BEFORE: This is the point in the countdown where I had scheduled the doc that was made years ago about another, my employer for over 30 years. I needed to use it for linking purposes, honestly I sort of built this little sub-section around it, but since being fired a couple months ago, I've realized that I'm 99% sure that I've watched it before, so to keep it on the list would be a violation of my own rules. Also, I don't need it for the linking, as Will Vinton carries over from "Claydream". Also, eff that guy.
To be fair, that film was something of a puff piece, it really had nothing negative to say about him, so I'm fairly confident that the definitive documentary about him has yet to be made, and I'm also fairly confident that if someone were to make a true portrait, warts and all, about him, they would have to go through me for the details. So I've got that going for me.
THE PLOT: The story of Mellow Manor, a company run by two hippie friends who created a first of its kind animation festival and ended up helping the rise of the independent animation scene and the careers of many artists and directors.
AFTER: There's footage here from San Diego Comic-Con, so it's an extreme coincidence (one of MANY) that I landed this film's viewing right during this year's event. Really, the scheduling is done by my subconscious mind, which is aware of lots of things that my conscious mind just does NOT take into consideration when blocking out this stuff. And it's Friday, so if Spike's at SDCC, maybe tonight he'd be running "The Gauntlet" there, which is a screening of the films being considered for the Sick & Twisted Festival, and if the audience boos them, they're removed from the program mid-screening. I used to run a booth at San Diego Con, and my boss pressured me for a couple years to get the booth right across from Spike's, not only because he seemed to have a lot of foot traffic, but also so we could kind of pair up and create our own little "Animation Alley", though I was never able to get the management to promote our section that way. Probably we just wanted to steal some of his traffic, but you know, a rising tide lifts all boats, they say.
Spike would stand in his booth and use a microphone to get attention (a clear violation of the floor rules of the event) and bust on the cosplayers walking by - like intentionally mixing up "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" or mis-reading what people were dressed up as. When things were slow he'd offer to give a free DVD to the first person who would say "I'm a nerd and I live with my mother" on the mike. And he'd throw shade over to our booth by making fun of my boss, so you know, sometimes I smiled over what Spike was laying down. If you could turn the camera just a bit to the left during the Comic-Con footage in this doc, you'd see my booth and maybe see that I was holding back a laugh. Spike got the Inkpot Award at last years Comic-Con, so I'm pretty sure that he's still hustling there. Hell, I just wanted to Google him and make sure he's still alive before I post, what with the recent rash of celebrity deaths. Spike would also make announcements from his booth like "I'm famous, and you're not." and "Mike can't be here today because he's dead." and really, there's no way saying those things could become ironic.
Two years ago (3 years after this film got released), Spike's company got acquired by Skybound Entertainment (not Skydance) and they're going to keep his library of films going around as a touring festival, or stream them, whichever, and I hope Spike got a big payout. I wish other animation notable were as forward thinking and connected (apparently) as Spike is - if other people had found connections like this, I'd still be employed. Or who knows, if my boss had sold his film library and cashed out, maybe firing me would have been his next move, who can say? Part of why I'm sitting at home now has everything to do with him NOT being able to sell his library, I'm fairly sure.
I never met Mike Gribble, he died maybe two years after I got into the industry, and I think at that point I was still figuring out who everybody was and what they did. But I knew him by reputation, he was the M.C. and the showman for the festival, while Spike was the quiet one who lurked in the background and made business deals, the "Silent Bob" of the pair, if you will. And after Mike died, Spike had to become a different sort of person to keep the festival alive. But together they grinded out the publicity for their touring shows, and accidentally created a whole cottage industry for indie animation, really the best idea from two guys who didn't know what they were doing since the Wright Brothers put wings on a bicycle and drove it off a cliff.
(My boss told me that Mike took some pill that turned his beard different colors, which I realize now is ridiculous. Even if such a pill existed, which I'm pretty sure it doesn't, that seems so much more dangerous and foolhardy than, you know, just using hair dye, which does exist. My boss was really gullible, or Mike said some weird things just to mess with people, probably both.)
I remember shipping out boxes of VHS tapes of animation collections to Mellow Manor, we had other distributors but Spike loved to sell our tapes along with his own. Later on he got some competition from Terry Thoren, who created another touring show called the Tournée of Animation. There's probably a whole other documentary that could be made about the competition in a tight market, but I never met Terry, though our San Diego booth was usually next to Animation Magazine's booth which was run by his ex-wife, Jean.
As I said yesterday, the animation business is very insular, everybody knows everybody, it's a relatively small group of people when compared with filmmaking overall. Over my career, "live-action" was frequently heard as an insult, it's that other group of people who can't animate and just film what's in front of them, how pedestrian. But if you make a good animated film, it's like you just killed a buffalo, you're part of the tribe now. And everyone's got to start somewhere, people who were just out of college and knew nothing about distribution or how to promote themselves found that the road maybe got a little easier if they went through Spike & Mike, in fact the pair would often help young animators finish their films, include their films in their touring festival, and pay them money. I'm sure Spike & Mike kept some money for themselves, I mean they had to keep their business going and they were doing most of the legwork, but you don't hear anyone complaining in this doc about getting ripped off by them. (If such people are out there, yes, I realize it's very simple to just NOT include their testimonies in the film.)
But just read the list below, it's a veritable "Who's Who" of indie animators, or ones that were indie and then got jobs at Disney, Dreamworks, WB, or Pixar. They really only missed a few people who rose to fame with some help from Spike and/or Mike: Don Hertzfeldt, Eric Fogel, Chris Wedge, John Dilworth and the "South Park" guys. Maybe those people were all busy, or maybe they hold grudges, it's not for me to say. I thank Spike for creating an outlet where there was none, and though he comes off as a gruff, scary guy, he's very entertaining with a microphone in his hand on the Comic-Con sales floor. And he proves that if you keep doing what you're doing, eventually everyone's going to know who you are. They may hate your work or think you're totally nuts, but they will know who you are.
The Spike & Mike festivals may have been started to function just like a rock concert - but one without all the trouble of dealing with rock bands that tended to be unruly or unreliable or untalented - but it turned into a phenomenon of its own. Instead Spike just had to deal with a lot of animators, who I can confirm tend to be a similary weird bunch, but at least they show up when you program their films. Plus, some of them are rational people - really, it's puppeteers that you have to watch out for.
Directed by Kat Alioshin
Also starring Spike Decker, Danny Antonucci, Jerry Beck (also carrying over from "Claydream"), Peter Lord (ditto), Nick Park (ditto), Bill Plympton (ditto), Marilyn Zornado (ditto), Bruno Bozzetto, Jonathan Davis, Pete Docter, Emek, John Evershed, David Fine, Joan Gratz, Seth Green (last seen in "Sex Drive"), Steve L. Harmon, Keith Lowell Jensen, Mike Judge (not THAT one), Bob Kurtz, Patrick Maloney, Dan Mirvish, Mike Mitchell, Kenn Navarro, Marv Newland, Jan Pinkava, Everett Peck, Shane Peterson, Joanna Priestley, Roger Raderman, Sean Rielly, David J. Russell, Bob Scarano, David Silverman, Libby Simon, Alison Snowden, David Sproxton, Andrew Stanton, Sarah Chavez Shelton, William Stout, Steve Tenhonen, Ralph Torries, Weird Al Yankovic (last seen in "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story")
with archive footage of Sergio Aragones, Brad Bird, Tim Burton (last seen in "The Sparks Brothers"), Mike Gribble, Mike Judge (OK, THAT one, last heard in "Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe"), John Lasseter, Olivia Munn (last seen in "Ride Along 2"), Kevin Pereira, Terry Thoren,
RATING: 5 out of 10 balloons popped by Scottie the Wonder Dog
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