumps up and kisses us both—it's Fay Wray! Talk about rewards! To hell with the money. We've had wonderful lives.Are you surprised that Kong is still inspiring filmmakers today, like Peter Jackson?

Harryhausen: Well, he did a little different interpretation. Anybody that goes to see a film called King Kong, they're not particularly interested in Ann Darrow's past. [Laughs.] She entertained the gorilla. It was well done but a different interpretation. The beauty about the first Kong was not only the technical achievement but the story structure. It was compact. There wasn't a superfluous word of dialogue or cut in that picture. It all fit together perfectly. It took you from the mundane world into the most outrageous fantasy that's ever been put on the screen.

Bradbury: And it introduced us to another love. ... Music didn't exist in films until around 1932 with King Kong. Max Steiner did the score there, and we fell in love with his music and all the other great composers that came into Hollywood in the next nine years.

Harryhausen: I know when I saw King Kong ... In high school I took a course in music appreciation, and I think King Kong did more for me than taking that course! [Laughs.] I realized the Wagnerian undertones in the score made the image. It's what music is for, and we always tried to get the best composers for our films. I was hoping that Max Steiner would do one film [of ours], but we never quite achieved it. When they sold The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms to Warner Brothers, I thought, "Oh, good! Max Steiner is going to rescore it!" The first score was for $5,000—the composer as well as the orchestra was supplied! You can imagine what kind of score it was. The composer used ballet music for the octopus fight! What's lacking in filmmaking today?

Harryhausen: I think it's the basis of storytelling. Every picture should have some form. Today characters are introduced and you don't know why they are connected with the leading person. I know people are jaded today, but when I grew up movies were an essential part. You'd wait eagerly for Saturday night, where you'd see the latest movie, and they weren't as plentiful as they are today. So people get a little jaded, and they always want something new, so they settle for things that don't have a story!Mr. Harryhausen, from a sculpting standpoint, what was the most challenging creature for you to make?

Harryhausen: I don't know. There were multiple creatures. Medusa [from Clash of the Titans (1981)] had 12 snakes in her hair, and I didn't want to end up animating gossamer gowns as we see in most illustrations of Medusa, so I gave her a snake's tail so she could be a menace from a distance. Did you do a lot of research to find inspiration?

Harryhausen: Yes, I tried to go into the classics for the structure they had. The classical concept [for Medusa] was a pretty woman with a pretty face with snakes in her hair. That wasn't suitable for our project. We wanted to make Medusa a rather demonic character [he purrs evilly], so you believe her eyes could really turn your eyes to stone. When you deal with mythology, it's very fragmented, so you have to borrow. We borrowed from the Hercules legend—the seven-headed hydra. In some legends, there were 12 or 15 heads, but I thought we'd cut it down to seven. And that was quite a challenge to animate, because if the phone rang, and you had one head going forward and the next head going backward, you had to remember which head was going in what direction.Did you have a trick for that?

Harryhausen: Sometimes if I went to lunch, I would write a note. [Laughs.]Did your sculpting materials change over the years?

Harryhausen: Oh yes, new materials were developed. We had to use foam rubber, which shrinks. I always had the model in clay a little stouter than they looked on film, because with the shrinkage they would shrink 10 to 15 percent. You didn't want them to look too skinny, so you made them rather fat. Some of the stand-ins that we used on the hard rubber are a little stouter than the actual model.

We used foam rubber, and you had to mix it in a bowl and beat it up with an egg beater so you could get it foamy. It was basically latex. Then you had to cook it for two and a half hours. Depending on how long you cooked it, it would rot within a week or a month. Some of the figures have lasted a long time because they were cooked properly. Today, though, you have different techniques with plastics that are very good. In the book, we wrote a chapter that says, "It's fine material, but it will rot!" Just like we are fine material, but we will rot, too. Mr. Bradbury, so many of your stories have been adapted into film and television. Are there any of your favorites that you would like to see?

Bradbury: One is being made in Japan right now, "The Foghorn". We did The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, but they only used 40 seconds, so in Japan now, they are doing the whole story. You'll finally see the dinosaur in the lighthouse completely.

Harryhausen: Wasn't that a short story?

Bradbury: It was a short story that I published in "The Golden Apples of the Sun" in 1953. I gave a copy to John Huston and he read it, and as a result I got the job of writing Moby Dick.Mr. Harryhausen, do you look at your films now and see things that you'd like to change?

Harryhausen: Oh yes, I shudder sometimes and say, "If I'd only taken 10 minutes more, it could have been better!" We were at a disadvantage because when you duplicate film, rather than CGI technique, you can't go over it too many times, because it looks too dupey. It's a different technique today. We weren't trying for ultra-realism, because I think that defeats the whole point of fantasy. I get a lot of fan letters saying they prefer our technique to CGI. I'm grateful over the years different generations are able to see our films, and they seems to appreciate them more today. Are there contemporary filmmakers and writers that you admire?

Harryhausen: Very rarely.

Bradbury: There was a film about [Sir Arthur] Conan Doyle and Houdini looking for fairies with Mel Gibson [FairyTale: A True Story], and they did a damn good job. It's very evocative ... about the impossible. These grown men that should be more intelligent are looking for imaginary creatures. It's a beautiful film.What do fans ask you most when they meet you?

Harryhausen: I get this strange question all the time of "What is creativity?" How do you answer a question like that? It depends on the time, your point of view, your experiences. It's just the way you see things.

Bradbury: The answer is love. I get letters all the time asking for advice. I give them very simple advice: Love what you do and do what you love. If your life is complete with that, you can't go wrong. Money isn't guaranteed, but that has nothing to do with it. Love makes you love dinosaurs, and along the way I fell in love with carnivals, Chaplin's films, Lon Chaney, Blackstone the magician ... I ran up on stage with him and helped him disappear. He gave me a rabbit and I decided I wanted to become a magician, and that's what I became, didn't I? [Laughs.]

Harryhausen: Don't let anyone talk you out of it. Sometimes people can talk you out of it, so working alone you try it and say, "If I succeed, I'm a success."

Bradbury: When I was 32 years old, Universal called me and wanted me to write a screenplay. I had never done one. They had an idea about a meteor striking Earth. They were going to pay me $300 a week for about five weeks. I said, "I'll do two scripts for you—one for you and one for me—because your idea isn't quite right." I said I'd spend two weeks and write a treatment for you and one for me on the same idea. They said, "Won't your idea be better?" I said, "Yes, it will." [Laughs.] "But if you won't let me do this, then I won't do the job. At the end of two weeks, if you don't pick the right one, I'll leave. They picked the one that I liked, so I stayed!" So you pick the way to go and you don't listen to those other people, because if I had, they would have made It Came From Outer Space as a bad film. It's not a great film. It's a very nice film. They put the monsters too far out in the front of the camera. If you took scissors and cut two seconds out of the film, you would improve it, because they are only on the screen for two seconds! [Laughs.]