The Buzz: May 2005

Voice of Tony the Tiger dies

Thurl Ravenscroft died at the age of 91 on Sunday from prostate cancer. He enjoyed a long career as a voice actor including The Captain in 101 Dalmatians and singing You're a Mean One, Mister Grinch in How the Grinch Stole Christmas. You may not have realized that he was also the voice of Tony the Tiger--the animated spokesperson of Kellogg's Frosted Flakes cereal--a role he has had since the 1950s. He joked in an interview, "I'm the only man in the world that has made a career with one word: Grrrrreeeat!"

posted: May 24, 2005 by athena

Reclaiming Felix

The State Library of New South Wales, in Sydney Australia is presently hosting an exhibition titled Reclaiming Felix the Cat.

For 50 years Felix was believed to be the creation of Australian Pat Sullivan - until 1977, 34 years after Sullivan's death, when Sullivan animator and cartoonist Otto Messmer claimed to have been Felix's real creator. This claim was supported by John Canemaker's documentary and book, and is now widely accepted as the true version of events - at least outside of Australia, where it is still a sore point with some fans.

Judith Nelson, who curated the exhibition, researched Sullivan's history and original works, and claims that Sullivan created Felix in 1917, years before he appeared in cartoon form. The exhibition runs until August. For the record, yours truly does not have an opinion on the subject.

posted: May 17, 2005 by lupercal

Et tu, Aardman?

You would think that the old-world British charm and defiantly claymated history of Aardman would be the last fortress for old animation fans weary of 3D. Think again, apparently.

With a long and proud history of emphatically British claymation, and their famously retro Wallace and Gromit films, Aardman aren’t just an institution, an eccentricity, and a company boasting enormous talent - they've always seemed like the last fortress of old-school 'values' as the unstoppable beast of 3D and CGI gobbles up traditional, hands-on production techniques.

Or at least it seemed that way. Having already joined forces with Dreamworks, Aardman's two latest projects are both CGI animations. First there was the announcement of the 3D Flushed Away (already being referred to as "Dreamworks' 'Flushed Away'"), and now Aardman have revealed their newest work in progress: "CROOD AWAKENING, a CG comedy to be written by Monty Python's John Cleese" (joblo.com).

Apart from the news that Flushed Away isn't to be just a one-off 3D experiment by Aardman - and who's to say that 3D shouldn't subsume every major studio in the world; perhaps I'm just perverse about this - there is the worrying news of John Cleese as writer.

Why is this worrying? Because it sounds troubling similar to Dreamworks' recruitment of Jerry seinfeld to write Bee-Movie. Seinfeld hasn't done anything of note since his eponymous series finished (and Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm is making it increasingly plain who the real comic talent behind that show was anyway). Similarly, John Cleese is basically a superannuated comedian whose only funny post-Python writing credit was A Fish Named Wanda in 1988.

I worry that Aardman are going down the same path as their bedfellows Dreamworks, whose recent recruitment of well known classical actor Justin Timberlake for Shrek 3 has already been hailed as a coup by... actually, nobody. Is this the idea now? Get some famous person with no talent, and a comedian who's famous but stopped being funny years ago, and rely on them to pull in the punters? Is there so little upcoming acting and writing talent out there that we have to rely on this formula?

Perhaps I'm just being a pessimist. Aardman have yet to make a bad film, and as for 3D - well that's progress, I guess. I'd just like a little variety.

posted: May 14, 2005 by lupercal

Don Hertzfeldt Interview

Oscar-nominated director Don Hertzfeldt talks to Keyframe's Tim Gadd (Lupercal), about The Meaning of Life, and other such things.

I recently 'talked' with Don Hertzfeldt, director of cult favourites like Lily and Jim, Billy's Balloon, the Oscar-nominated Rejected, and the newly released The Meaning of Life. Don's cartoons have won a gazillion awards (actually, something over 100, but near enough), and with Mike Judge he's co-founder of The Animation Show - a touring cinematic festival of short animations.

Initially we planned to do this interview 'live' by some means, but when it became apparent that we were both too technologically confused to actually accomplish this, we decided to do it via email.

All images © Don Hertzfeldt and Bitter films. Used by kind permission.

TG: When I pitched this interview to you, I told you that here at Keyframe we get more search hits for 'Don Hertzfeldt' than for any other person. I didn't mention that we're actually getting more hits for you than for any movie. Last month you were held out of top spot by the new Bambi film, and the month before that it was Mulan II, but this month you've totally creamed everybody and everything else. Hugely. So, how does it feel to be bigger than Pixar? And Soyuzmultfilm?

DH: i lost out to mulan 2????

TG: When you started at UC Santa Barbara, I presume you were studying film - not specifically animation, though you had made animations before enrolling. Had you always intended to work with animation, and are you glad you got into it through a more general film-oriented path?

DH: yeah i was definitely studying live action film in school, UCSB is really great for cinema history, theory, that sort of thing. i've never taken an animation class anywhere. i still do study live action stuff much more than i do animation.. though i guess it's like the old saying, the guy who mops the floor of the bowling alley every night isn't going to want to go bowling very much. i don't remember, but i guess i did sort of think i'd end up in live action.. maybe i still will, but i had been animating since i was 15 and it just made the most sense to go that route in college. when i found out i could do an animated piece to complete my beginning production class, i was like... this COUNTS? and that ended up being ah, l'amour.

TG: Are you still interested in the more tactile, mechanical aspects of film-making, as opposed to say working with software? e.g. most animation seems to try to disguise or eliminate any physical, mechanical origins and present a perfect illusion. Your work often breaks the 'fourth wall' in that respect - in the same way that say, Terry Gilliam's Python animations or some Aardman shorts would, with the animator's hand entering the frame. To put it another way, you can't scrunch up the paper if you're using rendering software (unless you render scrunching up paper, but that's too bizarre to think about)

DH: yeah i just prefer working on stuff with my hands instead of a mouse.. for me its kinda like a choice between painting with a real brush versus a simulated one that you hold with chopsticks.. it's just a weird barrier between me and the piece. i don't think one set of tools is necessarily better than the other, you should just use what you're most comfortable with, and what serves your piece the best. i think computer animators sort of get the short end of the stick to some degree, since they work just as hard as traditional animators do yet there's so little understanding of how computers work that i think a lot of the awe is lost on most audiences today. years ago it seems like people used to go, "wow, how'd they do that?" a lot more, and have this great sense of wonder when they saw stuff like star wars. nowadays audiences all just seem to shrug and say, "i guess they just used a computer".. as though there's no reason to wonder anymore "how they did that"... as though computers have a "make art" button on them or something.

but i just like real ink on real paper with real light hitting a real camera lens.. and if there's a problem with my camera i can fix it with my hands instead of "file not found" or something.

there's a certain quirkiness to these materials that is extremely difficult to simulate digitally. there are inherent flaws all over this old fashioned process that i think are charming and extremely attractive to the brain in some way. humans are always going to be more attracted to the subtle flaws in things rather than perfection - we're attracted to the flaws and the uneven edges and the quirks, because these things make objects and art more like ourselves. we can all relate to those things. i can't relate to visual perfection with glossy chrome coating on everything. 99% of 2d and 3d computer animation looks the same to me - very, very few people seem to be doing truly new things despite this incredible software at their command.

TG: You said something once that resonated with me - about how photo-realism in 3D animation bugs you. I had the same reaction watching 'Finding Nemo'. There was a scene of Sydney Harbour that was visually indistinguishable from a high res photograph. I thought, why did they animate this? Why didn't they just stick a movie camera out of a window? Do you think people are going to get bored with this sort of thing, or are we stuck with this schizophrenic sort of pursuit where you create the most realistic environment possible, and then fill it with characters who couldn't exist in it?

DH: yeah i don't know how long the silly holy quest for photorealism is going to last. photorealism has never been the goal of animation. we've already got photorealism, we all know what outside looks like. the point of animation is to break away from live action and to dive into the artist's head. that's why most "photoreal" CG stuff bores me to tears.. there's no imagination in those visuals.. you're stripping yourself of the full potential of the medium.

TG: In Ah, L'Amour, men have their heads chainsawned off, skin ripped off and so forth, and there's violence in Billy's Balloon and Rejected, too, but it doesn't disturb me. I mean, there's a show called Happy Tree Friends - have you seen it? It's just short after short where cute, furry animals get predictably, endlessly blown up and dismembered. I hate it. So how do you make violence funny and not overtly offensive? Or how do you balance the tension between the two? I assume this is something you must have thought about when making those earlier films.

DH: i haven't seen the happy tree thing.. but you're right, there is a very fine line. john cleese said something very true about dark comedy, that it's not hard to watch when the black knight gets his limbs chopped off because the black knight's not expressing any pain. and there's definitely something to that. billy's balloon wouldn't work at all if billy was crying or suffering through everything.. his deadpan is what makes it work as a comedy. or more directly, it's what makes it a comedy at all. all of the violence in rejected and the other films - nobody ever really suffers, it's all just absurd and silly. the l'amour guy is right back on his feet again every time. i do think there is a certain innocence to our characters and a certain innocent charm to our stuff.. they're probably too self-deprecating and reflexive to take themselves seriously.

TG: It seems to me a lot of what makes Billy's Balloon work is comic timing and anticipation. Is that fair? Is that something you were conscious of when you were working on it, or any of your movies?

DH: i don't know how conscious i am of those sorts of things, but i agree.. i'd also add that rejected only works because the sound and editing in it are top notch too. really, everything else that works in those two particular films is secondary to sound and editing.

TG: Your films have had a very 'hands-on' approach, because, I suppose, you didn't have much choice. You talk, for instance, about the tedium of the lip-synch and the sheer amount of drawing in Lily and Jim. Now that you've grown up directing this way, can you imagine delegating work to other crew, if someone threw a bucketload of money at you? I remember Ralph Bakshi talking about how it'd be fine if he had a budget like Disney and could just walk into a room and point at drawings and say "I like that" or "I don't like that" and then go home - but Bakshi did everything himself because he had to. You're probably an even more extreme example of that. Are you always going to be in there getting your hands dirty, even if you don't have to?

DH: sure, i'd love to have a crew. but a crew would require a larger budget and a probably some studio backing, and well, there it is. i spent a lot of time a few years ago meeting with all of the studios trying to get this or that animated feature film off the ground, but soon decided my time was better spent just continung to do what i do for as long as i can, rather than waste years groveling after something uncertain.. i'm very lucky to be able to make these films solo and still enjoy doing it. and nowadays i don't think any studio on the continent is interested in doing a traditional animated film, but it still would be really cool.

TG: Your latest movie is The Meaning of Life, which has been touring this year. You'll have to forgive people like me who live halfway to Antarctica and haven't seen it yet... I gather this is a very different film from your earlier work. You've talked about it being very painterly and musical. Also that it backgrounds humour compared with your older films. Now it's been out for a while, are you finding that people's expectations of you are changing a little, or do you think they're expecting this to be some sort of odd diversion that just happened to take you four years to make?

DH: yeah it did "just happen" to take four years to make.. that was certainly not planned on.. but yeah, it's not a comedy and people going in expecting "rejected 2" are probably in for a bit of a headspin. i think maybe the first month of release threw some fans for a loop.. it seemed like what most people were talking about was what the film wasn't doing - it's not funny, it didn't tell me the meaning of my life - rather than what it was doing. it's not really that unusual for me though.. you have to remember, many people didn't even know what they were looking at when rejected came out in 2000.. and lots of people still don't understand that one.. it seems like all of our films kinda maybe need a little time. life is also sort of difficult since its so dense and you only catch about half of it in one theater sitting. but i think it's sort of soaked in the public's ether long enough now and audiences seem to be really responding to it more. about once a week i get an email from somebody somewhere who reports having actually cried during the film because they were so overwhelmed, and i don't think the film could ask much more than that.. i saw a drunk guy puke from laughter once at a screening of rejected, but tears are a bodily function that my films hadn't yet achieved. maybe the next film will give everyone explosive dysentery.

TG: You say people often think your films are computer animated. That's mind-boggling to me, but that aside, do you feel that the 'restrictions' of live film can be a source of inspiration and creativity? Do you like having to improvise new techniques?

DH: i do think the limitations of doing things the old fashioned way actually helps, at least for me.. if i have to construct an outer space special effect from scratch with only a camera and backlights, it's a big challenge that's going to be demand many experiments, different ways of thinking, happy accidents, etc.. it's a lot of sitting around trying to figure out how to physically pull it off, and that spurs all sorts of additional ideas. when i work on a computer, often the first thing i try will work out fine and i'll move on... and it doesn't challenge me to actually think very much about what i'm doing, or come up with any more radical approaches that i might never have considered.

but yeah, lately that's been one of the nicest compliments for life.. audiences thinking all the effects were CG and being surprised to learn they're all in-camera. in a way i guess it brought that "wow!" factor back into the equation we were talking about.. suddenly everyone's wondering "how i did that", which is kinda cool

TG: The Animation Show is obviously a passion for you. Would you like to see a greater interest again in non-feature length animation in the US, and have you seen any changes in that direction?

DH: we've had some really great audiences across the country and the public interest is certainly there... but no, i don't think we're ever going to see animated shorts as a regular fixture in mainstream US theaters. there's very little money to be made in it and that's really the end of the discussion. there will always be guys like me and mike who really care about this stuff, but we are basically force-feeding it into the popular marketplace.. most theater chains and the general media are unfamiliar with it and wholly indifferent to what we're doing. everywhere we go its like a mini-education: this is why these films are important, this is why you should book us, this is why you need to review the show in your paper. we're able to regularly sell out venues, but much of the time it's an uphill struggle getting the word out. it's a bummer but i think all art in the US will always be sort of sidelined until someone is around with the ability to sort of briefly jam it into the public's popular field of vision, with arms waving. it's anybody's guess on how long we'll be able to do it, but i'd certainly like to keep trying.

TG: John Waters once said that he stopped doing underground and started doing more mainstream comedies because he couldn't imagine being 65 years old and still trying to shock people. What sort of direction can you imagine Bitter Films going in 20 years from now? (apologies for the tenuous analogy between yourself and Waters, or any inference that you haven't already changed directions)

DH: i don't really think about it.. life didn't come out of sitting down and saying, "hey let's do something radically different", it was just the next film in my head that needed to come out, and it just didn't happen to be a comedy. and the next film is already shaping up to be very different from life. and i like that.. i think all of these films are clearly coming from the same voice but i never want to tread the same ground and find myself making the same thing over and over again.. at that point i may as well quit. many animators seem to hit a rut of success and find themselves turned into commodity. and maybe that works because it probably means they'll make much more money that way.. i don't know, i'd rather keep trying out new things and push myself into more frightening, unknown directions.. if something isn't a creative risk on some level i don't think it's really worth doing. if i was after the money and a quick sale, i certainly wouldn't be making weird indie cartoons.

TG: You've talked several times about the frustration of working on a project that took as long as Meaning of Life. You're working on something new now, and seem downright excited about it, especially the speed with which it's happening. What can you tell us else about it?

DH: it's spun from an old comic strip i did years ago called temporary anesthetics... it's all about a character from there whose name is bill. half of those strips were terrible, but i always enjoyed doing the bill ones. the film now i think is some of my strongest writing and it's been a dream to work on. i may already have a few minutes of footage ready to shoot here.. the whole thing is in pencil and its moving nice and fast.. really the polar opposite of production on life. i'm not sure what else i can share.. it is going to be a comedy, but it is going to be very different. we may be stretching the film form a little bit with this one.. the story is going to be told in a way i've never really seen done before. i don't think i've been this excited about working on something new since probably rejected, or earlier. there are some very early pics from it in here.

TG: Finally, we have a top 5 films on keyframe as voted by our members. There are several feature films that don't have enough votes to qualify, which would otherwise be in there, but at the time of writing we have:

1. The Nightmare Before Christmas
2. Cats Don't Dance
3. Spirited Away
4. The Secret of NIMH
5. The Triplets of Belleville

Out of that lot, what would you put on the top?

DH: i havent seen cats or nimh. but otherwise i think you probably have a valid winner on top. tho where the hell is mulan 2??

TG: Don, thanks for typing with us.

May 2005

posted: May 06, 2005 by lupercal

The Mice are back

World Screen News reports that the characters from the 1993 series, Biker Mice from Mars will be returning for a new season after many, many years off the air. The mice are set to return on GMTV in the U.K., in the fall of 2006.

posted: May 06, 2005 by athena